Archive for October, 2007

This is the second in a three-part series by Alan Lane about his experience of being inadvertently caught up in a war while on business in Beirut.

Part 1 of Escape from Beirut was posted here on Fusion View last Wednesday.

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Alan writes:

Day 3 (continued). It is Sunday and the feeling of being trapped and alone increases. Experiencing an attempted coup against the military government in Nigeria some years ago had been frightening; but at least the roads and Lagos airport had been left intact.

Chances of an evacuation by sea become slimmer when we hear the Israelis have bombed Jounieh and other ports along the coast road. It is the last straw for Tony and his family who plan to leave the next morning via taxi to Syria. But now it is even more dangerous, expensive (US$150 for a taxis has now become $1500) and crowded (some 300,000 refugees are to cross the border by the time I leave Lebanon).

I walk into the nearby village to collect my thoughts as the last expatriate at our hotel. Bells at the small church announce a service is being held. Clearly, despite war, people’s faith is still strong. I am working on the basis of assurances from the British Embassy that there is a plan to help Brits. I am advised to stay put, wait for the Embassy’s call and prepare to go the sea route. When and exactly how, I know not.

My loyal and wonderful driver Maurice confesses he is taking the stranding of visitors in his country badly. Maurice had showed me the Green Line in central Beirut. Across this no-man’s-land, Christians and Muslims had fought a Civil War for some 15 years. He talks of still having a bullet lodged in his neck from those troubled days.

I sit with him over a cup of coffee in his modest shop where he makes chocolates and runs a taxi service. He is a true humanitarian in all senses of the word and worries that soon there will be shortages of essentials: food, water, medical drugs and gasoline. Likewise, I struggle to deal with my own feelings on the tragedy unfolding in his beautiful land.

Day four. Tony and his family leave at 6.30 a.m. for the Syrian border where they then plan to head further south to Amman in Jordan. I ask their taxi driver for his view of the situation. His reply does nothing to re-assure me of my predicament. ‘The Israelis and Hizbullah have stopped fighting for 48 hours to allow all those left to evacuate,’ he tells me. ‘The Irish Embassy went in convoy towards Syria today.’

I ask Maurice to take me to Beirut port as I hear the French Government has arranged for a Mediterranean ferry boat to pick up expatriates today. He warns I may not get on board, being British. To test this out I phone the French Embassy and am told in a terse and very Gallic way: ‘Non, you ‘ave to be French.’ Understandable, but so much for the European entente cordial.

Several hours later, Britain’s Ambassador in Beirut, James Watt announces an evacuation plan by sea has begun for Britons, with HMS Illustrious and HMS Bulwark on their way from Gibraltar. I have already registered with the British Embassy, so I intend to continue my pattern over the next few days: hours of frantic telephoning to ensure I am included on any evacuee list.

I tap into the BBC News website which gives chapter and verse on the extent of a multinational evacuation – thought by some to be potentially the largest since the D-Day landings of the Second World War. Some 20 countries may be involved accounting for around 100,000 citizens living in the Lebanon if they all decided to leave.

By far the largest numbers are from the UK (10,000), the United States (25,000), France (20,000), Australia (25,000) and Canada (16,000), with considered options including aircraft, landing craft, military and commercial ships and convoys of buses over the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Later, I learn, many elect to stay.

Day five. The war becomes a hot debating issue among leaders at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, which seems far removed from the reality that is Beirut. Meanwhile, it is reported Israeli troops have crossed the Lebanese border, a further ominous sign for those of us still stranded. We are told we are in a ‘safe Christian area,’ but in war, nothing is guaranteed. During the Civil War, I am told, there was fighting in the grounds of our hotel and bullet holes in the walls.

Tell-tale signs that politically, the situation is reaching serious levels begin to emerge. I go to the bank to draw US dollars against my credit card to bolster a dwindling cash flow. I am told the government has stopped the issuing of the currency to prevent funds leaving the country.

Later that evening, I hear the good news from John Barrett, an area warden working with the British Embassy: that I am among some 350 Britons to be evacuated the next morning by the Royal Navy destroyer, HMS York. John, I later learn, in his unofficial and amazing ‘Schindler’s List’ role, helped many people leave the Lebanon during the war.

