Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual Ch.1-A “What’s it all about? – Finding Fish! “
July 11, 2009 in Auto-biographical (tuna helicopters)
My home, my bird, my own personal airfield, with six feet clearance from my rotorblade tips
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SECTION ‘A’ PART ONE
OVERVIEW
“TUNA HELICOPTER FUNDAMENTALS “
This section contains, in rapid sequence, most of the “technical basics ” of tuna helicopter flying.
I have tried very earnestly to avoid saying ‘this is the way’.
You will often find different points of view expressed, and you will doubtless form your own opinions. That is the intention, anyway!
Remember though… that surviving contentedly and safely on a tuna boat is not just knowing how to fly, twirl a wrench, or recognize a ‘breezer’ from a cloud shadow.
The funny ‘stress psychology’ of tuna boat life is dealt with much more in Section ‘B’.
I offer you a caution: Section ‘A’ is what you may think tuna boat life is all about. And, sure, some guys do trip up badly in technical errors. I know I did…
BUT. Where things often really go sour and pear-shaped on a tuna boat… is not in the technical realm, but in the human, emotional aspect of things. Section ‘B’ !!
And you know something? That does not just apply to tuna boats….!
Chapter 1-A “What’s it all about? – Finding Fish! “
Ch.1-B Skipjack, Yellowfin, Bigeye, Albacore, Bluefin, log fishing, purse seiners, longliners, good pilots and dead trees
Chapter 1-C “Foamers and Breezers “
Chapter 1-D Radio bouys, Bird radar, Dirty tricks and Sculduggery
Chapter 1-E Herding, and the ‘tow-line’; the Brown Ball, speedboats, netboats, green dye, seal bombs, underwater breathing devices
Chapter 1-A: “What’s it all about? – Finding Fish! “
The reason a helicopter is used on a tuna boat is the same all over the world, from the Pacific across to Panama, and from there down to the South American waters. It’s all about finding fish.
Occasionally, a pilot may find himself involved in personnel transfer. Maybe the captain will want to visit a nearby ship. That’s fine if the other ship has a vacant helideck! You might end up doing some shopping, collecting the mail, and once in a while you will end up doing a hair raising crisis medical emergency flight. More of that later.
But overwhelmingly, most of the time, sunshine, you’re going to be looking for fish! It follows that it is very helpful if you have an idea beforehand of what’s going on. Before we launch off into a discussion about the elusive tuna, first a general comment:
Some boats own their own helicopter. Many do not. Most much prefer to rent from a tuna helicopter company.
Now, note this: many helicopter companies in their contracts specifically state that the pilot’s responsibility is ‘to fly, and not to find fish!’
This may seem a bit odd, but this clause merely seeks to protect against the occasional difficult customer, who either does not want to pay the bill because ‘the pilot’s no good – he never finds any fish!’, or, alternatively, the kind of captain who starts yelling and screaming at the pilot.
In actual practice, many pilots do just that: they only fly. They are sometimes just not interested in finding fish. Fair enough. Sometimes they actually intensely dislike their observer, their captain or their life style, and their sullen dis-interest forms some kind of revenge. I once heard a pilot in a bar positively reveling in the fact that they had flown over a huge ‘foamer’ of Yellowfin, which the observer hadn’t noticed, glued as he was to his binoculars, staring into the far distance.
When asked the question “Well, why didn’t you tell him? ” by me, (hell, I was curious) this pilot merely stated words to the effect of ‘No chance!’
To me, that seems a pity. Most of these pilots all have one thing in common – they are all bored stiff! Duh….
And that, as the actress said to the bishop, doesn’t surprise me at all.
Imagine flying in a straight line more or less for two hours with nothing to do except sit and watch waves… Horrendous.
I belong to the crowd who are rarely bored. I was always flat out trying to spot logs and fish FIRST. Ahead of the observer with his fancy gyro-stabilized ‘lookers’. I frequently do. I get a great kick out of the ship catching ninety thousand dollars’ worth of fish because I spotted the breezer the guy beside me missed. Now one good observation has just paid for three months worth of helicopter rent! In the next fax or email to my company, I can quietly slip that one in at the bottom. It’s amazing how you can walk around the ship the next day and get some big smiles! A lot of the crew’s income depends on the catch. It’s a variable. When word spreads that the pilot is good at spotting fish, the boys quickly learn to like him…
And then there’s always a good chance of a hundred dollar bonus plus a pat on the back from the captain. And that of course is a great way of getting asked back. If the ship likes you, you also have a hedge against the day you screw up with your employer, the rent-a-helicopter company. Just imagine… if you break something. Whatever you break, it’s probably going to be horribly expensive, my friend. (Shudder…)
If the boss back on shore, the owner of your helicopter, is tired of hearing all the complaints about you being a miserable old stick, and then on top of that you go and break his valuable helicopter… you are going to get fired. Compare that with the hard working guy who makes an honest mistake, but his captain likes him a lot. Well, it stands to reason that the pilot’s boss in his reflections is certainly going to include on your credit side the fact that his customer likes you.
You’ve got a much better chance of being soundly scolded for flying your $350,000 helicopter into the sea,with a stern admonition: “Don’t do it again!’ Fiction? Oh, no! There have been numerous cases where pilots have ‘splashed out’ and not lost their jobs! They either ran out of gas and ditched, or hit their tail rotor off a wave whilst ‘herding’, or they messed up a landing. Or….
But the greatest and best reason for looking for fish: it’s bloody good fun!
Over the next few pages then, we’ll dive straight into the habits of our quarry:
the Skipjack tuna, the Albacore, and
the Yellowfin tuna.
Francis Meyrick
(c)
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Note 1:
helpful Input from Joseph Smith ( “Aeroscout “):
Comments on Chapter 1-A: “What’s it all about? – Finding Fish! “
Yes. It’s all about finding fish. So I was eager to get started. I imagined that I would find enough fish to fill the boat the first day out.
Well, the first day out isn’t the first day out.
The first day out is departing port where you joined the ship.
It seems to be endless the delays in getting underway so you can do what you came to do.
The agents get all the personnel and deliveries to the ship.
The cook is trying to get back after shopping for his grocery list.
Supplies, fuel, water, the list goes on and on and it’s interminable.
While they are topping off all their tanks they are all venting the volatile fluids going into them.
I tried to get to a place on the ship where the breeze was fresh and uninterrupted to avoid all the organic compounds wafting through the air.
Finally the order is given to cast off.
Are we there yet ?
No way. Now we have to embark the pilot who navigates the ship clear of the docks or anchorage. Then, some time later, we idle out to allow the pilot to disembark.
So now you’re into your second day, that turns into 3 and 4 and so on.
About a week later I get notified it’s time to fly.
Yay, I’m about to go out and find fish.
Not.
I am told to go out and fly and figure out how to safely land a help on a moving ship for the first time ever.
So I do.
The next day…I’m ready to take the Captain and go out and find fish.
Not so fast.
I am assigned the second officer (sumung sa as I recall).
I am told that after flying with the second officer for long enough to prove myself worthy, I would get a shot at flying the first officer (Cho sa as I recall).
Then and only then I might get to go out with the Captain and find fish.
That happened about 3 months later, and my track record along with a very nice takeoff and landing made my Captain a regular passenger going forward.
Just in time to find some fish !!!
Aeroscout
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on October 29, 2015, 8:52 pm
Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual – Introduction
July 11, 2009 in Auto-biographical (tuna helicopters)
A nostalgic Photo: ‘my old bird’ – a Hughes 500 that never let me down
on Taiwanese and Korean purse seiner fishing vessels
Hints, tips, techniques, wild tales, and a good time
and in memory of too many guys who didn’t make it home…
This manual owes its inception to a cry I have heard many times in various forms.
