WYSIWYG*

Took a long hard look at myself in the mirror after shaving yesterday morning. I very rarely do this nowadays unless I cut myself or something, and I could see that I am beginning to look more and more like my late father. The only problem is that I am only going to hit sixty and he was more than a couple of decades older. I could also see now why I have such a good relationship with my nephews and nieces, who were very attached to their late grandfather.

I also find it amusing that people who blog, who open up their hearts and bare their souls, warts and all in cyberspace often are a bit coy about how they look. If pseudonyms are not enough, they post graphics, cartoons or baby pictures or something. Sheeesh. Talk about being transparent and all.

Me?

*What you see is what you get.

Research

I am pushing sixty this year (although I don't quite feel sixty) and just as I thought I can begin to enjoy my semi retirement, I have been asked by a prominent government think-tank to embark on a study project for them, possibly also as a start of several more to follow. Although the promised remuneration is nothing to shout about, I am honoured that I have not been forgotten after all this time. This should at least give me some considerable personal gratification of having contributed and giving back to society and the industry which has enriched me, not financially, and gave some meaning to my life thus far.

Having been involved in similar projects in the past, I do feel quite apprehensive in the sense that the product of the last undertaking, a major joint effort in association with several local and international consultants, probably suffered as a result of bureaucratic Malays, or rather, malaise. The report is probably now lying forgotten and collecting dust in some senior civil servant's filing cabinet.

I do hope that it is going to be different this time. There are also other projects in the pipeline so I reckon I am going to be pretty busy in my second half century.

Raging Bulls

After more than forty years, my friend Nigel* who was my batch mate aboard the cadet training ship "Dufferin" in Bombay, e-mailed me the above photo of the both of us kids slugging it out during the ship's boxing finals in '64.

I didn't know of the existence of this photograph, nor did I know what hit me then. Nigel (on the right) was simply too fast for me and the referee (not in photo), who was also our physical training instructor (PTI) mercifully stopped the bout well into the second round. He awarded a technical knock-out (TKO) in Nigel's favour to prevent any serious damage and perhaps also to avoid creating an international incident or something.

Our burly PTI, an ex Indian Navy man, was also quite a character himself. I have always suspected that he had a soft spot for me for he was always on the lookout for yours truly. Whenever he catches me goofing off during our early morning mass physical exercises (PE) on the quarter deck, he would scream,"You Malayan mungoo! Go run 10 times around the main deck. On the double!"

Which should explain my odd penchant for running around in circles for the rest of my life.

* Capt Nigel Chaves now lives in Melbourne, Australia with his lovely wife Patricia and their three daughters. We are still keeping in touch regularly via our alumni website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Dufferin63-65/ , which we started some years ago.

The Pilgrim

I had lunch with my old friend Ruslan Zainal in Port Klang yesterday. We have not met for quite some time and he has recently returned home from a Haj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Ruslan is one of the colourful and interesting characters one can meet in a port. A lowly technician who can barely speak English, he was a fearless yet humble trade unionist who was for a long time the president of the port's powerful staff union and at the same time chairman of the national joint council of unions in the government statutory bodies. The funny thing about him is that he stutters or stammers badly and it is sometimes difficult to carry on a normal conversation with him, but the amazing part is that when you put him in front of a microphone before a large audience, his painful stutters will magically disappear!

As president of the port's senior officers' union, I had the good fortune of attending many international conferences, ITF congresses* etc., with Ruslan and the leaders of other unions in the local transport sector. Together we had fought the good fight to make sure our members did not lose anything during the many intense joint tripartite meetings and negotiations with the port management and the government leading to the privatization of the port in 1992.



Ruslan, well, Haji Ruslan has asked me to join him on a two-week umrah and ziarah package tour of the Holy Land with a 3-day stopover in Istanbul some time in May. I have been postponing my Haj pilgrimage for no valid reason all this while, so I may just join him this time.

* Above photo taken at the 1983 International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) Congress in Madrid, Spain. Ruslan is on my left while on my right is the late YB Dr. V. David of the Transport Workers Union (TWU).

(Ahem, nampak eden masih jambu lagi, kan kan kan ?)

Google Earth

Amazing thing this, technology.

Above satellite* photo downloaded from Google Earth shows the condominium where I live (blue roofed buildings with swimming pool on the left). The Kelana Jaya Park with the lakes in the foreground is where I go for my early morning chukker every day, except when it rains.

