Month: June 2006

Go Socceroos!!


A favourite soccer terrace song is sung to tune of the kiddie song, “Skip to my loop” (I think those were the words). We sang it after Ole scored the winner against Bayern Munich in the ECL final of 99. It goes: “Who put the ball in the Bayern net?” x3, and then “Ole Gunnar Solksjaer”.

This morning, I woke kiddo up with the same tune: “Who put the ball in the Cro-ats’ net” x3, and then “Harry – Harry Kewell”.

Earlier that morning I watched in horror as Croatia went 1-0 up after about 2 minutes of play. It was an absorbing match and I continued the second half watching it in the gym, as I pounded the treadmill. Australia was 1-2 down and I have been watching the game for about 40 minutes on the treadmill. All that through time I was so absorbed in that match I didn’t realise the rest of the cardio section of the gym was also watching. It was only when Kewell volleyed the ball in when a collective “Yes” went up, along with a wave of arms jabbing the air. Including mine.

The next 10 minutes plus were pulsating, all the more so now that I know I had others watching it with me. In the end, after such a flurry of red cards you’d think it was Chinese New Year in Stuttgart, the Socceroos held out, it was 2-2 and we’re in the next round. Against Italy for sure, but it didn’t matter. It was a wonderful feeling, and there must have been some bias arising from our being residents here now but I really thought since Gus hopped on the Aussie bus, the football has become a lot more attractive to watch. The passing is tighter, there is a better flow and consistency.

So far I have had many WC games recorded on our newly acquired DVD HDD recorder (which has also been a new toy of mine in the past 2 weeks). This morning’s game though, together with the Argentina v Serbia one, would not be edited except for taking out the ads. These were great games. If there were any Australians who had not, until this morning, caught the WC fever, they should now.

I went into the city for a little matter this afternoon. I took a train, so I had a little walk between the station and the Court. I was half hoping to see some stalls selling the Socceroos’ scarf but at last, even if the fever is starting to spread, it hasn’t spread quite enough. In England for example, you’d see vendors of football stuff everywhere. Not Melbourne Australia. Not on the streets anyway. Think I’ll go and look for a scarf this weekend.

“So, I commend the enjoyment of life.” (From the Bible – really. Eccl 8:15)

Perspectives in Life


I was at the Federal Magistrates Court this morning. My matter was the last one on the list so I just sat around and waited, and listened in on the other matters. Sometimes this can be an educational as well as entertaining exercise. There were a whole 13 of them before mine, so it was quite a harvest there.

One of these matters was a bankruptcy petition by the tax boys. The debtor was apparently an old or sick man (or both). His barrister was asking for an adjournment as he has suffered a relapse of bowel cancer and has just been admitted to the hospital. The court remarked, quite rightly, that his debt problems have probably taken a (way) back seat in view of his health problems.

Often it is a question of perspectives. I guess when you are a normal healthy person, a bankruptcy matter is a huge one. A person needs bankruptcy as much as he needs a hole in the head. When you have bowel cancer which refuses to go away though (my grandfather died within a few months after having surgery for that) – bankruptcy? Moving on…

As always, I reflected on the matter and my matter soon became less important. I could take my mind off it, let it be, and take on new perspectives.

On the way back, while in a near deserted train, I was letting my mind wander when there was suddenly a minor commotion a few seats behind me. A passenger has just been assaulted by what appears to be a mentally disturbed male passenger. I stood up, went near the victim (he was an elderly man) and stared at the perpetrator. He got off at the next stop so I let the matter be. The victim wasn’t too bad off but it was still a bit of a shock.

Later in the office, someone mentioned that a few nights ago, there was some sort of a gang fight in the Glen Waverley shopping/restaurant area. That too, is distressing, and hitherto totally unheard of. I guess again, that put things in perspectives. Life really can be very fragile …

“So, I commend the enjoyment of life.” (From the Bible – really. Eccl 8:15)

Mateship


The Employer I worked longest for was a company called Phileo. It was a name derived from a Greek work meaning brotherly love. A bit like mateship I guess.

