New Property, New Encounter

Concorde Hotel built a new hotel in Shah Alam, 25km west from Kuala Lumpur.

As the new General Manager for Shah Alam was the Resident Manager of Concorde Hotel Kuala Lumpur who interviewed me in the first place, I was asked to look after the both properties as Associate Director of Sales.

Shah Alam is a industrial suburb where there were many Japanese manufacturing companies operated. This new hotel with 380 rooms had to cultivate new clients with strong Japanese business base.

I moved my hotel room from Kuala Lumpur to this Shah Alam property and started work with those manufacturers.

One day, I had a food poisoning from tuna sandwich and stayed in the hospital for 2 days. When I was discharged, I was still weak and sick, but I dropped in the office to see how much work has been compiled in the past few days.

Then I received a phone call from Matsushita Electric (probably their bland "Panasonic" is more popular and they just changed the company name to Panasonic two days ago worldwide). They were my biggest target as they had a large number of engineers travel from Japan and each stayed for several months. They could be the biggest corporate account in Shah Alam.

The lady asked me to come to office today, so I grabbed the chance although I was still sick and on medical leave. It was a never-to-miss business opportunity.

As I arrived their massive office, the Chinese lady who was arranging a hotel for their visitors explained their requirements and negotiated on the price. I promised to come back to her the next day, and she said she wanted to introduce her boss to me.

I was bloody sick but happy to meet her boss. His name was Yasushi and quite a young looking manager in mid-thirties. I thanked him for the opportunity and said that the hotel could start a good relationship with Matsushita Electric.

The General Manager of Concorde Shah Alam was happy to have an opportunity to move all the long-term guests from the other hotel, and agreed with the requests from the client and published the special rate for them. I invited the client's general manager and managing director to the dinner in our hotel and had a long talk to start a good and mutual relationship.

The flow of guests started to come in to the new and quiet hotel.

I greeted many guest upon check-in, and made sure they were happy staying with us. The Japanese guest service officers were hired to attend them on day-to-day basis.

I worked with Yasushi and his bosses closely and received many phone calls from him. It was so natural and business-like, it took me a long time to realise he had personal interest in me. I did not like to get involved with clients personally, but when things happen, they do if you like it or not.

Yasushi happens to be my husband now, but until we got married in 2000, there was a long way to go. The first thing we did after we engaged was to inform the managing director of Matsushita Electic who congratulated us happily. If he was a typical, old-fashioned man, we would have had a very difficult time. But fortunately he was open-minded gentleman who was understanding and supportive to us. He went back to Japan soon after we disclosed our marriage plan and could not attend our wedding.

I left the hotel industry at the end of 1999 as I thought my working life in the hotel could easily destroy the new marriage life. I worked too long hours and weekends and public holidays. Even if I moved out from the hotel, it is not easy to change the working style and people's expectation.

The first couple of months I left the hotel, I tried to do nothing. I sort of trying to see if I could be a full-time housewife.

Then I realised I couldn't. I rather had a nervous break-down and started having funny physical problems like body rushes and non-stop coughing.

I wasn't fit to be a housewife. It was so very obvious.

The nervous break-down was not only due to not working, but also the toughest decision I just had to make. I was going out with a different Japanese man for the past three years who did not seem to want to marry me but changed his mind to marry me after I met Yasushi. I cared for him deeply so it was a very painful decision not to marry him. The final decision was made when I thought he would not have asked me to marry him if Yasushi never came between us. I did not want to use Yasushi to change his mind and throw him away after he did. Though I loved the other guy, it just did not seem the right decision. Letting him go was a tremendous stress as well, but I recovered from all the funny physical symptoms after I went back to work, so "not working" must have been the biggest stress at that time.

Yasushi and I cerebrated the new year of 2000 at our friend's condo in the centre of Kuala Lumpur. The new millennium was around the corner.