Fault Lines - Seafood Slaves

It has been a year since AP broke open the fisheries #slavery story here. Much has been written about what was happening in #Benjina and later, #Ambon where our ops were based.
#AlJazeeraAmerica came late to the party but put together a quality 30-minute piece about the issue that's really worth a view here. 

The Harrowing Road to Asylum

My friend Naqsh fled Afghanistan and has been living in Jakarta the past few years. Here's a very brief overview of his journey to date from the weekend New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/opinion/the-harrowing-road-to-asylum.html

The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

By NAQSH MURTAZAAUG. 21, 2015

On Jan. 2, 2013, my mother, two brothers and I got into the taxi and left Kabul just after 1 a.m. At 3:20 a.m. our driver slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the men who suddenly appeared in the middle of the dark road. I could see the silhouettes of the Afghan turbans, the signature dress of Taliban militia. A young man, barely in his 20s, with a long beard, approached the car and peered in.

My facial features, especially my flatter nose, give me away as a Hazara, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan despised by the Taliban. I pretended I could not understand the Talib’s questions to our driver, trying to appear uneducated.

The driver said they were going to search us and the car. He was as frightened as I was. I tried to hide my fear from my mother and brothers, Abbas and Ali, who were 10 and 7 at the time.

I remembered that I was still carrying my wallet with my official government ID. I had worked as an adviser for governance and development for the government of the central Afghan province of Daikundi. This could be a death sentence — proof to the Taliban that I was an enemy.

The driver was still talking to the militiaman, and I managed to surreptitiously take my wallet out of my pocket and slide it beneath my seat without attracting any attention. Then, with no warning, the Talib came over to the passenger side of the car, opened the door and yanked me out.

Another young Talib came out of the darkness and pushed the cold barrel of an AK-47 against my forehead. In a glance I saw the fear-filled eyes of my mother and my brothers. My cousin, a high school principal and also a Hazara, had been murdered recently on this very road by Taliban in similar circumstances.

As one Talib searched the car, the other ordered me to take off my shirt. They wanted to see if my shoulder was tattooed with the Afghan Army or police insignia. My shoulders were clear. Then they ordered me to take off my boots. They were looking for the tell-tale calluses of a foot soldier. Years of wearing dress shoes had left my feet clean. Then they checked my hands.

“Your hands do not look like the hands of an ordinary Afghan man.”

I shrugged.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I have a grocery store,” which is a very normal-sounding job; most streets in Afghanistan have at least one little grocery.

The questions kept coming for at least 40 minutes, a long time given that the highway was normally patrolled by government soldiers.

At some point, the Talib fighter with the gun, finger still on the trigger, whispered something to the one who was questioning me. I was sure they were about to kill us. Instead, for reasons I still do not understand, they shouted at us to go. I slowly climbed back into the car. With the gun still pointed at us, we drove away.

I sat quietly for some time before I turned toward the back seat of the car.

“Is everyone O.K.? We are going to be fine. Do not be afraid, nothing is going to happen to us.”

Despite assuring time and again that we were out of danger, my brother Ali kept asking: “Are they going to follow us? Are there more Taliban militiamen ahead of us?”

This is the dread that seeps through all of us in Afghanistan, even the smallest children. I felt my anger rising. A seven-year-old should not have to fear for his life.

As Hazaras, we have long been seen as enemies by the Taliban, but my job made me a special target: I had worked for years as a television news presenter and a journalist at a magazine, before becoming an adviser in 2009 to a female mayor and then to a governor of an unstable, Taliban-ridden region.

I was luckier than most Afghans. I come from a wealthy, well-connected family. To avoid the Soviets, we emigrated to Pakistan in 1981, where I had the opportunity to attend school and university. We returned to Afghanistan in late 2001, after the American-led toppling of the Taliban regime. Like many Afghans, we were excited to be part of the peace-building and reconstruction effort. It seemed like a new day for the nation.

After that harrowing drive, having left our home for the second time in our lives, we made it to Quetta, Pakistan, where the security situation was worse than we had expected. The Pakistani Taliban was resurgent

I had a close call with a terrorist attack. I was in a café when suicide bombers attacking Hazara blew themselves up, killing more than 80 people and wounding dozens more. I had minor injuries.

My family didn’t have the financial resources for all of us to leave Pakistan, and my mother was too old and frail to embark on another big journey. She convinced me to flee. I felt I had no option but to go.

Finding a people smuggler isn’t difficult — you just have to ask around. Plenty of men are making a business out of the outrageous insecurity in the region. But going through with it, paying a smuggler to leave your family behind, is a gut-wrenching decision that you can’t imagine until you have to.

I paid a smuggler about $3,000 in cash to arrange to get me to Indonesia via Malaysia. I took a flight from Islamabad, and after deplaning in Kuala Lumpur, before getting to the immigration control counters, I met up with a group of men who guided me to an immigration official they had presumably paid off. From Malaysia I took a boat to Indonesia, from where I hoped to move on to a safer place. I had Australia in mind.

Again, finding a smuggler to arrange a trip from Indonesia to Australia was not difficult. In the early hours of July 28, 2013, I boarded an overcrowded fishing boat with 100 or so others on the southern coast of Java. We were all refugees or asylum-seekers from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The plan was to head to Australia’s Christmas Island. This time I paid about $3,200.

Everything seemed O.K. — until the storm hit. Winds, rain and waves pounded our weak wooden boat. A vessel full of people who had escaped terror at home found that once again our lives were on the line.

We screamed and cried. Someone deep inside the crowd shouted in Farsi, asking if anyone could speak English. I yelled out that I could, and I was hustled forward to the bridge. The captain had already called for help. I was handed a satellite phone. Seconds later I was talking with someone from Australian search and rescue.

“Hello. Can you hear me? Hello? ... We are asylum-seekers in distress on a boat. Our boat is broken and we will drown!”

Rescue: “Could you read me your G.P.S. location?”

I didn’t know how to do that. I had never used a satellite phone before, but I was guided by a voice in my other ear.

Rescue: “What do you wish us to do for you?”

“We are in a real bad situation, sir. We will drown. Our boat is broken. We are nearly 100 people on board. Could you please rescue us?”

