Graft in Malaysia’s Defense Ministry

Najib Tun Razak, Malaysia’s defense minister, finds a fountain of cash in military purchases

"Mat Salleh"
24 September 2007
Asia Sentinel

Despite the fact that the country’s borders have been largely secure for 40 years, Malaysia’s Defence Ministry has for decades been available to provide a river of money to defense ministers, the ruling United Malays National Organisation and any of the Sandhurst-educated generals who could get their hands into the till.

But if three separate contracts over the past several years are any yardstick, Najib Tun Razak, who became defense minister in 1999 and kept the portfolio when he became deputy prime minister, appears to have mastered the game far beyond the expectations of any previous defense leaders. Opposition figures say the three contracts, one for Russian Sukhoi jet fighters, a second for French submarines and a third for navy patrol boats, appear to have produced at least US$300 million for UMNO cronies, Najib’s friends and others.

Describing “the mundane but important element of patronage,” Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank supported by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, wrote in a 2005 article that “many foreign arms manufacturers generally used well-connected Malaysians as their lobbyists for contracts. The commission paid to such representatives is estimated to range from 10 to 20 percent.” Even prior to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Southeast Asia, which hasn’t had an external war in decades but is rich enough to spend plenty on guns, was the world’s second-largest arms market after the Middle East, representing about 20 percent of the world’s purchases.

By the end of next year, Malaysia is expected to have 18 Sukhoi-20MKM jets intended to replace 14 US-made F-5Es, which have been in service for two decades. Two Sukhois were delivered this year, and the Malaysian Air Force also has 18 MiG-29N Fulcrums.

All three of the contracts, which were approved under Najib (left) and have been widely cited by the opposition, fit well into Foreign Policy in Focus’s patronage scale. Bringing the three together, and taking a new look at their associations, is instructive. They have been forced back into public attention by the continuing trial of Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib’s closest friends, who is on trial for his life in a suburban high court along with two of Najib’s bodyguards for the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian translator who was shot in the head on October 19, 2006, and then blown up with C4 explosives available only from Malaysia’s military.

According to testimony in the trial, Altantuya accompanied her then-lover Abdul Razak to Paris at a time when Malaysia’s defense ministry was negotiating through a Kuala Lumpur-based company, Perimekar Sdn Bhd, to buy two Scorpene submarines and a used Agosta submarine produced by the French government under a French-Spanish joint venture, Armaris. Perimekar at the time was owned by a company called Ombak Laut, which was wholly owned by Abdul Razak.

The contract was not competitive. The Malaysian ministry of defense paid 1 billion euros (RM 4.5 billion) to Amaris for the three submarines, for which Perimekar received a commission of 114 million euros (RM510 million). Deputy Defense Minister Zainal Abdidin Zin told the Dewan Rakyat, Malaysia’s parliament, that the money was paid for “coordination and support services” although the fee amounted to a whopping 11 percent of the sales price for the submarines. Altantuya, by her own admission in the last letter she wrote before her murder, said she had been blackmailing Abdul Razak, pressuring him for US$500,000. She did not say how she was blackmailing him, leaving open lots of questions.

Spending for defense accelerated across the board after Najib, called “the driving force” behind Malaysia’s military modernization program by Foreign Policy in Focus, became defense chief. The shopping list, the think tank reported, “includes battle tanks from Poland, Russian and British surface-to-air missiles and mobile military bridges, Austrian Steyr assault rifles and Pakistani anti-tank missiles. Kuala Lumpur is also negotiating to buy several F/A 18s, three submarines from France and an unspecified number of Russian Suhkoi Su-30 fighter aircraft.

It was the Sukhois that have become the second controversial purchase brokered by Najib. The deal, worth US$900 million (RM3.2 billion), was through a Russian state company, Federal State Unitary Enterprise 'Rosoboronexport' on May 19, 2003. IMT Defence Sdn. Bhd. was appointed the local agent for the Russian company and received 12 percent of the purchase price, US$108 million (RM380 million). The principal figure and chairman of IMT Defence is Mohamad Adib Adam, the former chief minister of Malacca, previous Land and Development Minister and a longtime UMNO stalwart.

