Yours Sinisterly

1)The novel was supposed to be set in a dystopian era.

2)The American ambassador, Michael Dexter, was initially a Caucasian. The African-American was another CIA agent named “Charlie Brown.” The characters were merged into one to simplify the plot.

There is a bad habit in Singapore among employees to skip work by using the excuse that someone in their family died.
Usually when you attend a funeral here, you can collect a vouchsafe receipt to validate your claim.
However, some people have managed to bypass this official document, usually based on trust.
Anyway, here’s a real story about a man who told his boss he needed time off during the weekday to accompany his father for medical checkup. The employer didn’t think twice about relieving the man.
On one occasion the employee didn’t show up for a week straight. Everyone tried to contact him, but they couldn’t. He switched off his cell phone.
When someone finally got hold of him, he gave the excuse his father had died.
Unfortunately, the boss found out his employee had been telling a cock and bull story when the father turned out to be very much alive.
Apparently, the employee has been spending time at the race course. It got so exciting he decided what’s a few more days?

Met a young man here in Singapore, extremely cocky fellow, who claimed he has written 25 suspense novels.

I couldn’t selfie the shock on my face, but I told him he must be some kind of a prodigy or a super genius to have written 25 suspense novels by that age. I asked him for his website address, and he said it’s not ready yet.

He then asked me what I did for a living, so I said: “I’m a fisherman. I have my days, you know — tried to catch a Marlin near the Indonesian waters. Took me several days. I finally got the Marlin. But by the time I came back to shore, it was all bones. The sharks, you know.”

He didn’t get it.

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While waiting for my flight back to Singapore at the New Delhi airport a few years ago, the announcements were replaced by people singing in real time.
I walked up to a sales staff behind a counter to ask what was going on. Was there some kind of festival today?
Looking embarrassed, she explained the office where the announcements were being made had been hijacked by some passengers who were fed up with flight delays.
All I said was, “I see… well, that makes life more interesting.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

p.s. it works both ways.

I used to frequent the 200-year-old El Fishawy café in Cairo.  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.

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.”