Meaningful buildings

There are several buildings on Penang island which mean something to me. The first is obviously my childhood home: the house in which I grew up. And in fact, it was this house at No.10 Seang Tek Road that I lived with my parents and grandparents until I was 26 years old. There's a lot of attachment and many, many fond memories that goes with it.

The second is my secondary school building: the Penang Free School building in Green Lane where I had enjoyed seven years of schooling before stepping forth into the wide world. Again, a lot of attachment to it, and many, many fond memories too. Since 2012, I've stepped into the school premises again on countless occasions. Reliving my schooldays in a way.

The third has to be the former Ban Hin Lee Bank building in Beach Street which is now occupied by CIMB Bank. For 23 years, I was in the employment of this bank and I spent 18 years in this heritage building. So there's a lot of attachment here as well.

But there's a fourth building among two or three others that meant something to me. It could have been my primary school building, the Westlands Primary School building in Victoria Green Road or the Straits Echo building in Penang Road where I had my first meaningful employment, but no....I should refer instead to the Equatorial Penang building in Bukit Jambul on the south-eastern part of the island.

People may be curious to know why I should rank the Equatorial Penang building as one that means something to me. Well, it is because it was within the bowels of this building that I had spent eight-plus years employed at JobStreet.com. Yes, after I had resigned from Southern Bank in 2001, I joined this Internet job search company until my retirement at the end of 2009. 

For more than eight years, I crossed the bridge to reach Equatorial Penang from my residence on the mainland. Parking was always in the basement of the hotel. From there, lifts would take me either up to the ground floor where JobStreet.com was most visible through its sales, finance and administration offices. But there was also an executive search office further inside and a network control office too. I shared space with Ted Targosz, Teoh Eng Soon and Wong Yew Tuck who became good friends from my JobStreet days. 

Then several months later, I moved to the Lower Ground Fifth floor - deep down the Equatorial Penang building - to engage more with the software engineers in the research and development department of JobStreet.com. 

In those days, all the job search application software were developed from the Penang office of  JobStreet.com and the staff in this particular department probably numbered around 30 or 40 people. That's quite a large workforce to support the demands of a job search company which range from the job seekers to the companies advertising their job positions. Proprietary matching tools were developed to pair job positions with potential job seekers. part of my job was to check the correctness of the language on the website and that used for the mass emails that the company send to the job seekers. 

Working in a place such as the Equatorial Penang building gave my JobStreet.com colleagues and I plenty of opportunities to enjoy the restaurants at the hotel. Although we would usually have our lunch in Bayan Baru town, there were always occasions for celebrations and get-togethers in the hotel premises at the slightest excuse. Thus, places such as the Kampachi Japanese restaurant, the Golden Phoenix Chinese restaurant or their coffee house for lunch, The View restaurant for dinner or the Blue Moon pub to unwind after office hours. Plus, the time spent just sitting around and watching people passing by. 

I also like to mention the long and winding corridor on the Lower Ground Second Floor where the view was magnificent. Just standing there alone for five or 10 minutes, all serenely quiet and the wind sometimes blowing in the face, and looking out onto the Bukit Jambul golf course and the impressive bungalow buildings below was enough to soothe anyone's nerves. It brought me a therapeutic calm. 

All these are coming to an unfortunate end. After 32 years of being Penang's first five-star hotel in the southern reaches of the island. The management of Equatorial Penang has already informed the public that their hotel operations will cease from 10 February 2021 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The only consolation, so I hear, is that the tenants of their office block on the lower ground floors will function as normal. Nevertheless, the hotel will definitely become a much quieter place after this date.