Its you Cherubim!!

Hey Cher,

Saw u on multiply! lol

Old Bob has passed away

My friend, Bob passed away a week ago. I'm a little bit sad I didn't spend more time with him, esp. when I got back. But he lived rather far away, over 30 minutes drive, and I'm not good at managing my time to see him.

I had the honor to give him a eulogy at his funeral. This is it.

Eulogy for Chief Petty Officer Robert S. Wilkins (Ret) 25^th January 2007.

I had the honor and pleasure to become a friend to Mr Wilkins, whom we affectionally knew as Bob. We met at the ACCF church in 1995. He was very surprised that I knew so much about military history and we spent long hours talking about World War Two, the Royal Navy and his part in it.  This is his story which I recorded during my time with him.

Robert Stanley Wilkins was born, July 28^th, 1912, in a small English village called Tisbury in England. He came from a large family – 4 brothers and 4 sisters. His father was an ordinary laborer but an exceptional gardener who turned their backyard into a veritable Garden of Eden and grew all their vegetables and fruits – and according to Bob they lived like kings on the produce. His mother was a school teacher; a highly educated woman. Despite their social class mismatch, they married out of love.

 Virtually all his brothers had joined the Navy. All up, his family served a total of 72 years in the navy service. Bob was good at school but his father was too poor to send him to higher education, much to his mother’s dismay.

 
So Bob joined the Navy in 1928, age 16 years. He didn't do it out of love for King and Country, he just wanted to see the world. Back then, only the rich could afford to travel. He spent 12 months as a boy seaman on board the training battleship, Emperor of India which used coal as its main fuel. He actually had to haul sacks of coal onto the ship and hated it. At 18, he went to the battleship, Royal Sovereign and then joined the Revenge with the 1^st Battle Squadron in the Mediterranean. He served on 6 battleships including the Barham, Nelson and Vanguard and two aircraft carriers the Courageous and the Ark Royal – not including time spend on a minesweeper and destroyers. He preferred serving on the bigger ships – they were more sturdy, stable and safe.

He was very proud to serve in the Royal Navy. Everyone in the ship, from admiral to seaboy, was literally in the same boat and shared the same fate. It wasn’t like the army where the general sat hundreds of miles away in safety ordering his soldiers over a phone to attack the enemy. The Navy wasn’t a cake ride but Bob said he had the time of his life. He got to travel to Malta, Gibraltar, Israel, various parts of the Mediterranean and even to North America.  Discipline was extreme but they were all volunteers so they didn’t complain too much.

 He met his future wife Elsie on October 4^th, 1930 – 8.30pm Saturday evening. He was 18 years, 2 months old. He was serving on the battleship, the Royal Sovereign then. Whilst on shore leave, he met Elsie. It was very romantic. They walked pass each other in the street and glanced at each other for a brief moment and kept on walking. Then both of them turned back and gave each other a second glance. When Elsie saw Bob looking back at her, she got shy, and quickly walked away.

 It was love at first sight. So he ran up to her and being a true gentleman he politely asked her, “Excuse me, may I please escort you home and if you don’t mind, to extend our time together, might we walk a little slow?”

 After spending sometime with her, he liked her so much that he asked “If I may be so bold, and since you know your way around here – is there a longer route so that I may spend more time with you.” And she agreed.

 Finally, when it came time to say goodbye, he asked, “Let me write to you – but if someone you fancy comes by, you can go, but let me know.” And so they wrote to each other virtually every day. And one year, 5 months later – in May 1932- they had their first kiss.

 Bob had to write to Elsie often because his navy duty kept him at sea and foreign shores for many months. Years later he found that she kept all his letters – treasuring them and would read them repeatedly.

 He was the happiest man on earth when he was with Elsie. He took her to his parents for approval. His beloved mother loved her because Elsie had beautiful manners. Unfortunately, he felt he was a too poor to get married.

 Eight long years after they first met, Bob married Elsie on the 17^th December 1938- both were age 26. Soon after, he was posted to the big aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and it had to go to the Mediterranean for 3 months training. Elsie was angry when she heard about this and said - "Three months? What's that? A weekend?" It wasn’t a nice way to start a marriage. But he knew that war between Germany was close.