The involvement of IMT Defence only became known because in March 2005, a former director of IMT, Mohamad Zainuri Mohamad Idrus, filed suit against several Adib-related companies, alleging that Adib and his sister, Askiah Adam, “wanted to prevent him from exposing the reality of the Sukhoi deal.” In 2006, Mohamad Zainuri lodged a police report alleging that Adib had stolen the US$108 million (RM 380 million) commission that was supposed to be channeled to the company.

According to Mohamad Zainuri’s report, Adib had secretly registered a new company in the federal island of Labuan, Malaysia’s offshore banking center, bearing a name similar to IMT Defence Sdn. Bhd., allegedly in order to channel the commission illegally to the new company. The report was then sent to the Commercial Crime Investigations Department Headquarters. No report, however, has ever been released to the public.

Then, over the last few weeks, a third military scandal surfaced. Malaysia’s Auditor General, in a report tabled in Parliament on September 7, alleged that a contract to build naval vessels given to PSC-Naval Dockyard, a subsidiary of Penang Shipbuilding & Construction Sdn Bhd, which is owned by another UMNO crony, Amin Shah Omar Shah, is near failure.

[Read the entire killer article here...]

MEET THE MIDDLEMEN!

Gross! Pigged out last night on sautéed escargot and spinach.

"Gleen tea vely good for bad stomach," says Sinseh Ch'ng.

"Rather have peppermint," says Noseless Ned the Nerd.

"'Ere, mon, 'ave a spliff!" drawls Rufus da Rastaman.

"Thanks, bro! It's illegal in some places, y'know."

"Friend of mine got caught with a stash in Sing-Singapoo."

"Kids these days prefer to pop pills. They think it's cool."

"I'll stick with the chicks..."

"The Church does not condom premarital sects, you fornicators!"

"It's okay... I've been baptized!"

"My only sin is gluttony."

"Harro, my name... Lambo!"

"Ouch!"

"Oh, give me a break!"

Photos by Bayat aka Berge Gazen, a Turkish photographer whose versatile middle finger has a cult following. View more of his ingenious "Middleman" images here!

The War Works Hard ~ Dunya Mikhail

War is a recurring theme for poet Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi exile who fled her country after being placed on Saddam Hussein's enemies list. She wrote her first poems as a teenager in Baghdad, just as the slaughter of the Iran-Iraq War began. Subsequent wars offered more to write about.

One of Mikhail's collections is called The War Works Hard. It's also the name of a poem with an ironic take on the meaning and consequence of war.

Mikhail, who now lives in the United States, wrote that poem in response to the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

"When I think of war, for me, it's by default a ... lose-lose case," the poet says. "I believe there's no winner in the war because, you know, the killed one dies physically and the killer dies morally. So they are both dead."

For Mikhail, writing about war is not necessarily a way to heal wounds, she says.

"On the contrary, it keeps [them] open forever," Mikhail adds. "Poems are like X-rays. It makes you see the wound and understand it."

Three Poems by Dunya Mikhail (from The War Works Hard)

THE WAR WORKS HARD

How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning,
it wakes up the sirens
and dispatches ambulances
to various places,
swings corpses through the air,
rolls stretchers to the wounded,
summons rain
from the eyes of mothers,
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins…
Some are lifeless and glistening,
others are pale and still throbbing…
It produces the most questions
in the minds of children,
entertains the gods
by shooting fireworks and missiles
into the sky,
sows mines in the fields
and reaps punctures and blisters,
urges families to emigrate,
stands beside the clergymen
as they curse the devil
(poor devil, he remains
with one hand in the searing fire)…
The war continues working, day and night.
It inspires tyrants
to deliver long speeches,
awards medals to generals
and themes to poets.
It contributes to the industry
of artificial limbs,
provides food for flies,
adds pages to the history books,
achieves equality
between killer and killed,
teaches lovers to write letters,
accustoms young women to waiting,
fills the newspapers
with articles and pictures,
builds new houses
for the orphans,
invigorates the coffin makers,
gives grave diggers
a pat on the back
and paints a smile on the leader's face.
The war works with unparalleled diligence!
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.



