Operation Sealion II

Date of Invasion: 17th September
Departure location: KLIA
Time of Departure: 2315
Mission briefing and equipment check: 2115
Order of Battle: Rendezvous with Dutch resistance forces in Amsterdam in 12hrs time. 3 hours of transit followed by a smaller plane infiltration past the English channel into Leeds Airport. Little resistance is expected
Expected arrival time: 0950 local time

This is it. The H-hour and D-Day of my life is here. It's time to jump into Europe.

Horror Comeback

Arteta completes a horrifying sight for United fans

This is unbeliavably frustrating. All I gotta say is don't count your chickens before they hatch. Or rather, before the final whistle is blown. Even when you have a two goal lead in the 91st minute. It's nice to see late comebacks especially by United but when comebacks come to haunt them at the other end instead, it's produced in the most stupidest fashion ever. Here we have Moyes getting all wrong with his selection and they were 1-0 up first. Fletcher equalised nicely and allowed both sides to be all square at the second half. When Vidic hit in the 2nd and Berbatov the killer 3rd, it looked set for the coffin to be sealed and done. Then Cahill equalised in the dying minutes, and I thought, well, that could be a consolation goal and that's where 2 goal cushions come in handy to deal with a late goal like this.

It was as if Murphy's law sprang into life at that moment when the worst possible scenario played out. Fresh from the restart, Everton came racing down and Arteta completed the comeback by forcing the equaliser into the back of the net just within the minute. That was 3-3 from 1-3 down for the home side! What in the world were the defence doing? Once again, United were snapped in the butt, unable to hold water because of defensive lapses. That's 4 precious points dropped from 2 should have been confirmed victories. Moyes has gotten probably one of the greatest escapes of his career and yet he's so greedy that he had to invade the field to argue with the officials that Everton could have gone to win the game had the referee not stopped the play. Geez..be thankful!

I would say that Berbatov had a fine game and continued his good start to the season with 4 goals under his belt. It would say that Ferguson made a good judgment sense by taking account into the mental aspect of the game by leaving Rooney out, with him taking note of the flak that Rooney will get from the Toffees, who seemed to be sworn enemies with him the moment he left them. Rooney's gotten used to the flaks but this time, it's more stinging that usual considering the probe into Rooney's rather promiscuous off-field life which would be subjected to plenty of ridicule from the crowd. The defence meanwhile seems to have lot of lapses even without Ferdinand. Neville is too slow to catch up with the pacy speed of the Everton midfield and the most epic fail has gotta come from Evra. I can't understand why Patrice went acrobatic kung fu in the air to stop the invading Everton players at the first goal when a simple tackle will suffice. 4 matches played may be early but somebody's gotta stop the Chelsea juggernaut!

One Last Makan Spree

It was a massive effort to shift all the stuff back but I managed to make it thanks to some fantastic help from King and Reuben from JB. Actually, I had planned to return earlier back from the Southern Island on Monday for one last trip up north but Mama's exam invigilation duties and an unexpected death of a relative meant that it had to be postponed to Wednesday. Meanwhile, I made sure I had my fill of Botak Jones and cleaned my room well since I won't be bunking in anytime soon for at least a year. Since I was there for the week, my relatives and family friends there gave me some farewell dinners to send me off which I appreciated very much.

On Wednesday, I drove down along the highway in the evening and had a night's rest at PJ first before continuing the second half up north at the next morning. I had the usual ice kacang and char kway teow combo at Lorong Selamat for late lunch. Unfortunately, for dinner, my beloved Pork Noodle stall at Ho Ping Kopitiam was not open, so I had to make do with some Oyster Omelette and French Smoked Salmon at Northern Beach Cafe. Breakfast at the next morning was at Macalister Lane, opposite the road where I grew up. The famous chee cheong fun @ Seow Fong Lye Kopitiam there had remained elusive everytime I came to Penang because I went there late and usually they are finished by 11am. So I made it a point this time to go early and I got my fair share of it. There's also the Char Kway Kak @ SFL cafe and the Kway Teow Tng in Kim Lee at the same lane which I gladly slurped up. Each of these folks that I ate from had been in business since I was staying at Penang at the age of 3 or so and I grew up during my childhood eating from their stalls. Almost 15years+ down the road, all of them still had the same superb taste.