In 1939, war broke out with Nazi Germany and the Ark was sent straight to the Arctic to help the Norwegians. It was, one of the worse times in Bob’s life. The weather conditions were hellish and they were constantly under heavy air attack from the Luftwaffe and had many narrow misses. There's the photo with four big bomb splashes all around the Ark. Bob reckoned that one hit and the Ark would have probably blown up. The experience made Bob very religious.

One of the good aspects about the war was the faster pace of promotion. Soon after war broke out - one of the officers beckoned to Bob and asked him whether he wanted to get promoted. He said yes, sat for the exam and became a petty officer. By the end of the war he made senior petty officer - and he received his pension - indexed - since 1956, a nice tidy sum.

The Ark would play a vital role in the war – sailing to South America, the Arctic, the Atlantic, and the Med for various naval ops. Bob was very proud that his ship’s torpedo planes helped to sink the Monster Battleship Bismarck which you can see in this painting.  I bought it for Bob when I first met him. When he saw this picture, he was very touched.

Bob took part in Operational Pedestal in August 1942 which was an important convoy expedition to supply the important garrison at Malta with vital supplies. It was a horror. They were under heavy enemy attack and they lost eight ships out of 14 that took part. He saw things you wouldn’t believe, the funnels of merchant ships shooting out flames after they had been hit, warships on fire.

 The most frightening thing Bob saw was the sinking of the big aircraft carrier HMS Eagle. Bob saw the Eagle take four torpedo hits which caused it to immediate tilt heavily to one side. Sailors were jumping off the decks and desperately trying to swim away before the ship sink. In less than 8 minutes, the big warship had completely disappeared. Bob was horrified - the people under decks - in the engine room were trapped in the sinking ship. He worried it might be his turn next.

Bob was on board the Ark Royal when it too got sunk. They were on another trip to Malta and it was smooth sailing. They weren’t bombed. The weather was good. Unfortunately, out of nowhere they were struck by a torpedo from a German submarine, the U-81. For a moment, it looked as if the Ark was going to sink straight away. A lot of people jumped over the side, but the carrier seemed to recover.

 A destroyer came along side and evacuated the crew. Everyone eventually got off, except for the one casualty from the torpedo blast. A tug boat also came out and started towing the damaged Ark Royal. But after several hours, the flooding increased – and it sank.

 Bob loved the Ark Royal of all the ships he served on.  The Ark Royal throughout its short career was considered a lucky ship – it had been attacked many times, had many near misses and close calls with 1000 pound bombs and torpedoes, and the Germans and Italians claimed to have sunk it many times. This time however they did. But he told me: She was a real lady. When it was her turn to go, she waited until all her crew got off before she sank. The sea was calm, as flat as a pancake and the weather was beautiful. When I got to port, I telegraphed Elsie with the message, "Safe. Feet not wet."

For his service in the war and the navy, he was awarded these medals which I got professionally framed for him. Bob liked me a lot and we had a great time talking about his experiences in the war. He felt I should keep the medals because I would treasure their historical significance.

In the 1950s Bob was seconded to the Australian Navy and he found life so pleasant that he decided to migrate. He had to convince Elsie’s mother first. She was worried that Elsie would get eaten by the Aborigines. Elsie was also hesitant. But he told her- if she didn’t like it after the first year, they would pack their bags and go home.

 

However, she liked it and so they stayed on. Bob worked hard and saved enough money to buy Elsie a beautiful house in Ashburton, and they even got to travel around the whole of Australia. They loved each other dearly. It was a great shock to Bob when Elsie died in 1995. She was his soul mate and he mourned her deeply. He couldn’t get over her loss and cried a lot. Thankfully, God directed good people into his life to befriend him at his time of need and to help him cope. You know who you are.