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Next Wednesday: Evacuation at last…

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

© Copyright: Alan Lane All rights reserved

Photo: showing view from the mountains in Beirut of Israeli ships blockading the harbour - thanks to Alan Lane

Following on from my post on Friday with my Country & Eastern song, I’ve discovered that there’s a wave of Country & Western fever sweeping across Asia. Who knew?

Here are some videos to prove it:

Exhibit A. A fab line dancing display from some Taiwanese students.

Exhibit B. Yee-haw in Singapore!

Exhibit C. Tai Chi meets Ho Down?

I have to confess that I’m a secret Country & Western fan. Every time I listen to Loretta Lynne’s Coal Miners Daughter or Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colours, I succumb to the sentimental twangs of the guitars and the heart-warming heroism of the poor but plucky families in those autobiographical songs. Tears well up and before long, I’m sobbing into my sleeve.

It strikes me that many C&W songs are about “them good ol’ days when we was po’ but we was happy”. And it’s not just in the family saga songs. There are the songs where even though the narrator is now rich and successful, he/ she and their lover now don’t get on but way back when, back when they was strugglin’ to make ends meet - now those were the good times.

Also, many C&W songs evoke the rugged, lonely and mythical American landscape with their use of US placenames to give a sense of location. Think of Phoenix, San Francisco, Aspen, Denver, Jackson, Tennessee - these are all places I learnt about from listening to C&W songs as a kid in Malaysia.

It occurred to me that you don’t get many Asian songs about “how great it was when we was poor”. Nor are there many international hits that involve lines like “By the time I get to Johore Bahru, you’ll be waking” or “I left my heart in Penang”….

So, to redress the balance, I had a go at writing a Country & Eastern song, which I’ve called “The Ballad of the Lonesome Accountant.”

Imagine some steel string, twangy guitars and a gravelly, mournful Hank Williams sound.

I was raised up in Mud Valley*
Right beside the River Klang
We didn’t have much money
Nor much of any thang.

My mom, she fried hot noodles,
Spicy char kway teow,
Every day in Chow Kit Market,
With hardship on her brow.

My dad, he drove a fancy car
For a big time Mr Boss.
We never made much profit,
Only pockets full of loss.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From our porch by the Gombak freeway.
I dreamt of riches and big houses
And escaping far away.
I dream I’m a fancy accountant,
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highways
And I’m really getting far.

So I worked hard at my studies,
Gave my life up to my school.
Didn’t do no drugs nor liquor,
Nor girls nor played the fool.

And I got a job in business,
Got me some buy-to-lets.
Made a lot of profit
And paid of all our debts.

I bought my mom a great big house
And she sips martinis now,
While days of ladies lunching
Wipe the hardship from her brow.

I bought my dad a fancy car
And now he’s a big time Mr Boss.
He runs things all for profit
And never makes a loss.

I don’t have time to spend with them.
My wife and kids don’t know me.
They go shopping in the fancy malls
Living it up with my money.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From my Porsche on the freeway.
I see my riches and big houses
And my heart is far away.
I’m just a lonesome accountant
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highway
But am I getting far?

I wish for days so long ago
When my mom laughed out loud
At her stall in Chow Kit Market
And dad’s kindness made me proud.

I wish my wife would look at me
With eyes and heart aflame
And my kids could learn to love
More than just computer games.

Chorus:

I watch the cars fly out of town
From my Porsche on the freeway.
I see my riches and big houses
And I’m escaping far away.
I’m just a lonesome accountant
Driving, driving in my car.
I drive all through the highways
And I’m going very far.

I drive all through the highways
And I’m going very far.
Going, going, going very far.

All it needs now is for someone to set it to music and sing it for us! Any offers?

*Kuala Lumpur means “the muddy meeting place of two rivers”

~~~

Photo: of line dancing in Singapore, thanks to csc.gov.sg

PS. Come back on Monday for some videos of other Asian C&W fans doing their thang ….

When I met Alan Lane earlier this year on a balmy September evening in London, we started talking about cross-cultural lives as I told him about some of the fusion stories that I have showcased here on Fusion View. We found that we shared a global outlook and an interest in cultures across the world. Alan then told me how he had been in Beirut on business when he was caught up in a war.

This is the first of a three part series that Alan has offered to share on Fusion View about his experiences of the war in Beirut.

~~~~

Alan writes:

Israeli jets began bombing the Lebanon on 12 July 2006 in retaliation when three of its soldiers were captured by the Hizbullah Islamic group in the southern part of the country. What followed was a 34 day war.

