This is where I rant and rave, hoping to get somebody's goat out there. Actually, I stole my little brother's great idea, whose website you can link to by clicking here.
Sept. 10th, 2004
Well, another tragedy. Yesterday, Sept. 9th, 2004 at 10:30am Jakarta time, a bomb was exploded in front of the Australian Embassy in Kuningan, Jakarta. At the time of this update, 8 people were killed, and over 150 have been injured. I would like to send my condolences to the friends and families of those injured or killed in this incident.
Here is a letter written today to a friend of mine. He knows who is his, always tries to get my hackles up politically (and usually does a fine job at it).
"Its more complex than labels such as "liberals" or "conservatives" or "rag heads" "sand niggers" etc. over here. Being ever the cynic and a firm believer in conspiracies, I was expecting something like this to happen at just about this time. Here's the deal.
The second presidential election for Indonesia is in 10 days.
The current president is out of the country visiting the Sultan of Brunei.
The nominees for president are very polarized and have taken stances and been chosen mainly because of their military or civilian stances and backgrounds. I have been asking around for months and it seems that people here are favoring a return to Soeharto days when military rule was prominent. We're talking about a situation where people would open their mouth against the government, and in the middle of the night they would be picked up by police and never seen again. Most businesses in the country had to pay "security money" to government backed thugs who would attack those who refused to pay. The majority of people, when stating their political preferences for the upcoming elections state that they want a "strong" government to deal with the "terrorists/bombs/rebels/Aceh". People would prefer a strong military rule than have to deal with more bombs like Bali. Like I said, I'm not surprised that something like an Embassy bombing would happen right now.
More evidence: no foreigners were killed, it was only Indonesians doing their jobs (security guards) and innocent bystanders that got hit. If the "sand niggers" really wanted to sock it to the Aussies, there are many better targets that would use less explosives, waste less money, not have to be a suicide bomb, and kill more people than the Embassy.
So my conclusion? Whoever planned the bomb is sympathetic towards a militarily ruled Indonesia (or maybe even the military?). The bomb was perfect for their needs. The bomb has the appearance of a "western hate" crime, but there were no westerners killed, so in the end there will be minor diplomatic fallout and a showbiz type investigation that will placate the Australian public. There were many Indonesians killed and injured, and that is perfect for getting the voters all riled up and polarizing perhaps that 15% or so of voters that are still sitting on the fence.
Its only 10 days till the election.
I hope the crazies in America don't take lessons from this one, because then there would be a larger possibility something really bad could happen in the states sometime shortly before the election. The incumbent administration could use a new justification for spending more of YOUR money keeping THEIR oil safe. It would also justify the current foreign policy to those fence sitters that just aren't sure what the administration is doing in Afganistan and Iraq is the right thing. Some hardline crazy conservative could provide it for them in a flash and a puff of smoke, and undoubtedly it would be blamed on Islamic extremists of some kind.
God willing it won't happen, but it would sure be useful some some people in this world."
Well, there you have it, I've stuck my foot in my mouth again and am bound to end up in trouble over my comments.
Bring it on.
Sept. 5, 2003
Another Chapter for the WavePark
As the taxi driver cruised the coast I looked
way out on the horizon to see massive billowing clouds, something abnormal
for that time of the day. Within an hour I could see the clouds visibly
closer, and from my sailing experience, my gut said, "its not a good
day to go to sea."
With all my gear piled in the car, I was headed to Padang where according
to the plan, we were to leave that day for Siberut by speedboat, in order
to attend a wedding. Siberut, 85 nautical miles from Padang, is a 5-6
hour speedboat ride during good weather, and the boat can't make it if
there is anything but small chop. On the boat were 5 crew and two Indonesian
passengers, all excitedly talking about the wedding festivities that were
going to go on all weekend.
We were late in departing, about 11am, and clouds had already moved in.
The port of departure is from the rivermouth in Padang, a slimy, sludge-filled
moving rubbish dump that emptys at the mouth into ocean at the base of
some cliffs. The wind was HOWLING onshore and after about 30 minutes bashing
to weather, the speedboat captain decided to turn around and head back.
Rather than go back up the river and wait, he decided to anchor in the
lee of an island situated just off shore. The sun was still out, but the
storm was coming....
