Incomprehensible

On 11 April, my friend who was flying the Deputy Prime Minister and his entourage to selected campaign spots encircling Sibu sustained fatal injuries when, after returning the passengers to the town square, the helicopter he was flying rolled over to the starboard side from a hover, the very side where he was strapped into his seat. He breathed his last before Sunday night dinner time.

I was in Sibu on Tuesday to aid the DCA's airworthiness cell coordinate the investigation process.

After sending my friend's coffinned body on a chartered flight back to Kota Bharu, where he was to be laid to rest, I returned to Premier Hotel for a short rest, which was shortened further by Capt H's call. The DCA aircraft accident investigation team was to arrive at 1730H, headed by Dato' Y. I was to meet them and help them check in to their hotel and take them to the crash site.

The number of a cab driver was given to me and the meet up with the DCA men was arranged. "Ahpo" the driver, coursed through heavy traffic and the monotonous patter of rain to the airport. This was election time, and Sibu, like the rest of the state, was all abuzz with contending parties, swirling into the town via the arrival gates. This Sleepy Hollow was stirring with dreams and nightmares.

I got Dato' Y and his men into the little Avanza and we chatted as Ahpo exhibited his trade skills all the way to the town square. As we arrived at the Sibu Municipal Council's field, I saw the wreckage. Not my first. Yet, being at a crash site and seeing a mate's last venue of life floods me with emotions I have never acclimatised to.

I noted the people of Sibu standing outside the police perimeter tape. They stood with an air of sacred reverence; like a funeral wake over the spot where my friend's life was taken or given, I know not which. I have been made to understand since that Sibu has not seen a tragedy of this nature yet.

I approached the two cops who were on sentry duty there, introduced myself and pointed out Dato' Y to them, explaining the purpose of our arrival, which was to begin evidence gathering. We were received well and escorted into the cordoned off area. Dato' Y and his two-man team began their work aided by cameras.

I have no bone to pick with journalists. They have a job to do, I acknowledge that. But 26 years of service in the air force and knowing how obscenely they handle our fatal accidents, a journalist at a crash site strikes my patellar tendon.

Here he was, and his obesity lent no redeeming charm to his shamelessness as upon seeing us, he crossed the perimeter tape and began shutterbugging. With a huge telephoto zoom lens, he still chose to be inside the perimeter. This isn't about denying your press rights. It's about keeping the crash site untampered and undisturbed. It is also about sensitivity towards the friends and family of the deceased. The cop who stood with me clicked at him and waved him away with "Encik!". The journalist just walked a few feet away and started again.

Yes, my patellar tendon had definitely been sledgehammered.

I walked up to him, with the constable chasing after me.

"Encik, kamu dari mana?" I had to identify whom he worked for.

MSM, he replied.

"Encik nampak kah tidak pita yang megatakan ini kawasan penyiasatan polis dan anda dilarang melintas?' In effect, did you not see the perimeter tape that says this is a police scene and you are not to cross in?

He threw a glance over his shoulder and did not deny understanding the significance of a police-scene-do-not-cross perimeter tape.

"Kalau begitu apa yang menyebabkan Encik rasa yang Encik boleh melintas garisan pita itu?" What then made you think you could cross over?

The MSM journalist apologised profusely and backed off. I had nothing further to say to him.

And I laud the people of Sibu for remaining outside the perimeter tape in spite of the journalist's behaviour.

Remember Man......

Yesterday, I successfully evaded Ash Wednesday Service for the umpteenth time.

I cannot remember my last proper Ash Wednesday service. It may have been 2007 whilst still enslaved to the fashionably religious and pretentiously intellectual parish in PJ across the Federal Highway.

Yes, I know that this is a time of fast and abstinence.

Instead I spent the day sorting out the niggardly unserviceabilities of my ol' faithful 1992 SEG, then cycled 33 measly kilometres to Universiti Malaysia Sabah and back and finished the night pigging out on Basmathi and dried prawn sambal courtesy of Harry's charitable wife.

