I'm looking forward to someone telling some of the MAS stories. It was to MAS that quite possibly the largest group of Ozmates went, as early as late ‘89.
One that immediately comes to mind was the origin of "Ozmate".
“Shakin' Stephens”, a very keen (and very good) golfer, was one of the early arrivals there, and in short order, with all the time he spent out on the golf course, was as suntanned – if not moreso – as any local. He was also possessed of one very broad Awstrawyan accent, and like too many of us in those early days, he didn’t appreciate just how baffling our use of slang was to most of the Malaysians we worked with.
Shakin’ was a particularly bad offender in the use of Strine slang.
One morning, he was in the milling throng at sign on – not helping his captain with the flight plan, but showing some local captain how to improve his golfing grip – when another senior Malaysian captain approached one of the Australian captains.
He gestured towards Shakin’. “Bill,” he said, “Where does (Shakin’) come from?”
“Australia, like the rest of us, Rizwan.”
“No, no, he doesn’t,” replied the captain. “I asked him yesterday and he said he comes from some place called Ozmate. Where is that?”
And so Ozmate it became.
The other MAS story resulted in its main character being invited for morning tea with the redoubtable (and I think virtually everyone who went there would agree, much respected) Captain Ooi, the “Manager, Narrow Body”.
The FO involved found himself on an overnight at BKI in East Malaysia, an overnight that began at around lunch time. The Purser, (who was quite senior - which, it turns out, became an important part of the story, for ‘face’ became involved), and he agreed that a bit of up close and personal time might be the order of the day to while away the early afternoon hours, after which the FO returned to his room.
On the same crew, overnighting with the Purser and the FO, there was also a-very-new,-on-one-of-her-first-flights,-fresh-out-of-training-school-flight-attendant (you get the picture?) who was comely in the extreme (as, I’m sure few would disagree, were soooo many of the ladies we flew with at MAS).
On his way back to his room after his visit with the Purser, the FO met the young lady described above, and without going into too many details, it was agreed that she should come back to his room for some up close and personal time. Perhaps not surprisingly, this up close and personal time was longer lasting than the earlier tryst with the Purser, and while he and the fresh from training school young lady were lying back and having the proverbial cigarette whilst catching their collective breaths, the phone rang.
The phone was on the young lady’s side of the bed and so she picked it up and handed it across to the FO, unfortunately, (oh, how very unfortunately!) giving away her presence, perhaps even her identity, to the caller, who unfortunately was the Purser, ringing to see if the FO was interested in ‘seconds’.
Much loss of face for senior Purser (and, I imagine, some interesting crew dynamics on the multiple sectors they had to fly the next morning before returning to KL).
... and, as I mentioned, a visit to Captain Ooi’s office, where the FO was gently informed that there were some cultural lines that were best left uncrossed, and some young ladies best left unbedded.