BAG OF BONES

What good luck!
She has found his bones.
The skull is also in the bag
the bag in her hand
like all other bags
in all other trembling hands.
His bones, like thousands of bones
in the mass graveyard,
his skull, not like any other skull.
Two eyes or holes
with which he listened to music
that told his own story,
a nose
that never knew clean air,
a mouth, open like a chasm,
was not like that when he kissed her
there, quietly,
not in this place
noisy with skulls and bones and dust
dug up with questions:
What does it mean to die all this death
in a place where the darkness plays all this silence?
What does it mean to meet your loved ones now
with all of these hollow places?
To give back to your mother
on the occasion of death
a handful of bones
she had given to you
on the occasion of birth?
To depart without death or birth certificates
because the dictator does not give receipts
when he takes your life?
The dictator has a heart, too,
a balloon that never pops.
He has a skull, too, a huge one
not like any other skull.
It solved by itself a math problem
That multiplied the one death by millions
to equal homeland
The dictator is the director of a great tragedy.
He has an audience, too,
an audience that claps
until the bones begin to rattle—
the bones in bags,
the full bag finally in her hand,
unlike her disappointed neighbor
who has not yet found her own.



I WAS IN A HURRY

Yesterday I lost a country.
I was in a hurry,
and didn't notice when it fell from me
like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.
Please, if anyone passes by
and stumbles across it,
perhaps in a suitcase
open to the sky,
or engraved on a rock
like a gaping wound,
or wrapped
in the blankets of emigrants,
or canceled
like a losing lottery ticket,
or helplessly forgotten
in Purgatory,
or rushing forward without a goal
like the questions of children,
or rising with the smoke of war,
or rolling in a helmet on the sand,
or stolen in Ali Baba's jar,
or disguised in the uniform of a policeman
who stirred up the prisoners
and fled,
or squatting in the mind of a woman
who tries to smile,
or scattered
like the dreams
of new immigrants in America.
If anyone stumbles across it,
return it to me please.
Please return it, sir.
Please return it, madam.
It is my country…
I was in a hurry
when I lost it yesterday.

From The War Works Hard, published 2005 by New Directions. Copyright © 2005 by Dunya Mikhail. Translation copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Winslow. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

CONNIE TALBOT: 6-Year-Old Finalist on "Britain's Got Talent"

Connie's charm and talent alone are enough to restore one's optimism about the ultimate value of the human experiment!

Anand Krishna: Lessons from Bali

ANAND KRISHNA: NO RUN-OF-THE-MILL SPIRITUAL GURU

Features - August 29, 2006
The Jakarta Post

Michele Lee, Contributor, Bali

TO SIT in the cool tranquil space of the new Anand Krishna center in Bali with the man himself is to be in the company of one of the most renowned spiritual leaders in Indonesia.

His talk the night before had been inspirational so The Jakarta Post took the opportunity to meet him to explore further his beliefs about love, religion and peace.

His Indian accent was undeniable, yet he was born and raised in Surakarta, Indonesia.

Jakarta Post: You said last night in your talk that love is the only solution. Why is it the only solution?

Anand Krishna: I would say that love is the deepest emotion in human beings. It is the deepest part of our inner selves. When the solution is deep enough, then the result is also quite long-term.

It's just like when you have a tree. If the roots grow deep into the earth, then you will have a big tree. So this is the same thing, we should have a solution that is deep within our being and then we can expect a result which is long term.

That's a beautiful metaphor. You also said that when we practice consciousness, this is love. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can become more conscious in our lives?