Her advice, relayed through a most emphatic Harry, was to only heat up what was necessary for a meal. So after I prised off the lid of that tupperware, I glanced at the rust-red heap and took out a huge droolworthy tablespoon to be refrigerated and did justice to the remainder.

I admit that I am not the most exemplary of Catholics, and the reason for a delayed death is that my pyre in Hades is still under continous construction to befit my calibre.

I am not proud of my departure from my Catholic upbringing, even though I did not really undergo any version of a sackcloth and ashes regimen.

Yes, whilst I lived with my aunts and uncles and cousins, my grandmother would keep everyone faithful by administering a rassam and salted fish diet during the fasting period. Yeah, absolutely no meat on Fridays. I didn't feel the loss really. It was pre-adolescence and it formed Pavlovian in less than three weeks, and stayed with me till I left home.

It was service life that finally exorcised me of almost all Catholic fast and abstinence, hurriedly replacing it with all manner of indulgence.

Food was probably the only satiably good thing that I had in Cadet Wing. The rest was hell. The seniors, the unceasing ironing, polishing, digging trenches, claymores, leeches and worst of all, watermanship, were the stark contrast of unpleasantries whilst food was not. So when Fridays came, the special lunch spread they had in the cookhouse before mosque parades was nigh impossible for me to turn my nose up at. And so yes, I ate of the flesh of the fowl on Fridays.

Now, this rolling stone has amassed so much moss that it is no closer to the foci of its ever expanding orbit by growth of its girth.

Maybe over these forty days I may go white dwarf, get back to the centre, and return to some honest Lenten practise.

Lest I forget, that I am dust, and unto dust shalt I return.

See Off Tee

THERE!!! I WANT YOU TO LAND THERE!!!

That was the scream I heard from my training captain as he sideslipped the whining Bell206 over the edge of a clearing.

I looked down at the patch of green and thought, "Oh, bollocks; I couldn't get in there in a Mini Cooper let alone a helicopter." YES SIR!!! was the only thing I could say. After all, this was my conversion sortie and the morrow was supposed to be my Certificate Of Test Flight to be endorsed as a Bell206 Captain.

He handed over control to me and I swung the chopper into a right handed orbit over the LP (landing point) and rolled out on finals approach. "Running in!" I called and commenced descent.

"Where are your finals checks??"

"No updraft, no downdraft, no windshear or turbulence and power in hand is good at 40 percent torque," I prattled. But as I passed half way through into the LP, committed to the landing and lowered the collective, I sensed audibly the sound of an engine winding down. A quick check on the rotor rpm had me turning pale and I immediately wound my left hand hurriedly to power up the decaying rotor thrust, and I caught in my peripheral vision, the training captain's left hand also reaching down at the secondary collective to wind up power. I heard a stifled roar of profanity and then it came out.

"Jeffrey!!! Why the HELL do you keep lowering power when you lower collective?? You're going to kill yourself one day Jeffrey! You're going to kill yourself!!!"

His demeanour turned completely Zen upon landing and shutdown.

He wanted one more hour with me to complete all the mandatory exercises. The conversion was far from over. We were supposed to fly on Sunday but he didn't show. On Monday he got tied up at a meeting, so we missed our slot time and the heavy traffic at the airfield discouraged circuit flying. All we could do were hover manouvres and engine failures. Seems I completely mastered the latter judging from my confined area exercise.

The normal conversion programme takes seven hours. All the other guys had seven hours, in Keningau for St Jude's sake. I had just clocked three hours and the one hour more would make only four hours. And I was doing my conversion in Subang!! Thursday was to be my C of T. Could we pull it off? Could I pull it off?

While I did clock the final hour on Thursday the 24th, the C of T was arbitrarily set for Saturday as weather was coming in and the training captain wanted me to spend Friday seated in the cockpit, practising my start up checks. Yes, I am a guy who must get all things annoyingly wrong before I get it delightfully hardwired correctly.

