INSTANT KARMA DID GET HIM AFTER ALL

I should make one thing clear. It’s not that I disagree with President Trump’s foreign policy or his notions about healthcare. It’s just that he’s a lunatic sent here to destroy the world that gets to me. 

I mean, did you watch the debate? 

I watched it, first in incredulity, then in shock and anger. I don’t know why I should feel that way as I’m not a citizen and, God knows, my country has enough of its own problems. But, I suppose, the US and its actions ultimately affect all of us. 

I have a brother and two nephews living and working there and both my wife and I have had postgraduate stints in the States. And there is its reach – its literature, its art and its films – which has, one way or another, influenced many of us. 

Therefore, you expect the President of the United States to behave in a certain way, an approach exemplified by President Barack Obama – with wit, charm and an innate decency. 

You do not expect a showing like last Tuesday where President Trump exhibited all the tact and charm of a bull in a china shop. He bullied, he harangued, and he interrupted and trampled all over the moderator, the hapless Chris Wallace. 

It reminded me of the truth of the Mel Brooks quote: “Presidents don’t do it to their wives, they do it to their country.”

And when asked squarely to criticise white supremacist hate groups like the Proud Boys, he balked, or he couldn’t. And that only encourage the group: it promptly adopted his phrase – “stand back and stand by” – as their new handle. And that’s a group identified by the FBI as an extremist organisation. 

As I write this, I have just heard that both President Trump and his wife have tested positive for Covid-19. I’m stumped and all I can say is that John Lennon’s song Instant Karma comes to mind. 

This might finally jolt the people of the United States into waking up to the dangers of the disease, to listen to the doctors and finally let science lead the way in fighting the disease. 

It might also teach the President – not holding my breath here though – a lesson or two on the perils of hubris. 

While convalescing or in quarantine, the President will be well advised to read up on world affairs and perhaps catch up with American history. 

The reason I say this, is the fact that the President’s favourite rooms in the White House are, in order, the Lincoln Room, the Roosevelt Room and the Oval Office. And he still thinks that President Oval was the one who came after James Garfield. 

So far it appears that the President is fine and you have to hand it to the American people for the news seems to have finally united them in the sense that everyone, including his Democratic adversaries, praying for his recovery. 

With one voice, they’ve also urged him to avoid hydroxychloroquine and bleach like the plague. 

HISTORY DOES NOT HAVE TO REPEAT ITSELF

There is a phrase that’s still relevant in thought. 

Tabula Rasa literally means “clean slate” and it refers to the absence of preconceived ideas in humans when they are, say, young. 

But it’s not just the young that are easily influenced. On one level, there’s Goebbels and his ideas about propaganda: “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” 

Hitler, Stalin et al have used it successfully. 

But, incredibly, it’s still in use.  

The Deceiver-in-Chief in residence in Washington routinely employs the Goebbels Gospel to downplay the ravages of Covid-19 on the United States. 

Even more incredibly, and despite over 200,000 deaths, it’s believed by enough people literate enough to know better. And this in the US in the second decade of the 21st Century! 

It’s enough to make you believe in Santayana, “History always repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce.” 

But this “clean slate” business cuts across levels. Take me, for instance.  Growing up, I lived in a family where my father stressed English, so most of my siblings spoke English. With the exception of the eldest, we only have a rudimentary grasp of Malayalam. 

My father subscribed to two publications at the time: The Straits Times and the Reader’s Digest. Later on, TIME got added to the mix. 

In those days, my father used to insist that we read the editorials in The Straits Times – this was in the 1970s before the two papers separated, news-wise. We did, out of prudence: he occasionally tested us with dinnertime questions.

Add to this a reading diet of Enid Blyton, the Biggles heroics and TV fare like Get Smart and it changes a boy’s worldview. 

At first, the boy believed that only white people had all the adventures; that it was England which was the arbiter of life.  

Only to find out twenty years later, that Ms Blyton wasn’t the kindly, twinkling woman I’d imagined, but an unabashed racist who called a spade just that.    

And that the Battle for Britain wasn’t just won by English pilots like Biggles but pilots from other Commonwealth countries, including India.

The periodicals made me staunchly pro-Alliance and then pro-BN. I remember being annoyed with the University Malaya demonstrators in 1974 for “disrupting” life and business in Kuala Lumpur, as the ST described it then.  