“I wish somebody would write a decent manual for those damn first-trippers! “
The ‘first tripper’ being a derogatory term used to describe the obvious newcomer to the field, who unwittingly has broken one of the unwritten rules, or executed a hair raising landing on a nearby ship. I have also heard the phrase “R-22 virgin “, ‘lost landlubber’ and ‘150 hour wonder’ used in the same manner, indicating the low-time fresh graduate of an R-22 school with no real commercial experience.
I was once a ‘R-22 virgin’. And very proud I was of my Commercial. By the time I made it to the ‘Tuna Fields’, I was racking up over four thousand hours, but that did not prevent me from accidentally upsetting some other pilots, and I know the phrase ‘damn first tripper’ went rapidly out over the airwaves!
My training -if you can call it that- was typical: about one hour. Another pilot had ‘walked off’ my boat in disgust, (after only two months) and my employer needed a pilot NOW. One day I was in Scotland with a promise of a job six weeks later. At three the next morning I got a phone call from the small island of Guam, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, saying:
“Your ticket is at the airport – the boat’s waiting – we need you NOW! “
I got off the long transcontinental flight -right across Siberia and Japan- at the airport in Guam, and found myself sitting in an old Bell 47 helicopter. After barely an hour, I was pronounced fit and able.
At that stage I discovered the boat had already set sail, and was some forty miles south of Guam. I was told to “head south – you can’t miss it “. I guessed I probably could….
Off I set anyway, on my little ownsome, and after investigating several vessels, I finally located my boat sailing full speed off over the horizon. Running tight on fuel, I caught up with my future home, and my first landing on a tuna boat -underway at full speed- was a self taught hands-on affair. The entire crew seemed to be out watching the arrival of their new pilot, and I wonder what the bets were.
And that… was the sum total of my ‘training’.
I knew nothing. Nada. Zip.
Small wonder then that the first time the boat stopped at sea, I wondered in complete puzzlement why everybody was so interested in a dead tree floating in the water!
That was in the early nineties’, and little was I to know I would spend five years flying off Taiwanese and Korean tuna boats.
I eventually moved on, flew fixed and rotary for a Arizona Sheriff’s Office for three and a half years, then a sojourn flying Air Ambulance, and after that I came to the Gulf of Mexico, flying offshore. I’ve been here for over five years again.
I think I can safely say that since my tuna helicopter flying days, a lot of air has passed around my rotor blades. I’ve learned a lot, seen a lot, and made a few whopping bad mistakes. I have come close to wiping myself out, and frightened myself severely a few times. Above all though, I avoided possible future disasters by the kindness of more experienced tuna pilots, who unselfishly shared with me some of their experience gained the hard and painful way. No, I have never crashed. Touch wood. Touch a tree. Touch a whole damn FOREST. I have never even scratched a helicopter. But if I had never had any help, never had any advice, never had mentors… I would be stone dead by now.
I have waltzed -innocently- into many situations where…
a small amber caution light…
…flickered on inside my retarded brain. Where a little voice said to me:
“Hang on! Jimmy was telling me about this! This is where I have gotta watch it!
Hold on here now! “
And it is only in hindsight I fully realize how important those informal bar flying sessions actually were.
Many of the guys that I talked with were proud, stubborn old mules. Typical tuna pilots. Odd dogs, out of the mainstream, defying convention. Anti-authority. However, over a quiet beer, in some Godforsaken offbeat locale on some third world island, all were willing to tell on themselves, and admit their past mistakes, their learning cycles, and their prize f….. ups.
I always admired that. It takes a lot for an ex Vietnam Cobra pilot to admit where he screwed up on the tuna fields, and ‘splashed out’. Jim was one such a man, who reckons that the Hughes 500 is the ‘only machine’ that he could have been in and survived his high speed crash. Moody, occasionally sullen, introverted, and quick tempered, he nonetheless -patiently- answered all my simple questions. He spent hours with me, and he taught me a lot. Rough on the outside, he revealed to me a much softer side. He cared. All you had to do was ask. Jim was a willing teacher, who sought no reward.
Another tuna high-timer was Bob, who taught me all about avoiding rotor strikes near microbursts! I will always remember Bob for his quiet worrying about the offshore bird count.
“We used to have thousands of birds milling around here “, he would say. “Now it’s just hundreds. Why is the bird count going down? ”
He would worry about the impact of over exploitation of the Ocean’s resources, and advocated a much more active preservation role for those many island nations who control the fishing rights over large portions of the richest fishing grounds.
Ricky from Peru, a wonderful gentleman, told me what it’s like to go playing submarine in a Bell 47, and two other Hughes 500 drivers told me that a floating 500 rolls over inverted ‘real nice and slow’….
the same cannot be said for the adrenaline rush!
This ‘manual’ (I use the word loosely) then merely continues the tradition: an unselfish ‘passing on’ of information, tips, anecdotes and techniques that center on “the Art of flying a Tuna helicopter ” safely and successfully. There are also stories about the more human and cultural aspects of life in the Tuna Fields, and those don’t strictly belong inside this manual.
I am therefore slowly writing and posting those in the ‘companion series’ “Blip on the Radar “, also on this website. I have six posted so far, and another sixty two exist in outline note form…
I have written one novel, with a second one mostly finished. It’s called “The Tuna Hunter “, and you will find the first eight chapters also on this site. In that too, you will find some Tuna Flying descriptions.
This manual does NOT pretend to be exhaustive, or complete, or THE way to do things. One example of a highly contentious area is the landing technique on a boat that is rolling wildly with a heavy catch off the port side, Another is the use of ‘seal bombs’; many pilots refuse point blank to carry explosives in the helicopter. There are some great tales around about what happens if that little lot blows up inside the helicopter during flight. And then there are those pneumatic guns that fire steel arrows (with a wire trailing out behind) into floating logs. Just wait until they bounce, and go up through your rotor system.
Different pilots believe -passionately- in different things, but if this manual at least gives you an insight into the arguments for and against, you will be so much better prepared before you go out.
And you will know what to watch for…
There is a huge amount of time and effort gone into this manual, and it is an ongoing process. But if it saves just ONE pilot’s life, somewhere along the line, and if that pilot one day drops me a thank-you note… then I will be more than rewarded. It’s now thirty-nine years since I first went solo. And for some reason, I still get a wonderful thrill out of flying helicopters. All I need is a quiet morning, first flight, and I simply can’t wait to pull pitch and get going. One of these days I guess I might grow up and stop enjoying it so much…
As you read through this manual, I ask you to bear in mind that most of it was written in the nineties’. Those were heady days.
I was out and gone from tuna flying by 2000.
Now, in July 2009, as many of us old Tuna hunters look back at the difference only a decade of intensive hunting can make, we worry.
We worry that greed, shortsightedness, and a failure for the industry to self regulate may have devastating consequences.
For me,I am torn between the excitement we felt, the joy of thrilling adventure, the awe I felt when studying the vastness of the Pacific Ocean up close and personal, and a quiet despair. Tuna are beautiful fish. So, so beautiful to watch. They deserve to be caught, as Man has done for thousands and thousands of years, with respect for Nature, respect for sustainability, and gratitude for this great gift of the Oceans.
They do not deserve to be ruthlessly hunted into extinction, and cold bloodedly assassinated. As Wikipedia says, “the jury is out ” on whether Yellowfin tuna is being hunted today in a sustainable manner. Skipjack and Albacore are apparently doing well. But what of the Bluefin, that commands thousands of dollars per fish in upscale Japanese restaurants, just because it is threatened and rare? What kind of cynical nonsense is that?
