The joke that didn't land?

It has nothing to do with mocking the duly departed. No doubt we do not poke fun at the dead. Jocelyn Chia did not ridicule the victims who perished in MH370. She sneered at the country's citizens whose image bearer in the sky went down without a trace of existence. In the same skeet, she peeled bare the impotence of the government, which had lost in the global fight to stay prominent. Whilst the rest of the world is busy improving the saleability of its country and drawing in foreign funds, besides improving human capital and intelligence, Malaysia's leaders are content in drumming the past century's tune of race and religion. The leaders make their gullible subjects feel special when they are merely donning the Emperor's new clothes.

So when Jocelyn haughtily flaunted Singapore's first-world status after being jilted from an intimate relationship, during which the Prime Minister had cried about an uncertain future, she knew her country had done well. Speaking from a standup comedy stage in New York, embraced by the biggest economy in the world, she knows she has bragging rights. After all, the caustic world of standup comedy allows her so, burns, vulgarity, warts and all.

So the high offices of her former country have apologised. Of course, they did. They need the goodwill of their neighbour to oil the nation's machinery and food supply. More than half of the country's think tanks have roots in Malaysia anyway.

If Jocelyn Chia had mocked the falling of the Twin Towers or Pearl Harbour, the US would flip. So the IGP making an Interpol report to locate her will be about to nought. The US is not bothered about hurting the sentiments of a despotic third-world nation. It has to be seen as the purveyor of what it preaches, free speech, freedom of expression and pursuit of happiness.

It is all about playing the victimhood. It has nothing to do with sneering at something of a taboo subject. The recalcitrant son who cut off his umbilical connexion had all reasons to fail and had paradoxically proved his father wrong. Instead of crawling home all scrawny and embarrassed, poor and hungry, the rebel became more prosperous. The old folks, set in their ways, only spiralled down the path of self-aggrandisement. Excited over minor achievements, they praised themselves for newer, trivial, insignificant achievements. As if rubbing salt into an open wound, the Malaysian ringgit hits an all-time low against the Singapore dollar.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Only theories, nothing more.

MH 370: The Plane that Disappeared(2023, Netflix)
3-part Documentary

"Good night, Malaysia 370!" Those were the last words before Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah disappeared with his Boeing 777, 227 passengers from 14 nations and 12 crew members into thin air in the early hours of 8th March 2014 en route to Beijing.

Nine years later, the world is still clueless about how an aircraft as big as a building could disappear without evidence. In an era when we may be at the cusp of discovery of the Higgs boson (God) particle, and we can convict a politician with denatured DNA from semen deposited three days previously, we are still unable to make head or tail to a Boeing plane's whereabouts. All the satellites and tracking devices that monitor our every move simply failed to comprehend its fate after it went off the radar after 0130hrs. External communications and transponder signals simultaneously disappeared after entering the Vietnamese air space.

This documentary series has yet to shed any new information on the disappearance of MH370. We know now that all communications went kaput after reaching Vietnam before the Vietnamese ground control could get in touch. A telecommunication tower on Penang Island picked up signals from the co-pilot's mobile phone hours after the vessel went missing. The incompetent Malaysian Airforce towers picked an aberrant signal in the Straits of Malacca. Unfortunately, they could not make head or tail on the origin or meaning. They could not confirm whether it was a flying object at all. I remember reading from the local dailies that a junior officer who noticed the signal decided not to disturb his superiors from their beauty sleep, fearing retributions.

Then somebody suggested seeing a possible satellite image of an aeroplane in the South China Sea. Nothing was found by patrolling Navy ships. Imersat telecommunication satellite opined they may have had pinging cues from MH 370 somewhere along the Indian Ocean. The trouble was that they could pinpoint its exact location. For all they knew, it could extend from the Arabian Sea all the way to the turbulent South Seas. None of the observation towers in Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar or India had reported the passing of an unaccounted Boeing 777. Apparently, the policeman of the world, the USA, and Boeing are also in the dark about its locale.

Its black box was never discovered. Neither was any debris found despite extensive combing of oceans and beaches. Almost 15 months after the mishap, large chunks of plane parts belonging to the ill-fated plane made their presence in Reunion Island and Mozambique. The fact that a shady maverick in the vein of Indiana Jones found it and not a single boatman sighted it at sea raised suspicion about whether the evidence was planted. I remember there were some mysterious deaths of officials around the time of these discoveries.

As it stands now, there are only wild conspiratory theories to explain the whole fiasco. Still, none of them manages to correlate all the shreds of evidence we have so far. Then there is a question of which of the findings is indeed credible. Occam's razor principle suggests that when one encounters a problematic crossroad, the more plausible explanation is, the simpler one. As they say, "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." The problem is that all clues are equally compelling and are backed with scientific or pseudo-scientific convincing explanations.

 

Science and logic go out of the window in the modern world. Facts are sometimes stranger than fiction. The 6-tonne elephant in the room has yet to speak. Despite many of the victims being Chinese, China decided to play silent.