I believed everything I read then in the ST! 

The Reader’s Digest improved my English, made me understand humour as a writing tool, and left me admiring of a conservative, anti-communist US worldview. TIME merely reinforced those perceptions. 

Indeed, I bought McNamara’s Domino Theory and thought the Vietnam War helped protect countries like Malaysia from falling under the communist yoke. 

Reading and experience – I’ve been a journalist for 30 years – have changed my views considerably. 

Still, some things never change.

Before, the last general election, a Malay friend Z was confessing that he had difficulty wrapping his head around supporting the Democratic Action Party.  

This was a successful man with two Western degrees. But I understood: it was the tabula rasa effect all over again

“With your mother’s milk, you have imbibed the notion that the DAP is anti-Malay,” I said and Z, understanding immediately, agreed. 

HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE VICTORS

You might say Fearless Leader was back. 

Or maybe he never left. For a former leader with a 12-year prison sentence hanging like the kris of Hang Lekiu over his greying head, Fearless seemed remarkably cheerful as he tramped the hills and dales of Sabah campaigning for the Barisan Nasional (BN). 

Indefatigable was the word to describe Fearless and, watching from his safe haven not in China, Felonious aka Jho the Low, an erstwhile aide-de-camp and not-so-trusty sidekick, whistled admiringly. 

While not safely ensconced in China, Felonious was also rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The fact that Fearless wasn’t safe at all was what elicited the whistle of admiration in the first place but Felonious was nothing if not philosophical. One out of two was still good, shrugged the ample artist. 

“You can’t have everything,” concluded the round robber before turning his attention to more weightier matters of state like how much he had to pay the authorities for another year of not staying in China. It brought a proud smile to Papa Low’s face: that’s my boy, he thought affectionately, always a stickler for detail. 

And it was true too. Detail had been one of the comely girls Felonious had dated in Hollywood but that, grumbled Fearless, was neither “here nor there”. 

“What about me?” grumbled Fearless Leader and it was a good, if loaded, question. 

It was good because its right answer was invariably bad where Fearless was concerned and it was loaded because it looked like he might soon be shot into that place where, without collecting $200, one goes directly to.

How had it come to this? 

The kindly kleptocrat had followed all the right measures, listened to the right people, even read Lloyd George: “To be a successful politician, you have to learn to bury your conscience.” 

Felonious didn’t know about the former but he knew quite a bit about consciences. A pleasantly piquant 1976 Dom Ruinart Blanc would bury it pretty deep, agreed the beefy bandit cheerfully. 

And yet, Fearless remained cool under pressure. This was unlike Mrs Fearless who no longer had anything to say and was saying it so loudly that her silence was deafening. 

It was seriously out of character and it put to the lie the so-called wisdom that she had been the real power behind the throne. 

Nope, it had been Fearless all along. He remained calm, however, by dint of blame: he blamed everyone from Felonious and the bankers to Goldman Sachs and the lawyers. 

In between, he blamed the takers as well, arguing that “if they did not take, he would not have had to give.” It was a compelling argument   which, unfortunately, had no takers. 

Fearless even contemplated blaming it on the bossa-nova and had to be talked out of it by his lawyer, the eminent Scruffy A who took time off his tax-dodging troubles to remonstrate with his client. 

Blame was all right but what Fearless really needed was a good, old-fashioned miracle. He was optimistic and was nothing, if not religious, which was unlike his not-so-trusty sidekick, Felonious, whose faith was such that the church he did not attend was Christian on its off-days. 

You could not say the same about Fearless. Historians will attest that he whispered a mumbled prayer immediately after being sworn in in 2009. 

It was soft but it was clear. “Let us prey,” was the humble entreaty. And the rest, as they say, is history.  

DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMEONE TO BLAME

It appears that no one in power in Malaysia has ever heard of being accountable for their actions. 

It does not seem that way across the Causeway. 

On Thursday, the chairman of Changi Airport Group, Liew Mun Leong, resigned days after Singapore’s High Court not only acquitted his former maid of stealing from him but criticised the allegations brought against her.

Liew, 74, had been the group’s founding chairman since 2009. 