There are many helicopter pilots out there, and for their safety and information, the many tips on survival and accident avoidance are as topical today as they were in the nineties’.
But what is changing slowly but steadily is this: unless the tuna industry and those Pacific nations that control extensive maritime fishing zones get their conservation act together, they risk many former tuna hunters like myself becoming vocal enemies.
The tuna is too beautiful, too valuable, too much part of the ecological habitat we ALL have to survive in, to have us stand by and watch dozens and dozens of massive new hi-tech fishing vessels being built every year. There has to be a control over this.
Is the tuna industry seriously negotiating conservation and sustainability? Or is this just talk, talk, and more pure BS designed to put a smiling face on that of the executioner?
While fishing companies race to make the last financial killing, before it’s too late?
The jury…is out. But this may well get very, very ugly very soon.
Fly Safe, may God go with you, however you perceive Him.
I leave you with a video below, which -for me- shows that mixture of the excitement of the hunt, and the awe and beauty of Nature.
Man HAS to live in balance with this fragile, precious, unique, and threatened resource…
I hope you enjoy my humble efforts, and I hope that, one day, you’ll instantly recognize…
that small amber caution light…
…going off in your mind! And if I helped plant it there, and you let me know, then I’ll be thrilled.
Live Safe, enjoy the ride
Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick
(all rights reserved)
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on October 29, 2015, 8:54 pm
A Blip on the Radar (Part 5) “Near-Miss “
June 28, 2009 in Auto-biographical (tuna helicopters), Blip on the Radar
A Blip on the Radar (5)
“Near-Miss “
Some stories are so extraordinary, that there is no need to invent, embellish, ‘dress up’ or exaggerate. The simple truth in itself is so staggering, that no fiction writer could possibly -ever- dream up such an extravagant tale. This snapshot describes an event that actually occurred back in the mid nineties…
Ironically also, the worries many of us felt in those days at the surge in new technology being used to hunt for Skipjack and Yellowfin Tuna, appear to have been prescient. Many of us feared then that Man would eventually overwhelm this beautiful fish. More than a decade later, today, in 2009, the evidence is terrifying. In some parts of the world’s Oceans, unless stringent quotas and controls are speedily enforced, the ecological damage may well prove to be irreversible… The tuna’s best defender and ally may yet prove to be -ironically- the tuna fishing industry, which has far and away the most to lose in terms of livelihood and income. I wish their leaders, their captains and ship owners, wisdom and foresight.
It’s a nice, sunny day in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
A thousand miles offshore.
The tuna fishing grounds, the so-called ‘tuna fields’, stretch out in all directions. Who could ask for more?
Blue sky, warm, great visibility, spectacular cloud formations…. wispy cirrus streaks high above, and a translucent blue ocean below. It’s as if you can see down a hundred feet below the surface. You’ve just passed some dolphins resting lazily amongst the ripples, lolling about with not a care in the world. The water is so amazingly clear, it was as if they were floating in space. Suspended in a blue crystal bowl, surrounded by sparkling light. One of them must have heard you coming, because he suddenly came awake and kicked downwards. You watched him for a long time, as he dove deeper and deeper…
Neat stuff! And that whale you saw before that, swimming along with her calf in close formation. How many people are privileged to see this with their own eyes? This is an extraordinary adventure. And you could have been a bookkeeper! Or a librarian. Or the pale inhabitant of a cardboard cubicle, surrounded by artificial lights and flickering computer screens.
Yet here you are, both admiring nature, and quietly worrying about it. Worrying about pollution, and Man’s seemingly inevitable overfishing. How long can this relentless hunt go on?
Your observer nudges you. In the distance, … that looks like a white smudge just below the horizon! Could it be…? You turn the helicopter, and fly towards the white color. Your observer is getting excited. Straining your eyes against the blinding glare of the midday sun, you start to see why. It looks like a whole area of ‘foamers’! Maybe five, no, six…. seven large foamers. Spectacular!
You arrive overhead the first one, and marvel at the hundreds and hundreds of fish leaping, darting and rocketing across the surface. They tear great white ‘foaming’,frothing white gashes as they go. You can see the shapes, and the sheer vitality, the life force, just never ceases to amaze you. It makes you feel good that there are so many there. It’s not a situation like the whales…yet. There’s an awful lot of tuna in the seas. You fervently hope… it will always stay that way. This unique sight, one of nature’s real spectacles, almost unknown to most people. That ranks right up there with salmon fighting their way upstream, glaciers breaking off into the sea, and the extraordinary migrations of the tiny hummingbird across the Gulf of Mexico.
A spectacle of nature… under threat? From too many fishing boats, too many helicopters, and too much greed?
Ten minutes later you notice another helicopter in the distance. Another Hughes 500. Cool. Maybe a buddy to talk to. Unfortunately you can’t call him on VHF frequency 123.45 just yet, because your observer is using the two meter band to talk to the ship. If you transmit now, you will interfere with his conversation, and it annoys him.
But there is no problem, because the other machine is several miles away…
You circle a big foamer, probably several thousand fish strong, relaxed and enjoying yourself.
The sun is just cascading down, and splintering into millions of tiny light fragments on the surface of the sea. Amongst these random, scattering, miniature explosions of light, the tuna play, leaping and splashing, chasing anchovy, and generally having a ball. Some of those shapes seem really big. They appear and disappear like black bullets, purposeful torpedoes that leave great white flowers where ever they materialize…
You look around for the other helicopter.
Instantly you spot him.
Heading straight for you! One third of a mile away and closing fast!
Instantly you flick on your landing light, and simultaneously transmit:
“Hughes Five-hundred! CONFIRM you have orange Five-hundred in sight! “
The machine continues straight at you, now mere seconds away, as adrenaline leaps and surges through your system. There is no time for evasive action. With a head on profile, you don’t know which way to turn anyway. The closing speed is over two hundred miles per hour…
With that, a furious voice comes over the radio:
“YES I SEE YOU, YOU STUPID F…ING BASTARD!!!!! ”
There is no misunderstanding the rage and the hate. Gone in an instant is the peace and harmony of observing Mother Nature performing a timeless ritual, eons old. You are now firmly wrenched back into an ugly, brutish world.
The world of Man…
He is not finished yet.
“I AM GOING TO RAM YOU OUT OF THE SKY YOU PIECE OF IRISH SH….T! ”
You know now who it is. Oh Lord…. Him. The crazy dude. The one that was flying around the wild country of Papua New Guinea, without permission, while his boat was in port, offloading fish. Without filing a flight plan. Without required H.F. radio equipment. Without permission from his company. Without permission from his captain. But, note this, WITH a gun. And a fistful of dollars. Landing in remote villages in the jungle, trying to buy cheap gold!
Seemingly oblivious to the insane risks he was taking.
Yes, you turned him in, didn’t you? For his own sake. before he crashed in the dense jungle somewhere where he could never be found, especially without a flight plan. Before he got assaulted and skewered by some angry tribesmen. They still have cannibals in the remote areas of Papua New Guinea…
And now, here he is. Pay-back time…
“I AM GOING TO KICK YOUR F…ING C…ING ASS SO HARD YOU AIN’T GOING TO KNOW WHAT F…ING HIT YOU!!! I AM GOING TO TEACH YOU A LESSON YOU WILL NEVER FORGET!!! ”
You listen in astonishment to the foul mouthed tirade, which continues even as both machines pass heart stoppingly close, with the other machine passing just to one side above your rotor disc. But another side of your brain has already lost interest in the invective. You are already determining your course of action…
You decide to leave the area immediately, leaving the rich foamers to the other machine, and to return to your ship. You also decided not to get involved in a radio slanging match. Regret nibbles at your mind that the frequency has been quiet until this. You wished there was a witness! Another pilot on frequency who could hear this abuse…
You turn in the direction of your distant ship, but the tirade continues unabated.
