Annual Telekung Laundry Service

This year, like the past three years since I started joining this particular Ministry, I had been asked (again) to assist in organising the Malaysia ICT Week (an effort started as Asean Communications and Multimedia Expo – but had been upgraded to Malaysia ICT Week in 2002 as it began to comprise more ICT related events and exhibitions)

Like the past few years, the main event had once again been held in an international exhibition and convention centre in Seri Kembangan. Like the past few years, many junior officers had to be in attendance at the exhibition centre from morning till night on the day before the Official Opening Ceremony and all day long in the exhibition centre on the actual opening day. Like the past few years, we all had to make use of the small and stuffy surau at the end corner of the second floor.

“Kau bawak balik basuh la telekung-telekung ni A.Z. Aku rasa memang orang sini tak basuh – cuma kau je yang basuh setahun sekali, “ Sal suggested.

I took five pairs of telekung back home last year – bleached them, washed them with hot water, treated them with extra softener, got them nicely pressed and returned them back to the surau on the following day. I did exactly the same thing this year – that night when we had to be there for the rehearsal and last minute preparation, I brought back five pairs of telekung home to be ‘serviced’ accordingly.

A friend called as I was about to soak and bleach the not-so-white and stained telekungs. I told him what I was doing and his response was, “aikk, buka kedai dobi pulak ke?”

I know many would have thought what I did was just a bit strange. I know it’s quite unusual to find somebody taking back some telekungs from a public surau just to get them cleaned and pressed and brought them back to the surau the next day. It’s none of my responsibility and people would have thought that it would be the exhibition centre’s duty to keep the telekung clean.

Perhaps, I’ve read too many Chicken Soup books and was simply inspired by some stories which encouraged me to do some free ‘khidmat masyarakat’. Perhaps I just felt like it won’t cost me much to get the telekung cleaned but thought that clean telekung could make a lot of difference for the small-and-stuffy public surau users. Perhaps I was hoping that my little deed would in turn encourage my colleagues to carry out similar deed elsewhere.

Or perhaps I was merely seeking the satisfaction of hearing one surau user making an innocent remark to her friend (who obviously had no idea about my labour the previous night) “Bersih kan telekung kat sini, bukan senang nak jumpa telekung bersih kat surau awam”.

If only they have seen how filthy the soaked water was…