Afterthat, I stopped by Taiping during noon hours for my Mama to visit her relatives and I had to visit my favourite Hainanese kopitiam Yut Sun there to dunk in for one last time all the old classic fare. I would say that particular place is a piece of heaven where 1Malaysia truly exists. All my years eating there, I've never failed to see a healthy mix of Malays, Chinese and Indians gathering to eat under the same roof in a Chinese kopitiam. By evening, I'm on my way back to PJ since I have practice today and my last Sunday at GFS will be tomorrow. Ahhhh..it'll be hard to say goodbye to Pastor Vic and all the families there. It's been a fantastic 2 years of learning and serving there :)

One day in September

The most iconic image of the entire Munich hostage crisis which flashed before cameras and televisions

I was flipping through my movies library today and watched a few minutes of portion of the movie "Munich" when I decided to read more about it on the Internet. It turns out to be a coincidence that today 5th September was the exact day when the Munich massacre happened 38 years ago. If you think the recent failure of the Filipino police force in dealing with the Hong Kong tourist hostage was bad enough, history reminds us the handling of the Munich hostage crisis by the West German authorities was as disastrous. It was the middle of the 1972 Munich Olympics when a group of trained operatives from the militant group Black September, stormed into the Olympic Village in 31 Conollystrasse in the early morning hours to take hostage of the Israeli atheletes residing there. The village security was intentionally lax, following the Germans' determination to change the world's perceptions about them as a result of the bitter taste left by Hitler from the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It was this poor security loophole that was exploited by Black September with great success, starting from the infiltration of the facility as a worker and a mere casual visitor entering the facility without proper identification. They had the blueprint scouted well. Apparently before the games had even started, a West German psychologist, Dr. Sieber had came up with 26 worst case scenarios for the Olympic committee to examing and the predicted situation 21 was eerily too similar to the events that actually tanspired on 5th September. It was however dismissed as being too ridiculous to happen.

On the fateful day, the hostage takers entered into the Olympic Village compound in the most ironic fashion. Quite a number of atheletes had preferred to climb over the fence perimeter to return back to their apartments rather than taking a long detour back to the main gates with the guards. The bunch of them happened to stumbled upon a group of rather drunk group of American athletes who were at the same time, wanting to climb over the fence. Lo and behold, the Americans, unsuspecting of what they were doing or who they were (since all were dressed in tracksuits) helped them to climb over. Once inside and clear from outside eyes, the terrorists removed their AKs from the sports duffel bags and loaded them with bullets. They proceeded in breaking through the doors of the Israeli apartments. Of course, a struggle did occurred between the Israeli athletes and the gunmen as some of them were wrestlers and weightlifters and they thought they had a chance to overpower them with their muscular mass. The struggle did not last long as the gunmen promptly killed 2 of them during the struggle as a reminder to the 9 other sportsmen that they were holding. That was fail number 1 already. Hostage death.

So, the Munich police came in and started negotiations but the problem with the police force is that there were never any elite force or anti-terrorist squad present in Germany that were trained to deal with these types of problems involving highly armed situations. A large part of reason was because of the post-war agreements and the limitations imposed on Germany to operate any of these specialised militaristic group by the Allies. At first they tried storming the building with some track-suited policemen into the compound. Fail number 2: The camera crew were broadcasting the events to worldwide television and this included police positions and movements which the terrorists can observe from their TV sets..lol. Eventually, the storming idea was called off and towards the evening, the negotiations resulted in the terrorists demanding that they be transported via helicopters to the Airport to be flown to Cairo. It was at the airport that most failures were compounded. The Munich police devised another flip flop plan to have policemen dressed as airplane crew in the jet so that they can overpower the terrorist once they are in the plane. They don't seem to be able to make up their minds on a decisive course of action and towards the last minute, they decide to abandon this plan too and adopt another solution, that is to get snipers to take out the terrorists as they walked out of their helicopters. The problem is that there were never any trained snipers in the police team and the handpicked 5 were picked because they had regularly joined weekend competitive game shooting. That's fail number 3. They only had G3 rifles to rely on without scopes or night vision goggles. Fail no. 4. The Munich police had assumed that there were only 5 terrorists and that was the reason why they employed 5 snipers for one head each. Total number of terrorists coming out of the helicopters: 8. Ooopss. Fail number 5. No radio contact between the 5 snipers. Fail number 6. Three were on the control tower and two were on the ground. The two on the ground were vaguely instructed to start shooting as soon as they hear gunfire sounds.

