Down the slippery slope

FOUR YEARS AGO when I had last put my thoughts on this blog I had an inkling that for me at least, there is no where to go but down. I was approaching fifty at the time so mid-life "issues" might have something to do with it. Maybe.

I had lost some friends and family over the intervening period. 2013 was the worst though. Apart from my Dad's passing, barely a week after his one of my best friends from high school succumbed to Stage IV colo-rectal cancer. In the weeks leading to the inevitable I was visiting my old man at a hospital 30 miles away, sometimes two three times a day, and also dropping by to see Mole at his sister's house on the way back. By then he was reduced to a shell, naked on his bed lotus position, holding his head with his hands fighting a pain that narcotics can barely alleviate. So you can imagine that I may have needed some emotional rescuing at that point.

Anyway fast forward to 2014. Life went on as usual in the swamps of eastern Borneo. Then the work died down so I was put on loan to the other side of Borneo (the north side). In early April, a day or two before Unker Bernard passed away an email came in. It was sudden and unannounced and was to change my life forever. I was to be transferred lock, stock but with no smoking barrel.

It was the start of my heading down the slippery slope.

To cut the story short just over three weeks later I found myself in George Bush Intercontinental smiling to the CBP officer and showing him my 5-year work visa. That same night I took a connecting flight to the former French town of Lafayette, Louisiana. April wasn't even out yet -the work visa process took only two days in Kuala Lumpur - a record I'm told because that usually takes 60-90 days. Hmm, why is the refrain "we just want your money" keep going round the back of mind?

So I spent two weeks in the bayous just to jump start some 'govment paperwork: Tax ID, SocSec, Coast Guard letters etc and headed back home again to wait for the movers to come collect my worldly possessions from the other side of the world to Port Galveston.

Forgive me if I sound flippant. The process of uprooting one's family to the other side of the world in a space of a couple of weeks is anything but. My long-suffering better half was tasked with solving relocation headaches so it was a stressful time. At least for men my age. We have two school going children you see, a girl in primary and the elder boy in middle school. The school systems and calenders on opposite sides of the world are like night and day, so here they are in the middle of the school year when it's almost coming to an end over there. Then there's the assets and junk one accumulates through more than two decades of marriage; the house, the car, bicycles and what-not (so what should we do with the house, rent it?).

Since these events happened less than two months ago you betcha the house hasn't been rented out yet. And the car hasn't been sold. But the bicycles and kid's toys are on its way though.

And oh, while my family lies languishing in a rented home on the outskirts of north Houston with no furniture (the steamship hasn't arrived yet) and no TV and internet, my employer saw fit to drag me away to the bayous for my first assignment.

You can take the Swampman out of the swamps but the swamps always wins. Period.

London in June ... and a treat by AG

It turned out I wasn't the only one feted by Awang Goneng. Pak Zawi was already there days earlier terrorizing AG's wallet and relieving our confounded host of his Great British Pounds.

Yes, that AG, the famous anok Tengganung, master wordsmith of both English and Malay (albeit of the Tengganung Kite kind), an all around great guy and a thirty-five year veteran of living on English cod and salmon. Apa? Ikang tongkol tok cukup sedap ke?

Awang Goneng, for some reason or other, had decided that Mat Salo was worth his time. My own boss at work once said behind my back, 'That Mat Salo . . .he ain't worth killin'. For AG's selfless random act of kindness . . . I thank him from the bottom of my heart. Thank you, Sir!

Surreptitious e-mails were sent, (again, Pak Zawi had a hand in this), and a note by Kak Teh in this blog soon found me walking to Whiteleys in Queensway where AG would lie in wait at a bookstore (where else?) on the first floor.

Interestingly, according to AG, Whiteleys is one of the oldest department stores in London, which makes it one of the oldest department stores in the world in my book. As I trudged my tired limbs upstairs - I had been cycling for some days - I happened to pass Lillian Too's Feng Shui shop. It was shut and looked to be out of business. Now, don't you think the Queen of Feng Shui would have known better and sited her store at a more, shall we say, auspicious place? What hope then, for mere Feng Shui deficient mortals like us?

Anyway, the reason he asked to meet there was so we could have lunch at Malaysia Hall, which happened to be around the corner. Now that was a revelation to me because the last time I looked Malaysia Hall was someplace else. But that was twenty years ago. I didn't know it had moved since.



I was a bachelor then, traveling from Malaysia to Aberdeen to attend a week long seminar. The circumstances surrounding my presence at the old Malaysia Hall two decades back was harrowing to say the least. I was there to meet an ex and her newfangled main squeeze, to get - what today people would refer to - as "closure".

I'm not making this up. At the time I hadn't really planned to see her at all. Why should I? After all she had dumped me in a terrifying "Dear Mat" letter some time soon after hitting UK shores. And over a year had elapsed since her posting that "Dear Mat" letter and my sudden, unexpected visit . Anyway she was not in London but in some city up north, hundreds of miles away. But Brother Fate, and its sister Miss Coincidence are about to rear their ugly heads.

Clawing my way from the Banks of the Clyde to Malaysia I decided to stop in cold windy London for the night. Having nothing to do I decided to call a mutual friend, a girl who went to boarding school with the ex, she giggling excitedly over the phone, 'Eh Mat, know what? Your ex is in town with her boyfriend lah. She's on her way over, let's all go to Malaysia hall for dinner tonight - you know where, right? See you there!'

Hah. She's in town! How about that? In a fair, just and perfect world it would have been cause for celebration. But the world isn't round or fair or just. It's horribly flat, square, with sharp serrated edges. No. This can't be happening. But there you go. Brother Fate, Miss Coincidence . . . how do you do?

Now that friend probably doesn't understand the intricacies or nuances of messy break-ups, especially long-distance ones. Perhaps she hadn't experienced any. Or was privy to my fantasies involving throttling and wringing necks. Anyway, those thoughts had long passed and converted to . . . what, I don't know.

To say that the reunion was "awkward" was an understatement. A meeting of ex-es can never or will ever be described as "joyous". Reigning in flat out murderous impulses would be closer to the mark. As I stood there outside the former Malaysia Hall, one hand in my jacket to keep that London chill out, lighting cigarette after cigarette, passed an old VW Golf. Or was it the Rabbit? I wondered (belatedly) if I shouldn't just abandon this meet altogether, for it really served no purpose at all. Except perhaps, to tear old wounds.

In the rusting blue VW was our mutual friend driving, carrying inside what once held my dreams, hopes and object of er, lust. And not forgetting too beside her, hands on thigh probably, was The Guy who helped take those whimsical notions away.

It took a while for them to show up at the entrance, and it wasn't for lack of a parking space. Perhaps they needed to huddle down, figure things out at this rather unexpected entrance by Mat Salo, stage left, blindsiding them. To them perhaps, I was some kind of monster, a jilted raving maniac of some kind, bent on retribution. And they may be right. Anyway it was the girls who appeared first and true to Mat Salo's form, pretended like there was nothing ever between 'em, just a meeting of some old flames, er, friends. The Guy, they said, would join us "in a bit".

"In a bit", huh? Now how about that kiddo? Got cold feet?