The frightening reality sinks in at around four in the morning. Through the open balcony door of my hotel room overlooking Beirut comes the distant whine of an Israeli jet aircraft.

Reaching the window, I see and hear the crackle of red tracer fire from anti-aircraft guns. A huge ‘crump’ shakes the building as the aircraft’s guided missile hits the southern suburbs. Nearby, the sky is lit by a fire raging at a fuel storage tank destroyed by a bomb.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am in a war zone and my worst nightmare has begun.

Day 1. I realise I should have known better the previous afternoon. In retaliation for Lebanon’s Hizbullah (Party of God) capturing two of its soldiers on the southern border, Israel had carpet-bombed all airports just hours before I was due to leave Beirut for home in the UK after a five-day business trip.

But I was naïve. Like many others, I believed this was just a warning shot by the Israelis to their sworn enemy.

A sense of panic ripples throughout my hotel, considered a safe Christian refuge in the hills above Beirut. Rumours begin to spread. Had Gulf States embassy groups escaped along the main Beirut to Damascus highway into Syria before it was cut by Israeli bombing? How long would it take for this road to be blocked? The answer comes within hours as Israeli bombs slice through this route crossing the beautiful Bekaa Valley.

By now, it is clear Israel intends to trap Hizbullah – and us by default – within Lebanon’s borders, having already blockaded the port with gun-ships visible from my balcony. We begin to realise this is no short, sharp military response but potentially a long, drawn-out affair leaving us with few exit options.

Day two. Tensions build among my fellow guests. Exit plans are being desperately considered as Israeli precision bombing takes out more roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Night-time bombardment from the air or sea is becoming a regular part of life; and although seemingly distant, we don’t know for how long we will be safe.

Both expatriates and Lebanese consider routes through Lebanon’s northern valleys, a stronghold for Hizbullah. Others opt for the longer and potentially safer coastal route through Tripoli into Syria, or the almost circular drive through Syria into Jordan. Either way, the situation is beginning to mirror Saigon’s last days during the Vietnam War; the only difference being, we hope, that no-one is coming to kill us.

Day three. It is decision time for me and my fellow guests. The coast road is now being bombed and many thousands of evacuees queue at the Syrian border, some with visas, those without often being turned back. Stories abound of refugees walking for several kilometres across the border with their baggage, of people sleeping on the streets of Damascus as there are no hotel rooms available. For those of us left in Beirut, the exit window is gradually closing.

We hear one group took a bus up over the Syrian border and somehow made their way to Aleppo, leaving us wondering how they would make their way from this relatively remote small town noted in the annals of Lawrence of Arabia’s desert campaign.

Dubai-based Briton Paul Drummond and Washington-based David and Lois Khairallah take the gamble and opt for the coastal road by taxi. So too, does a Kuwaiti, who joins a convoy leaving from his country’s embassy in the hills. Paul had been worried about rumours pointing to civil unrest in the Lebanon following the onslaught of war. David and I had spent many hours walking the hotel gardens agonising over the decision.

I, in my cowardice or perhaps good sense, choose to stay and consider my options. I am joined by Tony and his family from New York, who, in generous style says if my government can’t get me out, then ‘we won’t leave you behind’ and I can go with the Americans.

Hour by hour, the hotel’s TV broadcasts in English and Arabic relay the heightening conflict. While Israel pounds Beirut from the air and sea, Hizbullah sends showers of rockets over the border into Israeli territory. We watch transfixed as Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah provides a ‘watch this, as it happens’ live commentary while his forces set fire to an Israeli gun-boat in the port with what is thought to be a self-propelled drone bomb.

Meanwhile, the political rhretoric becomes more alarming in this potential scenario for a full-blown Middle East regional war.

Lebanon Prime Minister Fouad Siniora describes Israel’s actions as ‘opening the gates of hell and madness’ while ‘cutting his country to pieces.’ Israel responds by repeating its demands for Hizbullah to be disarmed and threatening to ‘turn back the clock 20 years for Lebanon’ if the captured soldiers are not returned.

Among the guests, Lebanese people I talk to are split on what is unfolding before their eyes. Some see the Israeli action as an unmitigated disaster for their country and a gross intrusion backed by the United States. Others, at this point in time, see it as a way to weaken Hizbullah’s unwelcome influence in their society.