Then it started raining. It rained. It rained. It rained some more. Afterwards,
I was to hear that it was the biggest rain in almost a decade, not only
for sheer volume, but also for the rapidity of the flood. From 1pm onwards,
it was a completely, utterly equatorial torrential downpour. Just when
I thought it would let up, it would come even harder, smashing into the
plastic tarpaulin roof of the speedboat, with two crew bailing furiously.
I couldn't hear myself think for almost 5 hours. Lightning and thunder
smashed all around. I had never been in a storm so violent - and with
the wind gone - so serene at the same time.
As dusk fell, the decision was made to head for home. Disappointed that
we weren't going to make it to the islands as planned, I was nonetheless
looking forward to a hot cup of tea, solid land and some rice. The speedboat
had 3 x 40 hp. engines on the back, it was a go-fast machine. As we rounded
the peninsula that acted as a breakwater for the rivermouth, we realized
that approaching the river from front-on wasn't going to be possible.
All three engines were going full throttle, and we weren't making headway
against the water rushing out to sea. I looked at our progress, approximating
perhaps 18 knots of boat speed, with maybe 2 knots of forward momentum
towards our goal. I thought to myself, "I can just imagine myself
swimming in this crap". The drivers slowed down and let the boat
be taken slowly back out to sea, where they reconsidered their strategy.
On the opposite side of the river from the pensisula, Padang Beach runs
for many miles north up the coast. The decision was made to approach the
rivermouth from the beach at full throttle, turn a hard left, and tie
up to the dock as the last bit of light faded to night. The drivers really
wound it up on the approach, getting us full speed with no obstacles,
until we hit the river mouth.
Due to the volume of water flowing off the streets, mountains and creeks,
the river was gorged with plastic bags, trees, bushes, carcasses, etc.
As we swung a hard left into the rivermouth, the engines faltered and
one by one stopped. "We've got three", I thought, "we should
be able to get at least one going to maintain control." The operators
lifted the engines, cleared the debris, and attempted to start the engines.
Nothing. Try again, nothing, and again and again. Muscles pounded as did
the standing waves we were headed towards. Where the river met the ocean,
4 ft. waves appeared motionless, and I suddenly felt the horror of my
earlier instinct coming true. Everything was happening too fast. The boat
drifted powerless and silently along the edge of the peninsula, eventually
turning sideways into the standing waves, where we got swamped. Now it
was time to do something. Water rushed in from every side, and it was
obvious that we were going down fast. I picked up whatever I could find
and threw it overboard, the first thing I could get my hands on was a
60 litre jerry can of fuel. As I heaved the fourth one overboard, I realized
with a sudden start that the boat was suddenly silent and empty; I was
the last one on board! I watched in fascination as the boat, now completely
swamped, approached the last corner of the peninsula. Night had already
fallen and as I looked out to sea through the flashes of lightning, I
realized that I was headed out to sea on a sinking boat by myself. I took
off my shirt and dove overboard, swimming strongly towards the shore.
Although it was only a distance of perhaps 50 meters, I was being swept
sideways at about 15 knots, with standing waves and eddies making it difficult
to keep my line straight for the point. The last 5 meters were the hardest,
as a collection of every imaginable refuse had gathered at the rivers
edge. About 4 ft. thick, the goo was nearly impossible to get through,
as everytime I pushed some away to make headway, more would fill the gap.
Looking like drowned rats, we dragged ourselves up onto the rocks and
did a head count. All 5 Indonesian crew were there, but the other two
Indonesian passengers were missing, and nowhere to be seen. I knew that
time was critical, so I clambered up the rocks and found a path made by
fishermen over the years, that wound its way around the peninsula. It
is a vision that sticks with me still: All I had left was my shorts and
my watch, sprinting as fast as I could along a mud track. Buckets of rain
were still falling, and the only visibility was when the lightning would
flash through the overhanging trees. I was going fast, stubbing my toes
on rocks hidden in slippery mud, hitting overhanging brances, but I absolutely
had to find somebody to call the police. I can only imagine now what I
must have looked like to the residents of those first 5 houses that I
visited. Smashing on their door, half naked, completely drenched, puffing
and out of breath, with a wild look in my eye and screaming something
incoherent in a language that I had only started to learn 2 months earlier.
"ORANG, SWIM, HILANG, TELPON POLISI, POLISI" I shouted at the
people who answered their doors. They simply stood there as if they were
the first recepients of extraterrestrial life. I have to assum they were
more shocked than I was at the time, which is saying something.
