Friday, October 29, 2010 The Scourge of Burma - Part 5

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The scourge of Burma, Part 5
BYHLAOO, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR–23MARCH2010
POSTEDIN:MYANMAR, SCOURGEOFBURMA
This is a sixpart New Mandala series. Readers are warnedthat some of the
content inthis series is graphic andthere is occasional coarse language. Part 1,
Part 2, Part 3 andPart 4 were publishedinrecent weeks.
In 1992 a large engineering companybought out our little firm. We were massively
losing moneyin the recession and so our young owner had sold us out instead of
going under. The other companywas doing well and rather than paying taxon their
profit theyspent the profit on acquiring our operation.
Not onlydid theybuyus out, but theyalso shifted us to their huge compound in an
Industrial Park in Silverwater near the Remand Centre. I was promoted to Production
Manager as theyhad a grand plan of expansion for our operation.
Mysalarywas raised to $48,000 a year and so I didn’t need to drive a cab anymore: I
was happyand the wife and kids were happytoo because I was at home during the
weekends. We started making the expensive German manipulators we used to
import. The group Managing Director, the old owner, managed us initiallyas a new
division of his vast engineering group.
Within a few months the bright old man realised the main problem with our operation.
Our Engineering Manager was a Dutchman and a good tradesman but he wasn’t a
qualified engineer. I was always baffled byhis technical decisions.
Here was a typical example we laughed about. If we had to purchase a hydraulic
cylinder he would just pull out one of his catalogues and pick a suitable one without
anydesign calculations. Let’s saya 4” diameter one. If that one didn’t work he would
go for next one bigger. Let’s saya 5” one. That went on and on and finallywe could
end up with an 8” one that worked, and quite a few spare cylinders. As a result we had
a few hydraulic cylinders lying around rusting away.
He didn’t know how to draw the Force and Moment diagrams. He didn’t even know the
Bernoulli Equation for the relationship between the pressure of a flowing fluid and its
velocity. So he didn’t know how the venturi-vacuum-valve works. He had no
engineering degree. And he proudlysaid that if he has to hire an engineer he always
handshakes the applicant first and if he does not have a calloused-palm he will not
employhim.
So when it came to do the design work for our new German manipulators, which
required a lot of complexstrength calculations, our pragmatic old man gave the
project to me knowing that I had a 6-year mechanical engineering degree, even
though it was not recognised bythe Australian government foremployment purposes.
I had to do the calculations and detailed drawings, send them to the Germans, re-did
the design and send them again and again till the technically-fussyGermans were
completelysatisfied that our Australian copies would work.
I did the job well. I purchased the material, built them, and finallyinstalled them at the
client’s factory. The companymade a handsome profit out of the project and the old
man was happybut I made a bitter enemyout of the Engineering Manager. And he
patientlywaited over a year for his payback time with the help from our new Division
General Manager, a migrant from South Africa.
Racists
Since the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa, or even well before that still-
celebrated-event,South African whites have been moving to Australia. Their favourite
suburb in Sydneywas the veryexpensive St. Ives on the leafyupper North Shore. Most
of them were decent new citizens of Australia but a minoritybrought with them the ugly
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racismof their homeland, and a deep hatred and primal-fear of coloured people.
Myold workshop manager was one of them and even though he was a decent
hardworking man his snide remarks towards me were reallyhurtful. He even used the
derogatoryword kaffir when he referred me in his conversations with other
mechanics. I encountered some of them in mycabs and I could never forget the bitter
experiences.
Once I got a man speaking Afrikaans to his woman companion in mycab and he lazily
stretched both his feet onto the glove boxbeside me. “Excuse me, can you take off
your feet?”, I asked him politely. He asked his companion, “what’s this kaffir monkey
asking?”. I kicked them out of mycab.
And then the paranoid old woman. I picked her up from a posh Sydneyhotel one night
to take her home. It was cold and windyand I was wearing a black beanie and it might
have triggered something inside her. She immediatelydialled her mobile and started
talking in Afrikaans from the backseat bythe passenger side window. Her left hand
was on the door handle as if she’s gonna open the door readyto jump out at any
minute.
At first I didn’t know what was going on, then I realised she was telling someone at
the other end the cab number and myauthoritynumber first, and then where the cab
was at everyturn along the way. I could hear the present locations. Clarence Street,
Harbor Bridge, Warringah Freeway, WilloughbyRoad Exit, WilloughbyRoad,
Penshurst Street, Archbold Road, Eastern Way, Horace Street.
I almost freaked out. When we reached and stopped in front of her steel-gated large
compound in St. Ive’s two large men were waiting readyto pounce. “Are you guys from
South Africa?” The older one said “yes”. “Sorry, mymother was once attacked bya
Negro cabbie in Johannesburg”, the younger one with a slight Aussie ascent offered
an apology.
UnfortunatelyI now got one as myimmediate boss and he was hostile from the very
first day. Our owner was too old to run our operation day-to-dayso he assigned one of
his General Managers to take over our division as well. He was verybusyand he
didn’t reallyhave time to run our operation full time. So he relied completelyon the
Engineering Manager. Theyboth had the middle name ‘Van’.
Based on the Engineering Manager’s advice he transferred the German Manipulator
Project back to the engineering department and started talking to the owner about
how myproduction department was wasting moneybuying too manyhydraulic
cylinders. He even brazenlytold him and others that as a degree holder from an Asian
hellhole like Burma I was not qualified to do what I was doing.
I ran a verytight shop and I had a skeletal staff of about ten permanent welders,
boiler-makers, machinists, and toolmakers. I frequentlyused contract labour to bring
