Post Jerejak – 1
3/8/2007
When I woke up this morning, it was from a dream that was pleasing both spiritually as well as in the physical sense; I cannot remember what it was all about, but I felt the outcome and was elated. I did my sitting, which was followed by my prayers and then my Yoga stretching exercises, which flowed out naturally from within, with hardly any resistance. The daylight outside my living room window displayed an overcast sky with cool wind blowing through the house, and I tried to wake up my daughter as her alarm was ringing, but to no avail, as she curled deeper into her blanket.
Making myself a cup of coffee, I turned to the computer and picked out some soft music to listen to while I make my entry for the day, which I really have no idea what or how it will turn out to be. The tune I am listening to happens to be "In the Mood for Love," by Shigeru Umebayashi—never heard of before, but the violin sounds awesome and I am waltzing in my head. Not bad for starters this morning.
Outside, the wind had died down, and the skies were beginning to clear—no rain, false flag. As I gazed out towards the horizon, I realized that I could see the sea and the island of Jerejak, where I used to work for two years as the ferry terminal supervisor serving the Jerejak Resort and Spa facility on the island. The resort is still up and running, but I have no idea who owns it now or how it is faring business-wise today.
My two odd years working for the resort were as eventful as most of my past jobs had been, and when I left, I swore never to work for anyone anymore. One of the characters that got to me was the resort manager, who had the ego of the son of the former chief of police in Penang and had spent a part of his life being educated in Chicago, in the US. He was a drunk pretty much most of the time I was working under him and handled the place like he owned it. He was aggressive and obnoxious towards most of the resort staff, including me. The staff, being Malay Muslims, did not take kindly to his drinking and swearing, and so one can see back then how a beautiful place almost went under. But when you are the son of the former Chief of Police and you have strong connections, you cannot do wrong even if your actions brought negative effects on the business.
This, I found, to be the general fate of most Malay-owned businesses: accountability is cast to the winds, and ego rules the day.
Jerejak Island, or better known in Malay as Pulau Jerejak, was at one time a penal colony, a transit location for Indian and Chinese migrants brought over by the British East India Company to work in the rubber plantations and tin mines. Here they were processed and relocated to various parts of the then Malay Peninsula. It was also an internment camp for Japanese prisoners during World War II, and many heads were lost to the samurai blades during the occupation. Later, it became a part of the leprosy colony, where the old buildings still stand today as reminders of those times. It was a prison camp where political dissidents and drug addicts were held for a time and, most famously known among the locals, it was where jinns and various other evil spirits—even bad luck—were discarded or banished to by the shamans, dukuns and bomohs, Hindu priests, and Chinese necromancers.
Hence, Pulau Jerejak had a nasty history as an island.
Reflection:
Looking back on my time at Jerejak and the people, memories, and challenges that came with it is not an indulgence in nostalgia or regret. It is a reckoning—a gentle gathering of the scattered fragments of my past, not to be bound by them, but to better understand who I have become because of them. These stories, however bitter or beautiful, are not chains—they are threads, woven into the tapestry of a life still unfolding. If I revisit these moments now, it is not to dwell, but to distill meaning, to remember the lessons, and to carry forward only what still serves the journey ahead.
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