Rescue: “What do you wish we do for you?”

“We wish to be rescued, sir! I repeat, sir, we wish to be rescued!”

We stayed low in the boat, helpless, counting every second. They’d said 15 to 25 minutes. Seventeen hours passed. It appeared that the Australians didn’t believe our plea for help.

In desperation, I called an Australian journalist I knew in Jakarta to ask if he could alert the Indonesian authorities.

Nine hours later, a warning bell heralded the arrival of Indonesian search and rescue. We were given first-aid and water. It felt like a miraculous act of kindness.

Our voyage ended in Puncak village in Bogor, Indonesia, where many refugees, including myself, remain. I didn’t get my $3,200 back from the smuggler.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention, which means that we refugees can’t work or settle here permanently. Migrants like me hope to be legally classified as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a process that takes years. After that, we must wait, for more years, to be resettled in a country that will take us in.

The waiting is soul crushing. It’s been more than three years since I left Afghanistan. It’s been more than two years since I arrived in Indonesia. And more than 10 months ago I was officially accepted as a refugee — and all I can do is continue to wait.

Once a week I go to the U.N.H.C.R. office to check on my case, and I’m told politely to wait more.

We refugees know that our plight raises many challenges for host countries. These issues must be acknowledged, understood and addressed through multinational action. The source of our problems may be local, but the solutions are global. The quest to satisfy basic human needs should not be victim to political expediency.

People and nations that aid us have done something our own countrymen were too filled with hate to do. For that, we are very grateful. But at what point does a protracted wait for acceptance and resettlement become a violation of human rights? Is it after three years? Five? Ten?

Leaders with the power to find solutions need to listen to our stories and put themselves in our shoes. We risk our lives to flee our homelands because we have no choice. In the end, we want only what everyone else wants: to live with freedom and dignity.

Naqsh Murtaza is a former television news presenter writing a book about his experiences as an asylum seeker.

The Survivor

I knocked out the following for World Humanitarian Day, Aug 19.
GoT

She’s survived al-Shabaab’s fatal attraction and the murder of her father, two-days crammed aboard a boat adrift in the Malacca Straits, weeks living off handfuls of rice, shattered dreams of safety abroad, years in limbo under IOM’s care in Indonesia and most recently, a bout with cancer. Unshakable in her faith, eyes forward and a smile on her face, Asma Mohammed Hashi is ready for what she hopes will be a final struggle, for health and safety and relevance in a foreign land.

Just 22, Asma has seen a lifetime’s worth of upheaval that began in the streets of her war-torn hometown, Kismayu, a gritty Somali port city where the Jubba River empties into the Indian Ocean. She grew up under siege. During the country’s prolonged civil war the city of 180,000 fell to Islamist militants who imposed their own austere brand of the faith on the population.

It’s there, in 2011 that al-Shabab soldiers, one of the patchwork of militias that had emerged over the years of conflict, arrived at her door. It wasn’t the first time.

“They told my father that I had to go with them to be married,” she recalls. “He told them ‘No, she will not go with you’.”

A short time later her father and uncle were murdered by al-Shabab.

Asma fled the city for an uncle’s home in Mogadishu but there was no safety there. The following year, the same al Qaeda-affiliated militiamen again came knocking, looking specifically for her.

“My uncle told me I could not stay there any longer; his own family was in danger. He found the smuggler who took me out of the country,” she says. “He accompanied me to Malaysia.”

She spent a harrowing, stormy two days aboard a small fishing vessel in the Malacca Strait along with roughly 20 other Somalis desperate to travel to Australia via Indonesia. Together they flew to Makassar where the smugglers promised a boat was chartered to take them to Australia. They waited together in a small beachside home for weeks, surviving on a bit of rice and a handful of water, terrified they’d be arrested if they ventured out, but no one showed up.

“It was the Eid, (Eid ul Fitri is the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan) and we had so little to eat,” she says, tearing up. “For us it is supposed to be a joyful time… but it was very hard.”

Dreams dashed and out of money, Asma and her companions reported themselves to the authorities and, after uncomfortable weeks sleeping on the floor of an office, were processed into the local immigration detention centre, where she first encountered IOM staff. A short time later she was released to stay in a rooming house.

“There are many Somali people in the detention area; we are a big group. We cared for each other,” is all she offers about that trying period.

It can take many years for irregular migrants like Asma to be resettled to a third country. Ultimately, she was determined to be a refugee and a cousin in the southern United States was located who was prepared to support her should she be approved for settlement there.

“We have never met but she sent me pictures of my room in her house on Viber (social media),” she says with a gentle smile. “I have learned not to lose hope. We must be patient and pray for a brighter future.”

Finally a light had appeared at the end of the tunnel only to be dashed when she fell ill in early 2015; the young woman who had endured so much was diagnosed with a malignant form of cancer.

With IOM’s assistance and donor support from the US Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, she underwent surgery at a leading Jakarta cancer hospital to have a tumor larger than a softball removed from her abdomen in July.

“Throughout these difficult times Asma received close support and care from her compatriot Ms. Sadiya who stood by her like a loving sister and helped Asma maintain her positive spirit, optimism, hopes and dreams despite her diagnosis,” says IOM senior migration health advisor Dr. Sajith Gunaratne.

“She’s a shining example for people affected by conditions that drain hope from life itself. She has shown a strength of human spirit that is boundless. With further treatment, she will hopefully have many more productive years ahead of her.”

Though she faces further treatment, her humanitarian resettlement to the US was approved. Just a week after her release, Asma was strong enough to meet the IOM escort who accompanied her on the momentous move overseas in early August.

“I always believed I have a future. I know only God can heal me so I relax and I pray and I don’t lose hope,” she says when asked how she has remained positive in the face of so many storms.

“I think when I get to America I want to be an oncologist… Math and science were my best subjects in school; now I want to help people like me.”

For more information about global migration issues please visit:
IOM Indonesia

http://weblog.iom.int/survivor

Hear My Train a Comin'

There’s an agonizing 45-seconds of something that sounds like Jimi fed through a steel drum, opening riffs setting up a “YEAH” and a…. “yeah..” before steering away from something that sounds suspiciously like Voodoo Child… I

t’s 910 and I’m hard right & immediately left by the kali lima and roadside tire surgeon, accelerating past the 3-in-1 suckers biding their time behind smoked glass.