Eventually Adonis, God's version of the perfect male form, came hurriedly in from the cold like a surreal scene from a Peter Lorre movie; scarf flailing, eyes shifting, looking nervous. Being the older and more mature guy, a cool and calculated Mat Salo turned up the charm (until the knob could go no further or else the potentiometer valves would blow) and set about putting The Guy at ease, joining him for cigarettes while the girls go inside to order food . . . and to gossip perhaps at the scene about to unravel outside?

'Fraid not, he's not the Adonis.

Sorry to disappoint but there was no scene "about to unravel" outside. We'll me and The Guy won't ever be buddies, that's for sure, but at least there was a semblance of civility. The art of conceding defeat, being a gentleman, that sort of thing, part of being a man in a woman's world.

For the life of me I don't remember his name or what happened to him eventually but I do know that the ex, after getting her Bar and a stint at LSE, went home, met a Mat Saleh bloke and eventually became an American. Perhaps it's fitting that I eventually met the woman of my (real, rational and practical) dreams, married her and became an Indonesian. That's a joke, by the way.

Bloody hell, and I thought we were supposed to be talking about AG here . . . and how did my post get mixed up with trips down memory lane?

AG and MSD's deputy director, on his left.

Some photos of me and my boy below, occasionally finding ourselves lost. Real men, they say, don't ever ask for directions. Not ever. They just blow 200 quid on some gadget called Garmin, and still can't find their bloody way home.

Seriously, part of the fun of travel is getting lost. But don't tell that to the spouse who pre-approved the Garmin purchase at John Bloody Lewis, eh?

Lives In The Balance: Good Works Vs Bad

I have always held firm to the belief that we must have some balance in our lives; some sort of yin and yang in equal measure. To do some bad and to do some good, because to see the worst in human nature will make us appreciate the nicer parts of humanity. And I don't mean women's bodies...

I'm sure many of you will disagree but that's just me; seeing bad in good and good in bad. And I'm always grateful to be able to tell one from the other.

Because... how else would I find myself in what once was the largest prostitution area in the whole of South East Asia last Sunday afternoon?

I said, was. Remember the tense, please, was.

It's in north Jakarta, past Tanjung Priok, at a place called Kramat Tunggak.

What once housed close to 4000 rooms in 277 buildings employing hundreds of germos (pimps) is now the Jakarta Islamic Center. I dare not even speculate how many PSK's (Pekerja Seks Komersial) this bustling area once had. Ten, twenty thousand? More?

Anyway, all that was demolished in 1999 and early in the millennium the Jakarta Islamic Center had replaced all that had once brought misery and ecstasy in equal doses.

But don't take my word for it. Go here to Mualaf Center Online for a background on Kramat Tunggak.

So you ask, what the hell was I doing there?

I went there on a self-induced mission to visit a friend who once worked as a radio operator on my rig in Kalimantan.

Pak Aa Gym, fiftyish and obese, suffered a stroke about a year ago in his kost (rented room) in Balikpapan. Workers like Pak Aa Gym don't get to go home during time off like I do because their point-of-hire is in Balikpapan. They see their families perhaps once or twice a year, usually over Lebaran Idul Fitri, and of course, paying out of their own kantong celana. They just don't make enough. Their schedules are usually "two-one" - two weeks on and one off, and it was on one of those "offs" that his neighbor noticed that he had not emerged from his kost for two days running.


So he had suffered a stroke, alone in his kost, with no one giving a damn.

He was hospitalized for a while and when he was able to walk, his kin came to take him home to Jakarta. He had, by then, lost his faculties to speak.

So I promised myself that if I ever spend a day or two in Jakarta, I would hunt him down and pay my dues to a fellow comrade.

But finding him was no easy feat. I had to ask around until I found another offshore worker called Sugeng who could get me his address. So I kept that battered piece of paper with some crude references to Bekas Tempat Prostituisi Terbesar and finally, there I was.


I kept the meter running on the taxi (no need to expound on my getting lost in the maze of Tanjung Priok - the taxi driver had never been there either) which eventually made me poorer by almost RM 150.00 (yes, it's that far). After asking around I found the "Ibu RT" (some sort of neighborhood leader) who finally led me to Pak Aa Gym.

There was no one home except Pak Aa Gym, dressed in a white T-shirt and sarong with a metal cane by his side. He had lost perhaps fifty pounds. He registered surprised, and a pitying 'huummm, huummm' escaped his throat. He grabbed my waist and cried. And so did I.


And so I had come to fulfill my vow.

What struck me was what "Ibu RT" said to me as she left me outside his gate, "Pak, you're the only friend from his workplace that visited".

In reply, I said, "Alah...but my house is just on the way, Bu...", shrugging it off.

She had no idea that my house is in another country.

Pacha's First Solo

VIP Guest: P.104's London-born Kelana Kaya MP Gwo-Burne at Pacha's solo ...

Some inspired guests : My niece (left) and her best friend. Hmm, isn't that Nuraina's niece?

Pacha, The Artist.

Bali Meranti's real life lesson in Art Appreciation ...

IT IS THE LIFELONG DREAM, THE RECOGNITION, THE CULMINATION of any artist to host their first solo. What more if the artist in question found her calling very late in life; she was in her late twenties before she picked up that first brush to canvas.

That artist is my sister, Pacha. And the exhibition's titled "Pomegranate and 1000 Birds".

Entirely self-taught, she bagged Bank Negara's second prize for her Imperfect But Beautiful in 2004 that won her a silver trophy and an RM8000 cash prize.

She is married to Adrian Edris of Ahmad Izham Omar's Monkeybone label, who manages artistes like Faizal Tahir, Suki, Norayu Damit and Shila. Adrian's also currently involved in 8TV's One In A Million and Kami -The Gig. They have a daughter, Bali Meranti.

Please do come and visit the Gallery. The Exhibition will run until December 12.

For more stories and pictures, please come visit my other blog.

Your Last Goodbye, And A Grandson Who Deserves Hell

2003© matsalo.com

Hajjah Khamsiah Bte Haji Ariffin ( Bte Darmataksiah, mother) b.1916, d.2008 -today

Sometime before dawn broke today, in a nursing home in the leafy confines of Section 16, Petaling Jaya, an underpaid and overworked Filipino male nurse working the night shift noticed something unusual.

The old Malay lady at the bed closest to the wall had not stirred. Although bed-ridden and immobile, she was 'an early riser', often speaking to herself, cataract glazed eyes blinking at the fluorescent lamp overhead.

But not today.

This harried male nurse, Nelson, perhaps shedding a tear from having to care for this lady during her dying days; having fed her through the feeding tube, had bathed her and moved her limbs every so often lest she gets bed-sores. He then sets in motion events that would culminate in a phone call a quarter of an hour later, across the seas to the grandson who had put her there in the nursing home.

The grandson, her first, her most beloved, the one she cared for in the early years of his life, right until his second year of school. That impudent boy, often forcing his grandmother to walk in the dark to the well at the back of the village house, to bring him bath water which she must first boil in a huge blackened pot underneath a crackling fire. The boy simply must have hot water to bathe. If he remembers correctly, it took at least three trips to the well as the zinc pail was rather small. The boy refused to bathe at the well, even with his grandfather present. Because he was afraid of walking in the dark, or of slithering creatures that might cross his path, or of the freezing water. Because being the only grandson he was used to being the center of the universe.