In a separate statement, Liew said he had also resigned as an advisor to Temasek International and several other board positions he had been holding. He had decided to retire. 

The maid, Indonesia’s Parti Liyani was acquitted of stealing more than S$34,000 worth of items from Liew and his family. She’d worked for the family for a decade. 

In his judgment, Justice Chan Seng Onn said there was an “improper motive” for mounting the allegations against Parti. This drew the notice of the Attorney-General whose chambers then said the judge’s comments “do raise questions which warrant further investigations.”

It could be that Liew was told, even ordered, to quit but the fact remains that he did. And that might still not be sufficient to get him off the hook. 

Compare and contrast this to Malaysia where the truth varies but which is still a land of promise, especially before a general election. Here, the politicians like to make all the decisions without any of the responsibility. 

But the best proof that light travels faster than sound is the Malaysian minister or deputy minister: they all appear to be intelligent until they open their mouths. 

And no one, not a solitary soul, ever contemplates resignation as a consequence of stupidity or wrongdoing.  

The examples, to say the least, are legion. 

A full minister, with his family in tow, goes to Turkey and comes back without the mandatory two-week quarantine. When the news was leaked, he was fined RN1,000 after the fact. And this after a woman was jailed and fined RM8,000 for a similar offence. 

Neither has the minister ever apologised. 

A university student in rural Sabah climbs a tree for better Internet connectivity to take an online examination. When she posts this on her Facebook page, two deputy ministers castigate her decrying her post as fake. 

When they get lambasted online, they retreat in a hurry and another minister flies to Sabah to apologise to the family. One of the two deputies has since apologised while the other quietly deleted his offending post without apologising,  

Then there was the MP from the Islamic Party of Malaysia. During the debate on new drink driving laws, the not-very-informed lawmaker suggested that the Bible had been perverted presumably because it did not condemn the consumption of wine. 

When this prompted an uproar, the unrepentant MP advised Christians that they “had no right” to be offended as his statement had been “a fact.” 

The wannabe Bible scholar has been remarkably blasé about his thesis since. 

But why should we be surprised? 

A former premier has been found guilty of corruption, tax-dodging and gross abuse of power involving billions of dollars. Yet, as his judge noted, he has shown “no remorse” and has swaggered about since, appearing to all the world as the soul of probity. 

YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO

It must have been on an evening sometime in 2005 when I received a call from a businessman. 

I was surprised. The man was a very rich, very reclusive entrepreneur with interests ranging from telecommunications to oil and gas, and our last conversation had not been particularly cordial.

I’d written an article for the Far Eastern Economic Review mentioning him and he wasn’t happy. Actually, he’d been far more inventive in his language, but I think you get the point. 

Much had changed since. The Asian financial crisis had come and gone, the Review had disappeared, and I was now working for a Singapore-based daily as its KL bureau chief. 

And said businessman was still very rich and very reclusive to the extent that some reporters didn’t even know what he looked like. 

So, you can imagine my surprise. He said he knew about my shift and suggested I drop by on Monday afternoon for a “chat.” 

“I think it would be nice,” quoth he. 

It must be some new purchase, a deal, maybe even a market-moving scoop and I was excited. I called my paper and the editors were thrilled and promised to hold the front page for my story for all its Woodwardian promise. 

The meeting was to be in his new building in the KLCC. I entered its lobby and a guard pointed ne to a reception area where visitors were queuing to get a digital pass to the floor they wanted to go to. 

I reached the front desk and produced my press card. Two men appeared instantly and indicated I was to follow. Of course, a lift was waiting.

It was somewhere near the top, a whole floor actually; very cool and pin-drop silent. There was artwork everywhere with paintings stashed along the walls of the thickly carpeted floor. 

I was led along to a waiting room where a television was playing and there were magazines about. 

Coffee? 

Yes, indeed. 

They brought it and very good stuff it was too. None of your Nescafe’s or what-have-yous!

I didn’t see a soul but could hear telephones going so there was life on the planet. I looked at the framed pictures on the wall which seemed to be all of his children.

He came in quietly and I didn’t know it until he spoke. He was dressed very casually in an open necked shirt and jeans and his smile was broad and seemed genuine. 

After some desultory conversation, he declared he was famished and hadn’t lunched – it was 3.30 pm – and declared we would have tea. 