Well, I wait around the train station / Waitin' for that train / Waitin' for the train, yeah / Take me home, yeah /From this lonesome place
Drop a gear and throttle seamlessly left onto an empty six-lane strip, ignoring the pack of cops’ spidery mirrored eyes, aware the DOT half-helm, Hendrix on the ear-buds and speed are all very haram: bite me, boys. Accelerating hard into the rise above the grungy Blora strip, past Sudirman Station, and now we’re four, running hard in formation, gatecrashing the Landmark Tower bottleneck.

Dig / The tears burnin' / Tears burnin' me / Tears burnin' me / Way down… in my heart

Scooter girl’s lime green jilbab is streaming beneath her Hello Pussycat dome as she forces the wedge between the Metro Mini idling across two lanes and the army green TLC who’s hard against it’s bumper, and we compress to follow her, one-two-three-four, zip-zip-zip-zip… swarm theory in action.

Well, you know it's too bad, little girl / it's too bad / Too bad we have to part (have to part)

The posse splinters as the KTM climbs into 3^rd and 4^th. A middle-aged moto bekek wingman pulls into my blindside in busted flip-flops and GoJek green as we hit the dangerous patch of busted cement and gravel by Plaza Marein where a Kopaja shark’s magic hand signals the rusted green beast is gonna take us out and I run outta room and testicular fortitude trying to break right and watch the GoJek force the bus to a shuddering stall & sail on through to the other side. Dahm…boy can ride; must be something about the whole ‘surrender’ thing…

Dig / Gonna leave this town, yeah / Gonna leave this town / Gonna make a whole lotta money

Past the stalled bus, the road opens and I click up fast through the gears, 0-60 in three seconds “…hear my train a’comin/ hear my train a’comin” carving sweet lines through the puttering 125s and aging Road Kings. Wismet and WTC coming up fast on the left, an ugly, angry 100m strip where bankers inch into the parking lot, Beemers inch-out into bike & bus traffic and try to break right to enter the fast lane.

Gonna be big, yeah / Gonna be big, yeah / I'm gonna buy this town / I'm gonna buy this town /An' put it all in my shoe

A cherry red CBR250 whistles past on the right, the rider’s palms are hard on the bars to keep ‘er steady as the front end catches and wobbles, caught in a nasty seam in the road; “Get yer eyes up, man,” I’m thinking, as he locks up the rear and starts to slide. “Look where ya wanna go or you’ll end up smeared on the back of that cube truck”.

Counter-steer into a fast left up the hill behind the Sampoerna tower mosque just as twin Sukhoi, wing-to-wing, split the sky above, working out the kinks ahead of tujubelasan, Independence Day fly-over next Monday. Past warung city a side-street falls away beneath a neighboring tower into a dimly lit corrugated cement parkade choked with lines of parked bikes. The KTM finds her berth in a far corner; she’s lean & ticking, shaking off the heat as I pull off the dome & shades and head for the elevators.

Might even give a piece to you / That's what I'm gonna do / what I'm gonna do / what I'm gonna do

Over 500 New Human Trafficking Victims Identified in Indonesia since Benjina ‘Slave Fisheries’ Exposed

I knocked out this blog a while back but it was never posted for one reason or another. Now updated to July 31, it timelines the work done to date bu IOM and the government to assist victims of trafficking in the foreign fisheries in Indonesia.

http://weblog.iom.int/over-500-new-human-trafficking-victims-identified-indonesia-benjina-%E2%80%98slave-fisheries%E2%80%99-exposed

Hunt for "Slave Ships" Continues

Nice to be back in the 'game'.
The stories out of Benjina, Ambon and PNG are pretty awful. Glad the Guardian/Observer picked up for the Saturday edition.
Ambon is where it is all happening; PNG was just the news peg.

 Benjina facility, Eastern Indonesia

Hunt is on for 33 slave ships off coast of Papua New Guinea

Immigration officials seek trawler fleet crewed by 1,000 trafficked Burmese men that is thought likely to be supplying the UK with seafood

A fleet of at least 30 fishing trawlers crewed by slaves is being hunted off the coast of Papua New Guinea as the true extent becomes apparent of the trafficking of Burmese men by a massive Thai-run criminal syndicate operating throughout the East Indies.

Immigration officials have so far intercepted one of the fishing vessels, called the Blissful Reefer, and rescued its trafficked crew. Another 33 Thai trawlers thought to be crewed by slaves are being tracked in fishing grounds off the south coast of Papua New Guinea, known locally as the Dog Leg.

The trawlers are thought to be linked to a huge trafficking operation that was disrupted on the isolated Indonesian island of Benjina in March, liberating hundreds of enslaved fishermen – although a large number of boats loaded with slaves managed to escape.

Analysis of the trafficking operation reveals that the fish, which were originally heading for Thailand’s huge export-oriented seafood trade, are entering global supply chains, with some almost certainly destined for Britain.

It has also emerged that another, much larger, fleet of fishing boats crewed by slaves has been identified on the Indonesian island of Ambon – 1,200 miles to the west and once an important destination in the region’s spice trade. Officials from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) believe that a further 240 Thai fishing vessels are moored there, along with a total of around 1,000 slaves. To date, the crews of around 70 fishing vessels have been interviewed by IOM officials on the island, resulting in the rescue of some 350 Burmese slaves who will be repatriated to Burma (Myanmar). Accounts from a handful of former Burmese slaves who have already arrived home say hundreds of men remain unaccounted for.

Paul Dillon, a Jakarta-based IOM official, told the Observer: “We’ve interviewed the men from over a third of the 240 vessels in the port and discovered over 350 victims of trafficking, virtually all of whom are from Myanmar. If the pattern holds and we’re finally able to get access to the remaining men, we could be looking at up to 1,000.”

However, Dillon said local corruption had obstructed attempts to examine the remaining boats: “We are hoping they will see the light, understand that we are on a humanitarian, not a law-enforcement, mission, and let us get in there, assess and rescue these men and get them back home to their families.”

