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MALAYSIAN DIPLOMATS: OUR STORIES

next to the dining room. Free meal! Well, what can I say? I have never had
my meals at such a posh place before. And oh, I bought a new silk batik shirt
just for the occasion. I think it cost me RM80, which was a bundle then for
someone who has not even received his f rst pay check!

When the Minister arrived, I received him at the hotel lobby and took him
up to the Paddock to greet some of the guests who had arrived early. We
waited for a while for the other guests to arrive. T en the Minister received
information from his Special Of cer that three of his guests (if I remember
correctly) were not able to make it to the dinner. T e Minister then pulled
me aside and asked me remove the extra chairs and to rearrange the guests’
seating accordingly.

T is was where my problems started. I began to rearrange the guests’ seating
by shuf ing their name cards at the table according to the limited knowledge
that I had about the ‘protocol order of precedence’, and pulling out the extra
chairs. Everyone knows that guests’ seating at the table at an of cial dinner
is based on the principle of their protocol order of precedence.

T en everything became a blur when the Minister lost his patience when
he saw that I looked lost and was unsure of what I was doing. I was taking
too long, and he was obviously unhappy with the rearranged seating that
I had done. He then took my hand and started shoving it around on the
table seating plan (you know, that sheet of parchment paper on which the
seating plan was shown), telling me in a not so gentle manner and in a loud
booming voice in front of all the guests that ‘so and so’ should be moved
here and another ‘so and so’ should be seated there and so on. And more
importantly, I was told to avoid placing any female guests at the end of the
table. By then I was already having cold sweats and panic crept in. Oh God,
how I wished I could have disappeared then.

After getting things done to the satisfaction of the Minister, I went up to him
and apologised for my incompetence and left the room feeling dejected and
embarrassed. It was an important dinner for the Minister and I failed him.
Of course the Minister had every right to be angry at me. My incompetence
also did not ref ect well on him and the Ministry especially when it involved
foreign guests.

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