You dive for speed, and find yourself listening to threats on your life. You look around, and see that the other machine has turned, and is chasing you! Your mind works quickly. Do you take evasive action, like in some World War One dogfight? You decide not to, but to maintain a steady flight path, avoiding any abrupt maneuvers which could aggravate the situation. You have a passenger sitting beside you, who is utterly astonished.
Very frightened, the Taiwanese asks:
“Moggy! Why he do this? “
You answer quietly: “Because he is crazy! Do not worry – we go home! ”
You lose sight for a second of the other machine, and then you hear a roar and get to take in the interesting view of the underside of a Hughes 500 helicopter, floats, belly hook, rivet lines… even the smears of oil and grease. All in an instant, as the machine crosses over your rotor disc at fifteen feet! Your passenger physically ducks! You see him squirmed down in his seat, his white face staring, jaw open… Your earlier resolve not to get involved in a radio slanging match momentarily crumples under a desire to relieve your feelings… fluently! But something tells you not to add anything that might fan the flames.
If only somebody else was on frequency to hear this!
More than ever you wish for a witness. Your feelings are now running high. You find you are controlling yourself with an effort. You transmit, in a controlled, matter-of-fact voice, that surprises you even, given how you really feel.
“THAT is the most unprofessional behavior I have ever seen! ”
You leave it at that. Abuse comes pouring back as a reply, the other machine comes close a few more times, but not as close, and you decide to say as little as possible. There is just one more thing…
You think you know who the pilot is. You ask him to confirm he is ‘X’, and he does, with more invective. He wants you to know who he is, because the next time he sees you he is going to ‘kick your ass’.
That is all you wanted to have absolutely straight, who the guy was.
Time for one last comment:
“Okay, as far as I am concerned, this conversation is now terminated! “
You refuse to say anything more, and the abuse peters slowly out for lack of riposte.
You arrive safely back at your ship. Your Taiwanese observer is out the door like a missile, and speeds down to the bridge below. After you have cooled your engine for two minutes, shut down and strapped down, you follow down to the bridge. You find the situation now is escalating rapidly. You can almost see the funny side. At least you didn’t get killed.
And your passenger is okay. Well. Sort of….
Your buddy, Akaya, is mad as hell. It’s almost comical now, to see him gabbering away in Chinese, with vast, expansive waves of his arms. The captain, they call them “Fishmasters ” in Taiwan, is shocked and horrified. He is gabbering in Chinese on the phone. Speaking with the Fishmaster in charge of the Winfar 606, the boat from which the rogue helicopter came. Said gentleman apparently is complaining that he hates his pilot, and has been begging his head office in Taiwan to get rid of the guy for months. You lean against the chart table, and enjoy the show. In between heated exchanges, you get regular translations, plus you speak some five hundred words of Chinese yourself. So you get the picture. Everybody is mad as hell. But the good thing is this: it wasn’t your fault. For once, you didn’t screw up. Somebody else went doo-lally.
The satellite phone rings, and it’s for you. You answer, wondering who on earth it could be.
Oh, joy from heaven! It’s your old Taiwanese buddy, Captain Chan!
“Moggy! This is Captain Chan! Fu Kuan Seven-oh-seven! I fly in my helicopter! I hear everything! That pilot crazy! YOU are GENTLEMAN. I say nothing, I just listen! I hear EVERYTHING! I already talk to Winfar company in Taiwan! They say they FIRE his ass! “
And they did…
* * * * * *
This bizarre but factual story, which has all the makings of an urban legend, (or an Ocean Myth) that nobody will -ever- believe, actually had a few further twists. I kid you not…
About an hour later, I was called to the bridge urgently. This time, if that were possible, there was even more uproar. It emerged that the Winfar captain was on the satellite phone, hysterical with fear and rage. Our strange pilot, him of the dogfight tendencies, had been appraised of the fact that he was being terminated, and that the Winfar captain had orders from head office in Taiwan, to sail to the nearest port and drop him off. His reaction had been to go back to his cabin, and emerge with a rifle and a handgun. He had marched up to the bridge, aimed both at the poor unfortunate Winfar captain, and was threatening said sailor with his life!
And what complicated all that drama even more for me, was the fact that the crew of my boat were all looking at me for a suggestion as to how to resolve this hostage crisis. Knowing full well that the rogue pilot’s life was on the line, as the only American on a boat full of Chinese and Indonesian sailors, waving guns around the place, and threatening their captain, I immediately contacted another pilot in the area, who I knew as a ‘wise head’. Aroused from his sleep by my phone call, this worthy thought at first that I was playing a silly practical joke. Once he realized that the whole melodrama was for real, he gasped in amazement:
“He’ll get his throat cut, and dropped overboard! ”
Which was my sentiment entirely.
The wise dude contacted Billy the Kid, and managed to talk some sense into our fellow pilot. He dropped the aggression, and in turn they dropped him off at the nearest port. With his throat intact.
The whole story went around the tuna fleet like wildfire, and for months afterward I was asked to recount my side of the story over and over again. I document it here in the certain knowledge many will not believe me.
I shrug my shoulders helplessly.
Could anybody make all that up?
And get this… Apparently our friend would often wear a gun on his hip when he went flying. If he saw a whale, or a shark, and if he felt like it, he would descend down in autorotation, pull out his gun, blast away at his target, and then climb back into the sky as if all that was perfectly normal… No wonder his observers were scared stiff of him.
It was, undoubtedly, one of my worst near-death moments in my flying career, when our friendly dude decided to skim over my rotor system. It was an unhinged act. The flight of a madman. However, I can see a few funny sides of the story as well. The famous phone call from Captain Chan, in his broken, heavily accented English, for one:
“Moggy! This is Captain Chan! Fu Kuan Seven-oh-seven! I fly in my helicopter! I hear everything! That pilot crazy! YOU are GENTLEMAN. I say nothing, I just listen! I hear EVERYTHING! I already talk to Winfar company in Taiwan! They say they FIRE his ass! “
And the mental picture I have of Billy the Kid standing on the Winfar bridge, toting a rifle and a handgun, threatening the captain. Thousands of miles offshore, surrounded by a crew of twenty eight Chinese and Indonesian sailors, from a very different culture. With really ugly looking fish knives, hatchets, and pick axes littered all over the place.
Where life… can be cheap.
The only white man on a foreign flagged vessel. That takes….
…a daft Irishman to realize the gravity of the situation, and to worry about his safety. My quick phone call may have saved the fellow’s life.
But I’m NOT counting on any thanks, anytime soon…
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Note 1: in reviewing this story for the upcoming publication of my book “Blip on the Radar “, I found myself going through reams of faxes and paperwork, engendered by this event. Which I carefully kept. Just in case somebody ever tries to say I made it all up. There really is quite a neat little stack. It jogged my memory of the reaction of the pilot who was flying Captain Chan, and who listened to the whole litany of abuse and ramming threats. He told me afterwards, he was totally shocked. And that it was unreal to listen to. A soft spoken gentleman, good stick, he told me he knew the guy was flying around with a gun on his hip, and he’d heard the stories about him auto-rotating down and taking pot-shots at marine animals. When he heard the threats, he told me he honestly thought the guy was experiencing a psychotic event, had ‘flipped out’ and was going to either shoot at, or ram me. He was impressed at how cool I remained. Not that I had much choice.
