THREE weeks after the mauling of Malaysian cleaner Mr Nordin Montong in the white tiger enclosure, his colleagues are still grappling with "whys" and "what ifs".
Why did he snap? What was he thinking when he leaped into the enclosure and certain death? What if we had listened?
Could we have helped?
His operations manager, who declined to be named because she is seeking closure, revealed that the 32-year-old had wanted to talk to her the day before he died.
"I told him to come see me at the end of the day," said the 46-year-old manager, who worked with him in Sun City Maintenance, the cleaning company contracted by the Zoo.
"But I had a long, busy day and it was raining heavily so I decided to go home without talking (to him).
"Now I'm left with so many questions: What if I had stayed back to talk to him?
What if? What if? All these questions, but there's no way to answer them."
Sobbing, she said: "I just want closure. I agreed to be interviewed because I wanted people to see him in a different light. He was not crazy. His life was so much more important than his death."
She is reminded of Mr Nordin every day when she goes to work because there is a giant white tiger poster on the wall behind her desk. She did not want to take it down because it serves as a tribute to Mr Nordin.
"Although it is painful to think of how he died, at the same time it makes us think of what a wonderful guy he was," she said.
The manager, who at 46 is already a grandmother, has been in touch with Mr Nordin's family in Sarawak since his death.
She was the one who had to identify his body after it was taken out of the tiger enclosure.
What was going through her mind at that moment?
Traumatised
"Guilt. It was very traumatising. That image of him when they brought him out... I will never forget.
"I've lost sleep over this because whenever I close my eyes, I see that image."
She has known Mr Nordin for the 21/2 months that she has been working for Sun City Maintenance.
He was, she said, someone who was respectful and helpful.
"He would always greet me with assalamualaikum (Arabic for "peace be upon you"). He always sounded pleasant, always had a smile on his face.
"He was helpful towards colleagues from other enclosures. He didn?t have to help them, but he would volunteer. He was very sweet like that."
The day before he died, he was jovial and still joking with her.
She said: "That's why it was hard to detect if something was wrong."
Agreeing with her, Mr Stanley Kuta Teo Ukau, 20, a fellow cleaner at the zoo who is also from Sarawak, said in Malay: "He looked okay on the surface but if you really know him, you would have known that he was troubled over something.
"I didn't dare to ask him what was wrong because sometimes people don?t accept others butting into their private matters."
He added that Mr Nordin had been sleeping late a few days before his death. "When I asked him why, he said he just couldn't get his eyes to stay closed." His favourite memory of Mr Nordin was his cooking.
Said Mr Stanley: "He would cook fish, chicken, curry. It was a daily affair. He would cook and the rest of us would wash up."
He recalled with a smile how Mr Nordin once tried to play a discarded violin that one of the cleaners had brought back to the hostel.
"He really didn't know how to play, but he had a real go at it all the same," he said.
On the fateful day, 13 Nov, Mr Stanley saw Mr Nordin at around 10am.
"Right after morning tea break, he asked me for a cigarette and I gave it to him. That was the last time I saw him. I cried when I got the news of his death."
One of Mr Nordin's supervisors, who only gave her name as Diana, said his death has hit her "extra hard" because he died on her day off.
"If I was here, I don't think this would have happened to him. Maybe he would have confided in me," she said, before breaking down into tears.
Shocked
The 54-year-old said: "I was so shocked that night when I heard the news. We were close. He would show me his family photos.
He was always happy when he talked to me."
She recalled how he would follow behind her buggy on his bicycle.
"And he would call out to me, 'Kakak, kakak' (Malay for sister). He would do this every day," said Diana.
Since his death, she said, she keeps seeing ?visions? of him.
"Yesterday I saw someone who looked exactly like him, waving at me. Now, when I'm on the buggy, I make sure someone is with me.
"I don't want to go to the tiger enclosure. I've always been able to be tough, like when I counsel drug addicts, but in this situation, I find it so hard. He was really one hell of a guy."
This article was first published in The New Paper on Dec 5, 2008.