In Bali, especially, they have a beautiful tradition of dedicating oneself to the environment, to another human being and to God.

I would say that the generic word for God is love. When you do that you are being conscious. You are being conscious of your environment and you are being conscious of anything that you do.

How you sit. How you behave. How you converse with people and interact with them. Consciousness is not something that you can achieve from an hour of meditation every day; it's a full-time job.

It's how you practice meditation in your daily life - from moment to moment. And consciousness also means that it is important to let go of a part of your body in order to save the rest of your body.

So, to let go of part of your body as you say, is a form of sacrifice. So you do feel that there must be some sacrifices made?

I think so. We are sacrificing every minute, every moment actually. We are sacrificing certain things which we feel have lesser value. If you have a better vision, then you let go of the smaller vision of the vision that you no longer have anything to do with now. So actually we are sacrificing every moment.

It was quite enjoyable to hear your views on Gandhi. You said last night that you didn't agree with his methods of fasting because that was a form of hurting himself and love is not about hurting yourself. What do you think, then, is a better way to achieve peace?

Bring about awareness. This is why I started admiring Martin Luther King recently. He was so inspired by Gandhi but he didn't use Gandhi's methods. He would go into the street and make his point clear; he would let himself be imprisoned, but he wouldn't fight back or retaliate.

This is the way, I think. You make your point clear and you think about awareness and you make people aware of the cause you are fighting for. This is exactly what I'm trying to do ... trying to put these two great people together - Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

This is what is needed in Indonesia to bring about awareness that we are a great nation. Once upon a time we used to export spices to Madagascar and Africa. We used our own ships.

So where is that greatness? That greatness is still there within us. Why do we have to adopt something that is not suitable for us?

What I see in Indonesia is that one part of Indonesia is adapting to the Western way of life, which is quite good; I don't have any problem with this, but the whole culture from the West may not be suitable for this country.

The other part of Indonesia is adapting to the Arabic way of life and this is going to create two societies within one. That's not good because we will bring the fights, the battles and the wars to our side - to our country.

Your views on religion are very interesting. As you said, we all have many different religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc, but you feel that we can all come together, because even though we may all have different methods of worshiping God, there is still that one God and one truth that we are all trying to realize.

How can we overcome our prejudices about religion and become more open and less narrow-minded about the whole concept of what God is?

That's why I like to use the word love, because when you speak of love you talk about love. You can even accept the ideas of those who don't believe in God.

There was a Sufi who met someone who said, "I don't believe in God." The Sufi asked him, "Do you believe in yourself?" The man said, "Yes, I do."

As long as you believe in something - that something can be God, love, or self. In the Indian tradition God is your higher self - so I think we have to create this awareness about love.

There are many people who may think to themselves, "I have nothing to do with God." But all of us have got something to do with love.

So the state of creating a dialog between religions, what has been done especially by Christians and Muslims for the last 2,000 years, has been going on for centuries, yet we are heading nowhere because they are talking about God, yet God is not appearing before us.

When a Christian loves a Muslim or a Buddhist loves a Hindu or a Hindu loves a Muslim and if they are really deeply in love - just two human beings, then they forget about all these barriers.

Instead of talking about God - this is wrong I think - let's talk about love.

Once you talk about love and you develop that feeling of oneness with each other then God is present; then you will have no problems at all.


[recommended by Olivia de Haulleville]

KEMBALI KE BALI (Part Four)

Views from Bukit Jambul, en route to Besakih where the Mother Temple is located.

Bali's biggest temple at Besakih was acrawl with pilgrims when I arrived,
so I chatted with a couple of luminously beautiful vendors and rode off into the sunset.

I GOT AS FAR AS the side entrance to Tirta Empul hotsprings but decided to give it a miss. Too many day-trippers there, it felt like Batu Caves. I figured, the hot springs may be “holy” but, heck, all springs are – and I don’t like humans building a fence (and bureaucracy) around them and charging admission for Nature’s gift of healing.