He knew I had flown for Captain Chan, and he said Captain Chan liked me. We had gotten along real well. He said the Captain, when it was all over, just shook his head, and snarled:
“Back to ship…! ”
And that’s when my buddy knew, the phone calls to Taiwan, and everywhere, were not going to be pretty…
Karma, sometimes, is a determined Taiwanese gentleman Captain…!
Return to Index? (ChopperStories.COM)?
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on November 19, 2015, 10:01 am
The Protest Song
June 7, 2009 in article about writing
The Protest Song
His workmates laughed at him, behind his back.
Sometimes, they made unkind wisecracks, in mock stage whispers, and he would pretend not to hear.
It seemed easier that way.
There were many who thought him strange, and some who even thought of him as slightly retarded. Afflicted with some peculiar mental abnormality. Some treated him with a sympathetic kindness, and others treated him with quiet contempt.
He took little notice.
For my part, I knew much more of his background. I was, however, unable to set the record straight.
He had made me swear never -ever- to tell a soul. The look in his eye at the time had made me fully grasp the fact that I would lose a friend forever if I betrayed him. And not just any friend. A close friend, an old war buddy, who had saved my life -twice- under the most harrowing circumstances.
It was his sweat and dirt stained face I would always remember, his hands reaching through the fire of my crashed helicopter to pick me up, when, at the worst hour, I had all but given up. When I had lost hope, and was ready to die.
In a unique way, I felt helpless.
I wanted what was best for him. For he was a good man. A kind, gentle person, idealistic, and deeply well meaning. But he was also alienated from the human race, and isolated by his need for solitude and peace. I alone understood why.
I remember the day they played a cruel practical joke on him. Somebody had seen one of his simple stories on a writers’ website. And seen though his alias. He was not an accomplished writer, and his grammar goblins and unintentional habit of murdering the English language made me wince. I could see past the crude implements of written words on a screen however, and into the soul of the story teller.
The others, shallow folk, intellectually clever but spiritually dead, could not.
They had written him admiring reviews, pretending to really like his simple stories. Some had even pretended to be women, in love with his visions. He had fallen for it, perhaps relieved at last to have found some readers connect on his unique wave length. Then they had turned on him, publicly, in the office, and mocked him in front of his work mates. And produced printed copies of some of his better stories, with large, ugly red slashes underlining his copious technical errors. The stories themselves, painted not from a writer’s imagination, but drawn out painfully from the crucible of war, went right over their heads.
I alone knew better. I alone remained mute.
As they laughed at him, and threw the red slashed copies of his Art at his head, crumpled into derisive paper wads, he had taken it all, with never a murmur of protest.
I alone knew better.
I heard the music. To me, he was another John Lennon. Tone deaf, and a danger to any self respecting musical instrument. With passion in his heart. A soul that roared.
A wonderful, feeling spirit.
And I alone was deeply moved by his music.
The music of his protest song…
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 4, 2013, 8:48 am
On how to write a story
June 5, 2009 in article about writing
ON HOW TO WRITE A STORY
So you wanna be a writer?
If you do a search on the Internet, you will find all sorts of technical treatises on the subject of writing. There appear to be a lot of people who can tell you at great length the methodical steps you must plod along to achieve enlightenment and Nirvana. The perfect novel. The exquisite exposition.
All it takes is the ability to follow rules. If you follow enough rules -it seems- you can then break free and explode into…into…. the perfect rule book. I guess. I’m not sure. I’m not very good at rules. I have a hard time with authority, period.
Ask my poor, demented, former teachers. I’m a bit of a bird brain myself. I’m no Einstein, that’s for sure.
The first thing I have to tell you, on how to write a story, is that -truthfully- I haven’t got a clue. I’ve never read one of those writing books. Way above my intellectual level. I would be lying through my well worn front masticating implements if I suggested otherwise. I can tell you though, that it is fun. Especially if you sneak up on people.
How do you do that?
You start with a dead simple idea in your head. A picture perhaps.
A punch line. Something different.
Then you worry it around a bit. Like a dog with a bone, that turns out to be tougher to chew than puppy perhaps expected.
Then you add in a little twist. After that, you must let the readers write the story for you. All you have to do is suggest.
It’s their job to fill in the blanks. As an example, this afternoon I scribbled a story called “A Flithery-Flathery Thing “.
The operative verb is scribble. It’s not fair to waste such a portentious verb as write on such a fishy creature.
But it was fun. Notice -if you have glanced at it- that I never mentioned that I had perhaps found a solution to my dilemma.
I never stated that my search for a suitable metaphor was over. If you, dear reader, come away with that impression, then that is entirely because you have written part of the story in your head. I never said it. But perhaps, perhaps not, you filled in some gaps yourself.
One can even read a good story in a different language. Let’s assume you do not speak the foreign language in the YouTube video below. I bet you can still read the story. Your mind will fill in the blanks. That is the epitomy of a good story: one that stimulates you to mentally fill in the gaps….
This leads me on to a much more serious, intensely analytic YouTube video. No laughing matter, this one. Please pay attention now. I know it’s a trifle boring, and it gets a bit wordy with a lot of technical terms, but if you can follow the lecturer’s reasoning, I assure you, you will learn a lot about the art of creativity. This one builds on the skeleton concept in a much more academic manner, as the structural and logical foundation for a good story. Placed in a museum, a hallowed seat of higher learning, it is important to see the skeleton as your basic story idea. The elements of the story, the bones of the beast, are clearly laid out for the museum visitor. The rules require such a static exhibit to demonstrate to the museum visitor the higher ethical and philosophical implications of the existentialist perception of the static imagery. It may not be able to move -it’s dead, after all- but the museum clientele should have no problem with the essential thrust of the exhibit. The essential message, ethereal, sublime, should be capable of abruptly pricking your conscience.
This is one writer’s video I suggest you really bone up on…
Ah….. the joy of writing…
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 5, 2009, 9:58 pm
A Flithery-Flathery Thing
June 5, 2009 in Short Stories
Photo by Steve Ford Elliot
A Flithery-Flathery Thing
I‘ve seen and experienced my share of nastiness in this world. And felt the thud of boots landing on my body, and fists beating on my skull. And I’ve heard the gun shots, calling my name. I narrowly escaped a terrorist bomb one day, under circumstances that were strange and unreal. I have gazed down the angry barrel of a British Army rifle, and wondered -in an odd, calm, detached way- if he was going to shoot…
The same in Cyberspace.
Hate. Intolerance. Abuse. Racial epithets. Stalking. Religious bigotry. Threats. Really strange people, who send messages like this one I received:
“I is sik and tired of you peple dogging prejdicial to our Presidint and its Presidint Obama not Mr Obama.
I is white but even I know black peple just as gud. “
I replied sweetly with an email pointing out that “free speech ” works BOTH ways. And that the color of a man’s skin doesn’t interest me in the slightest… That in turn elicited a hate filled polemic, which caused me to yawn, and quickly lose interest.
The “Daily World ” as a website joins countless tens of thousands of others that have experienced this problem.
I tend to think that two ingredients widely available today bring out the worst in many people.
One is alcohol.
The other is cyberspace.
If you don’t know what I mean, go check out some of the comments people routinely place on the YouTube website.
One poster (good video too) disabled posts/reviews, with the comment:
“I have disabled the reviews feature -once again. You people are sad. “
I know what he means. I feel his pain. Or is it quiet disgust?
Good people can lose a lot of sleep by hate reviews aimed at them. By threats, by wild accusations, by ugliness and bigotry.