Last night I received an email from an ex-colleague. From Phileo, so he was a mate. He mentioned a recent lunch he had with a few other ex-Phileo employees. The names all brought back different, but by and large fond, memories. There were a few others not at the lunch. Of those who were, I have been in contact with 2-3 of them, from time to time.

It was great to hear of mateship like that. It is now 5 years since the banking arm of Phileo was sold. The name of the Company changed soon after that sale, and most of us left before that. I was one of the last to leave, when I finished in end 2001. Yet after we all left, we continued to hook up – lunches, drinks, dinners. They were always good times. I’d say we are all mates. I can imagine during this, World Cup season, they would probably be talking about football and betting pools. All good natured of course. These are all very nice people.

Yes, I do go on about ageing, about getting old, but it is true. This mate of mine, in his email last night, mentioned that he would be retiring not long from now (I suggested to him about coming to Melbourne to retire). He also mentioned that for that lunch, one of them turned up in crutches, having torn a ligament in a tennis game. I’m losing my hair and teeth but not my weight. We all age!

Just before I read that email, Theresa and Kiddo looked at some pics her brother in Malaysia put up in Kodalgallery.com. Wonderful site that one. We’ve been using it for years, when it first started as ofoto.com. We saw a picture of Theresa’s family – the whole clan was there. Her parents, both her brothers and their families, only ones missing were us. The thing that jumped out at me was how much older her father looked. He has aged. He looked a little shriveled. Then I remembered seeing photos of my sister-in-law’s recent graduation ceremony (she had taken some bible courses). My mother was in it and I saw how old she looked too. Her hair is now shades of golden-grey.

My late grandfather liked Psalm 90 a lot. Verses 9 and 10 say:

9. “All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan.”

10. “The length of our days is seventy years – or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.”

Makes you wonder why he liked this psalm, doesn’t it? He was a wise old man, for verse 12 says:

12. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

It is precisely in recognizing our mortality, in acknowledging our finiteness and the fleeting nature of life, that we become wise in our ways. Unfortunately, we often don’t concede that until the inevitable happens. It is when we see our parent age, when we see our contemporaries battling the effects of age, that we see our own mortality. That perception is augmented by our own failings, our own children coming of age. We see then that we are really, like dews on grass in the morning. We are here but for a moment. We don’t count. Only God does, because He remains. Whether our otherwise meaningless lives take on any meaning, depends on whether we hook up with the only One who remains. That is what the “Teacher” in Ecclesiastes says: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man”

Mateship is a wonderful thing. Mateship with God is a life-saving thing.

“So, I commend the enjoyment of life.” (From the Bible – really. Eccl 8:15)

Rot in Denmark House Still Wafting Through


 

Sometime in the late nineties, the Court of Appeal made an infamous Shakespearean reference in the course of alluding to corrupt judges. The Macbeth line of something being rotten in the House of Denmark was of course, an allusion to the court which was housed in the building in KL known as Wisma Denmark. That case was a high watermark (or more aptly, the low watermark) in judiciary corruption. It was of course, the Ayer Molek Rubber Company case.

I had forgotten most details of the case, when yesterday, someone in KL sent me an email suggesting the matter still has some mopping up to do. I guess it is a way of a certain disaffected bank owner trying to have a go at another (a more pro-establishment) bank. Whatever the motivation, it opened up a cache of unhappy memories for me. Suddenly details of the transaction trickled back into my mind and I have spent my otherwise quiet start to my mornings reading this fellow’s emails, designed to trigger some recollection in my mind. This transaction happened way back in 1994 and the last I had anything to do with it was in 1999, so the trigger needed to be pretty firm and sharp.

Ayer Molek was a clear case of regulators’ unhappy role in deal making. Deal making by its nature entails benefits to both parties. When these benefits and their recipients are multiple, it gets pretty damned close to signs of corruption. How large blocks of shares in a public company can disappear without the owner being traced shows how well Malaysian corporate players can collude. In Malaysia, the modus operandi is always to avoid getting to the bottom of a mess. Just sweep everything into an unseen corner and leave it there. Somehow people expect the mess to have nuclear properties and exude half-lives so that over time, they disappear. They don’t. They remain in some dust collecting corner and someday, someone would come along and dig it up, dust it off and the rot would waft through for all to realise it didn’t work to just “sweep it under a carpet”.

