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Enough Said.

I must admit, The Palm Vol.40 sucks.

The pushing back of the release date has already given rise to a raft of finger-pointings, what more to say the poor quality of The Palm last year?

My sister has recently come to me and told me her friends were complaining how “they felt cheated” to have to wait so long to get a “lousy magazine” this year.

I was the Chief Editor of last year’s The Palm; Jenies Kueh the Deputy Chief Editor. In 2003, Jenies and I were Deputy Chief Editor II and Deputy Chief Editor I respectively of the editorial board, but if I were to compare, I’d say last year’s (Vol.40) is a total flop and chaos!

I had been in the editorial board since 2001, and something I had realized was: towards the end of each year, the number of these so-called ‘members’ of the editorial board would definitely cut half — or even more, which almost made it seem like a survivor game. For instance — in 2003, the “remaining four” of the editorial frontlines were basically Jenies, Bing Han Alvin and I. In other words, an awful lot of work was to be shared amongst the four of us.

The Palm Vol.40 supposedly should have been out somewhere during year-end, and the hardcopy we held had actually been ready by October 2004. But the release date of The Palm and its quality turned out to disappoint most of us. And what I mean here is that there are reasons behind all these.

1. New Printing company

2003’s The Palm Vol.39 was actually tendored by The Sarawak Press Sdn. Bhd. Under new Principal Mr. Putit Bin Hj. Ped’s administration, the tendor last year turned out to be semi-governed Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad (PNMB). Jenies and I had been managing The Palm for several years under previous Principal Datin Hjh. Halimah’s supervision, and of course, she had a policy different from that of Mr. Putit, which I say left us much more freedom and a space of creativity.

Last year, right after we were told about the new tendor, we were slightly put down because from previous survey, the only companies in Kuching we found out that could do mate-lamination and hot-stamping all at once were those like Lee Ming and Copal. It meant that PNMB possibly couldn’t do the designs we had long planned.

We had no choice, we thought. But we’ve still got to try to talk the new printer into the matter of the designs we want. (We remembered what Mr. Putit had told us: If the company couldn’t do the designs as wanted, he would consider sending it to West Malaysia for printing.) And finally under Mr. Matabi B. Aba’s (a staff of GRSS) discussion with PNMB, we were appointed to meet Mr. Afflin Nyoweng on a weekday, which we did.

The first things we talked him into and wanted him to do were basically the main cover and two segmented parts from our hardcopy. We wanted the printer to do the magazine part by part — as suggested by our facilitator Pn. Siti Salmiah — so that upon submitting in new segments the next time, professionally reedited hardcopy of previous segments could be sent to us for proof-reading. He agreed and appointed us to come a week later. So we left in momentarily contentment, not knowing that a retouched hardcopy on previous segments would never be done the next time we went there. To our shock, the envelopes containing respective segments were never even opened!

Asked them why they had not started the submitted segments, “What we want is your complete hardcopy,” we were told by a staff of PNMB. First off, Mr. Afflin Nyoweng broke his promise in the first place, we thought. And second off, why didn’t Mr. Afflin Nyoweng tell us to hand in the complete hardcopy in the first place? Their needing our complete hardcopy was certainly a no-problem. But what troubled us in the end was that we had been told that PNMB had no ways to convert everything we had saved in Microsoft Word and .txt formats into their Apple Mac system. What the hack! The Sarawak Press is also using Apple Mac but at least they could do that for us before!?

2. Mr. Putit’s Policy

Disappointed, Jenies and I went to Mr. Putit to talk him into that matter, in which we were eventually understood that an LPO was needed in order for them to do stuff. Also, the cover with our intended designs was actually put to a halt not because Mr. Afflin Nyoweng broke his promise but because of the pricing involved. OK, it was certainly something new and a tough task for us because we just realized that we had worked very hard from the beginning of the year to produce our hardcopy but in the end everything was on the verge to be torn apart.

Previously each student would have to pay RM 7 for a copy of magazine. But last year, it was RM 10 because we had actually begged for the increase. And our intention was to get a printer to do us some magazine with more color pages, an outstanding magazine cover and HQ graphics. And we don’t think Mr. Putit knew this because the increase was actually made during Datin Halimah’s time.

We were going to sit for STPM by then (it was October), so Mr. Putit told us to leave everything for the next badge (we had already elected 2005’s editor by then) to complete (to redo) our stuff. And when I mentioned redo means to print out every single sheet instead of storing them in CD’s and diskettes. It would take an awful lot of time considering 70 percent of our hardcopy were actually digitalized. And printing out everything was not as easy as thought because the layout we wanted (which we had sketched on paper) had to be applied sheet by sheet into the programme we used.

Finally it turned out that the next badge couldn’t help much because they had no idea about our progress. Jenies insisted to me that we still had to do the rest on our own no matter what, and this kind of annoyed me a lot because STPM was more important to me than any other stuff. I argued that if they (Jenies and her gang Goh Zi Ying and Chin Wan Chin) still wanted to “save” the chaos and refused to talk the next badge into what to do, I was going to stop doing. I wasn’t irresponsible; I was just following what Mr. Putit had advised us: leave it to the next so that we could study for STPM.

In February 2005, I went to school and bumped into Pn. Siti Salmiah. She asked whether or not I could proof-read for her PNMB’s reedited hardcopy of The Palm Vol.40. I said no because first off, my job was officially over by then. And second off I was kind of angered and disappointed by the fact that after so many months the magazine had no yet been printed. It was such a drag! I mean during those months when I was busy with STPM somebody has got to take responsibility into that frigging magazine!

The Palm Vol.40 was finally due out on March 28th. I was thronged with great disappointment, of course. The whole copy was FAR different our very first hardcopy. Lots and lots of typing errors proved to me that the proof-reading of PNMB’s reedited hardcopy was either not done or not carefully done. I was mad and still am mad. In my opinion I just think that if it wasn’t because of PNMB (meaning, they could have chosen The Sarawak Press or any other non semi-governed companies), there would be so much errors and imperfection. But I’m not blaming anyone. I understand that everyone might have their own difficulties.

I hope that my writing this article would put all those finger-pointings to a halt. Special thanks to Wan Chin for so much help without complaining — I appreciate it. And Zi Ying, “thanks” for holding my certificate and telling me it wasn’t with you. That is called dumb.

By Kenneth Lee
April 02, 2005