At the bottom is the Petaling Jaya Stadium, home of the Cobra** 10's - the world's premier International 10-a-side rugby football tournament. I saw the NZ All Blacks' legendary Jonah Lomu play here in the '98 Commonwealth Games.

* Which also means that Uncle Sam or anybody else with an ICBM has got me by the globules ...

** Combined Old Boys Rugby Association

Politics, anyone?

This morning, as usual while out during my early morning brisk walk around the lakes of Kelana Jaya Park, I bumped into my fellow early bird the venerable Member of Parliament for Kepong who shared with me his definitions on what makes a good politician. We chatted while he religiously picks up and disposes the trash carelessly thrown around but not in the trash bins by children and fish poachers the day before.

I had asked him about his party's newest recruit, an active blogger and an Oxford graduate who was also the youngest CEO of a public listed company in Singapore. As a much respected politician and playing the quintessential diplomat, the Yang Berhormat spoke generally about the idealism of youth and also about doers and talkers. I had to agree with him since having been an ops man myself, I have always insisted on wanting to know more about solutions and not just problems, much to the chagrin of a lot of people at my workplace.

I have only contempt for politicians who will not practice what they preach and will only crawl out of the woodwork just before the general elections but will disappear soon after. Pseudo politicians who point fingers and hide behind pseudonyms while writing their blogs and the very idealistic young who seem to have all the answers to our problems. Who needs 'em?

Emma Maersk

My old friend and former Dufferin batchmate 'Fred' Kelkar* e-mailed me some photographs of the Emma Maersk recently. This 11000 TEU vessel, currently the largest container ship in the world, is a regular caller at our Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) in Johore where her owners have a minority stake.

I remember when third generation container vessels first made their appearance in Port Klang in the mid 70's, we pilots then still have to make do with whistles (yep, the same type used by football referees) to signal our orders and intentions to tug boats and wharfingers, using single letter Morse code. This was often followed by some frantic hand waving, jumping up and down and a lot of yelling and screaming. It took us some time to finally convince a very conservative management to buy us portable hand held radio transceivers or walkie talkies. These items are very common and much taken for granted these days that I believe even illegal pirated DVD peddlers in Petaling Street also now use them to warn each other of impending raids by the police!

I cannot imagine if pilots were still to use whistles when trying to berth or unberth vessels of above size.

* Capt. Subhash Kelkar is now an independent nautical surveyor in San Francisco, serving the Bay area.

Holystone

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,
And on the seventh—holystone the decks and scrape the cable
- Richard Henry Dana

Do you still remember
Holystoning ancient decks and chipping away never ending rust
- Capt. Yusof Ahmad

Recently my friend Capt. Noor Apandi posted some photos of boats in his blog "Tampin Linggi "and remarked how he loved the wooden deck of one of the boats. The first thought that came to my mind was, well, perhaps not if you were the one who have to 'holystone' the damn thing every morning.

A holystone is a brick or a porous slab of sandstone used as an abrasive for keeping wooden decks snow-white. Every morning on board my pre-sea training ship Dufferin in Bombay many years ago, we junior cadets were made to go down on our knees in rows and scrub the wooden decks with holystones in a to and fro motion while the seniors (read: slave drivers) hose down with sea water and throw fistfuls of coarse sand on the deck and often into our eyes. We had to scrub until the sand become fine dust which is later hosed down again with fresh water. The decks are thereafter wiped, mopped and squeegeed until they shone. This really torturous and back breaking job was a real pain and became the bane of our existence throughout the entire junior year.

KLRCA

I am going back to school tomorrow, or rather, going to attend a workshop on Maritime Arbitration for a couple of days at the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration (KLRCA) in Jalan Conlay, which will be jointly organized by Institut Kelautan Malaysia (IKMAL) and the KLRCA.

This is very exciting indeed, for we are about to introduce maritime arbitration for the first time in this country. In line with our national aspiration to become a truly major maritime nation, it is about time that resolutions of business disputes in the maritime industry be done locally unlike in the past and at present where it is very Euro-centric and most cases head towards traditional centers like London or New York. This will cut costs at least by half.

They say you will need to learn to walk before you can run, so for a start, we are going to introduce a special 'fast track' resolution and settlement of disputes for claims amounting to less than RM250,000. Something like a 'small claims' court for the Malaysian maritime industry to be administered by IKMAL under the auspices of the KLRCA. So as they say again, watch this space.