And what the insolent boy wanted, the insolent boy always got.

Now the boy has grown into a man; a man full of guilt, full of impotence at his inability to care for his maternal grandma. In 2004 when his grandma was staying at his mother's house, grandma slipped in the bathroom and broke her hip. She was hospitalized, and from that day on everything quickly deteriorated. After recovering sufficiently enough, she was brought home again to his mother's house. He tried hiring live-in maids (illegally procured in Kampung Pandan) but none could bear the heavy responsibility of a total invalid, often leaving within days of arriving.

His own mother at the time was approaching seventy and a decision, however unpleasant, needs to be made. He did not want to burden his already aging mother to care for an invalid. The only thing to do was seek professional care. And that was how the grandson had 'sentenced' his very own grandmother, the one who had selflessly bathed, clothed and fed him for the first eight years of his life, to a nursing home a few houses away from Anwar Ibrahim's PKR headquarters in leafy Section 16, Petaling Jaya.

But that insolent boy who grew up to be an insolent middle-aged man, whatever his faults, still had a rational mind - if one could charitably call it that - an ability to still feel something.

Because each time he drives past the nursing home, his hands never fails to bang on the steering wheel - and he can't help but think:

"You're going to hell for this boy, and you know it."

That's why nothing fazes him anymore. He resigns himself to circumstance, accepting fate, feeling hell is something he deserves.

Hell.

He doesn't have to go so far, oh no. Hell has already visited him today. When he received the phone call barely three hours ago, he knew then that he was never going to see his sweet grandma again. Even if he had managed to get off the ship now, the soonest he could get to Kuala Lumpur is tonight. It will be too damn late. The remains would be sent from Section 16, to UH probably, before being sent in a van to Seremban for a quick burial after zohor today.

Yes, Muslims go for the quick burial thing; something he strongly disagrees with, for it does not fit in with his selfish needs. And the thought probably will seal his fate in the afterlife. He laments; why can't Muslims have a wake, like the Chinese who for a few days could parade the embalmed body? At least time enough for her beloved first grandchild, the one she fondly calls Abang, the one who had shackled her to a bed in a nursing home, in leafy Section 16 at that- to come home from overseas so he can lay eyes on her for the very last time?


2004© matsalo.com

The last photograph was taken in 2004, on Hari Raya Haji Idul Adha, a month before she fell in her daughter's bathroom, broke her hip and quickly began to lose her faculties.The boy is her great-grandson, her beloved grandson's second son. The one working overseas. The one who had not bothered to carry her to her final resting place. Or pour dirt in the well of her grave, nor sprinkle her flowers.

For those so inclined, the grandson had also blogged about her once, and you can read it here.

Friends in High Places

INSTEAD OF FEELING the need for speed, like my hyper six-year-old often does (he has actually completed PS2's Need For Speed:Carbon, no kidding), I too feel the need . . . to trumpet a few things.

Mat Salo indeed has friends (not too many) and foes (plenty - just check out the politicians) in high places and this is a good time as any to give them their due. I'm not even going to bother checking with them if this is a good idea, because hey - that's what friends are for, right?

Today on perusing TheStar's Biz Section (Maybank Appoints New CFO) I was pleasantly surprised to read that a batchmate of mine, Beghat (nickname on account of his rather stupenduos male-centric accessory), was appointed the second-most powerful position in Maybank. No shit, Sherlock.

So I sent him an sms which goes like this: Hey Beghat.. Congrats & I hope I'm not the last to wish you. Woi! Now can u pls get your housing loan ppl to get off my back?

Comes in handy to have a buddy up there, I guess.

But the good Lato' Haji had the cheek to reply: thanks bro', but when you sold me those fotos back in kolek how come you never give me discount? And for the final nail in the coffin, signed off with a heh-heh.

An explanation is in order. I have been into photography ever since I was in Form One and it fell on me to catalog a piece of my batch's history and also to profit from it. So I'm the nerd with camera slung around the neck and was charging 20 sens (1975 dollars) for a 3R copy. And that was just for the black and white ones! I developed and printed them myself at the club's darkroom below the stairs near the science lab. The camera, all manual shit with no auto-anything was of course the club's property, along with the developer fluid, enlarger and photographic paper. For color prints I have it sent across to Yong's Photo down on Kuala Kangsar's main street where I would apply the appropriate mark-up to my fellow victims. At the end of the day, that was what the good Dato' remembered.

The bloody profiteering.

And the bloody profiteering is why The Bank has posted record profits --- and why its employees are now busily picketing with round badges over their breasts crying, "Thief!"

Anyway here's a photo of MBB's Number Two as a thirteen year-old preserved for posterity by yours truly.

©Mat Salo 1975

Payback time, eh Lato'? No man, am real proud of you, dude!

Actually I was into photography way longer than that (but why I'm still taking crap photos is anybody's guess). It all started in primary school when I was classmates with Mr. Heng FM whose dad owned the Film Star Photo Studios on Jalan Trus, Johor Bahru. As a ten-year old boy I was impressed that FM had a professional dad who photographed Ministers and Sultans.

Which brings me my next story, FM himself.

Couple of months back FM was also featured in The Star in his capacity as Managing Director of an SME IT company called Ceedtec in Penang, poised on the brink of greatness, MESDAQ and all that.

As per normal trumpet procedure, Mat Salo was the first to have caught this scintillitating item and had forwarded it to my primary school STAR2 JB e-groups where FM was forced to answer some uncomfortable questions.



For many years FM worked in the 'kilang sector' and while with HP had a big hand in putting cameras into phones. But it surprised me to know that FM, being unworthy of his dear father's profession? - shoots only with a compact camera? What-the-f%&*? An Olympus I think. Hard to believe he hasn't got an SLR when Heng Sr. was probably the most respected photographer back in the wild and swingin' JB Seventies.

At press time FM is actively enganging an "ODM Partner" (whatever that means) and having talks with "VC's" (Venture Capiltalists). Anyway, seriously, I do wish him luck. I hope to cash in if his tech company hits the jackpot. And do remember, you read it here first!

And my final story is about a guy, also from way back in JB who has now, some speculate, succumbed to the Dark Side*. Zikri is the guy in blue.

©US Department of Energy - Argonne National Labs

Zikri Yusof, PhD., is an "Accelerator Physicist" at US's prestigious Argonne National Labs near Chicago, Illinois. In our "JB" e-groups, Z, like his illustrious English College schoolmate FM before him, also had to answer lots of uncomfortable questions - namely from nincompoops like me. Z's breakthrough has directly impacted our lives by making more efficent x-ray machines using less energy.

Who knows, this Towering Malaysian might perhaps one day win a Nobel.

If that happens I can then smugly say, hey, I know that dude!

Please read Argonne's Press Release here.

And if you're like me, who never paid much attention to secondary school physics, I asked some rather silly questions because the press release was sheer gobbledygook. So Z was forced to email us a detailed explanation which I shall reproduce below in its entirety.

