Day: January 28, 2008

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I Would Rather Do It My Way Than To Do It Right

Do It Right.

A phraseword that has become the code of conduct for divers of the Global Underwater Explorers (GUE): a group, and now a diving agency, born from the need to streamline and standardize equipments for underwater cave exploration, promoting the Do It Right (DIR) way of doing things. They swear by the standards that GUE is promoting that they look at divers who are not DIR as DIW (Do It Wrong).

There is a hot topic on that on the forum now. I have been involved in technical diving since the third quarter of 2005. I find that DIR requires lots of redundancies and skills that are overkills, and would only suit a certain kind of diving – cave exploration or deep wreck penetration, for example.

ALL dive agencies have good standards for teaching and promoting dive safety. It is how the instructors convey the lessons, and the students’ comprehension that makes the difference. A good diver is determined by his/her dive experiences. A diver who dives in Sipadan 1,000 times in good visibility is no better than a diver who has 50 dives but dives in very low visibility conditions like in Port Dickson or Pulau Sembilan on a bad day. Equipment brand does not make one a good diver either: there are lots of divers in Sabah who dive using home-made equipment and can dive far better than a Course Director even.

So for you new divers, or those who plan to take up diving soon, do not be conned into being trained by certain agencies, or conned into believing that an ex-commando dive instructor would make the best instructor (commandos are BAD divers – trust me!), or conned by your instructor into buying equipment the moment you complete your open water course: DON’T!

You get more dives, and ask to borrow different equipments from friends…see what you like, try them out – then only you decide. Don’t waste thousands of Ringgit and at the end, you don’t quite like what you’ve bought.

I Do It My Way!

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Love Him, Hate Him, But Love Him – Suharto (1921-2008)

Mohd Suharto

General (Rtd) President Haji Mohd Suharto is no more.

He passed away just after 1pm yesterday after more than 3 weeks of being gravely ill.

Just what kind of legacy did he leave behind?

Suharto was instrumental in ending the Confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia, and advocated the strengthening of ties between the two countries. He also ended the life of the Partai Komunis Indonesia, an organisation his predecessor, President Sukarno, maintained, thus weakening the influence of the communists in this part of South East Asia.

It is my believe that the late President of Indonesia had to rule his country the way he did. It is not easy to maintain the cohesion of a country that is made of 13,000 islands with 200 million people. Look at what has happened to the country after that style of ruling was removed with the stepping down of Suharto in May 1998, following the Asian Economic Crisis. I am not trying to exonerate him of his acts when he was in power; I am merely saying that at that point of time, Indonesia needed such a ruler.

Despite the existence of nepotism, collusion, cronyism, corruption that existed during his rule, Suharto should be remembered for turning his country from a poor post-colonial nation into a modern and strong country. Most of those who demonstrated against him since 1998 until his passing were too young to remember the late President’s gift to them: freedom from colonial oppression.

During his time, race and religion issues never surfaced; but has now reared its ugly head, causing countless deaths amongst both Indonesians and foreigners. Forlorn Soldier should remember how ugly it was in Sulawesi when he was stuck there during the racial and religious wars that happened there after Suharto stepped down: something that had never happen before in that part of the world.

What Indonesians failed to see back in 1998 was, Suharto was not to blame for the economic crisis that had caused them to lose up to 80% of their purchasing power. It was a regional thing. Much like the empty promise certain quarters have made to the people of Malaysia should they be voted in to form a government – to reduce the price of fuel: where had these people come from? Saturn?

Anyway, my personal experience of Suharto’s Indonesia was of not hearing of any major crime taking place in Indonesia during Suharto’s time. No banks were ever robbed there. It would be almost suicidal to rob banks in Indonesia then, or to commit crimes against foreigners.

He also used to send one of his trusted friends, General Drs Widodo Budidarmo, then the Inspector-General of the Indonesian Police Force to Malaysia to enhance cross-border ties with the Royal Malaysian Police. My family hosted dinner for Pak Widodo at our residence (now part of the Tun Razak Memorial complex) at least three times before his retirement in 1978. The relationship between the police force of both nations were at its best then. It was then that my father was awarded the Bintang Bhayangkara Utama by Suharto, while Pak Widodo was made an Honorary Tan Sri when he received the Panglima Setia Mahkota Malaysia Yang Mulia (PSM).

Suharto, love him or hate him, was the best son Indonesia ever had up until now.

al-Fathihah.