I carried out my C of T on Saturday morning, using an abandoned Macademised road alongside Shah Alam as my runway and LP, witnessed by many unhelmeted palm oil estate workers on motorcycles in typical estate style. I was cleared to be a Bell206 Captain, and had my license endorsed accordingly on 28th Feb.

So, after more that two-and-a-half decades, at age 46 going 47, some fundamentals have not changed, with alarmingly evidential consistency.

I still garble matters even though I understand a system completely. I still infuriate the hell out of my instructors.

And I am still insanely in love with the helicopter.

New Baby

This is my new baby.

Every town has its own hazards to cycling. I am lucky that Labuan was a good town to ease me into beligerent drivers and near-jacknifing my Giant Rincon when they'd pull over and open their driver's door without a backward glance, and worse, looking at my approaching strobe light and opening up full ajar anyways.

Maybe the ravenous dogs along Merinding were easier to sympathyse with in comparison and even come across as a higher life form, I say such in hindsight.

My first ride in KK was with my old air force mate, Capt Fadhli "Jambu", whose lemming sense garnered my awe when I noticed he rode without a single lamp anywhere, front or rear, and we both knew our ride would end well after sunset. Nonetheless, I learned under him that Kota Kinabalu was a shade more civilised than Labuan. I didn't find anyone deliberately swinging into us...yes, but then again, that was my maiden ride in town. I was woken up to how marginally lighter that shade was when the manga-emulating youngsters with spiky long hair in oversouped MyVis pumping bass out of their boots to shame Dr Alban unapologetically tried to shave my shin hair with their skirting.

Coincidences congeal into the strangest residual forms sometimes. A few rides with the group from Kinabalu Hyatt hinted to me that I may have to consider a different bike so that I was not always the straggler at the foothills. It was just about this time that I spotted an xds with 30 gears sitting at the LBS in Tanjung Aru. Yes, a few reads of Bicycling magazine has embedded into me the cyclists' abbreviatrix for local bike shop. Oh, that baby looked pretty!! And it was going cheap, so I began to wonder what gave? Internet research did not yield the conviction and comfort I sought over my choice of bicycle. Surely something must be good about 30 gears!!! I could thrash the upstart cyclists with their 8 kilogramme bicycles in an uphill dash if those 30 gears were burning my rubber...couldn't I?

Hence when the means were made possible to me by way of gratuity, I dropped by the LBS and was served with a rebuking at having thought of taking the xds as an owner of a Giant, all this by the owner of the shop no less. After much deliberation and cross-examination, I decided to wed the Merida MATTS500. Adjustable suspension while riding, hydraulic disc brakes and 27 gears won me over.

And we live happily ever after, to the end of our days.

Saved By The Bell

Capt Az burst into the pilots' cabin to sign his authorisation sheets.

"Hmmmm...it's my day off, but they called me in. Both Long Rangers are out in the field and one has gone u/s. Battery conked. I must send them a spare, and I would take you along with me but I don't want to waste your time."

I was beginning to salivate. Two weeks with nary a soul to chat with, bored out of my skull at being on the ground and wondering when my ground school would start, this hesitant offer sounded really good. "Sir, time in the air is never a waste. You seriously saying I can get airborne?"

Capt Az looked at me for a minute as he deliberated on whether I would be worthy as ballast. Then he snapped, "Follow me!"

It was about 1400H when we strapped into the Bell206. It belched to a start like an old Volkswagen. The smell of hydraulics and avtur (aviation turbine parrafin) wafted lazily in the heated cabin air to stir many fond memories of the Alouette and the Nuri's odours, making me feel much at home in the seat. In a few minutes we were climbing to a thousand feet down to Sipitang to deliver a spare aircraft battery to the two Bell206 Long Rangers serving Bear Gryll's shoot near the Sabah Forestry waterfall at Malua.