Cell Phone Menace

There is an ongoing national campaign on 'road safety' this festive season, but yesterday I almost got involved in a nasty accident on the Federal Highway when the driver of the meandering car ahead of me suddenly slammed on his brakes for no apparent reason. My angry honking as I drove past did not seem to bother him since he appeared pretty agitated himself and engrossed in a heated conversation on his cell phone. I do believe that this type of drivers are a real menace to society and other road users, if not to themselves.

This reminds me of a news report a couple of years ago about a ship ramming into a Greek hillside because the captain was busy talking on his cell phone. Sheeesh. I never thought that this can also happen to ships.


It occurred to me that if the captain was indeed speaking to his girl friend on his cell phone just before the mishap, then this should give an added 'twist' to an old romantic Malay proverb, often used by young lovers to pledge undying love:

Tak kan lari gunung dikejar!
(No need to 'chase' the mountain, it wont run away ... or words to that effect)

No need to crash your ship into the damn thing either.

Shore Leave

Some time in September 1963, on the Sunday after the initial culture shock and euphoria of the first week aboard the Indian merchant navy training ship Dufferin, a rusty former World War 1 troopship then anchored a few miles offshore in Bombay harbour, the '63-'65 batch of cadets must have been looking forward to their first shore leave. Collecting their princely sum of weekly pocket money, the Bombay wallahs must have surely been waiting to show off their new uniforms to families and friends while the out-of-towners look forward to explore the city and 'paint the town red'.

While waiting for the boats to take us ashore, a chubby and genial fellow first year cadet named 'Balu' Rao must have taken pity on this 'lost' and strange looking skinny foreign kid in baggy and ill-fitting uniform and invited me to come along home with him. Balu's home was a posh apartment on the exclusive Malabar Hills in Bombay's suburbs and it was certainly an eye-opener for yours truly, barely sixteen, and many, many miles away from my own home.

I cannot recall the details of my first Indian home visit, but I do remember that we sat down to a splendid home-cooked vegetarian lunch of purees, aloo, dhall, pickles and various other assorted condiments. The food was rather strange to my young alien taste buds and I am ashamed to say now that I did not do justice to the meal and could hardly empty my plate. Balu's Mum must have been very disappointed in me. She showed concern that I will go back to the ship still hungry and so proceeded to ply me with sweets and rasgoolas instead.

I have since become a connoisseur and aficionado of the rich and diverse ways of Indian cooking.

There have been many other home stays and visits with other batch mates. I can fondly recall many happy Dufferin weekends with the Shroffs, Menons and Bedis, to name a few. Homes away from home. During the winter term breaks, I traveled the length and breadth of India to visit with the families of Banerjee and Boparai in New Delhi and David Ward and Usman Ahmad in Calcutta.

I always traveled first class (student fare) on Indian Railways and met with many kind and hospitable people very willing to share what little they had with me. On one occasion, I was 'adopted' by a noisy coach load of Indian Army captains and majors returning home from a training assignment. I had lied about my age and they got me rip-roaring drunk by the time we reached Bombay's Victoria Terminus, and I still cannot remember how I managed to find my way back to my tiny cubicle at the Mariners' Club.

Those were indeed very happy and carefree days. I am glad that almost all the names that I have mentioned above are still my friends today and with whom I am still in touch, although we are now scattered all over the globe. To the many other now nameless people who have opened up their homes and their hearts to the 'funny looking kid with pointed nose and spiky hair' (Balu's words), I thank them most copiously, from the bottom of my heart.

(Above photo was taken on shore leave with my old friend Jimmy Shroff (right), who is now still at sea and a senior captain with Japan's Mitsui Line.)

HMS Invincible

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Royal Navy's oldest aircraft carrier HMS Invincible, then fresh from the Falklands war, was docked in Singapore in the mid 80's when one of her helicopters landed on one of Port Klang's north port wharves one balmy morning, somewhat akin to an English midsummer day. It must have caused some alarm amongst the stevedores, as if the Martians have landed, when one of the 'aliens' said not so much as "Take me to your leader!" but jovially asked for yours truly by name instead.

