libra : miss wong

I suddenly recalled an incident … that i must blog about.

circa 1992, while I was working during the school holidays for an advertising firm (called Libra), my colleague Johnson asked me to go to the office. Located 3 floors below the workshop (where i was working), I capered down happily into the office. Johnson was standing near the office entrance and passed me a bunch of documents. Note: my back was facing the entrance.

Johnson : “Hey Mike.. can you get these documents to Miss Wong ?”
[Johnson was the lead handicraft/ad artist and was part of our sworn workplace camaraderie]

Me : “Sure dude. But I need to know who’s Miss Wong ? And where can I find her ?”

Johnson : “What ? You don’t know who’s Miss Wong ? The tall lady ? The one with glasses ?”

Me : “Hmmm .. nope… I can’t recall. How does she looked like ? Is she pretty ?” *wink wink*

Johnson : “She’s the boss’s first wife … haven’t you seen her before ? The one that sits at the 3rd floor office ?”
[Believe me or not .. the boss has 2 wives working in Libra ... and they are friendly towards each other]

Me : “The one that always come up to patrol our workshop ? Skinny lady ?”

Johnson : “Yes. She is the Miss Wong I’m talking about… ”
[Miss Wong is the boss' wife .. and I hate her because she's a mean bitch and love to yak her employees]

Me : “Oooooh … that damn old hag is it ? Can’t you just describe properly next time goddamn it ? Addressing her ‘Miss Wong’ is very misleading…coz she’s so old, wrinkled and saggy like that. You shoud address her as Aunty Wong. Hahahh”
[I exactly said 'si lau ee' .. hokkien for 'damn old hag']

Johnson was quiet and did not respond to me at all. I can see his face turned into the colour of a fish’s belly — pale. His cheeks were intermittently twitching, and his eyes were not blinking.

I figured that it must be something very wrong that I’ve said. Maybe he doesn’t like my crude and derogatory remarks about Miss Wong. I was like staring at him for approximately 2 seconds. But instead of confronting me, he just stood there without saying a thing.

It was then, I figured something went very wrong. There’s someone standing behind me .. coz I can see Johnson’s eyes focussing somewhere at the entrance. When I turned around, the worst odd came true. Miss Wong was standing right behind me. She was giving me that emotionless stare like a dog has. The next thing that happened was pretty blur. I forgot how I reacted.

I remembered very clearly that I quickly passed the documents straight to her hands without saying a thing … and fled the place up to the workshop. In just 10 - 20 minutes, the news was widespread up above the workshop and the artroom. The fellowship of colleagues can be heard laughing out loud at that very moment … while I was biting my nails waiting for the worst thing to happen.

But it never happened. Miss Wong took it with such a steady sport. In matter of days, the rest of us became totally forgotten about the incident and Miss Wong even treated me a great lunch when I left the company after the holidays. Maybe, Miss Wong wasn’t such a bad person after all.

I had plenty of crazy and funny experiences during my employment at Libra. I would be blogging more about it under the title Libra : something