I read out the stormy weather patterns that were brewing in the east, cascading in black billowing clouds down the Crocker's slopes to fall as thick sheets of ebonied rain into the Papar-Beaufort plains. I pointed out also, the tall white cross atop the hills of Papar, to which Capt Az responded as if it were the first time he had seen it in his seventeen years as a Bell operator in this area.

His hands would sweep and point at the instrument panel, as he must have done each time he flew. These familiar air force mantras of cyclical checks in flight were evident in his flying style, and we spent the air time alternating between the checks and chatting away, crowding out the intercom so much the technician in the back seat was hushed till landing time.

I took this chance in the air to watch the engine and flight instruments, the green arcs and the cycle of activities a solo operator pilot would carry out in the Bell. The Air Speed Indicator needle hung at 90, and I thought, okay, that's the Alouette cruise speed as well, so I should survive losing the 110 knots of the Nuri. Then noting the unit measure at the centre of the ASI, I shuddered as it dawned on me that it wasn't knots that the instrument was calibrated to read, but MPH!!!! Now, that's a real bush pilot's airspeed!

Capt Az reminded me that while I was behaving like a copilot in helping him with the lookout, the spotting of clearings and weather predictions for the return leg, I too would be facing all these alone in good time. I would not have a copilot. I traded the fact with him that I had flown with copilots so incompetent that I had to man both engine speed levers through the speed trim switches on the collective during a flight test in Airod Kuching, therefore feeling alone in the cockpit was not exactly going to be novel to me. Capt Az started laughing. "Yes. Been there too."

Closing in on Sipitang, he rolled left and we both started looking out for the two helicopters. Capt Az spotted them down yonder, sitting line astern on a timber trail and a pick up truck in company which carried the technicians for the task. Capt Az selected an approach path and drew down to land next to the pick up truck. Three Bells, on a timber trail! I am going to have a lot to get used to. This spot would not have accomodated one Nuri.

The battery was taken out of the rear passenger cabin. Then we lifted off to slowly and pleasantly cruise out of the hills and point ourselves back to KK.

We landed as the rain started to fall in the muted evening light of a KK day at its burnished 1600H end. Capt Az thanked me for the company, and assured me that my day would come. I thanked him for letting me hop on, and headed home for a cup of Sheridans and Ottmar Liebert.

A Bell! A Bell! My kingdom for a Bell!

Readjustment Blues

The clock on the wall no longer speaks sensibly to me.

I wake up at 0300H  in the morning and sleep again at 0500H, to wake up again at 0630H.

I just haven't 'bedded' into my new apartment.

Meeting my old schoolmates in the coffee shop at Tanjung Aru in the evening for tea offered no relief from the readjustment blues. There were lame aviation jokes tossed in my direction because I was the last to arrive, so I just grinned and bore them. Veeramani was curious about how I was surviving. Harry nodded in knowing fashion when I spoke to Veeramani about the location, the rent and the vista from my balcony. Being in the industry, Harry explained that the reason for the low occupancy of the Waikiki Condominium is that having been vacant for a long time, many units were haunted.

Yeah, haunted. I didn't bat an eyelid. Any air force officer will tell you that our bases are haunted. Enough men have died therein to justify the ethereal occupancy. Many bases were battlegrounds during the Japanese occupation. Gruesome crashes and tribal sacrificial rites comprise a portion of the reasons why some newbie officers don't sleep well in some rooms, finding themselves waking up where they didn't lay their heads.

"So if you find that after you shower your bed is made, You Know Who did it!!" Veera said with all Indian dramatism.

"Well, if that happens, I'm keeping it from the landlady."

"Yes..." Veera agreed. "She will raise the rent."

My feet are still wet from Labuan.

