The JobStreet reunion

If I were to be still working in JobStreet.com today, I would be spending my 15th year in this company. I joined it in June 2001 and left in December of 2009. Eight-and-a-half years in this fabulous dotcom company. But despite having left JobStreet.com some 4½ years ago, I still harbour attachment for the people and the work culture that I left behind. That was why when news of a possible reunion of former JobStreet staff was mooted some seven months ago, I had made up my mind to attend it.

And what a reunion that I've just had in Kuala Lumpur. After several false starts, the reunion of former JobStreet.com colleagues, together with some present staff members, finally materialised at the Publika shopping mall in Sri Hartamas.

Throughout the whole evening, all that I experienced were the warmth and friendship of my former JS colleagues. Met up with people like Chong See Ming, Tan Chew Lian, Suresh Thiru, Divya, Simon Si, and of course, Mark Chang, who had all been a part of my later working life.

As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I had been planning for this trip a long while ago, just waiting for it to take place and when it did, there was no second's hesitation before I booked tickets south. Unlike me, my wife isn't a former JS staff but she had met Chang, the founder and chief executive officer of the public-listed company, before. So she was just as keen as I was to go for the function.

The reunion was actually two-fold. Apart from the opportunity for people like me to touch base with some former colleagues, it was also meant for the launch of a book called The Tales of the dotcom Legend.

The idea for the book was conceived by Tan, one of the longest serving JS staff and he's still there, way back in March this year after news became public the month earlier that the company was selling off its jobs portal business to Seek Australia. He felt that the JobStreet.com story must be told from the view-point of people who used to work or are working in the dotcom company.

Four months later, the stories from 75 contributors were ready and compiled, warts and all, into The Tales of the dotcom Legend. The only thing left was to find a suitable date for the book launch. An earlier attempt to fix a date fell through when the main subject of this book could not make it for the reunion. This date with Chang was finally secured for the ninth of August.

That was when I bought the tickets to go down to Kuala Lumpur. This was a reunion that I wasn't going to miss. If the JS business was going to be hived off, I had wanted to meet up with my old friends from the company - as many as possible - before it disappeared. And I must say that I came home with no regrets of attending the reunion although I did not get to meet everyone that I hoped to meet.

After coming back, I had mentioned in one of my facebook messages that at the end of the day, only two reunions remain meaningful to me. The first one is with my former Ban Hin Lee Bank mates and the other is definitely with my former JobStreet.com colleagues. All you guys are truly wonderful.