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Cerita Kawan
Stories from the table.
The job hops, the flops, the friendships. No humble-brags.
New in KL
From Penang with one phone number
I moved to KL knowing exactly one person — and she was on a work trip my whole first month. This is how a strangers' coffee table became my social life.
Freelance life
I quoted RM300 for a RM3,000 job
My first year freelancing, I was basically a charity with a laptop. One Freelancer Lepak session later, I tripled my rates — and kept the clients.
SME life
The SME owners' table saved my bakery
Flour prices doubled, my best staff quit, and I was two months from closing. Then a stranger at a borak session told me what she'd done instead.
Mentorship
My mentor made me practise asking for a raise
Out loud. Three times. In a kopitiam. I wanted to disappear — then I did it for real, and it worked.
Community
I came for a job lead. I stayed for the people.
I showed up to my first mixer with fifty name cards and a plan. I used neither. A year later I'm the one hosting newcomers' nights.
I moved to KL for a UX job knowing exactly one person — an old classmate who, it turned out, was on a work trip for my entire first month. My weekends were me, my phone, and a lot of nasi lemak bungkus eaten alone.
A colleague mentioned Teman and I nearly didn't go. "Networking" sounded like being sold insurance by strangers. But the newcomers' night was just... forty people at long tables, a stack of ridiculous conversation cards ("what's the most Malaysian thing you've done this week?"), and hosts who kept moving people around so nobody got stuck.
I met another newcomer that night — she was also two months into KL, also from a smaller city, also quietly overwhelmed. We got teh tarik the next week. Then her friends became my friends. When a design role opened at her company four months later, she sent me the listing before it was public.
People ask how I "networked" my way into my current job. I didn't. I made a friend. That's the whole trick, and it's not a trick.
My first year freelancing, I was basically a charity with a laptop. I quoted RM300 for a website that took me three weeks. The client said yes so fast I knew I'd messed up — I just didn't know by how much.
At a Freelancer Lepak session, we went around the table sharing one real number: a rate, an invoice, whatever. When I said mine out loud, the table went quiet in a way I'll never forget. Then a designer I'd just met said gently: "Kawan. I charge that for a logo sketch."
Nobody lectured me. They just shared their own numbers, their own early disasters, and a simple formula for costing projects. I went home and rewrote my rate card at 2am.
I tripled my rates over the next six months and — here's the part I didn't expect — kept almost every client. Turns out clients who only want cheap were never my clients. The table knew that. I just needed to hear it.
Last year, flour prices doubled in the space of a few months. My best baker quit for a hotel job. I did the maths one night and realised my bakery had maybe two months of runway left.
I almost didn't go to the SME owners' borak — it felt like admitting failure. Instead it was twelve people around a table saying "same lah" to everything. One owner had been through the exact same squeeze and told me what she did: shrink the menu to the six things that actually made money, raise prices 15% with a handwritten letter to customers, and negotiate with her landlord instead of quietly suffering.
I did all three. Customers wrote back on the letter. The landlord gave me six months at a lower rate. The bakery is still here, smaller menu and all.
Business advice on the internet is written for companies with departments. This was advice from people who also unclog their own sinks. There's a difference.
When my mentor asked when I last negotiated my pay, I laughed. Then I realised he was serious. Then he made me practise.
Not in my head. Out loud, across a kopitiam table, while he played my boss. The first take, I mumbled something about "if it's possible maybe". The second, I over-explained for four minutes. By the third I had a number, a reason, and a full stop at the end of the sentence.
Two weeks later I did it for real. My heart was going at 140bpm and I forgot half my points, but I remembered the number and the full stop. I got an 18% raise — not the 25% I asked for, which my mentor says means I asked correctly.
People think mentorship is advice. It's not. It's rehearsal, with someone in your corner watching.
I showed up to my first Teman mixer with fifty freshly printed name cards and a plan: talk to anyone in marketing, get a lead, leave by 8pm. Efficient. Professional.
I handed out zero cards. Instead I spent an hour arguing cheerfully with two strangers about whether KL or Penang has better char kway teow (it was not close), and left with three numbers and a dim sum plan for Sunday.
The job lead came later, and from the strangest direction — someone I'd helped brainstorm a wedding hashtag for remembered me when her agency had an opening. But by then I'd stopped counting Teman as a career move. It was just where my friends were.
A year on, I host the newcomers' night. If you come to one, find me — I'm the one telling people to put their name cards away.