I am not yet done fine tuning the apartment to comfortably accomodate the Matisas when they drop  by for visits and shopping. When you get to a new place, you can't be too sure where to get spare signal lamp bulbs. Or shower curtains. A town changes much in 29 years. There are new norms and conventions to observe and live by. You start calling friends to find out where the good yellai sappadu shops are. I haven't started cooking yet. I want to, however at the moment I find that I have just enough time upon reaching home, to leap into my cycling gear and go for a quick ride to 1 Borneo and back, returning to the apartment at 1830H in total darkness. Then a jaunt to the Chinese restaurant where I am now a regular, for a hot and healthful meal and then back by 2000H to watch a movie or listen to music before tossing and turning on my futile way to the next sunrise.

 

For the duration of the tenancy agreement, this is home.

It really is nice being able to scoot to work at 0758H and still be a minute early for duty, which starts at 0800H. My conversion hasn't commenced yet, so it is a bit of a drag. Food is all around the place, but I am apprehensive about the gluttons' square across the road. Dingy as an opium den, and the fluorescent lights are too dim for me to spot if my food is host to guerilla vermin.

Still, in  the lazy evenings, it can be rustic as I look out on the landscaped golf course, its pines and firs and the rippling pond stirring in the coastal breezes. Occasionally an airliner rumbles on departure but rarely reaches a roar. It doesn't get to be a schkullschplittenshcreaminschmoken fliegen wagen from where I sip my coffee.

Then there is the restlessess from missing home. I would take again, the deathly dealings with my teenage son, the Latina dramatics of my adolescent daughter who started being a teenager at  age nine, the incessant chatterboxing that my youngest can keep up, the lengthy domestic details of a tormented wife, so long as I could be home again. In this respect, being in Kota Kinabalu is really kind, because a three-hour ferry ride takes me home comfortably in a cool air conditioned cabin with broadband internet access.

Life outside of His Majesty's service is looking up.

Blue Balls

I am getting impatient. It's bad enough that sleep is such an elusive bedfellow when one is preparing for exams, and worse when I have no reason for interrupted sleep after being a licensed pilot for nigh a year now.

My nightmares or dreams have borderlined on the bizzare.

I believe that I am suffering from some form of sickness, like bends, except that my version is from having been on the ground for too long. I am impatient to fly again, and the closer I get to my reporting date to Sabah Air, the less my patience holds. Part of this insomniac infestation is because I cannot imagine what it is like to fly the Bell, a throttled collective helicopter, and I have been told that my conversion will not take more than 5 hours to complete. That builds some anxiety, as I can't imagine anything, or foresee the conversion process, thereby disallowing my control freak need to always have my eye on the future.

Therefore my dreams are like those wet dreams where you can't see your quick shag's face, with exceedingly higher levels of frustration.

A few nights ago, I dreamt I was in the Nuri cockpit, doing a ground run before taxy for a sortie. In that dream I felt that the copilot was going through the challenge-and-response checklist with me up to taxy time. But of course!! The Nuri start-up procedure and rotor engagement requires a complete crew complement.

Then as I lined up for take off, suddenly I realised that the copilot's seat was empty. I was nonplussed. Where the hell did he go to? I was hard pressed to expedite the takeoff as an aircraft had been cleared for a landing behind me, so I did what I usually do when with an incompetent copilot: manage both throttles from the speed trim switches on the collective. With the throttles at full, I eased the cyclic forward and began a running take off. I broke ground contact and was airborne to 200 feet, when the utter illegality of the entire sortie hit me and I aborted the take-off, kicked the pedals for a taildrop turnback, and faced head-on the Boeing 737 on a landing run swerving on its brakes to avoid ingesting a Nuri.

I woke up, memories of other hair-raising manouvres flooding back to me, and I sighed in relief that this one more was merely a nightmare safely turning over in the graveyard of unfulfilled dreams.

Damn!!

 I need to get off.

The ground I mean.

Events

When you're about to leave, they tell you many ridiculous things. For instance, how you have to get a photograph of the family taken with you in your ceremonial dress. This is so they can make you a souvegnir of your service history and the bases in which you have served.

They want all the copies of documents that you have already tendered into record since the day you were married and bore children, like nobody knew you existed.

