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MY JOURNEY IN WISMA PUTRA – THE EARLY PART
OF THE JOURNEY

My f rst task at headquarters was the Of cial Visit of Prime Minister Nakasone
in May 1983 while my last task was arranging the of cial visit of the Head of
State of USA, President Barack Obama to Putrajaya in November 2014 to
attend the ASEAN Summit related meetings. In retrospect, those two high
prof le visits were the climaxes of my service at the headquarters.

First Posting – Tokyo, Japan
Prior to my posting, I went to Japan for the 21st Century Youth Programme
under the LEP and later in 1985, to study Japanese under the Gaimusho
(Foreign Ministry of Japan) programme.

After the completion of my Japanese language programme, I received a
posting order to report for duty at the Embassy of Malaysia in Tokyo. It was
unique in the sense that I did not go back to Malaysia to pack and send my
personal ef ects before being posted, but only did it a few months later when
I went home to get married to Zarinah who was my DPA course mate at the
then INTAN at Jalan Elmu.

I reported for duty to the Ambassador, who was then Datuk Ahmad Kamil
Jaafar and assumed the post of Second Secretary and the Head of Chancery.
I was shocked and did not expect to take up the post of Head of Chancery
too, as I was the most junior of cer in the Embassy and there were many
seniors available to f ll the post.

Further, I had to deal with senior of cials, including the ambassador, on
matters pertaining to the administration of the Embassy. In the early 80s,
the Embassy in Tokyo was a full-f edged Embassy with all the posts f lled
up in the descending order of Ambassador, Minister, Minister-Counsellor,
Counsellor, First Secretary, Second Secretary, T ird Secretary and Attachés.
T e ambassadors of those days indeed lived up to their title of Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary. By the time I became an Ambassador in the early
millennium, I only had one Second Secretary assisting me which had become
a norm in most of the small missions. T e big missions also did not have all
their posts f lled as it used to be in the 80s.

I learned a lot in my f rst posting, thanks to my ambassador who delegated
me to attend many of the diplomatic social functions. One of those pinnacles

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