Finally the fifth shack housed a man who had a head on his shoulders and
he told me that there were no telephones on that side of the river, that
the nearest phone was directly on the other side of the river, at the
police station. By now the other crew had caught up with me, and nearly
out of my mind with concern, I had to be physically restrained from attempting
the river crossing to the police station. Unbeknownst to me, there are
hidden pylons and an old wharf foundation that likely would have been
the end of me within a minute, IF I had made it that far.
A car was found, and as we piled in, I finally gave up my attempt at rescuing
the missing passengers, effectively passing the buck to whoever was going
to take it from there. I will never be able to explain the things running
through my head on that 30 minute car ride to the police station. I was
cold, wet, crying in shock, and the most basic emotion of my life was
beginning to surface; I was happy to be alive. That single, most basic
question of what could have been but wasn't ran through again and again,
rioting in chaos with anger at the boat operators, the weather, the wedding,
the day, the ocean, the garbage, the lack of phones, the night, the river,
the weather and Oh the weather.
Two weeks later, my tourist visa was expired and I had to make the dash
to Singapore for a new one. The boat captain was in jail for his own protection
from the family of the deceased, who wanted revenge. I had been interrogated
and released, sent to a friend's house to recover from the goo that had
worked its way into my body during the swim. The speedboat had been found
the same night as the accident, and the woman's body was found the next
morning. The last remaining passenger was never found again, there were
rumors of him dissappearing with the 25 million rupiah that was on board
as a wedding gift. His family was convinced he was dead, and no other
evidence ever surfaced. Not that it would have:
On my last day in Padang, I was walking near the river when a drunk local
came up to me and said, "Christie, we have your camera case and surfboard".
I had an ex army ammunition box that I had converted to a camera case,
and a 6'8 Cole that had never turned up. Now here was somebody telling
me that they had found it! Wow! "Come back tomorrow" he said.
I was furious that we couldn't do it that day because I was going to be
in trouble if I didn't leave to Singapore the next day before lunch. The
equipment was more important though, so I came back the next day as planned.
They sat me down and showed me my gear laid out on the table like it was
some kind of market or something. I immediately knew something was wrong
and from there on pretended not to understand anything they said, even
though I understood perfectly well that they wanted 1,000,000 rupiah for
my stuff. It was probably the craftiest thing I had ever done. I mentioned
that across the road was my friends house and that he could speak English,
maybe we could meet over there? They agreed to bring the stuff, and we
met at my friend's house, where I had the police waiting.
The story from them was 3 days earlier some fishermen had found my board
and camera box floating together out near the Mentawais, and they brought
it back to Padang. They were willing to hand it over for this sum of cash
which I certainly didn't have, and considering the BS these guys were
talking, I wouldn't have paid even if I did. I calmly asked the negotiators
if this was the real story, because I had my version ready to tell? They
swore in front of the police that this was the story, so I asked the policeman
if he had any questions he would like to ask? The policeman shook his
head no, and so, as the stress and emotions of the last weeks came to
the surface, I went OFF! "Do you mean to tell me that you believe
this shit?" I shouted. "My surfboard which skips across the
surface in the wind like a sail, and my camera box which is like a log
being found TOGETHER hundreds of miles off the coast after weeks in the
sea? If my camera box was found three days ago, why are there spider webs
in the ribbing on the box? Why are the metal springs not rusted? Why are
you not asking them any serious questions at the police station BECAUSE
TWO PEOPLE DIED!?" Again, it was extraterrestrial life found on earth.
I could have suddenly sprouted horns and a forked tail and the reaction
wouldn't have been any different. One from the party responsible for the
speedboat pulled me aside and whispered, "that's not how we do it
here Christie." "Yeah, but two people DIED", I repeated.
I got my stuff back, I made it to Singapore, and now several times a month
I leave from that same rivermouth to take guests on the ferry to my own
surf resort. I still occasionally meet with the people who swam with me
that night, and we share a common secret and a love of life and lives
that were given that night, and not to be taken for granted. Realizing
that it is possible to be soulfully content with absolutely nothing other
than your watch and your shorts is a lesson that I will take with me to
my grave, where I won't even have a need for those possessions. I also
learned to trust my instincts with the weather, Oh the weather.
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January 30, 2003
Welcome to the New Year.
I hope everybody reading this has been treated well by what the '03 brings them.
Its been a while since I wrote, and considering another season starts soon, I will write about some experiences that I have had since the end of the '02 season.
I went to California for a month. I was especially keen to see what state the American psyche was in. The "war" being on the top of the list in many people's minds.