Refugees from southern Beirut continue to pour into our hotel in cars, mini-buses and four-by-fours loaded with personal belongings en route to the border. To my surprise, I am advised by locals to ‘watch what I say’ as some of our visitors are from Hizbullah territory. I tend not to judge those I know nothing about; yet the unwelcome ghosts of Terry Waite’s fate as a hostage in the 1980s drift in, and as a precaution, I check my normally open conversational style.

Meanwhile, down the hill, restaurant trade is still booming as the durable Lebanese insist on trying to live life as normal while the ‘thump’ of bombs can be heard below in central Beirut. Against a history of conflict and culture dating back to Phoenician times, the Lebanese are born survivors and traders with a phlegmatic approach to war and unrest. A 15-year civil war from 1975 to 1990 has cultivated an approach of ‘whatever the risks, life has go on.’

I ask one of the kind and helpful Lebanese staff at my hotel for his views on the situation. His reply is as honest as it is chilling: ‘It is very bad; I think you should leave right now.’

~~~~

Next Wednesday: Day 3 continues as, trapped at the hotel, Alan waits for the British Embassy to come up with an evacuation plan.

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

Photo shows view from the mountains in Beirut of Israeli ships blockading the harbour - thanks to Alan Lane

© Copyright: Alan Lane All rights reserved

Less well-known that Thai kickboxing, Japanese karate and Chinese kung-fu, Malay silat is nonetheless an incredibly athletic and gracefully dangerous martial art. Here is a video showing some of the stunning moves. There’s an interview in Malay with one of the experts in-between the action shots - bear with it and the demonstrations are impressive.

There’s an international Malaysia Silat website if you’re inspired to find out more. It explains:

“Silat Gayong, or correctly referred to as Silat Seni Gayong, is a Malay art of self-defense; a fighting art, the art of stopping wars. The art is not merely about self-defense, it is also for the development of the self (belajar mengenal diri); becoming a better person so that you may serve humanity. It is a great way to develop and increase physical fitness, flexibility, mental conditioning, discipline and self-confidence. The philosophy of Gayong is strongly related to the Malay Adat Istiadat (Malay cultures and traditions), morals, adab (respect) and the teaching of religion. Religion is the inspiration, motivation and guidance for high quality behavior. It is a mark of peace and harmony.”

The following video shows the techniques for dealing with an attacker wielding a kriss - the Malay jagged dagger - complete with sweaty, muscly torsos and an exotic local setting.

I came across an article by Marina Mahathir, the daughter of former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, writing about a dinner she had with her family. She said, “In my family I have relatives who are Chinese, American, French, Irish, Javanese and I don’t know what else. But we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about race and nationality. I never thought of my aunt as Chinese until her party, at which time I felt proud.”

It struck me that many Malaysians I know have families made up of this kind of eclectic demographic, my own included. My sister-in-law is Dutch and my partner is South African. My cousin is half-South African and another cousin is married to an Australian. There are Kiwis, Brits, Americans, Indonesians all coming into the clan.

There’s still some resistance amongst the more traditional older folk, I think, to their children marrying “outside” what they are used to. I remember years ago an elderly relative asking me if my parents minded that my brother was marrying a Dutch girl, saying, “Their children will only be half yours, you know.” Well, genetically, whoever my brother married, their off-spring would only be half Ooi…! My parents laughed when I told them this exchange - for them, the only thing that matters is that whoever we are with, we are happy. And my sense is that most Malaysian families these days have attitudes more similar to my parents than my elderly relative.

What’s your family like? Are you a United Nations like mine? I’d love to hear your story - please add a comment!

Pic: thanks to en.wikipedia.org

Say Lee added a comment to my post about his blog last week, mentioning old fashioned games that he used to play as a child like spinning tops and collecting bottle caps. It started me thinking back to all the home-made games we used to play as kids in Malaysia. We had our share of Action Man and Barbie doll toys, Lego and toy cars etc so we were fortunate kids in that respect. However, we also had fun playing with home-made gadgets and toys, especially with other kids at school or cousins we visited in my mother’s hometown in Taiping.

Recently, my mum was clearing out our cupboards at home in KL and found a packet of “five stones” right at the back. “Five stones” is a picking up game rather like jacks but instead of a bouncy ball and plastic bits to pick up, you play with cloth-sewn packets of dried rice the size of marbles. You scatter them on the floor, pick one up and throw that into the air - while it’s in the air, you pick up each of the remaining four packets in different sequences, catching the flying one at the end of each move. These ones that my mum found were made out of cloth from old pyjamas and must be over 30 years old! They are rather manky and I’m a bit nervous about picking them up in case they crumble to dust in my hands. She had brought them over instead of chucking them straight in the bin because it was amazing that they had survived all these years and it was fun for us all to look back at those days together.

