Experts in "Tight" Places

In keeping with the "pro" and "non-pro" blogger stance, of which I am neither, this week I shall pay homage to people whom I am often in awe of - The Rig Movers.

The Two Captains would aprreciate this edition (and so would the rest of you I hope); Ancient, and Not-So-Ancient alike - because it deals with the complex intricacies of navigating in "tight" places.

Normally it takes me 2 - 4 weeks drilling "duals" - two wells on a given location before it's time to move again. I was fortunate this time around because I had my trusty Canon Ixus 850 in my front pocket while boarding the chopper while the rig is being moved by tugboats. The move can take anywhere between 16 to 30 hours (sometimes more, if the tide isn't in our favor because we have to stop and wait - and yes, occasionally we do get marooned on an unexpected sand or mud bar).

Ready to Board

Pre-flight checks. Notice the "legroom" of this French-made Dauphin helicopter?

Goodbye, Sepinggan (Balikpapan's International Bandara).

Some fall asleep . . .

While others contemplate . . .

While some perform "the sholat"

View from 3000 feet: Batu Bara from presumably Tenaga Coal Mines - being towed by barges to the open sea. Ready to electrify the lives of millions of Bolehsians. For more Tenaga Debacles go here.

And what's this is spy in the distance. A rig being towed?

On closer inspection - YES! - it's our rig! But since there are"big trees" flanking the small waterways, the pilot informed on our headsets that he'll have to drop us at "CPU" - a Central Processing Unit - where a boat will take us on board. He can't land the chopper on the rig's helideck lest he clips them branches . . . Aw shucks, that means lugging our bags all over the place again!

At the CPU . . .

And transfer to "sea truck" ( crew boat).

Joining the rig - me rushing up to the helideck - just in time to record this "tight places" business.

The powerful tugboat - pulling us 96 souls and associated drilling equipment on board a rig-cum- barge measuring 30 m X 100 m. Don't worry, after "de-ballasting" - the barge floats higher with an 11 feet draft. Plus these waterways were dredged ages ago . . . err, sure or not?

And the "Experts" who made it all possible? All home grown, mind you. The groups includes marine pilots and survey positioning experts.

Notice how close the fronds are. Sometimes you can put your hand out and touch the leaves!

And finally, we arrive . . .

To our new home for the next couple of weeks . . .

After ballasting (weighing and stabilizing the rig/barge), with the jacks in "up" position, we're ready to "ngebor" . . . To borrow a friend's phrase, "Baiklah murid murid, sekarang buat bulatan besar dan berlari setempat. Satu, dua, tiga . . ."

Up on the helideck, after final positioning, where I normally go for my pre-dinner walks with my 8 GB Nano in my pocket and MX-500 Sennheiser 'buds in my ear. But it rained earlier, so strike that. Now don't want to go slippin' and slidin' here do we?

Tuesday Blooody Tuesday

©Mat Salo Images - Photo Time Stamp 18:19:15, May 1, 2007. Digital Ixus 850.

Labor Day Tuesday

When I began my day this morning my thoughts were drawn to my beloved homeland, Bolehsia. I was wondering what my two boys will be doing today, aside from hogging the PS2 and PC - while testing the patience of my eternally suffering wife - because today, May the 1st , is a public holiday.

And the boys will be at home.

Because it's Labors' Day holiday in Bolehsia.

And I'm on a swamp barge rig, on the eastern edge of swampy Borneo - and it's business as usual, of course.

But Indonesia doesn't recognize any form of Workers' Day, and so my thoughts were then drawn to a brave young woman called Marsinah, now dearly departed, who once walked the earth in a place called Sidoarjo in East Java.

Sidoarjo came into the news recently because of the huge ecological disaster allegedly caused by irresponsible drillng practices by a company called PT Lapindo Brantas, in pursuit of the Holy Black Gold. Overflowing hot mud caused 15,000 families to be displaced; some killed, flooded 600 hectares of land and submerged whole villages.

I'd like to think that the disaster was God's Wrath - a retribution for Marsinah.


Lagu Aku Untuk Marsinah (Dan Jua Sebuah Al-Fatihah)

In case you don't know who Marsinah was, here's an excerpt gleaned from an Amnesty International Report:

" . . . . Marsinah's body was found by a group of children in a shack at the edge of a rice field some 100 kilometres from her home. It was bloodied and covered in bruises. There were strangulation marks on her neck. A blunt instrument had been thrust into her vagina causing terrible injuries. A few days earlier she had been a lively 25-year-old leading a strike at the watch factory where she worked in Porong, Sidoarjo, East Java, in Indonesia. She was brutally murdered, almost certainly by the military, because she was a trade unionist who stood up for workers' rights . . . "

And all that she did in '93, this poor young woman, was to sit down with her employer to demand to be paid as was what was on their wage agreement. No more or no less. To demand what's rightfully hers and for her co-workers.

