Multiculturalism seems to be the way to go, but it can present some unexpected problems as I discovered when working in Malaysia not too long ago
Tan was a happy man. Five of his numbers had just come up in the local lottery and he planned to celebrate with the rest of our little international group, who were working together in reasonable harmony in Kuala Lumpur.
Tan felt the spirits of good fortune surround him. They were so close, he could hear their whispers. His run of luck had begun when he bought a new car with the winnings from a horse race in Singapore. He liked the registration numbers - lots of zeros and eights to hold luck within their curves. So he used them in the lottery.
The fact that he won again, even in a small way, showed that the spirits were still with him. He stood in the middle of the office, beaming, holding up the winning ticket.
"You all come to lunch, lah?" Everything Tan said finished with "lah", a local Chinese ending that covered everything.
Lottery numbers
Linghan, a high-caste Hindu from India, sensed the excitement and came in from the front door, where he had been having his fourth smoking break of the day. After amassing a collection of degrees, he had recently focused his considerable talents and had written an elegant piece of software to predict lottery numbers. However, it had never produced more than two of the required six. Yet Tan, with his spirits of good fortune and his limited qualifications, had managed it from a numberplate. Linghan congratulated him, but could not hide his disappointment.
Azimi bin Enba, a local Muslim, did not look up from his computer screen. He had work to do and he intended to get it done. He was devout and his beliefs did not allow him to gamble or to profit from the proceeds of such activity.
He found the whole business amusing, but slightly distasteful. There was Tan, a grown man as excited as a boy, taking pleasure from chance! And to make it worse, he was being encouraged by the rest of us international misfits. Azimi smiled at us, sighed and lowered his head further.
Tan turned away from him and grinned at the rest of us. The more he celebrated his lucky spirits, the more they might want to stay with him.
"You must come with me to lunch, now - now, lah," he enthused.
Chris, the ex-Cockney boss of our group, was in a serious mood. We were not going to meet our weekly targets and the monthly ones looked even more unachievable. He just had to get his report back to London that afternoon. Helena, his Filipino secretary, was already working on it. The last thing he needed was his staff decamping to a local restaurant for an extended lunch.
"Bleedin' 'ell, Tan, what are you trying to do? Get a take-away if it's burning a hole in your pants," he announced before retreating behind his partition.
Irish stereotype
Me? I really did not care what we did. The weekly targets were not likely to be met either way. It was Friday and I had been out very late the night before, living up to the Irish stereotype. I had eaten and drunk copiously. I was feeling very queasy. Maybe I could have faced a small salad, something light to soothe the body and ease it towards the weekend.
Tan looked worried. If it was to be a take-away, the local food-stalls would be regarded as too downmarket for such an international clientele. What else was there? What was he to do? He left, struck by sudden inspiration, and was back within minutes clutching a mega-bag identifiable anywhere in the world - McDonalds. They had just opened a local branch. This was to be a real treat, compared with all the local fare we were used to. With a flourish, he laid out the containers on his desk.
Azimi looked up, smiled, shook his head as if disappointed by a group of naughty children, and went back to work, ignoring these fruits of sin.
"Any chicken?" asked Linghan. But there were only Big Macs.
"I'll just have the chips then - the beef, you see; can't touch the sacred cows and all that." He smiled apologetically. Tan looked wary.
Chris emerged and surveyed the sea of styrofoam.
"Hells bells, Tan - don't you know I'm on a bleedin' diet?" His moustache bristled as his hunger battled against his will-power fought. He had spent too long with the professional classes - will-power won. He took one chip and went back to his desk. Then came back and took one more.
Becoming desperate
"Have a packet, lah," Tan offered. Chris ignored him.
"Helena, come and get it." Tan was running out of takers. Helena did not move.
"Sorry Tan, it's Friday and I cannot eat any meat." She looked at the ground. "I'm a Catholic," she whispered.
"I didn't know you had to do that - sorry." Tan was becoming desperate. Linghan had rediscovered his faith, and now Helena was revealing archaic Christian dietary rules.
Tan turned to me and said, "You and I have it to ourselves." He was relying on me.
I looked at the six Big Macs, some with cheese oozing down the soggy buns, and gherkins protruding from the mess. I reached for one and took a bite. I chewed and swallowed. It would not go down. I chewed some more and tried again, harder. But no use. I ran to the bathroom.
Tan just put his burger down and looked around in amazement.
"Is it against his belief in booze, lah?" he asked, addressing nobody in particular.
He sat down at the burger mountain and began to eat. He got through two, stopped, then meticulously packed the remainder back into the carrier bag. He rose, walked out to the street and threw them into a bin.
He was close to tears. Such a way to treat lucky spirits. He could no longer hear their whispers.