The findings and potential scale of slavery in Ambon has prompted the IOM to look at extending its investigation to ascertain how many other slave fishermen are being forced to work in Indonesia – an archipelago of more than 17,500 islands, of which just 922 are permanently inhabited.

“The Ambon experience has stirred us up to want to look at other parts of the country,” said Dillon. “Currently we don’t know where else in the country there are large numbers of fishing vessels standing by. Many of the islands are very remote.”

Meanwhile, the hunt for the Thai fishing vessels in the narrow, dangerous straits of the Dog Leg will continue this week as the Blissful Reefer is impounded in the port of Daru in Papua New Guinea. The eight crew members of the vessel, rescued on Monday, have been found to be trafficking victims. George Gigauri, the IOM’s chief of mission in Papua New Guinea, said: “They are trying to locate an approximate area where the vessels are, and then narrow it down exactly. The search is becoming more targeted, although it is difficult.”
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The boats are suspected of being part of a massive transnational Thai trafficking operation that until recently operated from the Benjina fisheries weigh station in eastern Indonesia.

In November, an investigation by Associated Press discovered hundreds of forced labourers, mainly from Burma, on Benjina. Some were filmed trapped in a cage, and many of those interviewed said they had been abused or had witnessed others being beaten – or in some cases killed.

Almost all described being kicked, beaten or whipped with toxic stingray tails if they complained or attempted to rest. Despite working 20- to 22-hour shifts and being forced to drink unclean water, they were either paid a pittance or went unpaid.

The discovery by AP led to at least 300 men managing to escape but, before help arrived at the island, boats loaded with slaves fled the region for new fishing grounds – some to the island of Ambon, others apparently to the Dog Leg.

The Burmese slaves are recruited to work in Thailand’s seafood business and are usually lured or tricked into leaving their country to go to Thailand, where they are then taken south and put on boats in Indonesia. Others, though, are kidnapped and forced to work.

Once in Indonesian waters – some of the world’s richest fishing grounds for species including tuna and prawns – the ships’ names and flags are changed to escape the authorities’ notice, although the captain of the trawler is usually a Thai national.

Thailand’s seafood industry is worth around £5bn a year, with the vast majority of its produce exported globally to satisfy the global appetite for cheap fish. The catches are deposited with a huge refrigerated “mothership”, which transports the fish back to Thailand. Dillon said: “Look, It’s a billion-dollar business. There are powerful interests out there who have been making a lot of money for many years off the backs of these men, through acts of great cruelty. It is not going to disappear overnight, but in Indonesia at this time there appears to be the will to break their business model.”

However, little is known of the size of the Thai criminal syndicates, of their connections or of how they manage to coerce and recruit so many slaves. Investigators are still searching for the nerve centre of the operation.

Gigauri said: “It’s still not clear to us how this operates. Where exactly are these boats registered? To which company do they report? Who does the recruiting? Where is the headquarters of this operation?”

Last year another Guardian investigation tracked the supply chain of prawns produced with slave labour to British and American supermarket chains. Another more recent inquiry linked Thailand’s fishing industry with the trafficking syndicates profiting from the misery of Rohingya migrants.

What the fuck is that, “Act my age”?

As I chased down (and failed to find) the source of this awesome quote:

"'Act my age'? What the fuck is that, 'Act my age'? What do I care how old I am? The Ocean is old as fuck. It will still drown your ass with vigor."

...I stumbled across a few others at http://listography.com

“I know you and I are not about poems or other sentimental bullshit but I have to tell you even the way you drink your coffee knocks me the fuck out.” — Clementine von Radics
•
"People say i love you all the time - when they say 'take an umbrella, it's raining' or 'hurry back' or even 'watch out you'll break your neck'. There are hundreds of ways of wording it - you just have to listen dear." - the curious savage- John Patrick
•
The story so far; In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams
•
You were a chapter in my book and i was merely a line in yours. p.b.p
•
“I used to think I was tough, but then I realized I wasn’t. I was fragile and I wore thick fucking armor. And I hurt people so they couldn’t hurt me. And I thought that was what being tough was, but it isn’t.” — James Frey
•
“Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.” -- Meša Selimović
•
We are all the main characters of our own story, but we play supporting roles and extras in other stories. Sometimes we're not even in a story at all. That's okay though because our story influences the world. Remember that --theprettylittleblogger tumblr
•
“It’s like drowning but you just won’t fucking die.” — Urban Dictionary definition of unrequited love
•
I think we’re each given a gift or two so that we have something special to offer to others. But sometimes we make the mistake of assuming that the things we’re good at are common to everyone. We don’t recognize that our gifts are unique and therefore worth offering…I think sometimes we get confused and believe that our gift must bring us money or success or fame. Sometimes those things do happen, but not usually. The only thing a gift needs to do is bring you joy in the doing of that thing, and not worry about the outcome. - Carry On, Warrior by Glennon Melton
•
You may mess up, but you are not a mess up.
You may make a mistake, but you are not a mistake.
You may screw up, but you are not a screw up.
You may fail, but you are not a failure.
You are not your downfalls. - tumblr user p3rspective
•
"You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens." - LOUISE L. HAY
•
"Everybody goes through a tough time and I thought I wasn’t ready or I would want it to stop, but now I’m thanking god for each and every obstacle because he is only trying to bring the best out in us. So I’ll pray that he too will give you guys the wisdom and the strength to get through whatever is going on." - Tiffany Hwang
•
“I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we’d choose anyway.” ̶ Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars
•
Just because someone with depression has a better day, doesn't mean that person got better. The day is still grey but without any rain. - Miley
•
“It’s much easier to humiliate, degrade and just generally shit all over someone, than it is to admit that you love them.” — Nathan, Misfits
•
“Maybe the wolf is in love with moon, and each month it cries for a love it will never touch.” — Anonymous (via keimun)
• “Every villain is a hero in his own mind.”
― Tom Hiddleston )

First Dog on the Moon: Isis' Letter To The West

Classic offering from The Guardian's First Dog on the Moon.