No one wanted to get to the bottom of the Ayer Molek mess. Not when I was still in KL, in the company which was at the centre of the matter. Documents came to me, I could not get proper instructions, and they would bounce right off. Sometimes I had to cut these down to size so that they may be dealt with within the constraints prevailing then. So things chug along. The hewn down documents would again be shoved into some corner until yet another person digs them up. It could be years before that happened. It isn’t my mission in life to wait for such events. I have moved on. Down Under.

What do I do with this request to assist in mopping things up? I don’t know. I couldn’t even recall the relevant details until I was prompted. I can confirm or verify certain facts or documents, suggest some details which I can recall, but that is about all. Ayer Molek was an ugly chapter not just in Malaysian corporate and judiciary history. It was an ugly chapter in my life, too. I spent hundreds of hours on it, often unnecessarily. Others did too. Others wrongly and illegally reaped benefits while people like us are asked to drag ourselves through the quagmires. I think I will cease participating in any way. I think I will say no more.

 

Faith in the US of Mighty A


Faith Colish is a senior US securities lawyer. A colleague and I met her once, when our then employer (a Malaysian securities dealer) wanted to set up a sales desk in the US. As fate would have it, Faith now features again in my radar screen. Ms Colish could lead to interesting development again, of course. A client wants to offer securities to private US investors. He has a fantastic product but I don’t know if he appreciates the complexities of the laws involved in what he proposes to do. So I initiated contact with Faith Colish and hopefully, she can offer useful advice at not too astronomical costs. She is after all, a Wall Street lawyer.

 

Australia is now one of America’s favourite little brothers. John Howard received red-carpet treatment (literally) in a recent trip there, and Dubya saluted him big time. Effusive, almost embarrassing praises were heaped on him by senior US pollies, all the time increasing the risks of having, for example, Melbourne’s rail system blown up by some fanatical Islamic US haters. Australia has also been in cahoots with the US on the Kyoto accord, refusing to be part of the international efforts to curb fossil fuel burning (or is it the greenhouse effect?). I was a little heartened therefore, to read in the papers this morning, that Australia will now open a debate on the use of nuclear power as an alternative source of energy. Victoria has dismissed it outright, but at least there will be a debate on the matter.

 

I don’t know what brought this about-turn. Sure, a lot of it has to do with oil price, which was last sighted somewhere in stratosphere. I remember attending our weekly analysts’ meeting in my last workplace in Malaysia, when we were advising the budget airline, Air Asia, in its public offering. Oil price was I think, cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet (USD40 per barrel). The team leader was briefing the CEO of the critical price level before the bottom line would be seriously affected. My recollections are hazy now as I wasn’t particularly interested in all of this then but I think they thought Air Asia would be grounded if it hits USD50 per barrel. Well, it’s over USD71 now but I think Mr T (Fernandez) is still swinging away so the analyst must have been less than accurate in his number crunching, but I digress. The point is, I wonder if Australia embarked on this debate on use of nuclear energy without consulting big brother. Did John ring George before he opened up this debate?

 

Somehow we still feel we need the US nod in many things we do. This is all part of the religion of Dollarism. When I moved to Melbourne, I scarcely thought I would have anything to do with any US laws again. I certainly didn’t think there was any occasion to link up with grand old dame of Wall Street legal eagles again. The still mighty US economy (yeah yeah, it is a diminishing giant, way past its’ use-by date, but a big economy like that doesn’t take a year or two to lose its magnet, it chugs along on its own momentum, for a bit) still attracts people wanting to make it big. Or simply, bigger. Like my client. Local sources, especially in 20-million strong Australia, simply aren’t enough. Maybe that’s what drove John Howard to befriend Dubya. That Australia needed a big brother partner. Or maybe he genuinely liked Dubya. I don’t know. With pollies, the last thing we have is faith. Whatever his motivation, I now have Faith. Faith Colish.