Over tea and dry biscuits, I entertained the ship's captain and his aide. It appeared that the ship was considering Port Klang as the next port of call and they wanted to make sure that our northern approach channel and water depths were OK and to find out what facilities were available, etc. Apparently there were some hooha during their earlier visit to Australia where some environmental groups had protested the visit due suspicion she was carrying nuclear weapons, but they did not foresee similar problems in Malaysia. The ship would have been the first naval aircraft carrier to dock in a Malaysian port.

I let them have a couple of my updated navigational charts on loan and was invited by the captain to join him on the 'chopper' for a flying inspection tour to Pulau Angsa in the north channel and back. It was my first ride on a helicopter and all I remember of the occasion was that it was a very noisy affair indeed.

Earlier, my secretary Elizabeth had asked me to find out if Lt. Prince Andrew Windsor, younger son of Her Britannic Majesty, was one of the chopper pilots and to get his autograph for her. So, above the din and cupping my hands, I shouted at one of the helmeted co-pilots dressed in green battle fatigues, "Excuse me, are you Prince Andrew by any chance?"

"No, sir," came the good natured reply, "But I wish I was!"

Somehow the ship did not call at Port Klang. Perhaps Wisma Putra had other ideas. But a few months later I did receive a belated thank you note from the captain, together with a couple of brand new charts and some books and a standing invitation to visit the Admiralty in London.

Footnote: The HMS Invincible was decommissioned in August 2005 and would be mothballed until 2010, available for reactivation at 18-months notice.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year to all my Chinese friends. The Year of the Boar and whatever it brings.

The Week That Was

It has been a very busy week indeed.

On Monday, I finally managed to get a new replacement hard disk drive from Western Digital via the vendor in Imbi Plaza. It took them over a month to do this and there was no word of how and why the HDD crashed. But it was a very expensive lesson indeed and has taught me to do back ups of my data. I am also taking a couple of days to configure my PC just the way I like it.


PKFZ Authority building, Pulau Indah

Yesterday I went back to Pulau Indah with my friends and business associates Alex and Naharudin for an exploratory business visit to the new Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) to meet another old friend S.K. Foo and his immediate boss Azizul. The PKFZ which is being managed by the Port of Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority (JAFZA) has indeed made great progress since I last visited the place with my colleague Capt. Tasripin during the launching ceremony a couple of years ago.


Westport '97. (Photo courtesy of The Star) *

Westport also looked like it is also thriving and the container berths seemed very busy except for the conventional berths which were devoid of ships. I was sad to learn that most of the officers I had with me to kick start operations in the port in '94 are no longer there or have retired.

* Above photo and an accompanying story were featured in a maritime supplement of the The Star, circa 1997. Sorry for the 'forced' posturing ...

Hang Nadim

Hang Nadim Airport, Batam

An old friend of mine likes to tell the story of Hang Nadim, the young boy who saved ancient Singapore or Temasek from the attack of shoals of todak or swordfish.The Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals recorded how he suggested that a pagar or fence made of banana tree trunks be placed on the beach. The effort was successful as the swordfishes' snouts were trapped by the barricade of banana stems and thus the lives of many ancient kiasus were saved.

According to legend, Tanjong Pagar was the actual location where now huge container ships berth and unberth in what is now the world's busiest port.

Also according to legend, the boy's contribution earned him great respect as well as envy in the royal court. This made several individuals fear the possibility that Hang Nadim might threaten their influence. In the end, they convinced the ruler Sri Maharaja to execute the boy, and the poor fellow was thrown into the sea.

Which goes to show that it doesn't always pay to be such a smarty pants.

Recently, I received an email which suggested that the legendary Melaka warrior Hang Tuah was actually Chinese and that Hang* can only be a Chinese surname. This supposedly was because the name of the Chinese princess sent as a bride for the Sultan of Melaka by the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom was Hang Li Po. Pure coincidence, I think. The sender very conveniently forgot the story of Hang Nadim which took place much earlier elsewhere.

Which makes one wonder, even if the allegation was indeed true, why do we bother about such an inconsequential thang**, particularly at this time, missing the wood for the trees etc., when there are other important issues at hand.

* Hang (pronounced "Hung") for the uninitiated, I suppose as in William Hung, of the American Idol fame.

** Thang as in "You purty lil ol thang ..."

Withdrawal Symptoms

About a month after I started this blog and as part of a perennial new year resolution, I stopped smoking or rather am trying to, cold turkey and all.

