The People of the After Work

Nightlife in KL is best kicked off with a after work in my opinion. Starting the night with a few cold ones to keep the humid heat at bay en enjoying some good company. The people of the after work are a expat and business oriented crowd. It consists largely of:

• Europeans and Americans
• Chinese Business People
• serial-cultural empyed locals

Europeans and Americans have a culture of after work and happily donates large chunks cash for the perks of sin taxed alcoholic beverages. Not only do they provide a physical cooling sensation but also loosens the nots in ones shoulders after a hard day at the office. But more than shoulders are loosened. Yes tongues are loosened as well and it's during after works (AWs) that a lot of stories are told. If you want to get the lay-down of a bunch of random things just sit down at a bunch of random tables close to a bunch of random expats and listen in on their stories. Sometimes quite entertaining and sometimes apparently quite inviting. A buddy of mine and his company was randomly approached at an AW by people looking to recruit. It's a place where business and pleasure kind of blends together and you never know when you will meet one of those friends of yours that might not be the best to introduce to your business partners.

Chinese hare are quite similar actually. Although from what I've heard their conversations seem to tend to stick to business related topics a lot more. And when they don't they are often filled with wisdom's related to business. In fact the Chinese here are very business oriented. Sometimes in a quite hilarious way. I recently heard about the Sun Tzu's art of war applied in business approach. And spectacularly the small snippets of "wisdom" and how they are proclaimed in lose statements and how to's are sometimes not too far away from conversations at after works. Exchanging experiences in the Chinese business life can be quite interesting. Non related but worth a read is A story of zen. Naturally these are not the only conversations but they are the more notably conversations. Another interesting thing here is how they have trophy wives and girl friends very openly and which is sometimes seen as a status symbol. Sitting there without joining in in the conversation I'm not sure a European expat would bring that trophy girl to this gathering.

Joining these two groups are locals employed by foreign or international companies that have gotten used to this type of corporate and social culture. Many of which are serial-cultural employees. And to define that term that means people taking job after job in companies from a certain nationality or with a specific corporate culture related to one. One can see many people working for one Swedish company and then another and then another.. I'm not quite sure where to put these guys. Sometimes being more western than not and sometimes still being very local. Mostly being very western. Maybe that says something about the importance of corporate culture and how it can be more dominating in ones life than the cultural area and sphere one inhabits during off hours...