Fifteen minutes later I was feeling exhilarated as the road’s gradient subtly began to increase and I knew I was heading into the highlands. Guess my lungs have acquired a taste for crisp mountain air from fifteen years of living at the foot of the Titiwangsa Range. Stopped to buy half a kilo of heavenly marquisas (“the famous Indonesian passion fruit”) and snapped this portrait of a fresh-faced highland girl (I was charmed by the way the fruits were displayed in elegant pyramids).

Village girl at fruit stall 20 minutes from Gunung Batur

As my 5-day tour of Bali progressed I became acutely aware of the fractal nature of reality. My handy desktop dictionary puts it this way: “Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.” The key phrase in this instance is “similar patterns.” The holographic architecture of Creation is fractal, and this is hinted at in the Hermetic notion of “as above, so below” (more accurately rendered as “as within, so without”) which suggests that Nature works through repetitive geometric patterns, on micro as well as macro levels.

The volcanic Gunung Batur, reminiscent of Mount Doom in Mordor, its western slope still black, barren and baking hot, while its eastern slope facing Batur Lake is starting to green out beautifully.



Just as you will meet Wayans, Mades, Nyomans, and Ketuts in every family wherever you go in Bali, the same rule applies to cultural forms and human behavior. Put another way: one fruit stall (like a fresh-faced, smiling village girl) is pretty much the same as another, with minor variations that allow for a degree of diversity – yet, in essence, it is a repeat pattern of a particular motif which generates a dynamic interplay between uniqueness and universality.

The fractal principle holds true whether in the case of homestays, bakso stands, pirate DVD outlets, surfer beaches, winding mountain roads, dusty and noisy urban streets, night markets, or busloads of daytrippers. However, on an island the size of Bali, the micro- and macrocosmic dance is clearly visible – just as it’s easier to understand the behavior of a small group of individuals rather than that of a mass of faceless statistics.

When one begins to notice the fractal forms at the core of all structures, whether man-made or natural, the effect is somewhat psychotropic. Sensory impressions begin to interlock like pieces of an immense, multi-dimensional jigsaw and the concept of morphogenetic fields suddenly becomes a vivid reality.

You could say the web of life that has been there all the while spontaneously comes into sharp focus, and it seems totally incredible that you never noticed it before. Indeed, this sort of epiphany is akin to the enhanced perception triggered by consciousness-altering substances like psilocybin or lysergic acid diethylamide.

In Bali, the boundary between the secular and the spiritual is blurry to the extreme. Science can be found living happily next door to mysticism. Indeed, I know of no other place where simplicity and sophistication get along so well.

The friendliness and warmth of people you encounter wherever you go is offset - and complemented - by the savvy and sophistication of the Balinese mind.

A pair of mammoths guard the 372 steps leading to the royal pura of Gunung Kawi

By corraling the hedonistic budget tourists in the Kuta-Legian area near the airport, the Balinese have successfully found a way to capture a staggering amount of foreign revenue without getting overly contaminated by it.

The entire world is drawn to the ultimate theme park that is Bali – and the locals who work in tourism have swiftly learnt how to keep the vacationers coming back year after year and bringing along more friends.

In Bali you don’t get the sense of pseudo-morality and fuddy-duddy judgmentalism that puts a damper on folks having fun any way they want – young Aussies who blow their wad going from beach to beach in quest of the ultimate wave, consuming beer by the crate in the process, are as welcome as earnest ethnomusicologists, culture vultures, or the rich and retired. Wherever I stopped for coffee or a bakso fix, some old chap would question why I was traveling solo instead of with a nice chewet (Balinese for "girl"; boys are called chowok). "Don't be putting ideas in my head," I'd quip and this would generate a fair bit of mirth and merriment. How refreshingly unprudish the Balinese are!