I would play “five stones” with my friends in break time at school in KL, sitting in a circle on the cement floor. We also used to play a skipping game with a “rope” made out of rubber bands woven together - I was never very good at that, not being terribly well co-ordinated, but I remember enjoying stringing the rubber bands together and marvelling at how a cluster of these little things could become a long rope.

When we were a bit older, there was that paper game where you folded a piece of paper into an opening and closing flower and wrote a “prediction” in different quadrants. Holding it in your two hands, you’d ask someone to pick one of the four colours you had coloured in on the top and then spell the colour out as you opened and closed the “flower”. They would then un-leaf a petal where the last word landed and find their future “predicted” underneath. I have no idea what the paper thingy game is called but I loved creating different flowers with different predictions and colours.

I guess these are all girly games. I wonder if they are still played in my old school back in KL (Bukit Bintang Girls Shool 2). Or perhaps other home-made games have been invented since then. Can anyone tell me?

UPDATE: Oh wow, I was just searching the internet to find a picture of “five stones” and the Singapore Museum shop is selling a set (with pouch) as “traditional toys” for S$8.00! The online store description says: “Five stones (or four, if you prefer) would be played by a group of children sitting in a circle in the hot afternoons and taking turns to throw the stones in the air, catching them with one hand, in a variety of patterns.”

I wonder if they’d like to receive my historic, genuine antique “five stones” to display in the museum?

Whatever you might think about the army or the navy or America and war, this short film is a brilliant piece of story-telling about men, pride, war and friendship. It does it in just under 12 minutes with no dialogue and beautifully nuanced repeating scenes that take you deeper and deeper into the story and the characters of the two men.

You can find out more about one of the actors James McEachin at http://www.jamesmceachin.com/ and also the longer movie he has made, Old Glory, inspired by the response to this short film.

It looks like spammers have been using false [at]fusionview.co.uk email addresses to spam all and sundry. I’ve been getting all the bounce-back messages from their recipients. This is very annoying for everyone - the spammed and also me.

All I can say to anyone who has been spammed by a false [at]fusionview.co.uk is that the emails did not originate from me and I am as fed up with it as you are.

I’ve looked into this and it looks like quite a number of domain name owners have had this problem and there doesn’t seem to be much that we can do about it. If someone has found a solution, please let me know by adding a comment.

For many of us over a certain age, the digital revolution has really changed our lives in a dramatic way - especially if you compare how things are now with what we were doing 30 years ago. I’ve written about such stark contrasts in my post about the difficulties and costs of phoning home to Malaysia from the UK in the 1970s and touched on how our working lives have changed because of the computer. So my interest was immediately sparked when I came across a post on music players on Say Lee’s blog A Pleasant Surprise(s), a personal blog from a Malaysian emigre to Florida, USA, talking about his daily life, family and musings on Chinese and Buddhist philosophy.

He wrote about his experiences of listening to music over the decades, starting with vinyl records played on a gramaphone and progressing via the Sony Walkman to today’s MP3 players. It reminded me of fiddling around with a cassette recorder and leads trying to tape vinyl records off my parents hi-fi so we could listen to taped music in the car. And of songs getting stuck on the turn-table if there was a scratch on the record. And the pain of having your favourite tape chewed by the tape machine and trying to unravel the mess of brown tangle from the mechanism - especially if you’d actually bought the cassette and had no other back up of it.

On the other hand, it was fun to sit around with friends passing the record sleeve around, reading the lyrics from the insert and gazing at the big photos of your favourite singer or band. And making mixer tapes of songs for your friends, writing out the titles by hand and decorating the tape box with stickers. Sure, MP3 players and iPods are much more efficient and easy and portable but doing things the old-fashioned way had a fun of its own, too.

Say Lee also writes about Chinese traditions like the Moon Cake Festival and finds opportunities to muse on Buddhist philosophy from everyday moments. I also like the warmth with which he writes about his family and it’s just delightful how he proudly displays his wife’s Chinese watercolours on his blog.