Since several of you have expressed some curiosity regarding the nature of this work, I will spend a few minutes describing what it is, and how, in fact, the advancement here could actually have an impact on a lot of people, beyond just the immediate application to high energy physics.

The whole idea here is to make a better accelerating structure to accelerate charged particles, in this case, electrons. Our current technology uses copper cavities to do that. However, we can only put so much gradient inside this cavity before we destroy it (roughly 30-60 MV/m). So in order to accelerate particles to higher and higher energies (such as the one about to be turned on at CERN), the accelerator facility needs to be longer and longer so that we can stack more and more of these copper accelerating structures to get to the energy that we want. Unfortunately, this also means that such facility will be horrendously more expensive. The proposed International Linear Collider, which will be about 40 km long, is estimated to be about US$10-15 billion! At some point, we just can no longer build such monsters.

Thus, several groups around the world have been working on new acceleration schemes to make smaller structures able to produce higher accelerating gradients than the conventional ones. Our group, the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator, is one of them.

The physics here is actually quite simple [emphasis mine]. Imagine you have a boat moving on water. What you see behind the boat is a wake left behind that was generated by the boat. The larger and faster the boat, the larger is this water wake.

In our case, the boat is a bunch of electrons, and the "water", which is the medium that the wake is generated in, is a dielectric (insulating ceramic) hollow tube, and the wake field itself is the electric field. We can generate an accelerating mechanism in 2 ways:

1.We pass a large bunch of charge (we call this the drive beam) through our dielectric tube. It creates a large wake field. Then before that wake field decays away, if we pass a small bunch of charge at just the right moment, it will experience an acceleration through the tube. This second bunch is the bunch that you want to accelerate (we call this the witness bunch since it is "witnessing" the wake field). This is like a transformer ratio – large current, low voltage being equal to low current, high voltage, with the power being the same. In our case, it is large charge, low gradient going to low charge, high gradient. The drive bunch has a high charge, creating all the wake field, and this causes a witness beam of low charge to be accelerated by a large gradient.

2.But that’s not the only means of doing this. Since the wake generated is nothing more than a classical wave, we know that classical wave can add constructively. So, if we smart enough, we can make use of that. And we do! If, after the first drive bunch has passed though, if we can add a SECOND drive bunch just at the right time, the wake field generated by the second will ADD to the wake field generated by the first, thus creating an even larger wake! What if we have 4 drive beams, 8 drive beams, 16 drive beams, 32 drive beams… etc.? You can already see that if we can have a "bunch train" of drive beams spaced just right, we can create quite a large wake to accelerate the witness beam.

As you can imagine, the construction and the details in producing all this aren’t trivial. That’s why it took the group almost 20 years just to get to that 100 MV/m milestone. We’re hoping that since we now understand things more (and we also know what dielectric to use), the next series of progress won’t take as long.

Oh, how does this impact you? If everything works, it means that we can produce a cheap, compact accelerator. Accelerators are used in a lot of things, including to generate x-rays. There are medical accelerators to generate x-rays already in used in hospitals and doctors’ offices. In principle, this technique can create more compact, cheaper medical x-rays for not just diagnostics, but treatment as well.

Whoa! I’ve written way too much and have probably put all of you to sleep! Still, I’m sure you can understand by now the excitement surrounding this, and why I think this is quite fascinating.
Take care!
Z.
-----------------------------------

Damn, Z. Whatever. Now people... do you find this fascinating? Especially about the "physics is simple part"?

Anyway, heartiest congratulations to my friends Beghat, FM and Z.

And about the "embellishments" in this blog . . . all this is in jest, eh buddies?

===================

Uh-uh, got another one to make. An addendum. Because as soon as I posted this one up another interesting snippet came up in The Star today. This involves blood, my kah-zen, Man, the 'white sheep' of the family. No need to tell you who the 'baa baa blackie' is, eh?

This last-in-the-minute-past-deadline-post does the title justice - Friends in High Places - literally.

Anyway, Man, or referred to in The Star's story as Mejar Azman Jantan, is the first to fly the 'Ferrari of fighter jets' - the Sukhoi SU-30MKM - training with the famed Russian Knights since last July in Moscow. The reason he appeared in today's Star was because he did some aerobatic display at yesterday's LIMA in Langkawi. The paper quoted him as saying:

"...the Sukhoi could stall in midair while making swift turns, noting that it could also bank 90 degrees in the air and tail-slide down at ease.

“Apart from making flat spins like a falling leaf, the aircraft can also do a fantastic spin role on slow speed, dropping from 270 knots to 50 knots in less than five seconds,” he said.

Mejar Azman said the RMAF was looking for young and talented Malaysians to become pilots.

“Hopefully, by Lima 2009, we could have our own aerobatic team using all 18 Sukhoi aircraft,” he said.

Ea-sy kah-zen... gotta run that one by our current DPM first.

Anyway Man was already making news even from the late 80's when Mat Salo was busy scrubbing the deck of junk 25-year floating rust bucket. He did the family proud and even managed to further cement Mat Salo's reputation as the 'blackie'.

Man who had then just graduated from the Royal Military College (RMC) became the first ever Malaysian to be inducted into the famed Colorado Springs US Air Force Academy. The mother of all Top Gun schools which has produced 34 astronauts, famous Vietnam POW's and a host of US generals. There were Malaysians before him who went into West Point and the Naval Academy in Maryland but USAF? Not yet laar...

The USAF's is not only a military boot camp but a top-notch 4-year engineering undergraduate institution as well. Let's look at what it takes to get into one:

All qualified candidates may apply for nomination by either of their state’s two U.S. senators, their U.S. congressional representative, or the vice president of the United States. Children of armed forces personnel (on active duty or retired) may apply for nomination by the president of the United States. Nominations are also available to qualified enlisted members of the Air Force and Air Force Reserve. Qualified children of Medal of Honor winners . . . [as quoted in MSN's Encarta ]

Ok, Man, proud of you, 'cuz. I look at it this way, without white there can be no black. Without evil there can be no good. So it takes all kinds . . .

O' People of Burma, We Stand By You

A time in Rangoon


Lost Generation

August 8, 1998.

The battered Toyota taxi weaved along Pyay Road through a police checkpoint, the morning sun causing beads of sweat to appear on Zeyar’s wide forehead. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, immediately regretted dirtying it --and rolled it up to hide the offending stain. The heat irritated him because the AC had broken down a long time ago. Like everything else in this junta nation, spares are difficult to come by. The police constable (or military, rather – in Myanmar everything is military), seeing the empty taxi, waved him through.

Zeyar was on his way to pick me up where I was staying at the Ramada Hotel by the airport.

I met Zeyar about a week ago outside Yangon International where I had just arrived from Bangkok, fresh from my triumph of getting a Myanmar work permit in a record time of four hours at the embassy in Bangkok. I didn’t even have to appear in person. The agent who collected my passport at the hotel suggested I try the newly-opened “Ancient Massage” near the corner across the hotel. That was the best way to pass the time, he said, so why not? Let him battle demonstrators at the embassy instead. Having a lithesome doe-eyed beauty (yes… that one --number 26) with flawless taut skin expertly knead my legs, shoulders, thighs . . . was definitely better than waiting in a snaking queue any day.