MH370 disappeared in Vietnam, a China vassal state. Search parties have searched a vast area, minus territories, under the umbrage of the CCP. There were talks of suspicious cargo on the plane. It was once mentioned to be mangosteens, even though it was off-season. Then there was talk of people travelling with fake Pakistani passports. At that time, the murmur was that the cargo was drones from Afghanistan meant to be delivered to the Urghurs. Another mention was some high-fi computer technology in the aviation industry. The passenger lists also included high-profile personalities of interest to the USA attending a computer conference in Beijing.

Is it possible that the whole thing is a nicely executed perfect crime by the CCP? Once MH 370 entered Vietnam airspace, it took control of the entire aeroplane, disarmed its connectivity to the outside world, brought it down to a safe space in its territory, dismantled whatever it needed to and cleaned up all pieces of evidence. With increasing curiosity, it simply fed the world with elements of evidence to confuse everyone.

That is what we are left with, only conspiracy theories. In a world of information overload, no one is sure of anything. With MH17 being shot down by Russia-sponsored Ukranian terrorists so soon after the MH370 fiasco, there is a question of whether there is a Russian hand in this mess.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Say a little prayer...

You cannot fault me for thinking that when I am air bound, I am just a particle in the sky away the scrutiny of eyes of people who were supposed to be on a lookout for my welfare. From a person whose knowledge of projectile does not go beyond the problems I have solved in Mechanical Mathematics and understanding projectile vomiting, I cannot be faulted to think that if anything were to go wrong in stratosphere, I would be literally on a free fall. Nobody would know where I am and where to look for me.
It is not paranoia or some kind of phobia of flying that drove me to think so.
10  months ago, our plane went missing and till date no one has a clue where it went, where to look for it and what came out the billions spent looking for it.
And more recently, another one went missing. They had all the communication records and flight path at their disposal and yet 2 weeks into its disappearance, they are unable to put a closure to the mishap.
So, when you are up there, you are really on your own. Nobody has a clue where you are and what to do in case something goes wrong. Time spent listening to flight safety instructions can be better spent praying. That is, if anyone out there is even listening... What else can you do but hope?

Puppet-master or dice thrower?

A dejected Sandhu Sr in Penang.

As we straddle along the boat of life as it manoeuvres itself or we manoeuvre it along the river of life, we sometimes wonder why some things happen at all. Are they random occurrences or are they planned move made by the king chess-master?  Are they just chaotic activities which somehow coalesce to give meaning and pattern? Is it all a game by the dice thrower for the fun of it? Does the puppet master enjoy seeing His inventions cringe and wail to their heart's content?
In 1983, when tensions were high across the Iron Curtain after USSR downed KAL007, a Korean civilian plane, Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Union made the unconventional decision of not alerting his superiors when the warning alerts screamed  of a launch of US inter-continental ballistic missiles into Soviet Union. The SOP then was to launch missiles in retaliation. And time was of essence as every ticking second meant annihilation. At that crucial time, Lt. Col. Petrov decided to become a human rather that a lean mean killing machine. Something told him that the warning system was flawed and US were not sending 5 missiles to Russia! His inaction, even though militarily unacceptable, did however avert a nuclear war and possibly World War 3!
Fate reared its ugly head in the life of Sanjid Singh Sandhu. Sadly, he perished in the ill-fated flight of MH17. He was not even supposed to be there. He just filled in for a friend. Aviation disaster had earlier escaped his wife when she swapped her roster not to work on the fatal MH370 flight on 8.3.2014 at the last minute.
Many who escaped the mishap miraculously by twist of fate - missing the flight, changing their schedule at the minute and so on. They praise the Maker who saved them but what about those who perished? Preferential treatment or there is a higher order which is beyond human comprehension?
Life is full of dichotomies and alternatives. So are its outcomes. Life becomes too complicated if we keep on thinking what if, what if. Nobody would be brave enough to face the world and do what they need to do for continuity of life if they are fearful if the outcome is not in their favour. A man got to do what a man got to do.

Another unfound Malaysian mystery!

http://www.cameronhighlandsinfo.com/jim_thompson/


History Of Jim Thompson

"Absolute mysteries only improve with age" writes William Warren, author of Jim Thompson: The Unsolved Mystery, "and there can have been few as absolute as Thompson's has proved to be."
His skills as a designer and textile colourist were soon noted by fashion editors and, when the cast of the musical, The King and I, wore Thompson's creations, his silk empire was off and spinning.