I think that is even more sad: when I see good people, good writers, good artists, wasting valuable writing time and -finite!-nervous energy getting all upset by silly nonsense.
Just plain “Sjilly schtuff… “.
I have long wondered what would be a good metaphor for all this. I have yet to find one. A metaphor, that would accurately point out the waste of life, the waste of hope, the waste of energy.
A metaphor that would accurately warn people that there are big, humongous issues out there, clamoring for our urgent attention. That intensely threaten our whole planet, the whole human race, and our children’s future.
Why… waste time with the little stuff?
I was in the middle of writing that story I posted about the Tsiananmen Square massacre.
I have been wondering for many years:
“What happened to the Tank Man? “
Apparently they executed him by military firing squad. Along with hundreds of others. That upsets me. Well, right in the middle of my mood, thinking of thousands of peaceful Chinese people slaughtered by their own “People’s Liberation Army “, and our government Know-it-All’s (The Enlightened Ones) kow-towing to that same bunch of thugs, when…. here comes a message from a good cyber friend. He is being cyber stalked by some crazed half witted pest. And he’s all upset about it.
I think he expected me to be sympathetic. I wasn’t very diplomatic. What I wrote back was:
Yes, there are very, very silly people out there. I have seen my fair share. Ignore them. Not worth losing a single cerebral neuron flash over. Don’t worry about it. I don’t. I’m busy working on a story on the Tiananmen Square Massacre. 5,000 plus assassinated. Somehow, another silly b****** spreading poison on the Internet doesn’t rank very high on my radar screen.
I’m sure he thought I was insensitive. Heck, I’m sure I was. But I just couldn’t be bothered to work up any brain algo-rythm thingies about it. What was it Clint Eastwood’s nurd step brother said? The computer geek? That Internet website guy?
Oh! Yes, I remember.
“Go ahead, stalk me, punk. Make me a caliber day! “
(forty-four, I’m guessing)
Look at it another way; it’s not too hard to surmise that some people are mentally challenged (poor things), emotional retards, intellectual ‘sealed vacuum packs’, and otherwise vote-able as ‘NOT the most likely to lead and inspire’.
But all you are doing there is surmising. A child can do that. To prove it, you need to go a step further. You could hire a team of doctors and psychiatrists, spend a fortune, and end up diagnosing ‘toilet training psychosis’ and an acute deficit of genetic predisposition towards higher brain functions. That would work, but would cost time and money.The simplest…. and by far the best way is to give them a keyboard, a monitor, and connect them to Cyberspace.
Like I said, I would love to find a metaphor that accurately summed up my feelings. But it’s hard. I’ll keep trying. If I find one, I’ll let you know.
**************************************************
Incidentally, and totally non-related, I was messing about on the beach south of Cameron the other day. With my dirt bike. Popping wheelies, racing flat out through puddles, and playing chicken with the waves. I fell off a couple of times, (you are supposed to do that), and I even got completely stuck in some quicksand. Up to my axles I was…. all out of ideas, trying to figger out what the HighCrokeyTonk I was gonna do next. But along came a team of Cameron families on four wheelers, and if they were wondering what that demented, crazy old F**T was doing, sitting on his derriere in the mud, giggling like a tipsy Nun, they were far too polite to ask. They helped me out, were really nice, and I enjoyed the kindness of total strangers once again in my life… I have that effect on people, I think. They can see I need help.
It was while I was tearing around like a teenager, up and down the sun splashed beach, with visibility exceeding ten miles, that I came upon a small, slightly smelly, brownish, bracken puddle. Hidden in the shelter of a small dune. The surface, unlike the wild and rugged sea, was smooth and calm. Even so, something very small was skipping, slithering, sliding, skating…. fooling about on the surface. Trying to get to the other side I guess.
I stopped, and wondered what it was. It was a thing. Definitely a thing. A flithery-flathery thing.
Photo by “0595 “
I was about to move on, when the thought crossed my mind, (it didn’t take long), that I was wrong to assume that the tiny flithery-flathery thing didn’t have a unique place of relevance in the Grand Scheme of Things. I guess somebody who is really interested in small crawling things could tell you a whole lot about that flithery-flathery thing. He or she could probably give you the Latin name for it, and tell you all about its life cycle, and its reproductive functions. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find somebody who had a PH.D. in flithery-flathery things, and who would get all excited by that…. thing.
But I confess, most of us, would start yawning after much more than fifteen minutes of passionate discourse on the mating habits of Pa Flither and Mama Flather. It’s not that we don’t accept that they are part of Life’s Great Cycle. Surely, they are. It’s not that we say that they don’t matter. Surely, they do.
However, given the wide open beach to explore, the deep, eternal sea, the never ending soldiers in the sky, and the endless march of Time, how many of us want to spend a life time gazing into small, brackish, stagnant, smelly puddles behind the beach? To us, they will always be Flithery-Flathery things….
Photo: “Astrodeep ” by rmforall
Anyway, like I said above, if I ever think of a symbol, a decent metaphor, with which to paint my feelings about silly people who abuse the Internet, and who fail to even begin to understand our brief, delicate tiptoe through the awesome fabric of Space and Time, I will let you know. It won’t be easy. But I’ll try to solve that problem, and get to the other side.
Just like the flithery-flathery things…
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 7, 2009, 3:12 pm
Tiananmen Square Massacre
June 3, 2009 in Uncategorized
The twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre is upon us.
The events of June 3 and June 4 1989 in Beijing, China, are profoundly relevant to every American.
About the worst thing anybody can do is assume that what happens ‘over there’ will have little or no impact on our daily bread ‘over here’. Think again….
The events of June 3 and June 4 1989 in Tiananmen Square were astonishingly brutal. Armed troops were called in by the communist dictators to crush unarmed, peaceful protesters, demanding greater democracy in China. Demanding greater freedoms, which Americans -mostly- still take for granted, but which are nonetheless being steadily and deliberately eroded and undermined. All this what is taking place today, in June 2009, in the last bastion of Liberty in the Free World – America- is being wonderfully dressed up. A compliant media establishment is re-defining the concept of the “Tame Pet Poodle ” of the current White House incumbent. Many journalists and reporters are remarkably poorly read in History and Economics, not to mention Philosophy and Ethics. In the name of ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’, and whatever other sugar coating the present socialist regime in power in Washington chooses to slap on the cake, there is a horrible backward slide taking place. More power, and more power still, increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The inevitable result is that mistakes will be more massive, more irreversible, more likely.
Take a look at these YouTube videos. And ask yourself these questions:
*** Are you sure this doesn’t matter to us?
*** Are you sure our “Great Leaders “, in kow-towing to the SAME Chinese Communist Government, which is STILL in power, are doing the right thing?
*** Are you sure you like the idea of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Tim Geithner, begging bowls in hand, bobbing up and down in front of the same dictatorial, ruthless regime?
*** Are you sure you don’t mind the fact that we now OWE the Chinese Government in excess of One Trillion borrowed dollars?
*** Are you sure this pigeon ain’t gonna come home to roost one day?
I spent several years of my life working every day with ordinary Chinese people. I have written some stories about those days. I learned about 500 to 600 words of Chinese. Enough to build up a great respect and warmth for the incredibly hard working, hospitable, delightful average Chinese person. They showed me photos of their families.
What happened to them, and what is still happening to them, and the cynical media manipulation that goes on in China -AND AMERICA!- to this very day, should be a source of outrage to all freedom cherishing Americans. Our “Great Leaders ” however, desperate for Chinese cash to fund their impossible,impractical, Utopian dreams, have been strangely silent on the subject of Human Rights and democracy in China. And Tibet. To this day, the Chinese Communist Government (read: overwhelming power concentrated in few hands) do everything they can to block the memory of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
We are talking a mere twenty years. Such… is the power of brain washing, and State Control. So what did happen? Maybe it’s all a mistake? Western propaganda? Maybe nothing much happened at all?