In yesterday’s Bangkok Post the big story was UN’s Special Representative to Myanmar, Tan Sri Razali Ismail being denied a visa. Even the cover letter from Kofi Annan did not sway the junta in Yangon into letting him visit Daw Suu Kii. Rumors of a ten-year anniversary to commemorate the ’88 uprising was rife and foreign NGO’s and observers were already warned not to attend or will face the consequences. The Generals had already fired the first salvo...

Exactly a decade earlier on 8 August 1988 --the day of infamy --students and citizens from all walks had gathered peacefully at the Sule Pagoda near the city center. What happened next was unthinkable. Without scant regard, troops had opened fire into the crowd --mowing down students, schoolchildren, pregnant women and monks with impunity. The carnage ran into the thousands. Some news report said there were more than 3000 dead. Some said 5000. Thus a decade later the junta was very careful not to have a repeat of this bloodshed. After all, the junta had recently opened its doors to foreign investment and the seeing of thousands of bodies of being carted away is not something the Generals ever want to see again. That was why I called Zeyar to take me to Sule Pagoda, the site of the bloodshed ten years ago, to pay homage to the dead but brave protestors.

After the massacre, the Junta had hit upon a brainwave. Who are the demonstrators? Why, mostly college students of course. Let the country cease to have students! Brilliant! Now why didn't we think of that earlier? And that’s exactly what the enlightened Generals did – shut down every institution of higher learning in Myanmar. And they have stayed shut ever since. I call the these young people Myanmar’s ‘lost generation’ –people who were denied an education because of an exaggerated government phobia. Living in the 21st century I almost didn’t think that such a thing could have happened. But it did.

8.8.88 was thus an unlucky day for the thousands of students, ordinary workers, schoolchildren, pregnant women and monks who chose to peacefully gather at Sule Pagoda; their dreams of a democratic Myanmar crushed, their lives lost in a hail of bullets. What where the Generals really thinking? Any feng shui master I meet from now on would be judged on how he answers to my question: Is 8-8-88 considered lucky?



When I opened the door to his taxi Zeyar looked troubled.

‘Mr. Salo, I don’t think it’s a good idea’.

‘Why, I’m just a tourist. OK, maybe not Sule Pagoda today but we go to Shwedagon. Don’t worry I give you special tip.’

At the mention of “tip”, I saw Zeyar soften a little. Shwedagon is Myanmar’s finest Pagoda, but I had other ideas in mind, I want to see Suu Kii’s house, peer through her gate. But I’m not telling Zeyar yet.

I sat at the back, smoking my Dunhill’s. At a traffic stop Zeyar turned his head to me.

‘The military intelligence, Mr. Salo, know already that foreigners have come into Yangon to show support for eight-eight-eighty eight. I also heard on the radio that some Thai and Malaysian activist have been caught at the airport for carrying leaflets . . . I also see more roadblocks put up . . . there is a planned demo this afternoon but I think it will not happen’.

I was disappointed upon hearing this. But further down the intersection of Pyay Road I saw an army tank. Another road-block was being assembled to protect the many foreign business premises along the wide avenue; my employers included. Zeyar pointed to the tank. ‘See Mr. Salo, I hope you have your passport with you because they maybe want to check ID in case we are stopped’.

As a rule I never carry my passport. A passport should only be shown at a country’s port of entry or disembarkation, but I didn’t tell Zeyar this.

‘Eh, Zeyar, you show me University of Yangon first?’

‘OK’.

The area the university was in was what I presume to be the Yangon’s poshest district; wide shady streets and peach white bungalows along the ground's perimeter. The setting was quaint. It was scenes such as these that brought back nostalgic memories of my hometown of Seremban in Malaysia. Myanmar is still locked in the Sixties when the century was already drawing to a close. This is what I tell people when asked what Myanmar is like: A time that land forgot –if you remember what Klang and Seremban looked like in the Sixties –that is what Yangon is today. That’s what one party military rule does to you.

But the university was totally deserted. So it’s true then. Shrubs and opportunistic plants have rendered the once-pristine lawns turn into an eyesore. Creeper vines have taken over one side of a red building, presumably the bursar’s office.

‘So these students, Zeyar, what do they do now? They need jobs, right? For that you need some sort of paper.’

‘Actually Mr. Salo, the government gives them degrees so they can get employed.'

‘But how . . . there are no classes?’ The taxi had now stopped and as I looked closer, most of the windows in the buildings were broken.

Zeyar turns the engine off.

‘Believe it or not, once a year the universities are opened for exams. Since nobody go to class, so nobody learn anything so they let everybody pass so they can get jobs’.

‘My God,’ as I took another Dunhill from my duty-free pack, ‘so you mean to tell me the universities are opened just once every year, students take exams and they let everybody pass?’

‘Yes.’

A whole generation lost was the phrase that went to my mind.


Like all Myanmarese, Zeyar never ventures an opinion. He merely states facts, often in cynical harsh monotones. It must be honed-in to their heads to never speak their minds out. Lest they are spies out there so they might get arrested if they talk anything bad about their government.

Top down in my 4.0

In the taxi I told Zeyar to just go up the road. I had already cased the phone book at the Ramada and noted the Nobel Laureate’s address. And I knew it was just down the road from the university, at an intersection off the main road. Zeyar seemed to have read my mind.

‘Mr. Salo, you know we cannot enter the street where Daw Aung lives.’

‘Why not,’ I said. ‘I mean I just like to see the architecture of these old British-built houses. Almost similar to the bungalows we have in Malaysia . . . okay, just show me the street then.’

But as soon as we approached the junction that led into her street I asked Zeyar to stop. I got out of the taxi.

‘What are you doing Mr. Salo? –The police will catch you -‘

‘Just wait here ok?’

I quickly walked up the shady avenue. It had a very generous sidewalk. The bungalows here must have once housed Burma’s British colonial administrators. Some had swimming pools but all were now dry and have become refuse pits: broken branches, leaves, an upturned bicycle. I turned around to see Zeyar lean against the taxi, looking restless. Then I saw her house. Her gardens were huge and I stopped to admire the Flame of The Forest at the perimeter of her chain-link fence. When my dad was a Planter back in the Sixties, I too had once lived in fine bungalows with breezy corridors and wide banisters and a dog named Johnny. And I just particularly liked the tree‘s name . . . it just has a sexy ring to it. Flame of the Forest.

Her front gates, from what I gathered in the distance seemed to be made of solid iron and painted light green. It was still a further fifty yards ahead. I heard the clanging of the gate being opened. But there were no cars coming in or out.

“Arghh…” I flicked my cigarette. One of the military guards had noticed me. I can pretend to do . . . what? This was not a tourist area. I was the only one loitering in the street. Although he was now on the sidewalk in front of the gate and fifty yards was what separates us, the bullets in his rifle can definitely cause serious bodily harm, and I wasn’t about to argue with .22 caliber bullets. In short, I’m not going to hang around to find out. The guard had already thrown a menacing pointing finger at me.

As casually as I could muster, I turned around and came back in the direction I had come, my steps exaggeratedly unhurried. But now the taxi was nowhere to be seen. Shit!