in extra manpower onlywhen we needed it. He didn’t understand the nature of our
manufacturing and blamed me for the high cost of temporarilyhired contract labour.
Basing on that accusation he’d taken awaymyhiring and firing powers. When I angrily
challenged this decision, he told me to myface that I might be hiring too many
employees of myown colour. I was totallyamazed and extremelyangry. He brought
mynasty, disturbed side out into the open. I could kill a man for less than what he had
done.
So I started giving him shit too. I refused to talk to him. I refused to cooperate with him.
And the whole operation fell apart within three months from his appointment as our
General Manager. The owner was veryangry. He called me into his vast office and
ordered me to cooperate with the new General Manger like I did with him. I was a
good engineer and he was veryhappywith mypast performance, he emphatically
stated.
“But you must work with him, even if you don’t like him, he is looking after myinterest”,
he emphasised. “Do I have to leave here if I can’t work with him?” No, not really, I
didn’t mean that, he tried to calm me down. But I wasn’t convinced byhis replyand the
next dayI resigned and walked out of the factory. I’ve never taken no shit from nobody
in mylife and even if I had to give up mylittle house I wouldn’t give a shit.
And that’s how I lost mylittle house in Campbelltown. I didn’t have a reference from
mylast job and that was a hell of a time looking for a managerial job again in
recession-ravaged Sydney, especiallyfor some brown-skinned Asian with an
engineering degree from Burma. Within sixmonths I was forced to sell myhouse and
I had to move into a two bedroom rented flat.
The worst was that in the middle of the recession the house was sold for less than
the loan and I still owed the Home Fund money. I was so angryI refused to payback
the shortfall so the NSWgovernment put mycredit rating down into the shit. I was
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be able to buya house again in Australia. Mystupid temper fucks me up real well. I
had no house and no job.
Then one dayI remembered old Mr. Woo. He was a Mercedes-Benz-driving Chinese
migrant from Hong Kong and he was then managing a large cold storage in the
industrial suburb of Botanynear the SydneyAirport. One of the accountants from my
old job was also a Hong Kong Chinese and I met Mr. Woo at her house-warming
party. Once he discovered I was from Burma he told me the stories about his failed
attempts to get regular shipments of raw prawn meat from Rangoon. He even asked
me if I was interested in helping him.
So I called him and he asked me to come see him at his cold storage and that
meeting turned mylife again into a totallydifferent direction: backward or reverse!
Burmese Prawns
The prawn is the most used seafood in Chinese cuisine. EveryChinese restaurant
buys a large quantityeveryday. Prawns do not normallycome straight out of water
headless and peeled and deveined and readyto be cooked. To be used as prawn
meat it has to be decapitated and peeled. And the long shit line on its back has to be
removed.
The process is a labour intensive one and for the Chinese restaurants in a high
labour cost countrylike Australia theycan’t effort their kitchen-hands to spend half
their days peeling and deveining the stupid prawns. It is just too expensive. In Hong
Kong the idea of shifting that process to poor neighbouring countries with cheap
prawns and cheaper workers originated.
The prawn processing industryis well developed in mainland Southeast Asia. The
biggest food conglomerate in Thailand, CPFood, exports close to a million tons of
prawn meat everyyear. And, in those years, Burma was catching up since the military
government dismantled the 27-year-old socialist system and opened the economy
after the 1988 coup.
Private companies were formed and anyone with capital and overseas contacts was
trying to export anything and everything. The Burmese militaryitself had formed a
primaryholding entitycalled Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. and had been known
to be running manysmall cold storages all over Burma.
Mr. Woo told me all I need to know about the prawn trade and showed me around his
enormous cold storage facilitythat day. What I had to do now was go back Rangoon
and find out if I could gather a 20-foot container load or 20-tons of raw prawn meat for
his company. If I could, he wanted to know how much it would cost on board Rangoon
port. He called it FOBprice. He said the right price would be about US$100,000 for the
first container.
If the price was right and if I was confident I could ship a container load of prawn to
SydneyI would have to call him. He would then open a LC (Letter of Credit) worth
US$100,000 to the Burmese companyof mychoosing in Rangoon and I would have
to finish the job. I would have to come back to Sydneyonce the container left the
Rangoon Port and wait for the arrival of the container as it will take about 3-4 weeks
through Singapore. We would then have to open the refrigerated container (Reefer)
and if the goods were satisfactoryI would get $5,000 as mycommission.
I had to bear the cost of travelling back and forth between Rangoon and Sydneyand
that alone would eat the first commission. But once a reliable flow was established
Mr. Woo said he would lift the volume and take at least 5 container loads of prawns
per trip if I could find that many, and I would then make a decent amount of money. I
could probablybe earning $20,000 bi-monthly. I was pleased and accepted his offer.
Nothing could go wrong and I would be going home too, I was thinking. How wrong I
was then.
Before I left his place he said he had to warn me before I went to Rangoon. So I sat
back down on myseat at his desk. He then asked me to promise that I wouldn’t be
involving in the heroin trade. It shocked me.
“Whywould I be involving in the drug trade?”, I asked. “I used to bring prawn
containers from Vietnam to Hong Kong years ago while I was still living there”, he
said. “After manycontainers the Vietnamese guyI worked with hid heroin bricks from
Vietnam in the prawn blocks without telling me”.
The Vietnamese got awaywith first few containers but the Hong Kong police
eventuallyraided his cold storage and opened one of his containers. Everyprawn
block was broken and the cops found 20 kilos or 20 bricks of Double UOGlobe Brand
pure heorin from the Golden Triangle and he was arrested. It took him manyyears
and millions of Hong Kong dollars to clear his name and finallyhe had to leave Hong
Kong for Australia.