You feel welcome in Bali, regardless of your holiday budget. And the range of options is vast – you can spend anything from 30,000 to 3,000,000 rupiahs on a night’s accommodation. Chances are you’ll have a great time either way.

How did the Balinese accomplish this extraordinary feat of embracing modernity with a broad grin while retaining traditions that sustain social cohesiveness? Perhaps a significant clue can be found in the nature and personality of their prime deity, an emanation of Shiva-Natarajah they call Tintya, usually portrayed as an agile and elvish figure – sometimes painted with energy bolts shooting from every joint, often supported on a spinning chakra (disc or wheel), but invariably dancing the cosmic dance of primordial energy.

Studying images of Tintya through modern eyes, one might be tempted to speculate that the supreme deity of the Balinese was modeled after a visiting ET!

Consider the descriptive names the Balinese have for Tintya: he’s also known as Sangyang Widi (The Wise One), Sangyang Licin (The Elusive One), and Sangyang Tunggal (The Absolute One). Interestingly, Tintya represents the Supreme Embodiment and Manifestation of Life Itself in its unfathomable entirety and infinite diversity. Tintya is revered in Bali above the trinity of the exoteric Hindu pantheon, viz., Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.

Exploring the outskirts of Ubud on my motorbike, I stopped by another sacred fig tree and entered the small pura beside it. The stone walls and floor of the pura were green with ancient slime and the place looked fairly unvisited. Then I spotted an incongruously modern steel ladder bolted to the central candi (or shrine). Ascending the ladder between a pair of guardian dragons carved in stone, I came face to face with a Tintya icon, freshly gilded and radiant in the bright sunshine.

This was truly an unexpected epiphany which triggered a flood of long-buried genetic memories, too complex and mysterious to elaborate upon in a blogpost. Someday I may find a way to express these antediluvian flashbacks in words. But for now, suffice to say that I remembered the origins of the gods and the beginnings of religious indoctrination on this exquisite (and soon, soon to be liberated) holographic planet.

Terima kasih, Bali. I thank you with all my heart for staying true to yourself.

Text & photos © Antares

BACK TO PART ONE

KEMBALI KE BALI (Part Three)

Inspiring view from a fancy resort about 20 minutes from Ubud. Lodgings range from USD175-400 a night. I paid 50,000 rupiah (about RM18) at Dewi Antara Homestay (no great views but it had a hot and cold shower and I slept extremely well).

THE BALINESE are apparently governed by a strong sense of cosmic order, devolving from the adoration of monarchs who were once worshiped as deities in human form. Their belief in the Law of Karma seems to fortify them against hubristic notions of upward mobility; in Bali you can be a rich tourist without paranoid expectations that the poor folk catering to your whims are just waiting for their chance to rip you off, pick your pocket or mug you in a dark alley.

70% of the craftsmen and business operators in Bali originate from Java.
This young man spends his days patiently pointillizing wooden turtles.

I was never, for an instant, nervous about anyone pinching my bag or making off with my rented bike. Even the few beggars I encountered in Ubud weren’t at all pushy, and were happy to accept a 500-rupiah (less than 20 sen) donation.



My second visit to Bali confirmed beyond any doubt that Ubud – and its verdant environs of well-tended paddies – is where I could easily establish a home away from home. One can “kontrak” or rent a cozy house set amidst the most inspiring landscapes for between RM300-500 a month; count on paying at least RM750 (that’s about 2 million rupiah!) for a luxury villa. Indeed, my Bali vacation has been a powerful incentive for me to become grotesquely rich (as I fully deserve to be).

Understandably - considering Bali’s immense popularity as a tourist destination (it has successfully retained its reputation as “the world’s most beautiful island” for decades) - I was initially anxious that I might find the place overrun by busloads of budget airline tour groups (Malaysians and Taiwanese are notorious for traveling in large, noisy platoons). As it turned out, the only horribly congested areas were the Kuta-Legian “drunken surfer” strip – and two or three shopping streets in Ubud. Everywhere else I ventured, Bali looked its remarkable, unflappable self.

