First day at work

Well, today is my first day at work. For those who don’t know where am I working, I’m working in the High Court in Penang, which mean that I’m assigned to a court, then I just follow the interpreters to go into the court when there’s a case.

For this week, it is the week of High Court vacation, so there are not many cases being heard. A lot of the judges are away for vacation. So, basically I’m very free here. Moreover, I don’t need to do anything here since there is no one to supervise me. What I need to do is to go into the court and listen and observe how they run the proceedings and do the interpreting only. Quite an easy job, huh?

There are 4 High Courts here and a few Section Courts and Majistret Courts. According to a law students from UM, Hor Kee whom I met here, he said that High Court is quite different from the Section Courts and Majistret Court in the way they run the proceedings. Well, I still yet to find out what is the differences since I haven’t been to the lower courts yet. Today there are no cases in the lower court as well.

The interpreters’ room is just beside the court. So, we can go into the court easily. In the court, we must be in formal attire – black coat, long-sleeves white top and black dress or slacks.

So, when the court starts, the person-in-charged will ring the bell, and the judge will come in (with the lawyers, interpreters and the parties involved in the case in the court) and we’ll all bow. Then the interpreters will pass the file to the judge and read out the case that is being heard. And the lawyer in-charged will stand up and present his/ her case.

The court that I’m assigned to mainly deal with the civil cases. Today there were 3 cases only. So, all three lawyers for the cases were there at the same time and wait for their case.

After the cases, I was able to talk to the judge. Well, it was a whole new experience. I’ve never thought that I’ll have a chance to talk to a judge face to face. For me, a judge is someone who is of high ranking and he’s always high up there. But to actually sit down and talked to him personally, whoa, that was something exciting!

Hmm… that’s all for now. First day of work, quite free but exciting, a wonderful experience.