Scotch bar cites “dress code”, tosses kilted Grinch

So here’s one for ya.
Last Thursday 4.4 million Scots voted in a referendum to decide whether to yank the U outta UK, kick the Queen to the curb and go independent. As yer Grinch is Edinburgh sired and papered, he’s a degree of emotional investment in the decision and no strong opinions on the matter one way or the other. A she-kin reduced the possible severing of a 300-year-old relationship to the quandary any bar rat familiar with Last Call can relate to: “Heart says Yes, Brain says No”.
So I decided with a small group of like-minded Scotsmen and Anglos to meet at our local establishment for some discount libations before motoring over to a swanky whisky joint called Nip&Dram (#nipanddram) to mull early results over glasses of liquid fire culled from their (claimed) 400+ bottles of Scotch. I’d been meaning to attend the place for many months as I’ve had a twenty-year fling with single malt and thought it would be nice to meet some fellow travelers, have a cigar and chill.
It being a special occasion I wore my kilt and sporran with Doc Martens and a black-T.
1030ish we drift down to the Landmark Centre in ones and twos. The first hint something was off came when I discovered a gal-pal and her boy languishing in the parking area; refused entry because he’s in shorts and sandals. “Well… aye, I can see how a small, high end club might have a problem with that. Pity though… maybe next time!”
So yer correspondent rocks up, acknowledges the Meathead in a safari suit at the door, and is ushered inside where he’s greeted by two young women in LBDs and heels, one clutching a menu board. I catch my highland pal’s eye across the room; he’s comfortably ensconced with friends listening to the jazz trio opposite, and I make to join them. At which point menu board tells me I’m not allowed in because I’m wearing shorts. Clearly there’s some sort of misunderstanding, laughs I. Surely you recognize this as a kilt, formal attire worn by the male of the species in the lands from whence virtually your entire product line and by extension your current employment, hail! Let me speak to your manager.

The manager, no doubt a reasonable woman, a seasoned veteran of the higher ends of the hospitality industry here and abroad is just the person to see at a thirsty time like this, no? No. “We have a strict dress code and you cannot come in dressed like that,” says she, as Meathead #2 slips into the shadows off my starboard.
You understand that’s like telling a Javanese guy he’s not welcome at the wedding because he’s wearing a batik shirt, right?
Murrmmurr murmmer murmmmur
I’m still laughing when my pal ambles up, asks what’s the matter and makes to call the owner/partner at who’s invitation we’ve come this night. I tell him not to waste a dime because even if I get the green light I’d rather take power tools to my kilted goolies than put money in these fucker’s pockets. Poor fella has just got his obscenely-priced glass of hooch so I tell him to chill with our friends, I’ll wait car.
My pal the security guard Surya is a bit shocked to see me back so soon. He’d been surprised to see a whitey driving a car, let alone one who climbed out wearing a skirt. So I’d taken a couple minutes to educate him on the kilt in terms he’d grok. When I told him I’d been refused entry he was quite literally gobsmacked: he stood there for several moments with his mouth hanging open.
My buddy showed up not long after with the manager in tow: “She’s going to apologize to you now,” says he.
Which she did. Very sorry for the misunderstanding. Please come back… durka durka durka… and I started to think, okay, don’t be a complete ass, Grinch. If you don’t want to go, be gruff and gracious and accept her apology, she’s just a minion after all etc. And then she said the most amazing thing, words to the effect, “We’ll waive the rules this time” (presumably by order of the boss).
Charming, eh?
So, let me get this straight, you’ll let me in tonight but the next time a sober, well-heeled Scottish guy in a kilt shows up at your bar, whose reason for existing is to market and sell Scottish whisky, you’ll not let him in?
I laughed, told her hell would freeze before I’d set foot in her (strangled obscenity) of a bar. Then loaded up the rest who couldn’t be bothered staying, pointed wheels north and ten mins later landed back in the warm bosom of my local, sharing glasses of Quarter-cask Laphroaig with proper friends.
As for Drip and Dram? Well, y’all can…

25 things you never wanted to know about Grinch On Tour

A while back - prodded by a social media 'poke' - I wrote 25 random things about myself. Here's that bit of navel gazing five years on.