A lady brought in the tea things and a large cake. I accepted the tea and declined the cake. He cut himself a generous slice and pronounced it satisfactory. 

Then he held forth on healthy living and revealed that the cake had been made without butter or anything which bore malicious intent towards his cardiovascular system. 

At the time, he must have been in his sixties but looked younger and, what with a fat-free diet amid rigorous exercise, seemed bent on outliving Kirk Douglas. 

His summons still remains a mystery. We talked about a great deal –  his art, his family, mine, education – but there were no revelations and no market-moving scoop. 

It was, indeed, a “nice chat.”

Just before I left, he declared he had a gift for me and, with a flourish, handed me one of those cakes in a gift-wrapped box. 

He said I should live healthier. 

Like most of the evening, it was a “nice” moment.  

I obtained more information from the bodyguards accompanying me down. They seemed friendly now that I’d met the “boss” and informed me that he was a workaholic who was frequently the last to leave the building. 

I noticed Hassan, my then driver, eyeing the cake covetously and offered it to him. As was his wont, he agreed. He was never a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

I remembered the cake the next day and asked Hassan how it had been received. 

“Terrible,” he said. “Even the children refused to eat it”.

So, he tried it on his chickens.

Ditto, it seems. 

(It’s a damn sight funnier in Malay). 

TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME

We left Singapore last Thursday. 

It had to be by land crossing if we wanted to abide by a newly signed agreement between Kuala Lumpur and the Republic.  

So, we decided to drive home by way of the Tuas crossing. 

At the Malaysian checkpoint, we both had to download the My Sejahtera app and, numerous questions later, followed a pleasant, female Immigration official to the medical tent where a guy decked out in full PPE regalia sat awaiting us. The poor guy: it must have been at least 32 degrees in the shade and for all that, he was remarkably good natured. 

He took two swabs from each of us: one from the throat and the other, from deep within our noses. For each, he had to change gloves. 

No wonder Top Glove shares are rocketing. 

The official said the tests would come back in 2-3 days and we would be quarantined for the duration. For the record, the tests cost RM200 each.  

Since we’d asked for a hotel, the only one serving as a place of quarantine was a KSL Hot Springs Resort in Johore Bahru.

It turned out to be in Tebrau and the “Hot Springs” business may have been in the copywriter’s imagination. In any case, we signed some forms, paid the deposit and were promptly locked up in a room on the 9th floor. 

There was a chair placed immediately outside the door. Our meals, towels etc, were placed on said chair after which the doorbell would be rung. It was like getting to know your food, Pavlov-style. 

The two days that passed were interminable and I shudder to think how it would have been had we attempted an earlier crossing and undergone the whole two-week quarantine. 

At 11.30 am on Saturday, we received a call from the authorities telling us we’d tested negative and could leave. Even so, we had to take our temperatures and answer a series of questions on our My Sejahtera apps every day for the next two weeks. We were free to go but it was made clear to us that we would be “under surveillance” for a fortnight. 

As is her wont, Rebecca turned out to be a minor celebrity there and, after we’d signed the necessary paperwork, everyone including the cops and the immigration authorities wanted to take pictures with her. 

As is my wont, I stood off to the side and, sure enough, no one noticed! I only wonder if anyone found it ironic that everyone in the pictures was masked.  

There were about 30 of us quarantined in the hotel and while we never met, we were placed in a single WhatsApp chat group which my wife kept track of. 

One of the guys, Fahmi was back from Singapore because his father was critically sick. On his first night of quarantine, unfortunately, his father died. He had to wait another day before he was found negative and allowed to go. 

It’s nice to be home and even the traffic isn’t as irritating as it used to be. The My Sejahtera app is also a distinct improvement on the one we had to use in Singapore. It’s faster and more efficient with much more common-sensical usage. Example: in Singapore, you have to both check-in and out while it’s just one way here.  

Everything’s ok except the politics and the new government which I believe the majority of us did not vote for. That sucks big-time. 

BRB…

No post this week as dad is currently in quarantine with mum in Johor while they wait for their COVID test results (nothing to be alarmed about, just standard procedure). They’re finally back in Malaysia after being stuck in Singapore for five months. Please keep them in your prayers!

