Medium Delirium

Alternatively titled ‘Desmond’s Story’.

On a cross-country Grabhitch ride this morning, our driver – Desmond – told us (completely unbidden) the story of his life. And what a fascinating story it was.

Desmond looks to be in his mid-40s, a slim man with acne scars and slivers of white mixed in amongst wispy black hair. He wore a simple shirt and jeans, and his car was pristine and comfortable. We hadn’t even pulled out of the estate before he launched into conversation – what the hell were we doing, going all the way to a factory area in the far west early on a Saturday morning?

The answer was a woodworking workshop, and the conversation continued to flow, though mostly in a one way direction – Desmond speaking, my husband making polite sounds of affirmation. By means that escape my memory this led to Desmond telling us about the night a mallet changed the entire course of his life.

In the 90s, a young Desmond was working hard in his first job as an engineer for a household-name electronics giant. One evening he found himself alone in the office, tinkering away with mounting frustration on a machine that – this is what little I managed to grasp, my sensibilities veering decidedly far away from machinery and hardware of any sort – put chips into computers. He described it as being the length of two cars. The machine was spoilt, and he was trying to fix it. The machine had been spoilt before, for any variety of reasons, and yet he had always been able to fix it. This time, though, he was stuck. Try as he might, he simply couldn’t make it work.

Exasperated (in his words ‘pek cek‘), he impetuously swung a mallet at the machine, hard, and spewed a number of choice insults at it in both Hokkien and English. Why he had a mallet on him I’ll never know, but the important thing is what happened next. Above the self-generated din of his own complaints, it occured to him that the sound of the mallet hitting this sick machine was, in fact, rather odd. It sounded hollow. His curiosity piqued, he proceeded to take the mallet to every of the same machine on the floor. His suspicions were confirmed; the dysfunctional machine was making a different sound from the rest. Surely this was not coincidence.

He put in a report. He was asked to take the mallet to the machines again, in the presence of wary superiors who had (understandably) questioned why he had been hitting the very machines he was meant to be servicing. His accidental observations were corroborated. Not long after, delegates from the mother office in Japan were sent down. More corroboration. Further investigation revealed hairline cracks in the diseased machine that had gone unnoticed thanks to a rather thick coat of paint. The width of a single strand of hair, yet enough to fell a machine the size of small lorry. And enough to confound a persistent, indefatigable electrical engineer.

Who discovered this? Japan asked.

‘That guy there with the long hair,’ said the General Manager, sticking a finger in Desmond’s direction.

Desmond digressed at this point to elaborate that in his early 20s he had hair that was ‘as long as the lady’s.’ ‘The lady’ meant me, and my hair falls nearly to my waist.

Within a couple of weeks, Desmond found himself called into the GM’s office. Here he found out that the company was on a mission to review all the machines of this model in all offices everywhere, and, if more such cases of cracks were found, to fix them. This being a huge, multinational company, ‘everywhere’ meant, truly, everywhere – all over Europe, the US, and Asia. And, as discoverer of the flaw and the doctor to this first sick machine, Desmond was being deployed, solo, to the task.

‘I picked the US for you,’ continued the GM, ‘since I know you like Harley (Davidsons). In the US you can collect lots of patches.’

Without missing a beat Desmond asked for Europe instead. Why? The GM was puzzled. You see, Desmond was indeed interested in collecting Harley patches, but not in sheer quantity. He aimed to amass a collection from as many countries as possible. The US was one big country. Europe was many countries. He would get more country patches from a European posting.

This simple thinking might sound laughably thin in logic and foresight, but I think it was Desmond’s openness to going with the flow that opened the door to adventure.

Thus began a 2 year long stint in Europe. Based in Hamburg, he was flown to cities all over, including Italy, Hungary and more. In these cities he would stay in hotels, and report to the company’s local office. On the weekends, he found himself starved of entertainment. He didn’t drink, which in Europe – especially Germany – might as well have been a cardinal sin. He was affectionately labelled ‘little fucker’ by his German colleagues when they found him trying to order a Coke at Oktoberfest. Though well liked, Desmond still found himself at a loss on how to spend his time outside of work.

Sieged by boredom one weekend, he hailed a cab and headed back down to the office to continue working. The office security was mortified, and alerted the local worker who had been tasked to buddy Desmond. He calls and berates Desmond, stating in no uncertain terms the sacredness of weekends in Europe. ‘People spend time with their families on the weekends,’ his buddy reminded him. ‘You have family, but I’m all alone here,’ Desmond lamented in return.

Every weekend that followed, his German buddy drove to pick him up so he could join his own family for a day. Thanks to him, Desmond managed to see what Germany had to offer beyond the walls of his own apartment and office. Till this day, they are friends, and when the buddy visits Singapore, Desmond and his family warmly welcomes him and his.

After Europe came the US. During these years of profuse jetsetting, Desmond somehow also managed to get engaged, then married, then became the father to 3 children, flying back intermittently for each milestone before being summoned back to Hamburg, or New York, or wherever in the world he was needed. He grew tired of not being around. When his Singaporean GM (‘That guy with the long hair’) changed companies, he followed along.

This new company dealt in software, not the hardware that Desmond was familiar and comfortable with. Despite not being able to type on a keyboard at all, Desmond spent 10 years here, including an extended stint in Taiwan. ‘What’s the catch?’ he asked the caucasian boss at his entrance interview. ‘I can’t even type, what do you want me for in software?’

‘No catch,’ the white man said. ‘We just need people like you.’ Vague, but just enough for Desmond to be convinced. He remains thankful to his GM for bringing him onboard.

When his 4th child was born, Desmond was finally able to be present throughout the pregnancy, delivery and early years.

Now, his eldest is 22, and his youngest 16. The 22 year old is doing an exchange programme in Hungary; when she went, Desmond rang his contact from the Budapest office of the electronics company where he tinkered with sick machines 20 odd years ago. ‘If my daughter needs any help, can she look for you?’ The answer was a resounding yes.

Thanks to a fateful night and an incident with a mallet, Desmond has seen the world in a way that most in his generation have not. Before it was normal in Singapore to be financially able to move fluidly across the map, Desmond had done it. He has friends all over the world, and when they visit, or when he visits them, his family now does too.

Desmond is not old and yet he has already lived so many lives.

What is the moral of the story? Who can say? Maybe it’s to let your anger out. Carry a mallet. Say yes. Make friends. Be a friend. Perhaps it’s all that and a little more. Whatever it is, Desmond’s story was remarkable, and made for a lovely 30 minute ride that might otherwise have been pretty dull.