1. I almost died of exposure as a child when my just-off-the-BOAC Dad and his just-off-the-coal-scow Welsh buddy took me hunting in the middle of a Manitoba winter and got stuck many miles up a disused logging road. As dark and almost certain death by exposure loomed, hero Dad flagged down a truckload of hydro workers who literally lifted our station wagon and pointed it in the right direction. A year later I fell through the ice in a pond behind my apartment building. In addition to being first in a long line of near-death experiences these incidents and Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon are among my earliest memories.
2. I write, carry a hammer and wear a watch on my right hand, but I throw, draw an arrow and lift heavy objects with my left. I punch and kick with either.
3. I can spit further and whistle louder than anyone I know.
4. For as long as I can remember I have spent idle moments I drawing imaginary lines of infinite length through the 90-degree angles formed by tiles so that my eyes pinball around the ceiling or floor until they finally arrive in a dead-end corner. Then I retrace/unravel the pattern. This hypnotic activity keeps me captivated for hours.
5. I feel like a Guy Lafleur soul trapped in a Gille Lubien body: if I have to explain that then fuggedaboudit.
6. At least once a month since I was a child I get the sensation that I'm a nano-second out of phase with the world around me. Ambient sounds echo in my head, my peripheral vision blurs and I become a detached third-party observer to what I'm doing. It can take hours for this sensation to pass.
7. I've always wanted hair like Jimmy Page (or Tony Alva).
8. Hardly a day goes by that I don't think about Trudy (The Wonder Dog) and the way the light in her cataract-green eyes faded and died as I held her in my arms.
9. The Life of Brian was the funniest movie released in 1979, perhaps the single greatest year for comedies: The Jerk, Richard Pryor Live in Concert, 10, Being There, Manhattan, Meatballs, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, 1941 etc.
10. I graduated high school because I could crib a year's worth of theorems or irregular Spanish verbs onto a 2cm x 2cm square of paper with an architect's pencil.
11. I spent a couple of years in my 20s playing Dungeons & Dragons in my buddy Ed's basement: Sunday noon-till-midnight marathons and at least one other day each week. When Tolgar, my righteous, ass-whuppin' Level 16 Paladin was seduced by a horny +24 Charisma wood nymph and vanished into a forest permanently I realized it was time to do something more productive with my life.
12. I never received a copy of my university diploma so I'm not even sure I officially graduated.
13. My first job was as a nine year old picking up newspapers on garbage nights in Montreal for a recycling venture an elder (like, 16) had cooked up. Around the same time I picked up my first Montreal Star paper route. Since then I have: delivered groceries on a 3-wheeled bike, tele-marketed (briefly), recycled newspapers, sharpened skates & sold sports ware, worked in numerous restaurants and bars, split wood, hauled lumber, loaded fat tourists on ski lifts, stocked supermarket shelves at night, made pizza, sold produce, worked as a courier, been a carpenters apprentice, painted many, many homes, committed journalism, worked as a carny, picked grapes (France), peaches, apples and tomatoes (B.C.), managed projects worth millions of dollars and been a tour guide at a Cognac factory. I imagine there’s a few others I’ve forgotten along the way. Ironically, at this time in my life I have a lot of trouble answering the question: “So, what do you do?” and its corollary, "where are you from?"
14. Weed makes me sleep (so what's the point), I dislike the artificial intimacy of club-drugs and 'shrooms take me places I don't wanna go, but I will always have a sweet spot for LSD-25 or a piece of Afghan black.
15. Once upon a time, someone (some group of people more likely) stenciled distinctive bird silhouettes on hundreds of highway overpasses and bridges across Eastern Canada. A guy at a Sally-An soup kitchen in Sudbury, Ontario, was the first to tell me the combinations of birds (sparrows, gulls, eagles, robins etc.) were a code for hitchhikers. One of my great regrets is that years on the thumb and many thousands of miles later I've never met anyone who claimed to be able to read 'em, and the images themselves are long gone.
16. I pepper casual conversation with references to movies, episodes of M*A*S*H*, All in The Family, Taxi and WKRP among others, song lyrics, arcane advertising slogans and other pop culture detritus that no one (except my buddy Marty) ever “gets” but amuse the hell out of me.
17. In my experience when a journalist says "If both sides are pissed off then I must be doing my job well" the opposite is often the case.
18. "It's astounding" but I can still remember the words/crowd responses to most of the songs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
19. I believe there is no greater threat to personal freedom than social orthodoxies and prejudices buttressed by religion in the hands of a Charismatic.
20. I have never been happier than during my solo bike trip across North America on a beat-up 1000cc Yamaha Virago that literally disintegrated 45 minutes from the end of an 8,000km journey.
21. Being a freelance journalist in Asia is the greatest job on earth. Being a freelance journalist in Asia is the worst job on earth. This is not a contradiction.
22. I'm a fan of things that require no improvement: 10-year-old Laphroaig quarter cask and good Cuban cigars; the Coleman cooler; knee-high Sorels; CCM Super-Tacks, ACS 651 skateboard trucks and Salomon 747Equipe ski bindings; my 20" iMac, the basic Bic ballpoint and lighter; Volvo D240 station wagon; the combination of a black cotton t-shirt, 501s and Dayton boots; the roll-up crazy carpet snow sled; Export-A rolling papers and, the wooden-handled 4-inch Mora belt-knife.
23. If I could go back and do it all over again I would try not to be such a complete asshole to my parents during the worst of my hormonal teenage years.
24. I'm enjoying watching my face age. From the time I got my first line at 21/22, I've tried to imagine what I’d look like at 80. I even started a scrap book of head-shots – one per page – for ever year starting in 1965 to see the progression: its in a filing cabinet I've not seen in 10 years, 12,000km from my current locale. Now pushing 50 I'm generally satisfied with the pace of decay but would dearly love to drop this last 15 pounds so I can get into a size 32.
25. At the end of it all, I want a proper Irish wake; laid out on the table, lotsa whiskey and poitín, singing, coins on the eyes, candles and photographs and stopped clocks and smoking, much gnashing and wailing and lamentations and laughter, and carousing in the shadows. I've even got an informal list of songs I want played but I'm careful to never settle on more than nine: why tempt fate, eh?

Grinch Holiday ramblings...

