Khaled Talib's Blog, page 15

The Day My Teacher Told Me To Keep A Secret

I  had a male school teacher in primary school who was feared by everyone.

One day our class made so much noise he came in from the back entrance and kicked a few tables and chairs just to send a message.

Everyone stood still. He then made an example of one of the boys by ordering him to run around the class performing a butterfly dance.

Some years later, during Sports Day, he didn’t show up. We were told he was feeling under the weather. I remembered that day well.  Sports Day. I was walking home with some boys. I was right at the back of the group. After crossing a traffic light, something I was holding fell. I paused, turned, and picked it up. When I stood up again, my eyes caught sight of a stationary car behind the line. There, with his family, was the mean teacher behind the steering wheel.

I pointed at him but just as I was about to alert the others, the teacher, with eyes wide open, tapped his finger to his lips. I got the message and nodded.

I never told those boys I was going home with. In fact, I never told anyone until now.

 

 

 

 

Read with Caution

Back in the 70s, the main Singapore newspaper, The Straits Times, posted a notice saying that Santa was in the house. The notice encouraged kids to call in where they can tell Santa what we wanted for Christmas. So I decided to call Santa.

I was at a relative’s house when I made the call.  It took a while to get through, and we assumed it’s because everybody was calling.

After dialing so many times within an hour, I succeeded. Santa greeted me and asked me what I wanted. A remote control airplane, I replied. Santa then asked me to pass the phone to one of my parents. I said they weren’t around. So he asked me to pass the phone to another senior person. I gave the phone to a relative.

After my relative hung up the phone, he told me Santa requested for my home address. I thought he was personally going to come over with my present. So I waited.

A week later, a letter came from the newspaper’s office addressed to my mom. In the letter, Santa encouraged her to buy the gift for me. That’s it… no check, no voucher — nothing. Yes, indeed, my childhood was pretty traumatic for my parents.

Moral of the story: If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.

 

For My Memorabilia Wall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Twitter message is going to my memorabilia wall. It’s an honor to have the Queen of Espionage say this about Smokescreen.

Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling novelist and co-founder of the Int’l Thriller Writers Association has a new thriller out. The Assassins is winner of the 2015 Military Writers Society of America Founder’s Award.

She is also well known for collaborating with Robert Ludlum to write the “Covert One” series.

Famous “Body Parts” Murders in Singapore

Some of the most famous cases of murder and dismemberment in Singapore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1) Liu Hong Mei, a Chinese citizen, had been working in Singapore.  In June 2005, she was killed by her lover, Leong Siew Chor, and subsequently chopped up into seven parts. Her body parts and belongings were then dumped in a river. Investigations began when parts of her body surfaced on the river, giving the crime its name.  The woman was butchered by her married lover, a Singaporean factory supervisor, Leong Siew Chor.  Investigations revealed Leong had stolen the woman’s ATM card and withdrew more than $2,000 from her account.  Leong has since been hanged.

2) Briton John Martin Scripps was convicted of murder in the gruesome murder of South African tourist, Gerard George Lowe. The police were alerted when various parts of Lowe’s dismembered body were found floating in plastic bags off a Singapore pier. Investigations led to the arrest of Martin, his eventual conviction. He was hanged in 1996. Described as a mild-mannered and polite man, Martin had spent most of his adult life behind bars for petty crimes and drug-related offences. He was also linked to several murder cases in various parts of the world.

3) In 2005, Filipino maid Guen Garlejo Aguilar killed a fellow maid, Jane Parangan La Puebla, over a sum of $2,000 that La Puebla owed her. Aguilar hid the body in her room inside a luggage bag for the next two days, without her employer’s knowing. She then bought a chopper, an axe and some plastic bags, and dismembered the body. She dumped the body parts near a busy subway and at a reservoir. She escaped the gallows as the court reduced her charge from murder to manslaughter. She was found to be mentally unsound at the time of the killing. She spent only 10 years in jail.

4) In 2014, a legless body was found stuffed in a suitcase, which led to two Pakistanis in Singapore being charged with murder. Ramzan Rizwan and Rasheed Muhammad were accused of killing fellow Pakistani Muhammad Noor at a lodging house. The duo was arrested not far from where the body was discovered. Police were alerted to the case after blood was seen dripping from a suitcase when a rag-and-bone man tried to load it onto a supermarket trolley.

5) The decapitated body of Jasvinder Kaur, an Indian national living in Singapore, was found floating in a canal one morning in 2013. The body was wrapped in clear cling wrap and covered in black trash bags. Her hands were severed off at her wrists.  The woman was killed by her husband, Harvinder Singh, after he discovered she was making a long-distance call to a person unknown to him.  He punched her and left her lying on the bed, only to realize later she was dead. Harvinder remains on the run while his friend, Gursharan, was jailed for 30 months for helping him rid Jasvinder’s body. Gursharan had helped Harvinder carry a bag from the latter’s residence to the canal. Harvinder is now on Interpol’s wanted list.

 

 

 

Medical Scam in Singapore

A long time ago, while at work, I developed a fever. I went to the company doctor and also complained about a slight pain on the right side of my tummy. The doctor referred me to a specialist who in turn recommended surgery within the next day. He said I had appendicitis. What do I know? He added the simple surgery would last 25 minutes, and it would cost S$2,000.00. The company would pay for it.

I was apprehensive about the whole thing. So I told my mother about this scheduled surgery. She told me the doctor and the special were both conmen, and I should complain to my company. She said if I had appendicitis, I won’t be walking around. I’d be screaming and rolling on the floor — or dead if there was a burst.

I didn’t show up for the surgery. When the nurse called the next day, she said the doctor was upset because I wasted his time. I told her to tell the doctor I’ll be making a formal complaint against him.

