Day: December 30, 2006

This may be my last blog posting for 2006 as tomorrow is Aidil Adha for Muslims in Malaysia. The day after tomorrow we will be in the new year of 2007. Saddam Hussein won’t be celebrating either day.

I wrote some of the things I would like to achieve in 2006 and they are as follows:

For 2006:

1. I’m now doing my Divemaster training
2. Hope to at least become an Assistant Instructor before year end
3. Dive HMS Repulse
4. Conclude my land and timber sales deals (I hate finnicky buyers)

So where am I now?

1. I am now a Divemaster.
2. No, I haven’t begun to do my Assistant Instructor course as my priorities in diving have changed.
3. HMS Repulse is out of the question as the organisers cannot guarantee the safety of the LOB in Sri Lanka.
4. The buyers are still finnicky; I am now trying to conclude several land deals.

And what are the other things that have happened to me in 2006?

1. I completed my Decompression Procedures course.
2. I no longer work for Stale Tandoori Store.
3. I have moved back to my old (new) house.
4. I dived the Nichi Asu Maru and Gyoshin Maru wrecks.
5. Bought a Princeton Tec Shockwave LED dive light.
6. Made more friends (divers/non-divers).

What do I hope to achieve in 2007?

1. Get that LOB going.
2. Do my Instructor course and complete it, of course.
3. Do my KISS CCR course and buy one unit (manual).
4. Do my Extended Range course.
5. Do my Trimix course.
6. Do one more course that some friends and I plan to do.
7. Close the land by the beach deal (and several others in Kota Bharu, Langkawi and Bangkok).

So, if you look at the photo below, remember I asked how many of those in the photo would still be there at the Stale Tandoori Store? The answer is two.

I only wonder how much longer can the company sustain its operations, or how many more con-jobs can they do to get money to pay the employees.

Hussein al-Tikriti, or Saddam Hussein, is no more. He was executed by hanging at 10.05am Malaysian time, thus bringing to an end the life of a brutal dictator.

Saddam rose to power through bloody manipulation of the Ba’ath Party, after purging the party of dissidents, including some of his own uncles.

He did many bad and brutal things, including the massacre of fellow Muslims – Kurds and Shiahs.

Personally, I believe Saddam Hussein deserved to die, but at the hands of fellow Iraqis. Whether or not the current Iraqi government can be seen as one that is independent of the US, remains to be seen. I am sure he government tries to portray itself as not stooping to the demands of the US, but the fact that it was set up after an illegal invasion by the US and its allies makes it as just another extension of the arms of the US.

Personally, I will also wager my money that the violence in Iraq will not stop. Not at all. The current sectarian violence has nothing to do with Saddam, not directly anyway. In a country were the Shiahs are the majority, and the fact that they were subjugated by the minority Sunnis for decades, will ensure that the violence will not stop until the country is either controlled by one group, or broken up into different little countries according to sects, and even then, cross-border incursions will not stop, as the oil-rich territories will then be in the control of both Kurds and Shiahs.

In a way, Iraq was better off under the brutal control of Saddam Hussein. His death is only the end of ONE Iraqi nightmare amongst thousands others. And the timing of his excution could not have been worse. Every Aidil ‘Adha Muslims in the region will remember it as the day Saddam sacrificed himself.