Just back from three weeks R&R in the homeland. Some musings: Top Ten Holiday Highlights (in no particular order) 1. 4 1/2 year old female grinchlette in a life-jacket bobbing like a cork down Ottawa River rapids squealing, “Lemme go! Let! Me! Go!” to a clingy Dad. Thanks to Dave at http://www.ottawacityadventures.com/adventures/rafting/ 2. Watching reactions in Plateau Montreal shops as the smell of a backpack stuffed with fresh Fairmont bagels infused the air. http://www.fairmountbagel.com/ 3. Having the kids identify the Big Dipper the first time they’d ever seen a truly star-studded northern sky (thanks apparently to Disney Channel’s Doc McStuffins & “Celestial Celeste” who is apparently doing a better job edukatin’ my kids than I) http://www.allreadable.com/39316qDW 4. Watching 4 1/2 year old male grinchlette on auto-belay flash a three-story vertical wall at Altitude in Gatineau, pausing long enough to say, “Hey, good lookin’” to my brother, his climbing partner. http://www.altitudegym.ca/en/ 5. The Big Family Dinner; many roast beasts consumed. 6. Special evening of fine dining with the famle @ Le Serpent… http://www.leserpent.ca/en/ 7. Camping… bc a bad day camping is still more enjoyable than the best day at work (even when it leaves yer Grinch with a severed tendon in his hand that will require surgery within the week) http://www.ontarioparks.com/park/voyageur 8. Street hockey, trampolines, rock climbing, rafting, horseback rides and backyard swimming pools; blueberry pancakes, suitable volumes of decent wine, village-made cheese, and decent beers with buddies in Mtl; the CFL; Franco-Quebecois who default to English and Anglo-Ontarians who default to French; dueling hummingbirds, fat hissing ‘coons at the Mont Royal pullover, gonzo moths, a (sadly) rare tree frog & massive turkey vultures wheeling, watching, waiting; Players Extra-Light Kings and economy-sized little blue boats; needing a duvet in August and family, family, family. 9. Driving the same car for three weeks without feeling like an unwitting participant in a diabolical swarm-theory experiment http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Swarm_intelligence Taking the same period to figure out wipers and lights have swapped sides on the steering column. 10. Canadian Tire. Before there was anything else, there was Canadian Tire http://www.canadiantire.ca/en.html Dillon Family Holiday: By the Numbers Aggregate air travel (4pax) 136,240kms. Total layover time: 19.5 hrs. Kms on rental car: 1,812. Speeding/parking tickets: 0. Times in the past 15 years when that's happened: 0. Kms traveled by Zodiac: 9.1. Kms by ferry: 4.8. Kms by horseback: 2.2 (guesstimate). Tent poles known to be broken prior to leaving to camp ground: 1. Percentage level of importance of that pole in timely erection of tent fly: 100. Minutes required for sky to go from blue to black after setting up camp tent (minus fly): 15. Mins of continuous bloody rain before tent fly successfully raised: 16. Number of new curse words acquired by kids: 3. Number with more than one syllable: 2. Years rolled back as Dad, Mum and son again wrestled against the elements on a camping trip: 30+ Check-in bags to Canada: 3. Check-in bags to Jakarta: 5. Weight of return baggage: 97.2kg. Quarts of fresh blueberries crushed in return baggage: 1. Jam jars smashed: 0. Total new books acquired: 17. Total of those books that are for adults: 2. Bottles of single malt acquired at Doha Duty free: 2. Rank (1-10) of Doha duty free selection of single malts: 8.7. Percentage likelihood single malts to be provided as gifts: 0. Total clothes and meds bill at Hawkesbury, Ont. Walmart store: $531. Bill at Hawkesbury, Ont. Harley dealership: $138.48. Number of days after leaving Canada that cast members of TV show Sons of Anarchy will (inexplicably) travel of Hawkesbury, Ont. HD shop to party with locals: 24. Level of spouse's disappointment (1-10) that she won't meet the guy who plays SAMCRO's sexual deviant Sgt-At-Arms, Tig Trager: 8.1. Level of disappointment had it been Opie: 11 Pax at Big Family Dinner: 16. Bottles of wine drunk: Dunno oshiffer. Montreal-style bagels purchased 24 hours prior to BFD: six dozen. Bagels remaining to be brought to Jakarta (after vultures picked through the remains): six. Actually brought: 0 (bc one does not leave parents without bagels). New craft beers made in nearby village of 1,500: 2. Taps of craft beer made within an hour's drive of the village in a new local tav: 19. Average alcohol level: 6.8%. Confirmed number of marshmallows eaten by two under-5s: 15. Stomach incidents: 1. Percentage likelihood daughter will impale marshmallow and eat it before it can be roasted: 100. Cumulative wasp stings: 3. Wasp stings at 2:30am in a pitch-effin-black bathroom: 1. Number of new curse words acquired by kids: 0. 20-something Arab men on return flight who spoke English when they boarded for Jakarta: six. Who spoke English when mate unloaded on them for behaving like bleedin’ eejits: 0. Author's weigh gain: 2.5kg. Primary physical activity: opening fridge door; light laundry. Spouse's weight gain: nil. Primary physical activity: 5km morning power-walk. Lessons learned: Sorry… can you repeat the question?

Metallica @ Bungkarno Statium, Jakarta

Metallica returned to Jakarta for the first time in 20 years on the last night of their Asian tour. The governor of Jakarta is a huge fan and the riots that marked their last visit a blip in the past. Sixty thousand well behaved rockers of every variety sang every word from every song for two hours: the boys on stage seemed genuinely impressed though frankly, having that many irony-illiterate people punching the air and chanting "OBEY YOUR MASTER... MASTER" gave me the creeps.

I've been to a few large concerts here and while folks are very appreciative of the artists and knowledgeable about their work, here's a desperate need for some training in "rock and roll concert literacy". And so, the Grinch's Rules for Jakarta concert-goers (and organizers): 1. If the lead singer brings the song to a crescendo and raises his hand to the sound of a lone wailing guitar, it is time to make some %!@&#?!!ing noise. 2. If you want encores, make some %!@&#?!!ing noise. 3. Beach balls and Frisbees, yes; Roman candles, no. 4. Girls rock; bring them. Anyone gives them trouble, trouble them back (with interest). 5. Festival “seating” off the floor is a deadly idea; sell seats, not access. 6. Go home if you wanna play video games on your phone. 7. Under no circumstances do you applaud the arrival a politician. 8. If you buy bootleg music/t-shirts/swag etc. then go spend some money on the real thing. 9. Don’t make James Hetfield (or anyone else who’s putting it out there) beg; See Rules 1 & 2. 10. Chant “IN-DO-NE-SIA” at football matches, not heavy metal shows.

Dumb Bell Destroyer

Yer Grinch has been getting a lot of questions the past few months about what sorta exercise he's been doing. Been thinking about writing a bit about what I've learned over the past three years, since I took that long look in the mirror and decided I wasn't gonna be buried in an XXL coffin.... and I will knock something together on the grounds that I've learned a lot about what's doable, and might be able to offer some practical tips about exercise and good eating. But in the interim my exercise routine is pretty simple. I get to the gym usually three times a week for about 90 min and I play hockey every Tuesday night. At the gym I stick to the dumb bells almost exclusively because they sorta force you to focus on good posture and technique; if you're lazy and/or unfocused lifting DBs you're going to get hurt. I split the focus of my days between Shoulder/Back/Chest and Biceps/Triceps/Legs and try and spring the time to do at least 20 minutes of intense cardio to end each session; usually sprint intervals, one-min at 80% max and two-mins at a fast walk. Because time is an issue for me I Superset my DB exercises. Simply put, Supersets combine several lift sets working similar muscles (though not always the case) with zero rest. For example I might do 12 reps Standing DB Curls & 15 reps Incline Hammer Curls, rest of 90 secs and repeat for three reps and then move immediately to a triceps Superset and so on. I've tweaked the approach a bit by adding a third element to the SS. Depending on my mood it'll either be a core or abdominal element like planks or crunches, or something from my off-day routine; if I'm working arms I'll add a shoulder/chest/back set. I can get through four sets of three exercises in an hour and if I'm doing it right I'm completely wasted by the end, heart in the 125-135 bpm range before getting on the treadmill. Recently I came across a DB combo I like a lot: I've tweaked this as well, replacing a couple of the 14 exercises, adding to the number of repetitions, increasing the mix of weight a bit etc. It's kinda fun once you get into it. There's now 15 different exercises which I do without a break - the whole cycle takes about 20 minutes to complete - and then take a two/three min breather between each of three reps. This is my Saturday afternoon routine; it clears the residual booze vapors very efficiently and forces my lungs to manage the ten+ cigarettes I smoked the night before. A bit of well-deserved punishment for the night's excesses. The results since I started have been very noticeable (and in one regard unwelcome!); I'd sorta plateaued at 88kg but five weeks after adding this new component I've put on at least 1.5kg of muscle. Nice I guess but not really what I'm going for as I try and track down to my goal coffin weight in the low 80s.