In '98, Ratna Sarumpaet, the famed Indonesian playwright, was thrown in jail in for daring to stage a play on Marsinah.

To this day, the ban on the play is still in effect.

While I leave you to enjoy Labors' Day holiday with your loved ones, O' my Bolehsian readers, spare a thought with this translated monologue from the play by Ratna - Marsinah Accuses.

Then I heard a door being opened right in front of me.

I don't know whether my head hit the wall

or whether I was hit on the brow with a club

I only know I fell headlong on the floor ...

When I tried to move, feet in heavy boots

quickly restrained me, standing on

my shins, my belly, my chest, my arms ...

I was abused with streams of filthy words

during every torture that followed,

I don't know how many times my body was lifted up,

then smashed down, hard.

Lifted up again, then smashed down again ...

Onto the floor ...

Onto the corner of a table ...

Onto a chair ...

Until at last I was truly helpless ...

Such brutality knows no satisfaction ...

I could no longer even move my fingertips

when they began to wildly grope my whole body...

Ratna Sarumpaet, excerpt from Marsinah Menggugat - A monologue from the banned play.

No More Mr.Nice Guy

Yup, Mat Salo has graciously exited Bolehland (with passport duly stamped and endorsed) and am now fidgeting anxiously in my base office in Balikpapan waiting for my boss to grant me the honor of giving me "face time".

And no, it's not about the raise I didn't get.

Ancient Mariner said something in his blog the other day in a response to some comments, ' . . . I stopped trying to be Mr. Nice Guy a long time ago'.

And that sat me thinking.

The Good Captain, fortunately has his untold wealth of experience behind him to be able to say this. Down the line, I suspect, most of us will eventually adopt a similiar attitude, but for the moment we'll blame it on our misplaced Youth.

In deep conversation with man-of-the-moment, Rocky Brew

And he also said, ' . . . but I blog merely to inform, to educate and even to entertain as the case may be. It has never been my intention to force anybody to put on their thinking caps.'

It was Ancient Mariner's apologies for declining to be tagged you see. Apologies duly accepted, Sir, because I was one of the two who had tagged him.

Sorry, Cap'n, but he's always got me more-or-less with my "thinking cap" on, as with his other posts - that to me isn't just merely "to inform, to educate, . . . or entertain", as he put it. It's not intentional, I know - but for whom the bells toll?

Ancient Mariner seen with another ancient - Chegu Bernard, The Infamous Unmasked Zorro, with the latter claiming that he is more "ancient" one.

As bloggers (and readers) with our own individual quirks, we never know what stokes one's fancy. One mans meat / another man's poison, that kind of thing.

Another man-of the-moment, Datuk Ruhanie Ahmad (left), a former 14-year MP and vociferous back-bencher who runs two blogs: Kuda Kepang (in Malay) feat.Toyol Code and Ron Cyber Prince - being "interviewed" by The Mariner. Or is it the other way round?

Basically, I'm agreement with the Mariner, because the thing is, as bloggers we're such a diverse lot, and we need to celebrate this diversity. Where else, can you find glorified roughnecks (me), media stars, Members of Parliament, ship captains, film directors, web designers, plastic surgeons and all - sitting down together cheek by jowl, walloping Mee Rebus under a shady tree in PJ?

I just love this shot. Why? Because I got to shoot a "Photographer's Photographer". His photographs has appeared on the cover of TIME for no-less than seven times, seen here with his more famous spouse, preparing a candid shot of the Captain. New York-born Tara Sosrowardoyo's photos has also graced The New York Times, Fortune, and Paris-Match, to name a few. In honor of His Majesty Thailand's King Bhumipol 80th Birthday, Tara was included in a commemorative book which the King (an avid photographer himself) commissioned, listing Tara as one of "55 World-class Photographers".

Each has his own "voice", a particular forte if you will. Some are political and some are not. Like me for instance, I just don't have enough "vocab" to do justice to write about the political situation in Ijok, or a wonderful book review like the one Miss Elviza did on The Reluctant Politician.

But I sure as hell can try - after all it's my blog and I'll do what I want to (sung to the tune "It's my party . . .) because I don't have sub-editors to report to. But sometimes I wish I had though, just someone to proof-read and correct all my crappy grammar and inane sentence construction.

Yeah, that's what we bloggers are, a diverse lot - unceremoniously toiling for goodness what.

If bloggers we're to get paid a ringgit for for each "hit" they get, bloggers like Rocky Bru and Jeff Ooi would be millionaires by now.