The first thing that I noticed was a more radical separation between those who were pro and anti. I mean, those who are pro are ready to put themselves on the battlefield, and those who are anti are almost gagging at the thought of another American invasion. Personally I agree with my father's stance:
Anyway, politics aside, I was also very interested in the ramifications of a train ride that I took from Central Coast of California to Southern California.
All train stations require "photo-id" in order to purchase a train ticket. I'm assuming this means that the ticket agent enters my name into a nationally linked data base which stores the names of suspicious blokes and sheilas. Should somebody named "Mohammed" or Mohammedette" book a ticket, bells and whistles go off at the local police and FBI offices, alerting them to the perpetrators presence. All fine and dandy, I can understand that.
All these security notices and rigid precautions make me feel confident that not only will I be safe from "sand niggers**" but that the federal government has my safety and the country's security at the top of their list of defense priorities.
Yeah right.
So at the baggage department I check through my large backpack and duffel bag to my destination. When the whistle blows I get on the train with my hand luggage, and as we click clack down the track, the conductor comes around to take my ticket. Everything seems peachy creamy. "Ticket please", he says as he rips my ticket, writes my destination on a slip of paper and lodges it in the bulkhead above me.
I continue on my journey, this train is special. It is a once daily occurence that passes through Vandenburg Air Force Base; to my knowledge the largest collection of missiles on the West Coast of America. Of course I didn't see much from the confines of the train, but there are silos evident, and large amounts of infrastructure in place. Then it passes through Hollister Ranch with high pressure gas lines nearby.
Then we continue down the coast, the only other relevant landmark to this article is when we pass San Clemente and within a couple hundred yards of the nuclear power plant there.
And I start thinking...
When I earlier checked in my luggage, there were no x-ray machines, no visual inspections, no pat downs or even weight scales. In fact, no questions at all were asked about what my luggage contained. The fact that one of my carry-on peices is an ex-army ammunition box (converted to a camera case) didn't even raise an eyebrow. Obviously nobody at the train station was trained in luggage identification. Even if they were, they didn't have the tools to do a professional job. I had a giggle at the thought of the single un-armed security guard giving chase to anything other than another coffee to wash down his obvious addiction to anything fat-filled.
I had to experiment.
A week later when I took the train back up to LA, intending to fly out of the country, I repeated the same process as above.
"Tickets please" came the familiar call as the train got underway, this time headed north. "Could I ask you a question?" I requested. "Shoot" he said. "When you collect my ticket, you don't ask for photo identification. Does this mean that it is not important that the person who orinally purchased the ticket is the person who rides the train?" "Ummm. Hmmm good question" came his reply.
"Yeah, I was just asking because it seems important to me."
I have no experience in explosives, weight to strength ratios, even projectile destructive capabilities. For all I know, any luggage containing explosives would, out of necessity, have to be heavy enough to raise suspicion by untrained personnel? Still, it seemed to me that a lot of damage could be done with a nuclear device amongst some of the densely populated communities that we passed through...
Anyway, you get the idea of the kind of fun things I think about when I'm on the train, my book is finished, and my CD discman keeps skipping.
The larger issue by far, and the one that really scares me, is the shallowness at which your typical American train, plane and automobile passengers will delve into questions like this. That pretty much narrows it down to the entire American nation. If there is such a security threat to the nation, why do such simple, easily perpetrated opportunities for terrorists go unnoticed?
Logic only leaves two possibilities. Either the requirements for such blanket security would virtually shut down the nations economies, or there is no such security threat?
I don't know the answer, and my guess is the case much more complex than I present here. My suspicions that the latter possibility deserves closer inspection is based on two pretenses. 1) It would cost less to protect the citizens and communities of America by installing terrorist activity detecting equipment and training operators than it would to train, equip and send tens of thousands of soldiers across the world to wage war there. Why isn't the less expensive option implemented? 2) The best way to gain popular support for this kind of war activity would be to convince the populace that these actions are necessary. "If we don't stop the sand niggers ** in their homeland, you will never be safe in yours" could be the apparent propoganda motto for the current American administration in power.
They are going to have to do better than current efforts to pull the wool over MY eyes. What about yours?
Peace out,
Christie
**(I don't use this new American slur lightly but to give you an idea of the current pysche and racially based jokes that I encountered while there, again, all propogating the "us against them" mentality. Come on, we're all brothers and sisters.)