Thanks for checking in!

Raisa

IN VINO VERITAS (IN WINE, THERE IS TRUTH)

Stay drunk all the time

But on what? On wine, or poetry, or virtue, whatever.

But stay drunk 

(Charles Baudelaire, 19th Century French poet)

According to the Bible, Jesus Christ turned water into wine during a wedding ceremony at the urging of his mother, Mary, after the host’s supply ran dry.

Apparently, the assembled guests thought it was a very fine vintage too. They assumed the host had left the best for last. 30 AD had been a very good year after all. 

Now there’s a power some of us might love to have. Actually, it’s a distinct possibility and just waiting at a Cold Storage outlet nearest you. You no lomger have to gaze mournfully at your empty glass and wish for more. 

What’s more, it’s easy-peasy. No grapes. No fermentation. Nor do you need to sterilise equipment for the sake of hygiene. 

The brains over at Victor’s Drinks have created a MySecco kit which comes with all the ingredients you need to make what they describe as a “beautifully fresh and crisp sparkling wine with delicate citrus notes”.

Citrus notes?

Making prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) from the comfort of your own home. Imagine that! As Stephen Stills might have said: if you can’t be with the one you love, “love the wine you’re with.”

All you need to do, according to its creators, is to pour warm water and the included yeast and syrup sachets into the bottle provided, and give it a swirl. Fourteen days later, you have sparkling wine with fruity flavours; a do-it-yourself vintage, a sort of champagne-meets-the-21st-Century, Rube Goldberg trick.  

What will they think of next?

Each kit is priced at £19.90. And the firm has this tagline – “A man has got to believe in something, and I believe I’ll have another glass of wine.”

In these days of Covid-19, that’s not hard. 

But before you dash out to purchase said kit, you’d have to think long and hard. When it comes to wine, you have to take things on a case by case basis.

This is generally good news all around. Penicillin may cure, but wine makes you happy. Listen to Baudelaire.

It could also trim costs.  Imagine what it might do to government budgets the world over. Embassy booze bills would shrink dramatically while the United Nations might actually go into surplus.

And where would that put traditional winemakers? Economics dictate that they would have to cut prices but who’s complaining?

Of course, one should be careful about drinking excessively. I once heard of a fellow who, after a night of carousing, drove into a ditch. No big deal? Well, this fellow stopped at the ditch, looked right, then left, and then drove into it.

On the other hand, there’s the late, lamented W.C. Fields, who once famously quipped “I don’t trust camels or anyone else who can go for a week without a drink.”

Let’s face it. Wine is here to stay. It’s even crept into literature. There’s this new book out called The Wine Hangover: The Grape Depression. Or that classic the Wrath of Grapes.

And did you know there’s a new Mexican translation of that great Harper Lee classic, you know, the one about Atticus, Jem and Scout Finch.

It’s called Tequila Mockingbird.

WELCOME TO THE RAFFLES

The Raffles Hotel in Singapore is located on what seems to be a misnomer of an address because there isn’t a beach in sight. 

But the imposing colonial-style building eponymously named after Singapore’s founder still squats along Beach Road. That’s because when it was built over a century ago, the sea was visible through shimmering palms in the malarial heat of an island Sir Stamford thought might be a nifty port. 

The malaria is gone but the heat is still around although it’s dispelled by the many ceiling fans that line the route our guide takes to lead us to The Courtyard. 

We have now been stuck in Singapore for over five months largely because we landed a day before Malaysia imposed its movement control order. 

Then, just when it seemed that we could return to home quarantine, some idiots were taped breaking home quarantine and that loophole got closed.  

So, we thought we’d have a drink at the Raffles which was, at least, vaguely historic. I mean, Somerset Maugham staved off the chills via stiff G-and-T’s at the hotel’s Long Bar. 

Alas, the Long Bar was closed due to the virus, Rudolfo regretted but assured us the Courtyard would be just as good. 

We are led to a table amid the strains of the Stones’ Paint It Black, which I suppose is sort of par for the course for six in the evening. Rudolfo is from Chile and he’s here because he “followed my girlfriend home.” 

You have to suppose that’s as good a reason as any. 

We scan the menu and that’s when you realise how good the island is at branding itself internationally.