Instead of wallowing in millions - with the lawsuit that they're facing - the threat of being sent to the poorhouse is very real.

For that I commend them for standing up and fighting the good fight.

And by the way Cap'n, you'll always be a Nice Guy. Just someone with a more "different" outlook, that's all.

All the better for it, and for Bloggers out there too.

Bereft of original ideas, I've become just a poor plagiarizer of themes . June Tan wrote an excellent piece earlier (which I shamelessly "plagiarized" here) on bloggers and blogging in Malaysia for her Master's thesis. She had just completed it by the way. (I suspect she too was wondering the effects of blogging on Ijuk's eventual outcome). I urge everyone to read her piece and her "debates" on the subject with Susan Loone.

Congratulations on having completed your thesis June!

© 2007 MatSalo Images

Tag-Mengetag-Menggatal

Never Been Tagged

Fulla-mak!

Had a pleasant surprise tonite when I fired up my son's (who's thirteen goin' on 4-teen) computer to get on the internet to check on blogs - mine in particular.

I was too lazy to open my notebook - no time to dick around with power cords, cables, usb ports and such.

The surprise was havin' been tagged by none other than that glamorous thinkin' man's chick (ala Susan Sarandon laa gua kire) - the vivacious, bubblicious Ena or Nuraina Samad of 3540 Jalan Sudin, and among other nice and nicer things - author of the wildly popular Tuesdays With Bapak.

Huh? Me? What did I do to deserve being tagged by the lady whose writings I am so enamored with?. Careful, careful . . . it's her prose I am so in love with - not the lady.

Just like the time back in the Eighties. In my junior year in a redneck Texas college, I had decided to "broaden my mind" by way of a two-year subscription to Playboy magazine . It was for "the articles", you see.

Yeah, right.

[I remember I used to "cringe" everytime I went to collect my "sub" at the Student Center where our letterboxes are located. Since that classy Hefner publication didn't quite fit my pigeonhole, I was forced to ask for it from the elderly lady in the mailroom. Even with my baseball cap pulled real low, out of the corner of me eye I saw that she never failed to give me, Mat Salo (the gook-lookin' furr'nerr), her most condescendingly Dirty Look. Really, PB introduced me to one of my all-time favorites - Tom Wolfe]

So now it's my turn to choose my FIVE victims. They are chosen, not at random, mind you, like some serial killer who senselessly chose their victims - but after five whole seconds of deliberations, heh.

Above all, these bloggeratis made me think, which is easy to do (making me think that is). Because in my real job as a glorified roughneck, I get paid to do - never to think.

No need to tell you that their writin's way up there, folks.

So it'll be wise to pay these hallowed individuals a visit. Actually I've got more than five fine folks in mind, but what's a man to do?

1. Galadriel @ Euphoria In Misery.

2. Captain Pandi @ Tampin Linggi.

3. Captain Yusof @ The Ancient Mariner.

4. elviza @ Write Away. (Right away, ma'am!)

5. Clark Gable @ Pulau Duyung's Plastic & Reconstructive.


This award was started here:

And now my dear recipients, your award comes with a price. You have to award five others whose blog you think deserve this award.

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!

Farewell To The King

Mat Salo's Tattler - PhotoBlog Edition


I chose the title for this weeks' posting, a "Farewell to The King" ( a 1989 movie starring Nick Nolte) as a personal anecdote. As a director / scriptwriter, sheih, I suspect, will appreciate my metaphor. The movie's director, John Milius (Red Dawn, Conan The Barbarian and Creator of HBO's Rome), incandescent with rage, once telephoned our Subang Jaya office to "give us shit" for losing his movie script.

No shit Sherlock, no kidding, it really did happen; we once "lost" a big-time Holly-Wood movie script.

I can't remember the exact date but it must've have been sometime in '86 or '87. Because back then I had a name card that spelt "Sale Executive" - a now-defunct courier service company - which my detractors also claimed my salary there could arguably fall into the "non-halal" category.

For those old enough to remember, the mid-80s was a "bad time". Especially if one had just graduated from college and entering the miserly job market. The economy then, a bit like today, had gone way South. So I found myself "under-employed", thus joining the ranks of thousands of other recently-graduated Bolehsians during that pubescent MTV era.

For lack of other "saleable" skills, a good friend recommended me to this Kiasuland upstart that was going to "knock DHL and TNT Skypak off their perch". I didn't buy into their noble mission statement of course. I was only interested in " impressing the girls". How? By way of abusing my petrol allowance and doctoring the receipts of my entertainment expense. That's where the "non-halal" stuff crept in, I guess.

Milius' phone call was from Kuching, Sarawak, where part of the movie was shot. A few days before that I remember rifling through this thick sheath of A4 manuscripts that fell upon my desk.