Most visitors to the Cameron Highlands head off for a walk along one of the many forest trails to enjoy the scenery and the refreshingly cool mountain air. Most return to relax in front of a log fire in one of several resorts located in the former colonial hill station made popular by heat-fatigued colonialists who headed up to the cooler Malaysian highlands for some cool relief from the heat and humidity of the lowlands.
Very few walkers don't return. The most celebrated trekker who didn't was American entrepreneur H.W. (Jim) Thompson who had single-handedly rekindled the Thai silk weaving industry before his disappearance.
Jim Thompsons disappearance saw renewed interest in the case. While there are many theories about his disappearance, the fact remains that they are mostly all speculative and no one really knows exactly what happened on that fateful March day. Noted Thai-based journalist and friend of Thompson, William Warren has written the definite analysis of the incident in his book, Jim Thompson - The Unsolved Mystery (Archipelago Press, 1970).
Before his disappearance, Thompson was already well known and this no doubt fuelled much of the speculation and kept the rumour mill ticking over.
Thompson had practised as an architect in New York City from 1931 to 1940. He then quit and enlisted in the army as a private in the Delaware National Guard Regiment. A year after the outbreak of World War 11, he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which specialised in intelligence gathering, subversive propaganda and undercover activities behind energy lines. While the group went on to form the CIA after the war, its activities were a little different to those of the CIA. The organisation adopted the reverse Ten Commandments and was described by one operative as one where they were taught to lie and steal, kill, maim, spy, deceive, terrify and destro" Thompson volunteered to serve in the Pacific and he was originally assigned to the China-India-Burma area.
However, in 1945, he received orders to proceed to Thailand, then technically an enemy of the Allied forces as it was occupied by Japanese troops. In preparation for the assignment, Thompson received jungle training in Sri Lanka, so the jungles of the Cameron Highlands would not be completely unknown territory for him. As it turned out, he arrived in Bangkok just days after the Japanese officially surrendered but he was said to continue spying activities well after the war had finished.

Eaten by Wild Animal?

After his disappearance, it was suggested that he disappeared at the hands of terrorists seeking ransom money despite the fact that no ransom demand was ever received. Unsubstantiated suggestions were also made that Thompson was involved in drugs and that his disappearance was somehow related to this.
Another suggestion was that the Thai silk entrepreneur staged his disappearance despite not being depressed or financially strapped for cash at the time. Was he taken by a tiger, wild boar or leopard? If so, the 325 police, soldiers, friends, Orang Asli and volunteers failed to find any trace of Thompson.
No remains were ever found of the man. Perhaps he fell into a ravine and his remains were enveloped by the jungle? The slippery moss-covered rocks, prickly creepers and dark forest interiors pose problems for jungle trekkers even to this day. The search officially lasted 10 days, covering a territory of up to 70 miles from the scene (teams were dispatched to places where speculative sightings were reported).
Seven years after the disappearance, Jim Thompson was legally declared dead in 1974. As noted in William Warren's book: The myth of Jim Thompson is as vigorous as ever.

In Thompson's Memory
While time has diluted the mystery somewhat, there are those who still reflect on what happened that day. Others staying at the recently-opened Cameron Highlands Resort may raise an eyebrow with their evening late fireside nightcap and think twice about heading for one of the mountain trails without an experienced guide. These days, the only confirmed sighting of Jim Thompson is that of the label on many exclusive Thai silk products sold in the boutique bearing his name in the Cameron Highlands Resort.
Next time you're there, buy a copy of William Warren's Jim Thompson - The Unsolved Mystery from the boutique. Then snuggle up in one of the comfortable resort lounges in front of the log fire and postulate a few theories of your own.

The book starts by talking of the actual disappearance, in effect setting out its stall and the enticing readers with the nature of the mystery. Basically Jim disappeared with seemingly no trace, no clues and this started the mystery. The book obviously gives more detail and more potential plot threads.
Once the nature of the mystery is established the book details the first legend of Jim. Without the first legend the mystery would not be so important. That is to say if an ordinary person disappeared the story would not endure thirty years. Jim worked for the predecessor of the CIA in the war and then aged 40 basically single handedly rebuilt the Thai cottage silk industry into a multi-million pound (dollar) industry. The book talks of personal struggles, strife, conflict, interests and other things which add to the first legend.

Do we know, really?

In a silly internet poll recently, it showed that my personality is that of an influential person! Influential?

Even with the sinuses clogged with phlegm of influenza and my thinking faculty clouded, I still describe myself of anything but influential. Firstly, I am quite lethargic of influencing anybody of anything which makes me a poor salesman, a visionary dictator or industrialist who would transform the world we live in. I am also not influential enough to move mountains or 'arrange things' with my contacts like a chess master moving his pawns. On the contrary, I visualise myself as one easily influenced (fall prey to/suckered) to others' sob stories.
I like to think that I can be such a good role model that I can influence others to path of glory! Maybe that is wishful thinking. And you think you know everything and about anything.
Just the local leaders and foreign think tanks who basically hoodwinked the world into thinking they were in grasp to all the information laid before them and finding MH370 was just a matter of time.
And the paternalistic political leaders who think they know what is best for their subjects. What about the religious leaders who think they know all the purpose of our existence on Earth. As if they had an audience with God, they choreographed our every gesture insisting that God like to be worshipped like this and like that.
Why not just put all the cards on table for mankind to judge? But then the element of mystery and mysticism would be lost. Their importance would amount to nothing if the element of unknown is lost.