I ran down towards the intersection and looked around the corner. Sure enough the taxi was parked under a tree by a large monsoon drain.

‘Zeyar, why didn’t you wait’, while I huffed and puffed to catch my breath, ‘like I asked you to?’

‘I told you no one is allowed to pass her street’, Zeyar said, a note of triumph in his voice, 'Lucky the police didn't chase you'.

Just then a curious thing happened. From her street emerged a sports car – we actually heard it before we saw it - a two-door coupe with its top down, dark blue and a very young male driver looking smug. Asshole. Not just any sports car but a left-hand-drive ‘99 Mustang four-point-oh. In the US, the latest models are always called “the following year’s" - the latest model produced in ’98 is thus called the ’99. The same it was with my US magazine subscription. (I receive my September Stereophile issues usually in July or August but never in September itself). .

We both turned our heads to admire the car – the rims must be at least twenty inches with a large block V-8 at the heart of pure American muscle.

‘Wow, how come this car is in Burma, Zeyar? That’s the latest Ford Mustang, just released in the States’, I said, exhaling a billowing smoke from my envious lips.

‘What‘s so strange Mr. Salo? That boy you see driving the car is one of the top General’s son. They control all business in Burma. Only children and family members of the junta are allowed to do business. I’m sure your company’s local agent has powerful military connections. . .’

I only know too well of the military connection. Fax machines are a “controlled item” in Myanmar. Just the other day my boss complained that he spent three thousand dollars just to get a fax machine set up in the office. Five hundred for the fax machine, five hundred to set up the line, one thousand for a permit from the Telecom ministry. And then there’s a three month wait. If you don't want to wait another thousand would get the service connected immediately.


Palace's Palatial Pleasures

That night my boss decided to show me Myanmar’s top “meat market”, the Palace. A female Australian engineer who was going to be part of my rig crew insisted on tagging along. She was perhaps barely twenty-five. The problem was she had been holed up in the hotel room for the past one week and mostly ignored by me and a Filipino engineer called Jorgen. It’s not that, but in a equal opportunity world we do not want to be construed as doing anything remotely sexist. So she said she was "bored out of her skull" and wanted to “go out with the boys”.

‘Sharon, I said, ‘our boss is going to bring us to a rather notorious joint. Err . . . It’s a fancy nightclub but really it’s a high-class state-sanctioned whorehouse . . . for top government people and expats. You sure you want to follow?’ And for added emphasis, 'really, for sure, really?'

‘Ummm, yes’, her, face lit at the prospect but me thinking her blond tresses would certainly look out of place at the club tonight. ‘I won’t get in the way I promise, I just want to come along to drink. I can’t be drinking beer from the mini-bar every night . . . it’s expensive for one, and where’s the fun in that? C'mon have mercy, Salo. '

‘We’ll . . . I won’t argue with that, Sharon. But promise me no regrets, eh?’

‘Don’t worry; pretend that I’m not even there.’


We first had a round of post-dinner drinks at the hotel lounge. When the girl went to the restroom I told my boss of her decision to tag along. My boss was of the “old school”, never giving a damn about 21st century workplace ethics or appropriate behavior with female underlings in the office. He was liable to pat a secretary’s rump if necessary or comment freely on the tea lady’s bosoms. My boss’ response was, “If she wants to follow let her come”.

In any oilfield town, or any town for that matter, chief amongst our duties (as oilmen, that is) was to visit the most happening place, usually a bar with the most exquisite women in it and disseminate the information gathered therein far and wide. This will also provide fodder for endless tales of bravado in trashy oilfield bars across Asia in years to come.

Jorgen and I looked forward to the evening in anticipation. I can see my Filipino colleague distractedly licking his lips while we were in the car. Sharon sat between us. Our boss sat up front with the driver. Sharon sensibly wore jeans and rather plain white blouse, the sleeves rolled up to expose her elbows. If her hair was shorter, she could pass as a guy almost because her chest was a bit flat.

The place was dark like most discos and night clubs are. It was actually much classier than I thought, with a Captain wearing a suit leading us to our table. The low wide velvety sofa engulfed us. There were a few couples on the dance floor under a solitary globe, bodies not moving in tune together giving it a surreal jerky atmosphere. The Captain asked what we wanted and drinks were ordered. It was time to develop a nice buzz in anticipation of sexually charged evening ahead. Want to see the girls now, Sir? The Captain asked. My boss casually flicked his hand and said, ‘later’. I can see the disappointment in Jorgen’s eyes as I believed he wanted to see them now. Yes, where were they? Perhaps cloistered in a room in the back somewhere?

The Twenty Dollar Siti Nurhaliza

The reason for the unnatural heightened sense of expectation was a story making the rounds called “Twenty Dollar Siti Nurhaliza”. The story was told by a Malaysian construction company executive whom we breakfasted with one morning. We both saw, from a distance one early morning, a young girl exiting the guy’s hotel room into a waiting taxi. She did look breathtakingly pretty but was painfully thin. The exec had boasted, in his excitement spluttering spittle and beans over our table, ‘Only in Myanmar can we get to sleep with Siti Nurhaliza look-a-likes for twenty dollars.’

So that night at the Palace, Jorgen’s thoughts were full of Filipina mini-serials starlets, mine consumed by . . . err I don’t remember –all which can be had for twenty dollars or less.

Actually that’s not true. The Palace being the classiest of the bordellos charges forty dollars at a minimum. Some go as high as three hundred dollars for the night. The girls are carefully selected and guaranteed clean by the military junta. The Palace is a controlled military facility designed for expatriates to channel their sexual needs in a responsible manner. At the very least we can credit the Generals' understanding of business wants and needs. ASEAN-style.

We ignored Sharon completely and drank while making small talk with the boss. The boss suddenly said, ‘Ok let’s get the Captain to bring them out’. Jorgen let out a palpable sigh of relief.

The girls would pass Jorgen first who was sitting to my boss’ left while I sat to his right. The Captain said there was more than twenty girls with a few “fresh ones from Mandalay”. A door at the end opened and soon a train of Burma's finest poured forth, walking awkwardly in heels, chests up, faces forced into a smile framed by too-generous lipsticks. Our pulse quickened. But it was so dark that we can’t quite clearly see their faces.

In order to see our prospects, each time the girl passes, the Captain would pull a mini flashlight to first train the light on her face, then her bosoms before finally settling on the hips. It very much reminded me of a meat market, which it was. If we like her all we have to do is take her hand and beckon her to sit with us. So twenty girls were flashed before us because our boss had instructed to “check out all first” before having them pass slowly the second time around.

Sharon seemed to take all this in quite in stride as she sat in the corner nursing her Gin and Tonic. I wondered if it was fun for her watching guys in their true element.

But something that happened next took me aback.

A girl stood towering over me and holding up the queue. My boss had a certain idea that I might like this one – and indeed her cleavage was phenomenal with all the right curves. But what my boss didn’t know was breasts never factored much in my equation. I was a modern male and equated flatter chests with higher IQ’s. I’m not anti-bimbo per se but honestly I prefer legs, and how a girl looks at me is important. Even if a girl can be had by paying, I subscribe to the theory that there must also be some sort of chemistry involved.