Wohoo! An actual Holly-Mother-O'-God movie script!

The script was sent by a small Los Angeles courier company and adressed to John Milius, care of a hotel in Kuching. Why on earth the scriptwriter had sent this valuable manuscript through our company I don't know. I suppose in the mid-80s the courier service was still quite in its infancy, so he wouldn't have known better. For a small upstart operator like us, and let's be honest, our "network" was practically non-existent. For most of the "one-off" routes, the name of the game was piggy-backing on someone else's more established network.

The case of this missing manuscript was a prime example. Unlike DHL, we don't have our own live couriers flying valuable tender documents and Hollywood scripts to Kuching. So what I did was to bring the consignment to the old Subang Airport, "coaxing" the DHL boy flying to Kuching into making something "a little extra" on the side. Very much "touch and go" you can imagine. If his supervisor happened to be nearby, then I have to be extra careful about the "bribing". Because you just cannot carry your competitors' consignments, period. In those early days there was a lot of "co-operation" going around in the Subang terminals and bars of Subang Jaya, trust me.

As with jobs done "on the sly", things are wont to go wrong. Who knows, the courier / despatcher in Kuching might not have been paid for his fair share of "the cut". To ease his frustration he could've easily dumped the consignment into the Kuching river for the amusement of Bujang Senang.

The short of it was John Milius was livid with rage. He lost a few days shoot while waiting for the other draft to arrive. Imagine how much he had to pay Nick Nolte and the crew just for lounging around?

You know what? That replacement draft was still sent to us via that small L.A. company. Some people never learn, huh? Anyway, we made a loss on that one. I personally had to "re-pack" the script and had it sent through a major ally/competitor as a proper consignment, duly paid from our petty cash, instead of the usual "piggy-backing".

You can imagine what our clients would've done if they had known of our shenanigans, eh?



Today, the 15th of April 2007, sheih of penembak badak fame, will officially start his position as GRO - strike that - I mean CLO (Corporate Liasion Officer) for the Kelantan Chief Minister Corporation. The Malay acronym for this is PMBK or Perbadanan Menteri Besar Kelantan, and the PMBK also sounds a bit like "penembak badak", is it not?

Enough digression, let's check out the Farewell Party, shall we?


First the Songs . . .

"Shar101" and Mees NAS with a spirited duet. TheStar's Desk Editor Veera looking on in sincere appreciation. No, I didn't recall it being a Hindi number.


A solo by the inimitable and eminently sporting and did I forget lovely... Mees NAS ?


Even Bird Duck (A Big Canine with the Jewish name) offered a tune.


Then The Dance . . .


Unker Bernard, "doing" the salsa, which was to later become his "un-doing". Ha ha.


The Makan-Makan

The Farewell Kid breaking bread with The Usual Very Unusual Suspects.

Some serious exchanges going on. . .

An Impassioned I-am-A-Malaysian Eric Woon in serious discussion with Unker Bernard.




Unker Monty "Monsterball", right, - trading barbs with the ever popular Bird Duck . Art imitates life: Real life blogos-spheric adversaries?



Now, now . . . ho boy. Unker Bernard consoling Bird Duck. The latter smarting and licking his wounds after possibly losing the first round to Unker Monty.



Not to worry, the blogosphere as in real life; everyone "kissed and made up" soon after.



"OK, OK . . . for sheih's sake, let's bury the hatchet for tonight.. but come tomorrow we shall cross swords again!" Learning to live to fight another day, heh-heh.


FACE-OFF - a LongKang + / Klante CMO* film

*Chief Minister's Office

Monty vs. An Unmasked Zorro. Director sheih performing a cameo role as "the negotiator".



Unker Monty dispensing advice.


And a well-meaning hug for the Prodigal Son . . .


Finally, the Good-Bye's . . .


Eli Wong's Well Wishes


Mr. Screenshot popped-in to say Good Bye, Good Luck, and Good Night.



Mees Nas checking out penembak badak's latest Malay Edition site!


Rocky Brew In Action - seen here publishing live to his Million-Hits' site. The Malay Male , far left. Note the wooden stick used by the guy on his right. The Malay Male claims to have a real live stick somewhere "down below". Don't believe me? Go to his blog... I tol' yu beloggez are bellaardy liarz!


The truth in plain Black and White: sheih with Matsalo the Photog. Photog who actually depressed the shutter is current NAB Council Member and former arus perdana journalist Ms. Anu Radha of DanseMacabre fame. A big Thank You, Miss.


Best Wishes sheih.

God Speed penembak badak.

Good Nite John-Boy...

And to Unker Monty, who the hell is that "pondan" husamasam who decried 'thank God for one less Kelantanese in KL'!???

© 2007 Mat Salo Images