Once the terrorist touched down in the airport, two of them went to inspect the alleged getaway jet plane and when they discovered that it was empty, they started running back in panic to tell their other comrades that their positions were compromised already. It was at this point that the German "snipers" started to open fire, killing two terrorists and fatally wounding another. The others managed to get away and ducked for cover. A firefight followed afterthat and this was proceeded by an hour of so of standoff, terrorists still hiding in the airport runway vicinity and giving sporadic shots once in a while. The terrorists succeeded in shooting out most of the airport lights and in the moment of confusion and darkness, friendly fire meant that that the 2 snipers on the ground were mistakenly targetted by their colleagues on the control tower, reducing the amount of operational sharpshooters to 3 personnels. Fail no. 7. The situation would have been easily settled with the deployment of armoured personnel carriers but the APCs were deployed only after the gunfight occured. And then they were stuck in a traffic jam. Epic Fail no.8. So, it finally ended with the remaining terrorists going on a kamikaze run towards the helicopters, spraying bullets and killing all hostages under point blank AK -47. To finish off the job, the terrorists lobbed grenades to explode the helicopters, burning the corpses in the process before they themselves were shot dead by the police. All hostages died at the end of the day. GG.

Up till today, the Germans could never account for their tactical failure in dealing with the crisis. It was a doomed rescue operation from the start, with many basic mistakes being made that could have saved lives. The West German government responded by forming the elite commando Swat group of GSG-9. Security at the Olympic Games was never compromised since then. Munich spent less than $2 million for security. The security bill in Athens 2004 was estimated to be more than $600 million. History does teach lessons in the end. Both sides did not gain at the end on what they had demanded, although one could say that it was a political statement success for the Palestinians in a way since they were brought under focused world media attention after the incident.

Merdeka Reflections

This year's Merdeka Day came in timely for me to do a reflection on Malaysia. Two more weeks and I'm off to start the next detour lap for my life journey, this time out of South East Asia. It's been two years since I've relocated back to Malaysia and how time flies. It was an enlightening experience for me during these two years as I embraced the true identity within me and being in place where I truly felt being at home, although I don't own a property to stay as of yet. It's home because I'm born and have my childhood bred in Malaysia. It's home simply because I'm Malaysian.

This year's 31st was not auspiciously placed as it was marred by the school principal's racist remark incident. A counterweight reaction was launched by Namewee using another of his videos, citing that he's riding on the band-wagon of anti-racism. Every year we find new reasons to hate the country. And they are easy to find. The list of complains can outrun the Great Wall of China. Every year passes by dishearteningly for those who have high aims for the country but there are still reasons to love and cheer for the Jalur Gemilang too. Let's look beyond the morons that incite racism, the political gimmicks and corrupted policemen. The soul and radiance of Malaysia rests not on these problems but on the rakyat and the culture that we have. That's what I love about Malaysia - It's the people, traditions and the lifestyle that we have. The makcik that sells nasi lemak. The splatterings of Manglish containing the rojaks of all sorts of languages together. The mamaks that open 24hrs for socialization and catching up. The kampung houses. The hawker stalls. Proton cars everywhere. You can't replicate those anywhere else in the world. We need no 1Malaysia slogans to unite the country. All we need is for the usual inciters to shut it up and do nothing more. The rakyat can very well manage themselves.

The grass always looks greener at the other side. But when you step to the other side, you realised that it's not that much greener after all compared to the previous one that you had just stepped. I don't believe there's any spot in this world that is totally green without spots. There'll always be crooks, criminals, politics, morons and self-destructing policies in every country. We are human afterall. Even the American Dream was looked upon as a curse by Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Anyplace can be a hellhole or a safehaven depending on how you perceive it. I believe for every hellhole which you perceive you are in, you can make a heaven out of one corner it if you ever want to be the difference in it.

Scouting Ahead

All the preparations are completed and all that is left now is just to get my butt on the plane on the 17th of September. Meanwhile, there are still other things to settle. There's a whole mass of books and items that I have to shift from PJ to Singapore and this means a car trip down south after Merdeka Day. I've just settled the final step of formal preparations, that is to pay and obtain the flight ticket and I did that by driving down to Imbi on last Thursday. The date is getting nearer to the Invasion of Britania but not near enough for it to be terrifying.

