I did a fictional story of a German U Boat making a long trip to the Far East for a secret mission for NaNoWriMo 2008 but this bit is rather interesting and perhaps worth further investigations.

(Herbert Kuppisch, the man destined to be the commander of the Penang base. But was KIA when his boat (U-847) was sunk southwest of the Azores. Image source: www.uboataces)

This is a true story of German U Boats operating in the Far East with the intention of having U Boat base in Penang, Malaya.

From Uboataces:-

Barely a month later, on March 28 1943, U-178 departed from France and en route to the Indian Ocean, BdU sent a message that she was to sail to Malaya and set up a U-boat base there. After having replenished from a surface tanker in the Indian Ocean, the U-178 arrived in Penang at the Malayan Peninsula on August 1943. KK Wilhelm Dommes became the first commander of the German U-boat base in Asia.

Penang, situated on the west coast of Peninsula Malaya was under Japanese occupation and was selected as the main U-boat base. A second base was established at Kobe, Japan, and a small repair base was located at Singapore, Jakarta and Surabaya.

A total of 41 German U-boats sailed to Far East to undertake various operations from transport duties to operations against shipping to U-boats to be presented to Japan. These boats paid a high price for their journey, as of the forty one which had set sail, only six would return to Europe, and only two of those successfully delivered their cargo back to Germany.

Just imagine what would have happened if the Allied had not broken the German’s Enigma Code and if German and Japanese forces had an upper hand on the war against the Allied forces? Penang would have been an interesting place.

As at todate, have managed to pass the 11,000 words threshold and should be hitting 12,000 words by midnight tonight. Having 2 days off with nothing to do have provided with plenty of free time to extend the number of words clocked.

I have created a new page to ‘consolidate’ all my NaNoWriMo novels here and hope to participate in many more NaNoWriMo venture in years to come. My first year’s venture is now available for download.

This year’s venture is titled “Unexpected Mission” and it is about John, a former member of the Special Forces is in Ghana for long due holiday but things are not going to be smooth for him as certain events unfold and John is caught between minding his own business or being involved in it.

I am developing the sub-plots as I am continuing to write but it is not easy.

(To be updated)

This was rather interesting…

Last Wednesday marked the 30th anniversary of Iran’s storming of American Embassy in Tehran and taking 52 people as hostage for 444 days. Apparently this event is celebrated on yearly basis in Iran. However this year, such ‘celebration’ was also used by the oppositions here to protest against the ruling party.

Our driver told us that there will be protest when he came to pick us in the morning. He said that it is a yearly event here in Iran. Then when we were at work, news of the protest getting violent began to filter in.

ABC News reported:-

Iranian protesters took to the streets today as they do every Nov. 4 to mark the 30th anniversary of the U.S. embassy takeover.

But this year, opponents of the Iranian regime used the government sanctioned day of street demonstrations to challenge the hard line administration.

We had no interest on Iranian politics but the problem was strange things began to happen.

Mobile phones began to lose its coverage. Access to certain websites like Gmail, Twitter, IM Chat sites and some news agency sites began to be denied. Somehow access to blogs was still allowed but we did not know for how long this access would be allowed.

Mobile coverage came back online sometime late in the evening (depending on which operators, of course)

Whilst we understand why certain websites are being denied access by the Government, what we don’t understand is that why access to our office mails are also being affected. Some flash based web pages are also failed to work. We had a hard time communicating with our colleagues back in Kuala Lumpur on system related issues.

I guess for now we just have to get used to the unannounced web access restrictions whilst we are in this country. We just hope that there are no future demonstrations planned for the next few weeks, otherwise it is going to have serious implications on our communications back to Malaysia.

As at today, the access to certain sites is still restricted….a dreadful thought if this is to happen in Malaysia

If there is one thing that brings the ‘best of me’ when I am abroad, it is learning to be independent in the kitchen – independent in the sense of able to cook something for dinner. As every Malaysians would know, one of the lifelines for times like this is Instant Noodles.

(One of the ‘local’ instant noodles on sale here but compared to Maggi and despite both takes the same 3 minutes to cook, it was rather bland and tasteless)

This time around, I did not packed as many instant noodles as my friends did for the Iran trip. I guessed that 15 packets would be enough for the 3 months duration. Others brought about 30 packets or more. Initially I thought even bringing 15 packets were abit too much since I have not planned to depend so much on instant noodles. However given the recent spat of rainy nights in Tehran, sometimes we have no choice but to cook at home. Instant noodles, chicken nuggets and fresh eggs make a hearty meal anytime of the day. If there is nothing much to cook with it, then we have to resort to eating just bread and fruits.

Interestingly if it has been me at home back in Malaysia, it would have been a rather rare occasion of me going to the kitchen to cook something. Kitchen would have been my wife’s department at home and I must admit that her cooking is much better than me, given any time of the day of course. On some nights when instant noodles would have been the ultimate meal, my wife usually takes care of it, often with additional ingredients added to spices up the meal.

(For one heavy dinner, we are having fried eggs, nuggets and instant noodles)

For breakfast, it is a different thing all together. My friends still take the trouble to cook something in the morning for breakfast (instant noodles is one of them, instant oats is the other) but I find it quite difficult to do the same especially when I have a hard time waking up. So I opt for bread and milk which is not exactly heavy (I miss the heavy ones back in Malaysia – fried noodles with tea or nasi lemak with teh tarik) but is sufficient until lunch break.

For lunch, the good thing is that since we will be out from the house, we will usually eat packed food – rice and kebabs (rotating between chicken and lamb). Rice once a day is more than enough for us here in Tehran. Probably that is why I felt like I am loosing weight – I hardly take plenty of rice during the night.

(To be continued)

(An U Boat story – Image source: http://military.discovery.com)

I spent almost 1 month to draft out my NaNoWriMo 2008’s entry titled “The Malayan U Boat” and spent probably another 1 week to clean up and polish the story.

For those who are interested to read, I have uploaded the pdf version of the story in Google Docs.

Please be free to download it and give me comments on the story and how it can be improved further.

Thanks