29 January 2021

An ode to Shah Rizal Noorzaman

Today marks the last day Shah Rizal or Shah as everybody calls him works at this company. Shah was amongst the first colleagues that I know from EP campus. He’s been a real good friend and mentor, teaching me a lot of things that I don’t know in the early days of my work there. Shah is some of the most knowledgeable person that I know of in the IT department, second only to Shazumi and our managers.

We were both promoted together as the deputy to System Admin. We’ve been through a lot together, some ups and downs. I was quite surprised when he was demoted from the position last year and transferred to the KL campus. I heard that he made some minor mistakes at work last time but surely that is no cause for such drastic action. The one person that benefited the most from his transfer is of course me who got transferred the opposite way to EP. I can’t speak for him on how he felt about this series of unfortunate events but I’d be lying if I think that he doesn’t feel at wronged or being treated unfairly by the management. One thing for sure, those decisions are out of my control so there’s nothing I can do but to follow orders.

The last few months of working here, I can sense him being cold towards me and Shazumi, his former line manager. We didn’t get much response from him while communicating for work and sometimes while chatting casually. Even after he got transferred back to the EP campus we didn't talk much. In the last couple of months also, his health has been poor and he’d been in and out of hospitals a few times, sometimes being warded and taking weeks off from work. While I hope nothing but the best for his health, I must admit, his absence affected our productivity at work. But still, I was as surprised as everybody when I heard the news about his resignation earlier this week. Usually, long time staff need to give 2 month’s notice before quitting but the management had agreed for his short notice.

At first I was worried why he had to quit in this economy plus the fact that he had not secured any jobs at another place first. Then I heard from his good friend that he just sold his house for around 200,000 ringgit so no worries. To Shah, I wish you all the best in your future endeavours and projects. I hope you succeed in whatever business or job you’re getting into next. I know we were rather distant in the last few weeks of our time together but I’ll never forget all the knowledge and help that you’ve given to me all these while. This is actually Shah’s second stint at the company. Believe it or not, he quit the company a long time ago and worked somewhere else, only to return back to the company right around the same time I joined. So I won’t be totally surprised if he suddenly joins the company again in the future.

Good luck again Shah Rizal and thanks again for everything.

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