You must consume 90 days of accumulated leave but you can still be hauled in to attend meetings that nobody else is qualified to be in because they don't have another senior helicopter pilot as a staff officer. You have given them 26 years of your life and yet these last days as you leave, they have not been able to get your replacement.

Then there are other things that they don't say that tell you that you are no longer relevant to the system.  Crewmen whom you once flew with and ate with in remote places nod at you but have little to say. A cycling tour is organised for all air force participants but nobody tells you about it though they see you cycle all over Labuan.

Then there are other events that spell out whom will stand as friends and who had you hanging around just to bolster their confidence because they were too afraid of the dark to face the civil aviation exams on their own.

I can say that I have finally settled it. I know that some who believed better of me will disagree with my decision as I opt for the unprofessional way to earn a living. I have decided to become a bush pilot in the civil world.

Though I have been told that being an offshore helicopter pilot is the way to become a professional pilot, I have witnessed the offshore doors drawing to a close on me. One other company while being keen on me, cannot take me in till June 2011. As I will be out of a job in December, I am treading a time-critical line here. The one company that has been compelling me to be amongst their livery of pilots is a general aviation company operating in Kota Kinabalu. Yes, general aviation pays less than offshore flying. However, there is a draw I feel to this company, and seeing that I will be based in Kota Kinabalu, I am wondering if all these transpirations are ominous portents.

I know the terrain and the landing points I will be serving, as these are the same ones I have flown through in about six years as both copilot and aircraft captain in No 5 Squadron. The flying will be Visual Flight Rules, which means I will remain a bush pilot and not puncture weather. The thought of flying a single-operator helicopter is growing more appealing as the days pass. I have not flown solo since my days as a flying student in the Alouette.

Owing to courting this prospective job in KK, it appeared that December would be a bit of an unpredictable month for me. Brenda conferred with the kids and the consensus was that their annual trip back to KL would be forfeited on the air force's ticket in favour of a short holiday by way of joining me in attending a friend's wedding in KK.  We took the evening ferry to Menumbok and drove the Vios through the single carriageways till we hit the duals of KK.

The first day, the  morning of the wedding, was spent on shopping in the 1 Borneo mall. Brenda was convinced to buy a nice LBD, while the girls scoured the racks for their personal delights. Ethan was not to be seen as he devoured the bookstores for his own fetishes.

The second day I met up with various realtors to check out the kind of place I would live in while working in KK. Yes, found one, just 5 minutes from the hangar. Very sweet!!

Then on the third day, the day of our return, just for the heck of it while driving about town, I stopped over at my childhood supermarket at the harbour side of the city. Rowena had a near cardiac event in the aisles at the sight of all the various olives, chocolates, snacks and what Labuan would not shelve or stock in its freezers. I too, could see that the living here would be good. The draw was just getting stronger.

It may be that all was indeed a blessing in disguise. It may not be the ideal academic choice to exercise, but if I don't venture this open door, I will not know what I originally intended to defer in favour of an offshore flying career. Furthermore, I want to see if Datuk Donald Mojuntin would keep his word when he told his entourage one lunch encounter we had, that if I joined this helicopter company, he would make me his personal pilot. It tickles me to think of checking out the extent of his rhetoric.

I now wait to sign my name and begin learning to handle this contraption as my next breadwinning machine.

It's All In The Delivery

90 days of pre-retirement leave does sound generous.

How on earth can I possibly put 90 days to good use on a wild tropical island, duty free for all possible vices, and avoid running out of all 3 months and not plead for more? After all, Labuan is such an exciting place.

I fill my time cycling.

With one admission of guilt.

Being on leave does not make me cycle any more frequently than when I was at work. That says a lot more about my work than the quality of my leave. Really.

Yet, it is cycling that helps my mind undwind, to induce some measure of expenditure so to sleep and to help me keep my eye on what really matters.

I often take the eastern coastal road that faces the mainland. I like the view as I can spot the weather changes over the mainland and see if Kinabalu has unveiled her face in the amber evening light, or sits in mysterious blue silhouette in the pale morning sunrise.