I believe I am slowly winning this battle and it is very difficult indeed. After all I have indulged in this unhealthy habit for more than forty years. Starting with stolen shared cigarette puffs at fifteen or so in the Big School lavatories at the Malay College in the early sixties and many years later a vain attempt to switch to pipe tobacco when I started piloting ships in Port Klang. The latter was more for effect to appear 'older' since piloting was indeed an old profession where age has always been associated with experience!

I am now having trouble concentrating when blogging, and my attention span has somewhat reduced without the damn thing sticking in my mouth. I am also having severe mental blocks to blog. But I shall persevere ...

National Integration

I was glad to read in the newspapers yesterday that the government is indeed intensifying efforts to promote greater understanding and unity amongst the races by introducing more fun programs for the young to mix more freely in camps and such. The fact that increased racial polarization in the country is recognized and being addressed is surely a step in the right direction.

Last Saturday I was invited to dinner at the home of a vivacious former port colleague and her very affable hubby in Taman Sentosa, Klang. It was a happy and informal reunion/get together of ex colleagues which was becoming a regular annual affair. The fact that I was the only Malay guest invited was not lost on me and perhaps this was because I was the least paranoid as far as food is concerned and my political leanings or whatever were also well known amongst the others.

But then again, I would not have missed Poh Cheng's scrumptious seafood steamboat and yummy yam cake for the world.

Long Weekend

OK, so that was a long weekend.

I also got calls from my friends Raj and Gam in Singapore wondering if anything was the matter with me. On the other hand, I also did not want to appear obsessed with this blogging thingy, so I thought lets go easy.

On the blogging front, I believe the battle lines are drawn and parties involved in the defamation suits are going to court today. Well, the best of luck to both sides. While most bloggers are up in arms over the whole affair, I really believe that there was never really any other choice for the aggrieved parties and it has to come down to this. We cannot fail to notice that most of the parties involved in the suit have axes to grind with each other and I will also not be surprised when the time will come when bloggers will also sue each other...

Lawyer jugak yang untung.

Protocosmic Interface or Whatever

My old friend and former MCKK classmate Zaharan writes his blog, Protocosmic Interface (I'm still trying to fathom what this means) from Kota Kinabalu. A bit of an eccentric ex-academic, I believe he is now more into voyages of self discovery, solo biking and trekking in tropical jungles, climbing mountains and kayaking in river rapids and such after his retirement from the world of academia. But like me, he is also not really interested in politics although he counts amongst his former students blogger Ahirudin Attan of Rocky's Bru, now being sued for defamation by the New Straits Times.

Zaharan was also the one who had advocated standing on one's head as a panacea to a host of ills (see my earlier blog on this) some time ago when I was having a bad case of the flu. This had forced me, like him, to break into verse, albeit in an unconventional Nogori patois. I must confess though that a clogged nose and a splitting headache can really play havoc with one's literary ambitions.



He once also tried to convince me to join him on a trek up the Himalayas, in particular to Kali Pattar at the Everest Base Camp. I had wisely begged off, I think, giving the excuse that my 'sea legs' were more meant for pacing the decks of ships and certainly not for climbing mountains! But I would not have minded tagging along if only to help keep the campfires burning, snugly ensconced in the warm tents while he and the other nuts go climb the mountain, perhaps with a few lady Sherpas to keep me company ... to which he promptly pointed out that Kali Pattar was indeed the name of the patron Goddess of the lady Sherpas!

Hmmm...

Mind Your Language

It has occurred to me that since my young nephews and nieces are also reading this blog, I had better watch my language. Now this is at a time when there is already a widespread malaise of four-letter words and obscenities being freely traded over the air waves, in print, on TV and in the movies that I believe no amount of 'bleeping' (is that the word) by the censor boards can cure.

I remember many years ago, my youngest sister had asked me point blank at dinner one day what the 'F' word meant. She was then already a senior in the convent school she attended and even the then prudish Oxford English Dictionary had not yet offered any authoritative definition of the magic word. A young and naughty neighbourhood boy had shouted the word at her while cycling past, and I bet he too didn't know what it meant.

Of course my parents also didn't know what it meant either.

Suffice to say that this big bad sailor of a big brother was caught off guard and was at a loss for words, but was saved at the bell by my other sister who gave her that special lingering look amongst sisters that she immediately caught the drift and said, "Oh, you mean that, ah? I thought dunno what!".

(Now I bet her daughters, i.e., my nieces who are probably reading this are now rolling all over the floor ...)

What is the world coming to, indeed.