I stayed only one night in Kuta, in a quiet guesthouse just off the busy commercial hub, and did a wee bit of shopping (nylon hammock, music DVDs, a cool shirt). Bumped into a lovelorn Irish gypsy named Eva and dispensed a bit of free advice. Rented a motorbike the next morning - cheap at 40,000 rupiah (about RM15) a day - and off I rode, feeling freer and easier than I have in years. Getting in and out Kuta, though, is quite a feat as the streets are a veritable maze, dusty and dense with traffic. You can’t rely on maps in Bali. Just stop and ask every 10 minutes. You’ll find that everybody is happy to point you in the right direction with a genuine smile.

One of the greatest joys in life is to ride a motorbike through open country without the impediment of a ridiculous crash helmet. True, Bali has been coerced by the diabolical forces of globalization into making crash helmets compulsory - but the rule is rarely enforced, especially outside the crowded urban areas, and this is one sure gauge of a nation that hasn't signed a contract with Dr Mephistopheles!

In Ubud I was surprised to hear somebody call my name. I turned around and caught sight of Andrew Sia’s beaming face. Did a quick U-turn and caught up with him down the road. Andrew (from The Star) was chauffeuring his mum around. He suggested I check out the sacred spring at Tirta Empul, Tampaksiring.

At Gunung Kawi, the royal pura (temple) and amphitheatre  carved out of granite are worth a visit.

11th century meditation cave at Gunung Kawi.

Met another Malaysian, oddly enough also from The Star, at Gunung Kawi. Zafarul was honeymooning with his new bride, Nazmi. He promised to pop me an email. Still waiting, Zafarul!

Private shower at Gunung Kawi - for me the most mystical moment of my brief sojourn there!

[To be continued...]

Text & photos © Antares

PART FOUR

KEMBALI KE BALI (Part Two of a 4-part pictorial essay)

Barong, king of spirits, getting ready for the grand cremation of Bali's Queen Mother.

More preparations in Ubud for the Royal Cremation.

WHY ON EARTH did it take me 26 years to return to Bali? My first visit in 1981 stretched over 5 weeks and every day was a Technicolor dream filled with adventure, romance, inspiring vistas, and delicious sensations.

Perhaps the high point of that earlier trip was my encounter with the Bird and the Bearcat in a tourist restaurant on Lovina Beach. I found myself seated opposite two friendly young women who looked Scandinavian. As we chatted over coffee after dinner, somebody shouted: “Wow! Look at the full moon!” So we decided to take a stroll on the beach to revel in the silvery moonshine. Somehow I found myself standing beside the Bird on the surf’s edge. It was a moment of perfect ease and deep tranquility.

Without a word spoken our lips and souls connected.

Bird spoke briefly to Bearcat (her favorite traveling companion and childhood friend of ten years) and jumped on the back of my rented motorbike. We rode off to my humble lodgings and, with only a few coconut palms as our witnesses, I married Agnete "Bird" Holbak under a cloudless Balinese sky. Our honeymoon lasted less than a week before Helle the Bearcat turned up at our charming guesthouse on the outskirts of Ubud. “Your birthday is tomorrow,” Bearcat reminded Bird, “and I can’t let you celebrate without me!” So the three of us saw the Bird turn 21 in Ubud and thereafter, we decided to save money by sharing a room – the Bird and I in one bed, Bearcat in the other. And I thought such things only happen in the movies…

My Danish viking angels flew off to tour Malaysia’s peninsular east coast as planned while I stayed on in Bali another few days. They had my address in KL and promised to reconnect at the end of their journey. As it turned out I decided to cut short my Bali trip so that I could meet up with my dad at Changi Airport, Singapore. He was on his way to Melbourne for heart bypass surgery, accompanied by my mum and sis. The operation, performed by Dr Vincent Chang (the acclaimed heart surgeon who was senselessly murdered a few years later by a Malaysian thug), was successful beyond all expectations. My dad lived another 23 years and died of bronchial congestion in October 2004 at the ripe old age of 88.