That is what the Communist Government of China would love you to believe. And our “Great Leaders “…? What would they like us to believe? Or would it be more correct to phrase the question this way:
“What would Clinton-Pelosi-Geithner prefer that you IGNORED?? “
Every thinking American should pause, and reflect on these terrible events. And what it means for us. And what it says about our “Dear Leaders ” and their spineless -desperate- begging expeditions to China. “Please -PLEASE!- buy our Treasury Bonds “.
Finally, consider the words of Dr. Steve Sjuggerud.
“Yesterday, a bunch of Chinese people laughed at us…
What was the joke? U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told a crowd of students in Beijing that the trillion dollars worth of U.S. government bonds the Chinese hold are “very safe. “
Students laughed. They know the truth.
It was an embarrassing day for America. I never thought I’d see it…
In my career, I’ve learned there’s nothing surer in finance than this: When a Treasury Secretary explicitly tells you ‘your money is safe,’ then your money is in big trouble…. “
Time to wake up, America. Get vocal. Get snarly. Get suspicious.
And share these videos with your friends.
Francis Meyrick
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on August 28, 2012, 11:39 am
Citizen Kane versus CenturyTel (round 3)
June 3, 2009 in Short Stories
Photo “Wino ” by Jason.Lengstorf
Citizen Kane versus Centurytel (Round 3)
Tuesday morning, June 2nd, 08.00 hrs.
The door bell rings, and the CenturyTel A-Team stands on my doorstep.
I check furtively to see if they are carrying any baseball bats, knuckle dusters, or sawn-off shot guns.
But all I see are hand tools, electronic measuring devices, and a half eaten ham sandwich.
I think I’m okay…
They pour in, the first of many posses. Between 08.00 hrs and 14.00 hrs (two o’clock to you sad folk who have never watched TopGun) the A-Team go hard at it. They even climb electric poles, and otherwise risk life and limb in the pursuit of the Ghostly Gremlin that has stalked my Internet connection so successfully for a year.
Around about ten o’clock they are getting really puzzled. They can’t figure it out. Something IS wrong they say.
Yeah, you ain’t kidding…
They bring in reinforcements. The door creaks slowly open. The music stops. The floorboards groan as The Answer struts in. He doesn’t quite seem a cyborg, but there is undoubtedly something otherworldly in the fixed gleam in his eyes. Is he a Geek? The may-be Geek sits at the table, and pummels away on my computer. He is so focused on his mission, he even refuses tea and chocolate biscuits.
I of course, am in total awe. He must be a cyborg. I who could never pass up a chokkie biscuit. Not even if the house was on fire, or if Barack Obama was banging on the front door offering to do my washing up.
(he has promised everything else…)
Around about eleven they are gone for a while. I wonder have they given up. I try the Internet a few times. Nothing. Not even one single miserable kilo byte bothers to register. I’m cut off. Snubbed. Even my phone doesn’t work. I have been cast back into the dark ages from whence I came. I worry now. What if they never come back? What will I be reduced to? Snail mail? Navajo Smoke signals? Telepathy? My bicycle and the Post Office?
I try to read a book. But my mind keeps wandering. I have survived most of my adult life without the Internet. But now it’s indispensable. It’s like a fix. That cheap bottle of wine, wrapped in a dirty old brown paper bag, that the Alkie, sleeping under the bridge, clutches like the Last Comfort…. that’s what the Internet has become to me. I own two websites, and never does the Sun go down without my humble soul having quenched itself in the nether waters of that vast shadowy underworld of human activity. I don’t need Acheron, the Greek mythological boatman, to row me across the river Styx to reach my final destination. All I need is a blessed Internet connection that works. Surely there has to be a medical term for Internet deprivation?
CWS? Cyberspace Withdrawal Syndrome? Does that maybe lead to violence? Is that how people end up climbing lamp posts, whilst barking like a dog? I look across at my dog, Sinner by name and nature, stretched out on the floor, dozing. He opens one eye, and gives me that thoughtful look of his. It seems to convey a message:
Okay, Boss, NOW what have you gone and gotten yourself into…?
The doorbell rings, and I leap into orbit.
Our cat, Pintle, dives under the sofa, and Sinner grumpily opens the other eye.
Quickly I put my nonchalant expression on. I open the door with that feigned non-surprise. The “Oh, it’s you guys again ” casual look. The “I wasn’t really thinking about it ” glance.
They are looking all pleased with themselves. They have either gotten the green light from Head office to come and break both my legs, or they have maybe fixed something. I wonder which it will be.
They reckon they have fixed it. It was a “locked Adtran “. I pretend I know exactly what they are talking about.
Oh! A Locked Adtran. Of course. I get those once in a while on my bicycle. Right. Now I know everything…
We try the connection. Not only do I discover we ARE connected. We are connected at a blistering 2.57 MegaBite per second.
Up from a miserable 255 Kilobytes (0.25 MB) on Sunday before. Ten times as much bandwidth…
We play some YouTube videos. Yep, that works. Real cool. Amazing what you can do when you finally get the bandwidth. The bigger pipe.
The A-Team are pleased. They do some more checks, and then depart, with promises that they will check back with me.
I also have maintenance email addresses and phone numbers. I feel empowered. Much better than dealing with the canned voice of that nice lady back at Centurytel head shed. The one that passes me along, and along, and around, and -eventually- back to where I started.
The door closes, and I abandon my nonchalant posture. I vault over the sofa, knock over two chairs, scare the cat -again- and do a John Wayne type running saddle jump onto my bucking bronco.
Photo “Roaming the Ranch ” by chrisada
We take off, across the now thankfully wide open plains of Cyberspace, On the gallop, I can achieve in mere seconds now, what before took me many minutes of teeth gnashing frustration. I can kick up dust, move like the wind. And fire from both pistols. I can wave my hat in triumph, and let forth a joyful outlaw yell…
Whoooopeeeee……..!
So it can be safely said that Tuesday, June 2nd, far from being a Day of Infamy, (to quote that great deceiver of the American people, that traitor of Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt…), was in fact perhaps the beginning of a whole new ride through Cyberspace. As one who is anxious to make “my website ” (www.writersharbor.org) really hi-tech and attractive, I can now more easily experiment with bandwidth-heavy applications, such as YouTube videos, Windows Movie Maker, and various Flash applications.
On Tuesday, June 2nd, approximately one year after the start of my Centurytel Dis-Service, approximately two months after refusing the pay the bill anymore, and exactly two days after venting Citizen Kane’s pent up feelings on the Internet, including the Daily World website, (I love that angry face), the Centurytel maintenance A-Team found the culprit. The hoodlum. El Bandito. By the name of “Locked Adtran. ” Wanted… Dead or Alive.
Life is good once more…
A cynical observer, a student of the relationship between Big Business and the Lowly Average Consumer, the Humble Customer, might well wonder about some of the issues these three installments highlight.
1) Might Centurytel usefully take a closer look at what exalted promises over-eager telephone sales staff make to potential customers?
Promising customers -repeatedly- “absolutely no problem ” with streaming video, for what turns out to be a 256 Kilobyte connection… That seems to this saddle sore dirt rider at the very least erroneous. At the worst, gentlemen, it is deliberate B**** SH***** T. A very dubious sales pitch indeed. I’m a reasonably intelligent fellow, with a University education, and if I was so confuddled, I expect many other people were (and ARE) as well.