Anyway the girl’s crotch area was level with my boss’ face. She wore a dark colored blouse with some sequins and a short faux-leather skirts with legs stopping down to white stilettos. The next thing I knew my boss had put his hands under her skirt - using both hands grabbing her buttocks.

‘Mat Salo’, my boss with a leer in his eyes, said, ‘check it out --she’s not wearing panties’. This of course wasn’t true because he pushed her to me and picked my reluctant hand to join him feeling her buttocks. My fingers immediately got tangled in something. It was just his version of a rowdy macho-guy joke. I can't help but think what Sharon might make of this wanton display . . .

I quietly whispered to him, ‘Boss, if Sharon puts in a complaint of sexual discrimination -- Sheeat . . . we die, man’ (that’s why these days we can’t display images of naked women on company PC’s screen savers for fear of a sexual discrimination lawsuit).

My boss, his speech beginning to slur, ‘Goddamm Salo, this if Burrrmah. If she wants to, well, let her. Who cares?'

In the meantime I was obliged to entertain the girl that we both had pawed. The music changed into something soulful, and I felt the need to dance. I took her hand and we both headed to the dance floor.

I never noticed it earlier, but out of the shadows came two military guards. The girl said to me in very good English, ‘Don’t worry Mister Salo, this is normal. Army take care of your safety here’. But it was quite unnerving nonetheless to see two young commandos on the dance floor in full military dress looking over at us. They just stood there at the edge of the dance floor, immobile. Apparently they only step out of the shadows when foreigners get on the dance floor.

At the end of the Earth Wind and Fire’s ‘Boogie Wonderland’, I decided to get out of the spooky stare of my two minders and sit at a different table to chat with the girl. As she linked her arms in mine, she bent her long graceful neck to my shoulder and whispered, 'one hundred'. I put one finger up in a non-committal gesture of “maybe later”. What I really wanted was to pick her brains. She was a first year Economics student at the University of Rangoon she said, when the massacre happened. That was a decade ago and she must now be about twenty-eight. A bit too old for my taste, I thought. Plus she had hardly looked like Siti Nurhaliza. I looked across and was a bit disappointed that Jorgen had already secured his Filipina wet dream; a teenage version of Kris Aquino from what I could see.

My boss also had a girl draped across his lap. Only Sharon seemed to have shrunken into the folds of the sofa, alone and looking bored.

I looked at the girl, and tried in my best apologetic voice, ‘Sorry Miss, I hope you don’t mind.' She immediately sensed that I wasn’t interested in bedding her and she laid out an opened cupped hand. A tip was expected, of course.

I put in some kyat (pronounced chart) notes the equivalent of five dollars to thank her for her time.

I lay back in the sofa, slumped and wondered whether I should just call it a night soon. The answer came soon enough. I caught Sharon’s eyes across the room and nodded.

=================================================

To show solidarity with the peoples of Myanmar please sign the on-line petition:

Hello, I thought you should know about this:

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world. For decades the Burmese regime has fought off pressure--imprisoning elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy activists, wiping out thousands of villages, imposing forced labour, creating refugees- But last Tuesday Buddhist monks and nuns, revered in Burma, began marching and chanting prayers. The protests spread as hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and public figures joined in, finding the hope they'd lost. Now they're facing crackdown – so please, show your solidarity to this movement towards reconciliation and democracy and sign the emergency petition supporting the Burmese people -- it'll be delivered to United Nations Security Council members and international media all week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/tf.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

In the past, Burma's military rulers have massacred the demonstrators and crushed democracy. The world must stand with the Burmese people at this time, to show the military rulers that the world will not tolerate repression and violence.
Right now, global leaders are gathering in New York for the annual United Nations summit. In speeches, press interviews but also in real actions, we need them to show Burma's military junta that the global community is willing to act in solidarity with the protesters.

Show your solidarity to this movement for peace and democracy and sign the emergency petition supporting the Burmese people. It'll be delivered to UN Security Council members and the UN press corps all week:

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Thank you for your help!

An Evening In Africa

Between A Gated Community and a War Zone


It was 6.00 p.m. on a Tuesday on a hot African bush evening. I was smoking outside my container office, eagerly waiting for the food to arrive, and along with the food, two of my crew and fresh laundry.

I was but a few hundred kilometers from the borders of Uganda, Kenya, Congo, Central African Republic and Ethiopia, in the southern-most corner of Sudan.

As a “key personnel”, I was required to be on site, but the rest of the crew lived at the ‘camp’; the ‘camp’ being 10 km away on a bone–jarring ride by pick-up truck. The container cabin at the rig where I was sequestered is comfortably equipped with bunk beds and a shower. I share this cabin with my Romanian colleague Ciprian (pronounced Cheep-ri-yan) who is, in rig parlance, my night guy – taking care of activities between sunup and sundown.

The date was 2 August 2005, and I had no inkling that ‘war’ had already started.

My uncouth oilfield brain would later say, hey, this is interesting, how often does a middle-class Bolehsian get to experience being in a war zone, and in the dark corners of Africa at that?

Ciprian and I stood uncomfortably swatting mosquitoes while chain smoking cigarettes in a pathetic attempt to additionally thwart the agressive mozzies away. These are not your run-of-the-mill mozzies, no sir, but killer ones guaranteed to cause malaria; they are also more persistent and a shade bigger than you find in Bolehsia. Thwack! I gave my face a sharp slap but missed the damned mozzie. So what else is new? And where the hell is that pick-up?

(Ciprian posing away)

Ususally the pick-up would arrive by a quarter to six carrying our two north Sudanese (a distinction is made here, northerners are invariably Moslems) crewmembers, along with our food and clean laundry. Occasionally, the clean laundry and food would go ‘missing’, and for the latter I will be forced to pry into my emergency ration of Yeo’s Curry Chicken or Maggi Mee, whose stock was already fast dwindling.

As we stomped the finished cigarette with our steel toes, only to immediately light another one with my Zippo, the tell-tale dust trail in the distance beckoned. Finally, our empty bellies would soon be filled by some bread and beans! A note about the bread here: Some client rep once remarked that if you throw that offending bun at a dog’s head with sufficient force, you might invariably kill the poor canine – it was that hard. I was also eager to eat quickly so I can rid the red dust of my coveralls and have my dirty laundry sent back to the camp. I was left with just one pair of coveralls, and if I lose any more I will then be reduced to wearing jeans and t-shirts - which will look silly on a drilling rig, not to mention unsafe.

Presently the red pick-up (originally white) came to a halt. My empty gut told me something was wrong. Our driver Hafiz, a Darfur native or thereabouts, stepped out with an expression bordering on fear. My two crewmembers Ma’mon and Bashir stayed rooted in the rear seats. As it was already dark, it was hard to see their faces.

Oh-oh.

Hafiz, our driver, cut to the chase.

“They cannot stay in camp, boss, just now Ma’mon got beaten in the galley while eating dinner,” the words came tumbling out in sing-song African lilt.

Before I could respond, he continued, “Didn’t you know? John Garang killed in chopper crash Sunday . . . martial law declared by President Omar (El-Bashir) yesterday . . . looting, burning in Khartoum”.