We learn that the Singapore Sling was invented in 1915 in the Long Bar by one Mr Ngiam, a bartender whose verve with gin-based cocktails endeared him to so many British hostesses that it made his at-first-shyly-offered pink confection an instant hit. 

We didn’t have one though: they were priced at S$35 a pop. 

But the guy who dubbed it the Singapore Sling was a genius who put the drink, its origin, on the map. 

Why can’t we do the same thing?

Malaysia is supposed to have invented Yee Sang so let’s just christen it the Kay-El Toss and get on with it. Why not Seremban Eggs for Foo Yong Tan? Tambun pomelos, anyone? And so on, ad infinitum.

And the thing that simply screams out to Malaysians visiting the Raffles Hotel is this: Malaysia has a zero history – zilch, nada, zip – of preservation or maintenance.  

The Kuala Lumpur Railway Station could be every bit as colonially imposing as The Raffles but history hangs shabbily on its frame. It is grubby; it has Ficus (a parasitic vegetation) growing in its cracks and it’s downright embarrassing given the billions squandered on wasteful projects or outright theft. 

Remember the country’s rest houses? They used to be quasi-motels where you could get a good meal relatively cheaply and a clean bed/toilet for the same privilege. These used to be looked-forward-to staples back in the 1960s and 1970s.

Now ask yourself: where are they now? 

SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG WAD OF CASH

There but for the grace of Beijing go I, breathed Felonious and shuddered so violently that he required two more goblets of soothing Dom Perignon to restore his customary good cheer. 

The chortling char siew, as he was fondly described in Hollywood circles, once thought there were lessons to be learnt in this instance. 

Crime did pay – for nine years at least – until you got caught. And it could have been worse, he told Hairy, his moustache-flashing father, “it could have been me.”  

Or me, thought Hairy Low, his moustache flashing triumphantly because in their case, it was still paying and then some. 

The object of their ruminations was Felonious’ one-time taiko and old-round, best buddy Fearless Leader who had been found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined RM210 million to boot. 

Fearless had the finest lawyer money could buy in the form of Scruffy A, a pit-bull with a beard. Scruffy’s fees alone might have been punishment enough for Fearless, but the man had also come up with a compelling legal defence. 

Shorn of its legal rhetoric, and there were a great many, it boiled down to three phrases: “Who, me?”, “I didn’t know anything”, and “It was all Fatso’s fault.” 

Scruffy was proud of his erudite counsel and thought the latter defence especially brilliant. Alas, his brilliance was extinguished by a no-nonsense Judge Nazlan who dismissed it as “far-fetched, defying logic” and “lacking in credulity.” In short, what Scruffy thought had been lucid reason and sweet clarity, Judge Nazlan ruled as bunkum, hogwash and – his last offer – poppycock.

Indeed, the judge privately thought that even the Boston Strangler had put up a better showing. Still, after all the sound and fury, the tale told by an idiot signifying nothing, it had taken the better part of two years for Fearless’ trial to wend its way through court. 

Even so, the gallant Fearless remained undaunted and promised that an appeal would clear his name. Instead of waiting for said appeal, Scruffy enumerated Judge Nazlan’s “many mistakes” to the media although he magnanimously conceded that the mistakes had all been “honest”. 

But for all of Fearless smugness outside the court, he must have been dismayed by the international headlines he provoked the day after. 

An Australian newspaper ran “Plundering idiot” on its front page while the New York Times had “The fall of Malaysia’s Man of Steal” as its headline. 

On a note of accuracy: If you thought the NYT was punny, you should think local cartoonist Zunar, whose original it is. The paper had written to him asking permission to use it and he’d agreed. 

Fearless had liked Zunar well enough when he was busy skewering Dr M or Abdullah Badawi, but he’d thought the reference to a Super-thief had been in poor taste.

Fearless had been surprised when his coalition lost the 2018 election. But in truth, it wasn’t so surprising: the people had simply read between the lies.

It was that loss that had undone them both, thought Felonious sadly for he longed for the glory days of Equanimity and ice-cold white wine on its moonlit deck. 

The dumpy dim-sum concluded that the secret of success lay in not getting caught. And Felonious resolved to do so by emulating Teddy Roosevelt. 

Henceforth, he would always speak softly and carry a big wad of cash.