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He didn’t want the same thing repeating here and so he wanted me to promise that I
wouldn’t be involving in the heroin trade as Burma is the main source of all the heroin
in South East Asia. “Also please do not lie to me, truth always comes out”, he said. I
eagerlypromised and he let me go.
The next dayI flew to Rangoon via Singapore.
Share this:
9 Comments
Barrybankruad
PostedMarch24, 2010at 11:35AM
Interesting story, I look forward to the next instalment. As anAustralian now living in
Thailand, who has also lived and worked in Southern Africa for manyyears I’m
afraid the phobias of manyS.African whites will take a couple of generations to
become eradicated. I should also like to add that I worked with manyBurmese
people in Australia and found them to be delightful.
Quality comment or not? 0 0
The Frog
PostedMarch24, 2010at 4:48PM
Epic.
Hla Oo
NMreaders and also Andrew and Nich must be sick of me bynow. OnlyPart-6 left
and I won’t be writing again for a very, verylong time, I promise.
Chris
Hi, Hla Oo: No one is tired of reading your stories. Theyare well-written and the
detail is veryauthentic. Your on-the-ground view of how modern Burma operates
and how things and people go in and out is veryinsightful. Thank you for taking the
time to write these pieces. Chris Coles
Hla Oo
Chris Coles,
Thanks for the encouragement. BTWI like your Expressionist Portraits. I am a fan of
SydneyNolan’s works.
I was also educated in a Bangkok universityand during myfirst night out in Patpong
in 1985 I was almost stabbed bya pimp in an upstairs bar when we refused to pay
the massively-inflated bill. We had a fight and then we successfullydid a runner.
In the mid 90’s while I was a bagman between the Burmese Armyand Israeli arms
dealers I used to drop in a couple of times at Bangkok to pick up briefcase full of
US$ from scary-looking Thais without knowing the moneywas from the heroin
trade. The house I met them was not far from a small park which had a huge, caged
Burmese Python right smack on the middle.
I am writing down these stories of myadventure now as mylife insurance policy. I

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am dying anywayof myliver problems.
Moe Aung
Hla Oo
I sure am looking forward to the “Confessions of a Burmese ArmyHood”. Rename
it ‘Memoirs’ or ‘Life and Times’ if you like. Worth selling it for film rights I reckon, not
just a book.
It would be a shame if the storywent untold. Certainlycolourful and scenic, from the
Burmese jungles to Bangkok and Sydney, spanning an interesting and eventful
period of some three decades with diverting subplots, and billed as mainlyfact-
based fiction. And above all you’ve definitelygot the knack. Hope it’s going to be a
nice little earner for you, and time’s on your side to enjoyit. Good luck.
Hla Oo
Thanks Moe Aung,
I take it as a compliment even though the snide phrase “mainlyfact-based fiction” is
hurtful.
Film rights? Interesting as Nich once told me The Scourge would make a great
movie after reading myseries first time. But, believe me for once, mypurpose is not
after fame and fortune.
I’m just hoping that from mywritings something good for humanitywill come out
and make Burma a better place than I’d witnessed bitterlyand still painfully
remember.
Our people have been suffering for far too long!
Aung Soe
PostedMay 10, 2010at 10:24PM
I have read all of the stories from part 1 to 6
non-stop, theyare excellent stories indeed.
Hla Oo
PostedMay 13, 2010at 1:05PM
Ko Aung Soe,
I’m glad you enjoyThe Scourge of Burma series. I have written on New Mandala
quite a few essays since 2008. You can find the rest at the following links. (Since
you sounded like an avid reader.)
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2010/01/15/irrawaddy-water-and-ne-
win%E2%80%99s-gold-trees/
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2008/07/23/1974-u-thant-uprising-a-first-
hand-account/
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2008/08/04/the-horror-of-political-
violence-in-burma/
I speciallyappreciate a comment coming from a fellow Burmese. I am now writing
another series called “Burma in Limbo” just in time for the coming elections in
Burma.

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Friday, October 29, 2010 The Scourge of Burma - Part 5

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