Over the years, there were two more attempts to cheat me here in Singapore. There’s a lot of medical BS around the world. Singapore is not innocent either. Always get a second or third opinion. It’s so important.

Fear =…

Confession: I used to be afraid of travelling to Turkey. Even though I have some distant relatives over there, that movie “Midnight Express” freaked me out. Then again, so did The Exorcist.

I realized eventually the movie was exaggerated in many ways. Turkey is a beautiful and colorful country. Thankfully, the real Billy Hayes qualified and explained himself in relation to the time he spent in prison there.

As Saint Augustine said: “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”  

The monks in Europe used to travel to the Middle East to study at the Islamic universities during a time when books were banned. It was the “Burning of the Book” era, and if I am not mistaken, this took place in Europe somewhere in the 14th century.

In fact, when Napolean Bonaparte colonised Egypt, he took some aspects of Shariah and superimposed it into the French Civil Law with modifications, of course.

Or as Averroes (Ibn Rashid), a medieval Arab scholar from Andalusia, Spain, tells us:  “Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation.”

p.s. it works both ways.

Double Whammy

I used to frequent the 200-year-old El Fishawy café in Cairo a lot.  The waiters knew me well. On one occasion a senior waiter asked me to change an American hundred dollar bill with him. The note belonged to another customer who didn’t have the local currency to pay his bill.

The next day, I went to the bank to convert the bill. But the teller did something strange: He returned it back to me. He told me I was in possession of a fake. The teller rubbed the paper with his fingers, proving how easily the ink came off. I was surprised he didn’t have me arrested. I could have been the counterfeiter.

So I went back to the waiter and told him what happened. The waiter, upset, took back the bill and promised to return my money. He did.

Some days later at the café, the waiter told me to accompany him and a few others to the police. The forger had been caught. My role was simple: Tell the police what the bank teller told me.

The man they caught was a middle-aged Palestinian-Jordanian. He appeared calm and composed as he listened to their accusations.  Fingers pointed at him, voices were raised. Everyone swore he was the wrongdoer. They were cocksure.

The accused then pulled out his passport from his jacket pocket and asked one of the officers to check the entry stamp. The man had only arrived a few hours ago.

Wrong guy.

Halt! Who Goes There!

 

I was at a certain place, and a stranger, a Singaporean, tried to strike a conversation with me. I knew what was coming next, because it’s rare to meet someone here – though they exist but as a minority – who can hold a proper conversation without prying into your personal details.

I can tolerate a lot of things, like how in cinemas here, people laugh at dumb slap sticks but remained silent when the dialogue is sprinkled with pun.  But there are some things I classify as a no-go zone.

As expected, the question came: “Where do you stay?” Once you answer that question, more will follow. They’ll ask you incessantly without respecting boundaries.

On one occasion — someone, whom I hardly know — came up to me and the first thing he asked was, “So what’re you doing now?” In reply, in front of his wife, I said: “Standing in front of you, talking to you.” The wife giggled, he didn’t.

And then there’s that “You again” when they meet you in public instead of saying, “Hello, how are you?” That’s crudeness, in addition to everything else.

In fact, I’ve had strangers at gatherings asking me, “What’s your race?” What’s your religion?” apart from “Where do you stay?”

Here’s the funny thing: When you turn the questions on them, they don’t like it. They start to shift their eyes this way, that way, looking uncomfortable.

This time, however, I decided to give the person at the beginning of my story a brain freeze. A real shocker.

I narrated about my prison time in Argentina for murder and how I got a shorter prison sentence after  revealing to the  prosecution office where I hid the body. I added I’m back for good, and presently staying at a halfway house.  As I don’t have any friends, I asked him for his phone number.  You should have seen his face as he slowly crept away.

I complained about this incident to a friend, a senior PR director, about how in Singapore one’s privacy is always being trampled. She told me she suffers from it too — and she doesn’t like it. I’m sure many of you can relate to this.

This has to stop.  Nobody has the right to disrespect your privacy.

 

Murder Simply Brewed

Looks quaint, doesn’t it? This used to be the caretaker’s quarters at a Presbyterian Church in Singapore. It was located beside the old library. I must have walked past this place a million times. There used to be a bus stop in front of it, and across, a cinema. I am kinda outdated these days. Singapore’s too fast for me, too many changes.

Back in the 1980s, lots of things were happening. I mean, things were moving and shaking. Good old days. The pace of life was moderate.

But something happened at this little house that was most disagreeable with the tempo of life.

The caretaker was chopped into pieces and his parts cooked in curry. You read that right.

The six suspects, including the man’s wife and her relatives, were charged with murder.

But they were eventually discharged not amounting to an acquittal. No remains or evidence of the killing were ever found. Imagine that.

Three others were imprisoned for several years, and then released unconditionally.

The three gave a newspaper an interview. In the photo, they were all smiles while having a meal at a food stall.

The case was dubbed “The Curry Murders.”

 

Don’t Piss Off The Nice People…

During a trip somewhere, I stopped over in Qatar. The connecting flight was delayed for many hours.

When I had to go to the gents, I found a long queue of people waiting. There was no other place because it was a make shift airport. The new complex was being constructed.

A Bangladeshi janitor, with a gesture, made me follow him. He took me around the corner. Right there, above a locked door, the sign read: “Executive.”

The janitor took out a key, unlocked the door, and told me it’s all mine.

Two hours earlier when I first arrived at the airport, I had walked past the janitor. He greeted me. I responded with a smile and a nod.

I didn’t think anything of it. But it would seem it meant a lot to him. For that, he remembered me.

Moral lesson in this story? Don’t piss off the nice people.