Bird and Bearcat did show up at my doorstep in KL and we enjoyed a bonus vacation on Pangkor. I subsequently visited the Bird in Copenhagen a couple of times; and in 1987 Bird, Bearcat and I enjoyed a 10-day reunion in Phuket as the six-legged monster of Laem Promthep.

Stone monkey guards a wayside shrine.

In any case that 1981 holiday in Bali permanently changed my outlook on life, gave it an earth-centered spiritual grounding. The very next year I discovered the enchanting location I now call home. It was the closest I could get to living in paradise without leaving Malaysia. My nearest neighbors are now the Orang Asli who are in many ways like the Balinese – although they sadly lack the aesthetic sense, the unforced graciousness, and the rich tradition of skilled craftsmanship that characterize the Balinese.

Dead trees transformed into magnificent works of art.

Wherever you turn in Bali, you'll see skilled artisans hard at work - and there are expert woodcarvers, stone sculptors, metalworkers, and glassblowers to be found in large numbers, especially in the Gianyar province, where the cultural hub of Ubud is located.

Undoubtedly the people of Bali are an integral part of the island’s irresistible allure. Three million people – give or take twenty thousand tourists at any given time – crowded together on an island no bigger than the state of Selangor. A strong sense of hierarchy and tradition underpins all of Balinese social life - legacy of an era when Hinduism (along with the caste system) arrived on the island with refugees from the shrinking Majapahit empire.

Apart from the aristocracy - and it’s not unusual to meet a few “Anak Agungs” just as “Tengkus” aren’t uncommon in Malaysia, since Royalty everywhere has a penchant for polygamy - Balinese families classify themselves as Brahmanas (priests and scholars), Ksatriyas (warriors), Vaesyas (artisans, farmers, merchants), or Sudras (laborers).

I doubt that the demarcations between the castes are as rigid today as they once might have been, and intermarriage across caste lines must be fairly common these days. Balinese are named according to their status within each family. Every first-born has Wayan as a first name; second-born, Made; third-born, Nyoman; and fourth-born, Ketut.

What about the fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-born?

“The parents are free to name these children whatever they like,” I was informed by a lovely she-male named Nyoman Ayu (left) who took a shine to me.

Striking architectural and cosmological similarities abound amongst the monument-building cultures found along the Asia-Pacific Rim, leading one to speculate on Bali’s ancient links, via the Indian, with the Cambodian, Incan, and Mayan civilizations.

The Pleiadian influence reveals itself in the symbolism of the sacred bull (Alcyone, the brightest star in the Pleiades, is also known as Eta Tauri, and happens to be part of the Taurus constellation). Interestingly, the Pleiades features prominently in the starlore of almost every culture found south of the Equator; while, in the northern hemisphere, the predominant influences are Sirius and Orion. Energetically speaking, one may regard the Pleiades as a "feminine" or magnetic influence and civilizations in the southern hemisphere tend to be more mystical. Whereas the "masculine" or electrical influence of Sirius and Orion tends to inspire civilizations that are more technologically inclined.

[To be continued...]

Text & photos © Antares

PART THREE

SHANNON @ RWMF 2007

Polish Celtic folk-jazz fusion group SHANNON explores new musical territory with the addition of Maria Namyslowska on keyboards and Marcin Drabik on electric violin (with Marek Kwadrans on bodrhan). Captured in action at the Rainforest World Music Festival, Sarawak, on 15 July 2007.

APU @ RWMF 2007

The colorful and exuberant Aseana Percussion Unit (APU) represented Peninsular Malaysia at the Rainforest World Music Festival 2007. Today, Malaysians celebrate the 50th anniversary of Merdeka or Independence (though from whom or what it's hard to say) - so it's only appropriate that APU be invited to liven up the party with their feel-good muhibbah stage act!