I've also received an introductory letter from the Leeds Law Society and it seems that they're a very outgoing student body there. A lot of trips and seminars are organised and the highlight seems to be a Paris weekend outing in November which costs 120 pounds for 3 days 2 nights! Woohoo! I can't wait to join that one! So I went to check out and do some scouting at the Leeds University Student Union website and wow, that is one union you don't wanna be messing with. The website is impressive and with over 300 clubs and societies, the union itself is even a registered society in public. Very organised and official, compared to the ones we have here. I kinda have in mind on what to join over there other than Law Society. Of course CF there is known as Christian Union (CU) and the other groups that I may see myself joining are like History Soc, Rock Soc, Punk Soc, Band Soc (Rock Performance!) and MASSoc(Malaysian/Singaporean Soc). Haha..imagine a Society dedicated to the appreciation of Rock and Punk! That's something you'll never find in this part of the world. I found a range of other 'interesting' groups like Food Club (Will I have free food if I join? haha), Socialist Students (no joke, they are serious about advocating socialism, democratic style), Revolution (anti-capitalism group), Unite Against Fascism (alright! let's keep out any future Hitlers and Mussolinis from hitting the shores of England!) and Atheist society (today's club agenda is disproving the existence of God?..hehe). I'll have to go there and see for myself which are the more active groups.

One thing about the Brits is that every society's opening ceremony seems to be in a party club, it's free drinks with DJ music etc. That's what they call social night over there for the fresher's week..haha. Meanwhile, I better prepare myself by equipping some relevant knowledge of Brit lifestyle to avoid any unwanted culture shocks!

Costly Failure

Woeful penalty by Nani

These are the kinds of nonsensical play and results that can prove costly to the outcome at the end of the season. United screwed up for the second season in the running for their second game. They lost against lowly Burnley last season and look where the points had costed them. It is already bad enough with Chelski bulldozing through with double 6-0 wins and even Arsenal and Newcastle are joining suite. The Magpies may be disposed by United in the first game, but they came roaring back against a high-flying Villa in St James Park. Wigan were totally no match for a “Playstation team” Chelsea and I guess their fans must have felt that their money’s worth of home matches went up in flames in recent weeks. They were spanked heavily with two losses at home – 10 goals against and still no reply from them.

It was thought that United might have some momentum after sweeping the Magpies aside. It was a week of celebrating the longetivity and experience of veterans Scholes and Giggs who had combined to tear Newcastle apart. Scholes in particular was pulling the strings in midfield and his evergreen form looks set to continue against Fulham when he pulled the trigger from long range to put United one goal up within 10 minutes. Afterthat, United did pretty much little to pop in the second goal despite dominating possession. Fulham looked like a rejuvenated team at the second half and some sloppy defending from Vidic and Evans allowed Fulham to equalise. It’s a schoolboy error in marking and from then on, looked like a contest that could go either way. I thought that United escaped with a stroke of fortune when Hangeland bundled the ball into his own net. And the deal looks even more set with a penalty conceded by Fulham not long after the own goal. Lo and behold! It was Nani who stepped up and I already had a sneaky feeling that he will squandered it. And I was RIGHT. I can’t understand why in the world is Nani taking it when there are a whole lot of other candidates particularly Ryan Giggs and Berbatov. Even Owen would be a better choice. Nani just has too much ‘rage’and ‘explosiveness’ in him to take it coolly and calmly. With the failure to make it 3-1, the game is too close for comforts. In minutes to come, United will come to regret that missed penalty and it will be a costly one as they look back. In a sweep of ironies that characterised the whole game, Hangeland scored at the end too, this time to equalise against Man Utd. United looked resigned by then and they would have realised that it was a silly two points dropped.

Chelski are starting to run away at the top with such a superior goal difference so early and it’s already looking like a massive chore to chase after them. The United defence has really gotta buck up especially with the absence of Ferdinand. Not only that, there is a desperate need for Wayne Rooney to find his form soon. Man Utd certainly has to get this Fulham draw out of the system quick and hope that the Chelski machine grinding could come to a halt soon. Otherwise, it’s a going to be a long long drawn-out chase. Meanwhile, the field players gotta make sure that Nani never takes another penalty.