2) Might CenturyTel usefully take a closer look at explaining to customers -clearly- the different levels of bandwidth customers can get, and what level of Internet connection speed and efficiency each level is likely to deliver?
3) Might CenturyTel usefully take a closer look at the efficiency with which problems are in fact passed over to maintenance? The A-team themselves were puzzled why that took so long. Once the heavy brigade was brought in, it got fixed. That blackguard, that hoodlum, “Locked Adran ” finally got his come uppance. Why did that take so long? Why was I palmed off with platitudes so long? Is this a case of “Ignore him and perhaps he will go away? “
4) And what was that nonsense with the tape recorded initial sales call?
I have a feeling that if it had been in Centurytel’s interest to “find ” that tape, that it would have been “found ” as they say: toute-suite. Promptly. On the gallop.
To be fair, I have to say, are we consumers entirely blameless? How informed are we? How aggressive and determined are we to follow up our legitimate complaints? That “locked adtran ” adversely affected a lot more people than just us. But the noise and flack and yelling seems to have come overwhelmingly from this writer. Did everybody else just give up?
Consumers MUST make themselves familiar with www.speedtest.net
Heck, it’s so easy even a caveman could do it. Oops. Even a “gentleman who prefers an alternative habitat ” could do it.
Photo by Hendrik Dacquin
Strike one for this caveman!
Now, where did I leave my club?
(PS: Thank you Earl, Robert, Fred. I appreciate it.)
Francis
Citizen Kane versus Centurytel (round 2)
June 2, 2009 in Short Stories
Centurytel CEO by sylvar
Citizen Kane versus Centurytel (round 2)
It’s Monday , June 1st, 2009.
Seems like a good day to call CENTURYTEL again. AGAIN.
About my internet….
The long running saga of one man’s struggle against a corporate giant… Maybe they’ll make a movie out of it. Maybe Jesse Jackson will champion my cause. Or Ted Kennedy. Or, more likely, they’ll lock me up. After I am found, alone in a darkened room, with a sledgehammer beating up and down on the keyboard. Shouting, at the top of my voice: “Kilo…..kilo…..Bites……Megga……download….Arrrrggghhhh…!! “
The lady that answers the phone at CENTURYTEL is canned. A recording machine. I have gotten to know her well. Sometimes I get stuck with her. For many minutes on end. We have had some interesting conversations, a fact which will probably feature in the proceedings when they decide to commit me to an asylum for the criminally insane.
Finally… I get put through to Christen. She’s a sweetheart. Very nice. Seems we are going to do another “speed test “.
I like these speed tests. They don’t even have to talk me through them much any more. It’s pretty simple, even an old Tyrannosaurus Rex could do it. I’d say “Caveman “, but I’m sure that by now that is no longer politically correct.
Ho-hum…
NOTE to INTERNET USERS: YOU TOO CAN DO THIS. ANYTIME.
(DO IT NOW….)
MAKE SURE YOU ARE GETTING THE BANDWIDTH WHAT YOU PAY FOR.
First…. we connect to www.speedtest.net
Then we go to “settings “
Select unit “kilobits “, because it’s “easier to read “.
(They say that every time).
Start the test…
rolling…rolling…rolling…
And up comes the results:
Download speed (the important one!): 413 Kilobits per second
Upload speed: 255 kilobits per second
She sounds perplexed. I’m not, of course. She states the obvious: “It’s slow “.
Yes, dear, it’s slow.
In fact, she says, it’s very slow.
I’m not going to argue…
I helpfully add that 413 divided by 1,500 = 27 per cent. Of the bandwidth that I should be getting. Of what I’m paying for.
In case you are perplexed, I’ll add that 1,000 Kilobits equals 1 Meggabit.
I like Christen. She sounds concerned. She’s not faking it. Says she will write a ticket for the maintenance crew, and they will be out tomorrow, Tuesday June 2nd. And I don’t even have to be at home she says. I guess they’ll just climb in through the cat flap.
Oh! It’s an outside job? Fair enough.
So now we wait. I’ve been waiting a year. What’s another day.
Ho-hum. Anybody seen any good YouTube videos lately?
My tip: go to YouTube and dial in: “skeleton on a motorbike “.
And, if you are not with CENTURYTEL, but with a REAL Internet Service Provider: enjoy!
Installment 3) of Citizen Kane versus Centurytel will be along.
Soon….
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 4, 2009, 10:42 pm
Diary (14) “Alienation “
May 31, 2009 in Auto-biographical
Diary (14): Alienation
May 31st 2009
(NOTE: there was a photo here of somebody kissing the TV presenter goodnight.
Apparently, a known phenomenon where extreme loneliness affects people. The link was broken, and I can’t find a copy)
When I first saw this photo, I was actually looking for something totally different. I was trying to illustrate a story I had written called “Meeting Mrs Bird “, which featured my then sweetheart Natalie. And her older sister. Of decidedly bovine dimensions. Who immediately took a strong dislike to me. And I of course, being a gentleman, well……, I guess you need to read the story. Anyway, I had entered “ugly cow ” in the search engine attached to a website for free photos, and I have no idea how this particular photo came up. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. The photo immediately brought back a strong memory. I left a note for the photographer,saying:
“Usually a story is written and goes looking for photos.
In this case, the photo is written already, and I shall go fill in the story…. ”
The verb written to describe a photo I believe was correct. I thought then – and I still do- that this was a brilliant painting. The memory was that of a visit I made to the apartment of a troubled female friend. In Dublin, Ireland.
I had found the apartment building alright. It was a large old house, which had been converted into ten self contained single units. There was one central hallway, with the mail boxes, and a row of bells with the names of the occupants beside them. Hers was missing. I looked and looked, but I was unable to find her name. So I innocently decided to knock on somebody’s door and ask…
The door I selected was on the main hallway. Every occupant in the house would pass through that place. They would mingle there, presumably, collecting their mail, or putting their coats on before venturing outside. In this manner, a resident would soon learn to recognize the other tenants by sight, if not by name? I knocked on the door, from behind which I could hear the sound of a television. The result surprised me. A high pitched woman’s voice, obviously frightened, asked me who was there. I apologized, and -very politely- inquired if she might know the room number of one Miss Moira McLoughlin…. In answer, she practically screamed out:
“I don’t know anybody in this house! Please go away! ”
The fear was unmistakable. And if that reaction wasn’t strange enough, the television volume was instantly turned up full volume, as if to drown out the sound of my polite inquiry…
Photo: DerrickT
It registered with me at the time as a sad alienation. That somebody could live alone in such a building, surrounded by people, and not know any of them. With only the television for companionship. And refuge from crisis…. It seemed wrong somehow, unnatural, and awfully sad. When in later life, I heard stories from social workers about people who kissed the Television reporter goodnight before going to bed, I was not surprised. My encounter -through a closed door- with this strangely terrified woman had prepared me for that. Loneliness surrounded by people. Loneliness in the big city. Loneliness and isolation with only the make believe world of Television for some kind of surrogate support.
I believe this photo is a Masterpiece. Although obviously staged, it nonetheless captures brilliantly the anonymity of a faceless city dweller, lost in the urban wilderness, reaching out, pathetically, to touch the face of a Television Being.
It makes me feel the urge to reach out. To stretch forth a friendly hand, even through a medium as diluted and esoteric as Cyberspace. People still need people. Real people.
I write, I scribble, and I hope I come across as a real person, a creature of flesh and blood.
With real feelings…
Francis Meyrick
(c)
Last edited by Francis Meyrick on June 10, 2013, 6:13 pm