Page 18 - MDOS2_Final

MALAYSIAN DIPLOMATS: OUR STORIES

in spaghetti bolognaise, eggs, yoghurt, and bread and butter as my sahur.
After three days of the same food, I felt like I could not take it anymore. T e
room service of erings cost a fortune. Food stalls were nowhere to be found,
and I did not want to take the trouble of getting a taxi to an eatery in the wee
hours of the morning in freezing temperature.

One evening after breaking fast, I went to the hotel gym for a workout. After
a while I felt dizzy. I was short of breath, drenched in sweat, and almost
fainted. I sat down on a bench but the dizziness did not go away. I knew
I needed medical attention and asked the gym staf to call the paramedic.
After listening to my explanation, the paramedic said that my body has
not yet adjusted to being in a high altitude place like Almaty and I was
short of oxygen. Furthermore, I was working out after fasting during the
day. Together with the paramedic was the hotel’s assistant sales director, a
Turkish gentleman by the name of Murat. He was the one who welcomed
me when I f rst arrived at the hotel. We became friends. Murat then left
Almaty for another stint in Eastern Europe and married a Russian woman.
To my surprise, we met again three years later when he returned to work at
the same hotel.

After the permissible f ve-day hotel stay, I moved into the government-rented
bungalow left by my predecessor, Hashim Ismail. Obviously it was too big
a house for me as a single of cer. I also retained Hashim’s live-in maid, a
Kazakh lady named Bibigul, af ectionately called Vika. What a relief for me
to have company in that big house. I needed her for cooking and washing.
However, Vika could only cook one or two Malay dishes. What was worse
was we could not communicate verbally due to language barriers. It was not
a problem for Hashim as he could speak Russian, thanks to his successive
postings in Moscow, Tashkent and Almaty. I remember calling Marina, the
embassy’s interpreter, whenever I wanted to instruct Vika to prepare a meal
or do other things. With Vika standing next to me, we passed the phone
receiver back and forth to speak to Marina.

Night time was longer than day time during winter. Every day after sunset, I
locked myself in my bedroom and spent the hours mostly reading. I hardly
watched the television as only Kazakh and Russian channels were available.
T e Embassy received on a monthly basis magazines published by Dewan

16