What? Looting? Burning? I heard myself thinking; no wonder I couldn’t reach my boss in Khartoum last night.

I rushed to the rear doors. Ma’mon looked forlorn, his large African chiseled head nestling in his hands. Bashir, the quiet one, just stared ahead, as if in shock. I opened the door, and Ma’mon slowly raised his head to look at me, his eyes red from crying.

“I’m scared . . go back to camp, boss, the bloody Christian workers want to kill us …” his voice trailed. “OK man, go inside, go relax in the container”, was all I could say.

He looked none the worse for wear, for someone who was ‘beaten’ I mean, and except for a few scratches and the scruff coveralls, torn near the pockets, he was, in my estimation, probably just a victim of some spirited pushing and shoving. No harm done, I thought. But still I needed to quickly evacuate these two North Sudanese back to Khartoum just the same.

The threat is very real, the Southerners hate the Northerners with a vengeance, and no telling what the recriminations will be, especially if John Garang’s death was an assassination ordered by Khartoum. Only three weeks had passed with Dr. Garang’s appointment as Sudan’s Vice-President in a landmark peace treaty cum power-sharing agreement with Bashir's government. The motive was definitely there. Why share power when you can suck that Black Gold out in wanton abandon rather than share it with the infidel Christians?

The capital, being a thousand kilometers away, is served only by an air charter service provided by our client. The dusty airfield (well, it gets muddy if it rains, which is often) is about 30 kilometers away, so I needed to contact my bosses in Khartoum to get the client to send in the twin-propeller Beechcraft.

I later found out that all civilian aircraft in Khartoum was grounded.

I went inside the container office and grabbed the ‘Thuraya’ satellite phone. My hands were shaking, and I even failed to notice that the pick-up was bereft of packed bread and beans. Worse, I also ignored my gnawing hunger. I quickly scrolled down the address list and hit ‘Call’.

“Come on, pick it up”, I cursed under my breath. A few attempts later my boss’s high-pitched wail crackled in. He tried to hide the panic in his voice as he explained that he was holed up in so-and-so apartment, and that the office would be closed until further notice. Martial law was already declared, and he dared not even go back to his apartment as the news reports there said his part of town was the worst affected. They were already deaths in Khartoum. Yes, yes, I know all that, I replied, but he quickly hung up.

He was holed with three families with crying spouses and infants in that so-and-so’s apartment meant for just one family. He was also having tough time, he claimed, and if that was an understatement, I don’t know what is.

In effect, he more or less told me I was on my own. Time to take the bull by the horns, I muttered to myself.

Moslems versus Christians, North versus South.

To be honest, flashes of scenes of the gated community I lived in Bolehsia did pass by me; scenes of my then twelve-year old and four-year old boy happily playing in the park straddling an odd-sounding place called The Curve. And my darling and eternally suffering wife, coming home from work, stopping at the park to take the boys home. Never in wildest dreams did I consider not being able to see them again.

The workers on the rig, being mostly of the Southern Christian variety, a sub-Dinka tribe that Garang belonged to, were all ready to revolt. This was after all, their territory.

Drilling was suspended, as the roughnecks refused to go the rig floor. Ciprian and I climbed up to the floor to see if we can double-handedly continue the drilling operations. But the headlights of a familiar pick-up bearing the SPLA sub-commander was making its way to our site, replete with a heavy caliber machine gun looming menacingly in the rear, causing us stop mid-way up.

I knew the sub-commander would be looking for me.

The reason we had a 'relationship' going was because I had a portable satellite phone. Indeed, a most valuable commodity in the bushes of Africa. And he was probably just as lost as I was and needed to find out from his rebel commanders up the hierarchy as to who would fill Dr. Garang’s big shoes. And what the next course of action will be. Slaughter all the foreigners on the rig, perhaps? How about holding them hostage for hard currency?

In the course of our ‘friendship’, Commander Johnson as he liked to be called, had many times been at liberty of sampling my cigarettes and whisky (ho, ho the latter is used a ‘bargaining chip’), and the dollar-a-minute phone of course. Not too mention the tons of bottled mineral water for his goons.

The Commander's goons goofing off...

Commander Johnson, in my book, is one of the good guys. My bleeding heart will always give ANYBODY the benefit of the doubt, even if they were to show up with rifles and side-arms.

After having spent some time picking his brains in the past, I came to the conclusion that indeed, the SPLA rebels had a valid grouse against the government (read: Moslems in Khartoum). I not only sympathized with the rebels, but also grew to view the government in Sudan with distaste, much like I view the government in Bolehsia.

Now this is dicey, for I claim to be Moslem, and Commander Johnson knows this. But the good Christian Commander also knows Mat Salo is a ‘good guy’ (hopefully the feeling is mutual). Now as I walked to his battered truck, I needed to get Commander on my side more than ever.

I noticed he still had his shades on, even when it was well past sundown.

Without much preamble, I handed Commander Johnson the phone. I was sweating bullets, I admit, but forced myself to slow my movements, in an effort to show I was relaxed and without a trace of fear. I didn't want to give the good commander any 'ideas'. But honestly? Where it matters most, they 'jewels' had already shrunk on its own accord.

I needed to ask him a safe passage for my two North Sudanese engineers to Heglig, where our base sat eight hours away in the safe cocoon of Government (North Sudanese) control.

I gently coaxed him to provide armed escort for my crew to the so-called ‘demarcation’ line, about three hours away. As ‘head’ of my cell, I was already doing a couple ‘CYA’ motions to comply with my company’s extra-stringent ‘journey management’ policy. The manual stated, a trifle bit ambigously, ‘ ensure armed escort for personnel movements'. But it failed to specify from which 'side'. As long as the 'escorts' are armed, that’s good enough for me.

Right away I saw the irony, and possibly the folly of my quest.

And again, scenes of the guardhouse of my Bolehsian gated community flashed before me.

Imagine then, as an asinine analogy, the Residents Association of the housing estate convening a meeting. The security company that the residents employed has absconded, because one of the guards was badly injured in a scuffle for thwarting a robbery attempt. And the break-ins, which have been going on too long already, so they decided to deal with the devil. Thus the ‘thief’ was now called in to provide security. It does nothing for their piece of mind, I tell you, but in terms of performance, it does wonders. No more break-ins at the gated community.

And that was exactly what I was doing, negotiating with the ‘devil’.

But ah, this is the devil I know, and sure enough, a few ‘swigs’ later, and a carton of Chinese cigarettes to sweeten the deal, Commander Johnson agreed for a pick-up to chaperone the ‘valuable assets’ of a multinational oil service company, for evacuation to Heglig the next day.

Thus the insidious seed was planted in my idiotic nether region that I was never going back to that hole in the wall they call Africa.

I miss my ‘gated community’ too, too damned much, and all it contained there-in.


And that was how I found myself in the boondocks of Borneo not too long after.

In happier days, when Dr. John Garang was still alive and Mat Salo without a care in the world . . . Again, no prizes for guessing which one's Mat Salo (hint: he doesn't claim to be a non-smoker)

© Mat Salo All Images from various borrowed cameras.