In Floods

So this time last week, four days of monsoon rains forced a 30m breech of the north wall of Jakarta’s West Flood Canal beneath the Rasuna Said bridge, flooding the heart of the city. You might have seen the pix on TV: the ‘iconic’ Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, home to luxury shopping centres, bank towers, and five-star hotels turned into a cappuccino-colored swimming pool.

An estimated 35,000 people were displaced (in 2007 the figure was roughly 400,000). At least a dozen people died including four employees trapped in the basement of the nightmare cubist 40-storey UOB building who either drowned, were electrocuted or died of exposure; elite Marine divers spent several days in swimming through the murk three stories below street level searching for air-pockets and possible survivors before surrendering to the inevitable.

Our den is about 250m from the canal breach point. We were lucky. The surge choose the path of least resistance, pouring along the broad length of Jl Purworejo and Sumenep – which are separated by a deep, 10m wide canal – before spilling on the main drag, Sudirman. Between 10am and 11am Thursday, our place which is on a narrow side-street parallel to Jl Purworejo, went from being dry, to being 40cm deep in brown silty grunge courtesy of the Ciliwung River that feeds the canal – one of 13 rivers that converge on Jakarta – and judged to be one of the most polluted on earth. Ultimately the water would rise to almost 50cm, or roughly knee-high on a six-footer like me. Everything got stacked and then stacked again; nothing to be done about the Christmas tree tho… it looked kinda forlorn there in the corner. Moved to the second floor etc. for the goggle-eyed twins and their playmate to pore over. Reminded me of Angela’s Ashes, and Frank McCourt recalling his father Malachy regularly moving the family from their flooded main floor to the second, dubbed Italy, because it was warm and dry.

The main Purworejo intersection was a chest-deep Class II rapid. Local yoots, personal drivers, cops and RT/RW guys - including contingents of tattooed mini-gangsters running the parking rackets on the nearby Jl Blora bar strip - set up belay lines that allowed the brave and foolhardy to cross the street.

The tropical fish and coral market one block north on Sumenep was hard hit; the waters receded to reveal fat koi rotting in the underbrush. Briefly we rescued one from the laneway and tucked him into a large pot. Not sure if it was the toxic canal waters that killed him or one of the pups dumping six-months-worth of fish food in his pot, but by morning it was an ex-koi.

Friday we bought a 2000 watt Krisbow (sort of a Canadian Tire-type of cheap tool and machine maker) gas generator at Ace Hardware for about $350.00 which gave us some power that night and filled the water tank (till the utility cut off that service to our neighborhood). Weird note, gas at the pump is heavily subsidized but when you fill a jerrycan it has to be unsubsidized; upshot is a 20L Jerrycan cost Rp190,000.00 ($21) which is what it costs to fill the car’s 45L tank. That evening the first of many rescue boats began removing the old and infirm.

By Saturday the bulk of the clean-up was done. We took the goblins for a swim and shower at the gym, and loaded eight five-gallon bottles with tap water which turned out to be unnecessary bc by 6 pm both power and water were back on and the genset was silent. We got off lightly compared to others. It’s an older lower-middle class area in transition and many of our neighbors live crammed together in narrow alleyways that run off our street and Jl Kudus where the water had nowhere else to go but up. Anyone in a single story home was kinda uckfayed. Same applied to our wealthy neighbors along Purworejo/Sumenep. Two hundred kg porcelain planters were picked up and thrown into the living room of the home of a famous Indonesian designer; walls collapsed and basements full of luxury automobiles – as many as five to a house - were destroyed. The lucky few managed to grab a posse and haul 'em out.

A Sunday tour of the neighborhood revealed the huge clean-up job still facing many people in our kampung, and an army of garbage pickers with their rolling boxes stacked with ruined bedding, clothing and smashed furniture, anything of value. Some of the waste channels (‘got’) that run along the side of the alleys have been cleaned out; others are still waiting from that nasty business. The fear now is dengue as the mosquito population rebounds and the possibility of sustained rains; the soil is saturated so water pools rapidly and a 48-hour burst of rain would likely collapse the berm again making the situation an order of magnitude worse for everyone in our area.

According to people who have lived there since the '40s, nothing remotely similar has ever happened in this kampung. The "why" part is a long complicated story that I will render down without getting into the sordid history of Jakarta canal and flood-gate management and/or maintenance. In 2002, flood waters topped the south side berm of the same canal at almost exactly the same point. The Landmark Towers, two of the city's earliest buildings have basically emptied in the decade+ since and the Regent (now 4 Seasons) Hotel was closed for 18 months of renovations. So, the Jakarta DKI (provincial) government spent some money to mount a wall on the south side of the canal, but being small-minded bobbins, failed to do the same thing on the north side, opting instead for rip-rap, sand and soil. Three/four years back they double-wided the Rasuna bridge, which weighted up the exact spot that failed last week, and then opened the area to expanded billboard advertising which resulted in seven massive steel pilings being driven into the same roughly 200-meter stretch of embankment. This was not an "Act of God", but the inevitable consequence of the reactionary stupidity that is the hallmark of decision-making in all levels of government in Indonesia. Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Jakarta_Flood