On one such morning ride, coasting downslope from The Chimney, as I passed the juction to Anjung Ketam I spotted a pair of storks from the Chinese Egret flock, looking busy on the grass next to the refuse bins.

Labuan's storks are ubiquitous, and when I first got here, I was fooled by them. They are so porcelain white, I was convinced they were decorative plaster figures planted in the playground. Till one moved and I laughed at my own gullibility.

But here they were, and by now knowing they were real, I admired their satiny plumage as I freewheeled approaching the junction.

They were quite voracious as they pecked at some white moving mass on the ground like a couple pawing at popcorn in a cinema.

Then what they were feasting on registered as I swept by.

Maggots that had hatched out of crabshells from Anjung Ketam's seafood swill.

I am glad I am done having kids.

I wouldn't want any infant of mine being delivered to his crib underslung in one of those beaks.

Reunions and Partings

Facebook is such a wonderful web tool for keeping voyeuristically in touch with friend and foe alike.

You can laugh in unavengable scorn at how ugly and fat your old belligerent school bully has turned out and  pore through his pictures to satisfy yourself that his fugliness is spawned yet onto another generation of people who will find his entire family insufferable. You check out his wife; if she's pretty then you know he has one nice woman who lives in regret. If she's ugly you surmise that this marriage was of equal partners. Only much later you find out that he is obscenely rich, the woman in the pictures is merely one of the many consorts in his life except that she is the only one he legally wed, and his kids are enjoying life the way you and yours can't dream of in a million years. You then  see that life is very very unfair.

Through 'fb' I caught wind of the La Salle Kota Kinabalu's 49th Annual Reunion (funny how that word, annual is sidelined by the popular yearly nowadays) scheduled for the night of the 21st of August, and I sent word to Anthony Mojitoh that I would surely be there. There were friends whom I had not seen in 30 years whom I hoped to see there. I needed to get a feel of KK, as it may yet prove to be the last resort as a place for me to seek employment. There was also the thrill of meeting my old, and once best friend, Dato' Donald Peter Mojuntin, just for the sake of saying hi.

The ferry departed Labuan late. It rained from Kuala Penyu to Kota Kinabalu. But the old Toyota SEG pulled faithfully along the twisty roads and land slides in the wet, the Levin engine not showing any signs of being edged out by the younger Vios that was bought three months back for the wife and kids. I'll keep her. She stands for the number of years I have survived marriage---18 and counting.

The hunt for KK's StarCity Convention Centre was done by calling up my other old buddy, Veeramani Selvaraju for interactive voice GPS, but he having never been for a reunion, did not know the place. Ah well, it was his birthday and he had other plans at home. But he did give me a foggy idea and with helicopter low-level sniff my way there skills, I wound up in the convention centre's parking lot before I could end the conversation with him.

Being a senior air force officer, I am used to being amongst the older ones arriving at any function. You know how it is: you walk in and newbie officers from all trades see your silver head and just know that you must be addressed as sir and they rush forward to greet you and ask socially correct questions with the ineptitude of a teenage nerd. Alternatively when you have answered as much small talk as you can suffer, you spot your office mate and hail him as if you hadn't seen him in the 26 years of your dead end career and you jettison the load of ditchwater younger officers for the company of guys who can hold a conversation long enough for you to consume your pre dinner drink.

But here at the convention centre as I walked up the stairs and into the lobby, I recoiled for a moment at the stark absence of youth save for those manning the registration counter. Everybody was old. Some looked positively geriatric. How do you know you're old?? It starts when the band sings Tom Jones' Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow, and gets emboldened and underlined when everyone at your table joins in, verbatim to the original singer. That's when the league I actually belonged in hit home: I am them. I am going to die very soon......

