These aren’t the droids you’re looking for….move along….

June 8, 2005

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for….move along….

I'm still without my beloved laptop ( "he's called pedro - he's my mule") and therefore having to work from this cantankerous monstrosity desktop that packs up every five minutes and does the exact opposite of everything you tell it to do. It only has windows 98 so I have no access to any of my back up files and all the settings are wrong for email and internet etc - it feels like I'm wading through gloopy honey every time I ask it to do anything. It's a huge yellow electronic monster sent from the depths of hell to make my life a misery.

The computer equivalent of accidentally shooting someone in the head (dead laptop), drenching yourself in blood and brain (must work, can't work) and subsequently having to borrow a geeky large fore headed friends old clothes - necessary yet uncomfortable, out of fashion, buttons and pockets aren't where you are used to having them and can't wait to change into something else.

Anyways - point of the above is that I can't gibber long as I want to go home and am limited in what I can write due to the fact this infernal machine could lose it all any minute.

So the thing that bothered me today, (apart from being accused late yesterday evening of fecking up big time at verk, worrying about it all night and then finding it was because the fellow on the other side of the world simply doesn’t have the date settings on his computer arranged correctly…. Why I oughta….) was that lately this country and Australia have been at each others throats over the case of Schapelle Corby – the surfer girl who, upon arrival in Bali, was found to have 4.1kgs of Mari-jo in her bag and no way of explaining how it got there.

Basically both sides have been engaged in a verbal barrage ever since she was convicted by an Indonesian court and sentenced to 20 years. The daily English language Jakarta post has had numerous articles detailing the views of both sides and all sorts of nonsense has taken place along the lines of minute by minute national television coverage in Oz, hoax anthrax letters to Indo embassies and protests in the street here in Jakarta demanding the death penalty. The arguments continue in the form of letters printed in the paper – one day the Aussies call the Indo’s corrupt fools with no common sense who shall never see them set foot in Bali ever again – the next the Indo’s call the Aussies arrogant drug peddlers who have a racist immigration policy – and so it goes on… and on … and on.

There are many, many reasons to suggest the poor girls not guilty and there are many things wrong with the way the trial was organised (a judge who has never set an accused free in over 500 drug cases and is quite “proud” of the fact, for example). There is also the stark inability on the side of the defense to provide solid proof of how the 4.1kgs or Marijuana got in the girls surf bag.

However what has never been accurately answered by ANYONE covering this trial and those claiming she deserves all she gets, is this:

WHY WOULD YOU BUY 4.1KGS OF MARIJUANA IN A COUNTRY WHERE, IN COMPARISON TO THE PLACE OF ARREST, IT IS MORE EXPENSIVE TO PURCHASE AND THE LAW IS FAR MORE RELAXED ON POSSESSION - AND THEN - TAKE IT TO A COUNTRY WHERE IT IS CONSIDERABLY CHEAPER AND MORE WIDELY AVAILABLE BUT HAS TOUGHER SENTENCING IF CAUGHT WITH IT ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR PERSON?????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She can’t of possibly been trying to sell it, she can’t possibly of been intending to smoke all of it herself (average joint 0.5grams) and if it was to share with others then they would just buy it from one of the many, many, many, many little men that seemingly cover every street corner of Kuta trying to get you to buy the stuff (and everything else under the sun – I ended up with a goddamn Bow and Arrow last visit- what will I ever need that for!!! Salesman’s dream sometimes me). Fundamentally this is the main reason that it makes no sense – there is no personal or monetary advantage to bringing that kind of quantity from Oz to Bali – No stoner, no matter how wasted, would think this is a good idea – let alone anyone looking to make money from it (as such a quantity suggests) - yet what could have been a polite discussion between embassies, got turned into a media circus and then in true Indonesian fashion, pride and bureaucracy comes before basic bloody common sense and they shut up shop on further discussion - then the Aussies start flinging even more fuel on the fire, plastering it over every media network going and putting it alongside the rest of the worlds headlines.

You can come to agreement on common sense issues here in Indonesia – you just have to handle it in the right way and make sure no one loses any face over the matter – as long as you get what you want out of the situation, it does you no harm to tell them they're right and let them have their cake and eat it – as you will NEVER convince them any other way – If you lie and say, “yes she was a silly girl and we want to take her back for rehabilitation and lets not mention this to anyone” and then let them go away thinking they are the masters in the right and as soon as they are back in Oz, set her free and forget about the whole thing, you’d have a situation were everyone is happy (well, folk get what they want perhaps, if not exactly happy) – she carries on with her life and buys a lock for her surf bag vowing never to go back to Bali - and the Indonesians carry on living in blissful ignorance, thinking they were in the right all along and congratulating themselves on the wonderful outdated, nonsensical, bureaucratic load of old bollocks they call their legal system.

But the moment the Oz press set fire to the issue and put it in the spotlight to the point that my 88 year old Grandmother back in Uk probably knows who Schapelle Corby is, a grandmother who can’t remember my name half the time, then there was no way back – the Indonesian government cannot possibly lose face on an international scale, most importantly in front of their own people, and admit they were wrong – therefore the girl will have to serve as much of her time as possible until the issue goes away and they can smuggle her out the back door and back home to Oz (and the book/movie deal).

You cannot live and work in Asia if you do not understand the importance of never losing face in front of others – getting what you want by tricking those you are getting it from into thinking that they are the one who thought to give it to you in the first place, is the key to it all! – the Corby case was a diplomatic fuck up of galactic proportions on the side of the Oz Gov – of course there is moral reason to bang the drum of injustice and tell the world of how badly the Indonesian courts were handling this, alerting people to the lack of common sense and stupidity of the whole scenario – but not if you actually wanted to get the girl out of prison….

It’s just like when Ben Kenobi and Luke pulled up in their speeder entering Mos Eisley – two threatening storm-troopers approach and ask them were they got their droids who happen to match the descriptions that they're looking for – Old Ben gets the Good Ol Jedi Mind trick out of the closet and with a whisper and a wave of the hand the trooper is soon replying;

“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for…… you can go about your business…… move along….. move along”

Jedi mind tricks rather than explosive confrontations - if you really want to succeed in getting what you hope for in Asia.......

Spo | June 8, 2005