The night was a blast! The La Sallians year 1981 were seated at two tables. Dato Gordon Leong, another old classmate kept the wine pouring at our table and the conversation was simply rib tickling. Anthony, dear old chap, went so boldly as to engage me on why I should not fly the Nuri. He is an old friend. As with insurance salesmen, you never say no, you never argue. Just say yes and do what George Harrison recommended in his song.

The next morning was a mad rush back to Labuan.

The annual Kelawar Exercise on night vision goggles role and rescue flying had already begun on the 20th. My flight to KLIA was set for the 23rd, and I was to be picked up at the airport and driven straight to Kuantan. Though I was picked up and yes, driven to Kuantan, the proceedings of the day were not anything resembling straight. I was sharing transport with a Major Daud who had come down from Kuantan for a meeting in KL Base. That ended at 1300H, but the driver had to refuel and send a patient to hospital which dragged our pick up time to 1500H. Then we were informed that we had to pick up a Colonel's son from an LRT station in Setapak and get him home to Kuantan. Numerous cellphone calls to both father and son revealed that neither could provide directions to the station he was waiting at. You can't go hunting down a nebulous LRT station in KL on any given afternoon!!! I decided to interfere and navigated the driver to the LRT station near my old superbike mechanic's shop. Incidentally the boy was a 5 minute walk away from that point and he finally turned up looking as bright eyed and bushy tailed as a marten in the midday sun. Our departure from KL was at 1730H, with all the passengers save for me, anxious that the breaking of the Ramadhan fast would ingnobly, be on the road.

Thanks to the military driver breaking the speed limit from Karak to Kuantan, Major Daud and the  Colonel's son were dropped off at home eight minutes before berbuka, and did not miss the breaking of fast with their families. I, on the other had, was to be dropped off at the Mega View Hotel in Kuantan town which meant the driver would be at the wheel at berbuka time. I told the driver that I could wait in the officers' mess while he broke fast with his family in the Airmen's Married Quarters, but he opted to finish the job, end his duties and just head straight home after. I pressed my suggestion no further. As we exited the main guard room, we heard the base muezzin ululate the call to prayer. The driver made a brisk turn into the petrol station a kilometre away and I bought us drinks from the convenience shop therein, as that was all he wanted for breaking his fast. When he noticed I wasn't saying any prayers before guzzling my sparkling Ribena, he turned all apologetic.

"Tuan ni....bukan Islam ke tuan?"

I shook my head.

"Alamak tuan, kenapa tuan tak cakap? Tuan lunch pun tidak, teh petang pun tidak. Saya boleh masuk mana mana pekan on the way tadi."

I set him at ease and said that he should expedite to the hotel so that he could get home fast.

And the next day began Kelawar.

Mega View was a riverbank hotel where the exercise coordinators were housed. It was quaintly located. I used to watch the otters play like lovers on the pier. A bookshop a stone's throw away just screamed of Austin Powers to me. What a welcome to the witless!!

I turned up for the Exercise Coordination brief that afternoon at 1400H, being a member of the Exercise Secretariat. As soon as the Exercise Director saw my face, he said, "Ah Jeffrey!! You are here!! The report writing for the exercise is all yours."

The Kelawar Exercise had nothing to do with flying at night as far as I was concerned. For me, it was to say goodbye to my freinds. Capt Marina had invited me to her berbuka puasa at her home where I met Capt Paranjothi, my old copilot from No 5 Squadron and now aircraft captain and instructor to be, Capt Ahmad Tarmizi, the new aircraft captain, and Capt Khairani, my old air traffic controller form KL base when I was serving there from 2001 to 2005. It was more about updating each other on Major Sukumaran's recovery from his coma and to find out the latest repercussions of the Operation Deerhunter.

At the berbuka puasa to mark the closure of the exercise, I was forced to sit at the table with the exercise Director which was not so bad, but the unsettling thing was having to make idle chatter with the base commander, whom I was acquainted with. Yet there was consolation when shaking hands with one and all at the end of dinner, when they would say. "Okay Major Jeff, see you again."

To which I invariably answered, "No sir. Goodbye."