24,000 Scuba Dives to recover Buried Trasure

Divers unveil Java Sea treasure trove

In a non-descript warehouse in Jakarta, treasure hunter Luc Heymans dips into plastic boxes and pulls out jewels and ornaments that lay hidden at the bottom of the Java Sea for 1,000 years.

The find, including artefacts from China's Five Dynasties period from 907 to 960 AD and ancient Egypt, is already causing a stir among archaeologists who say the cargo sheds new light on how ancient merchant routes were forged.

An ornately sculpted mirror of polished bronze is one masterpiece among the 250,000 artefacts recovered over the last 18 months from a boat that sank off Indonesia's shores in the 10th century.

On a small mould is written the word "Allah" in beautiful Arabic script, on top of a lid sits a delicately chiselled doe.

Tiny perfume flasks accompany jars made of baked clay, while slender-necked vases fill the shelves of the hangar along with brightly coloured glassware from the Fatimides dynasty that once ruled ancient Egypt.

A team of divers, among them three Australians, two Britons, three French, three Belgians and two Germans, excavated the vessel laden with rare ceramics which sank more than 1,000 years ago about 130 nautical miles from Jakarta.

Archaeological treasures

"It is a completely exceptional cargo," Mr Heymans said, the Belgian chief of the excavation team.

"There is very little information about the Five Dynasties era and very few things in the museums. This wreck fills a hole."

Close to 14,000 pearls and a profusion of precious stones were found in the wreck, including some 4,000 rubies, 400 dark red sapphires, and more than 2,200 garnets.

"On the second last day of diving, I spotted some broken ceramics. Under 30 centimetres of vase, I uncovered the handle of a golden sabre," Daniel Visnikar, the leading French diver, said.

Salvage operation

It took more than 24,000 dives to recover all the treasure from the boat that rests 54 metres below the surface.

Material recovered from the site has whetted the appetite of overseas experts.

"A 10th century wreck is very rare, there are only a few," Jean-Paul Desroches said, a curator at the Guimet Museum in Paris, after seeing photographs of the early hauls.

He says the wreck and its cargo offers clues to how traders using the Silk Road linking China to Europe and the Middle East, used alternative sea routes as China's merchants moved south because of invasions from the north.

The variety of loot pulled from the depths is hard to imagine: dishes adorned with dragons, parakeets and other birds; porcelain with finely-carved edges; teapots decorated with lotus flowers; and celadon plates with their glaze intact.

"These porcelains come from a very special kiln, an imperial kiln, perhaps from the province of Hebei in the north of China," Peter Schwarz, a German ceramics specialist, said.

Controversy

Mr Heymans insisted the treasure - the subject of controversy when the divers were chased from their barge in the open-sea by the Indonesian navy last November - was stored in a comprehensive and transparent manner.

"Every piece is indexed and we know which part of the boat it comes from. Every week we sent (the Indonesian authorities) a DVD with digital photographs of all the pieces," he said.

As well being chased by the Indonesian Navy, an incident that began a long dispute over the booty, Mr Heymans says another group of treasure hunters also tried to move in on the swag.

The divers say the treasures might be bought by a foreign museum or are expected to be shown between 2006 and 2007 in an auction, as the cargo is valued at several million dollars.

Indonesia will receive 50 per cent of proceeds from the sale of the treasures.

- AFP

(I think they meant some Indonesian General will get it)

Finding Nemo - Documentary

Hey, I found Nemo. lol. This video was shot off Pulau Dayang, Malaysia - the camera used is a FUJI F31D. Depth is about 10 - 15m underwater. Current was strong as you can see.

Scuba Diving with Nemo

Plenty of clown fish in the waters off Malaysia. This one at Pulau Dayang. I used a FUJI F31D with the FUJI underwater housing to take the shots. The current was strong. And I didn't have a red filter.

French Rogue Trader could have lost 80 BILLION Dollars

Amazing - this one trader working for a major French Bank - think of our DBS or NAB has practically bankrupted the company. He had a working knowledge of the security systems - and fudged the records - and lost nearly 8 billion US dollars in share trading. Apparently, it could have been much much worse. He could have lost 80 billion. Scary.

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent | January 26, 2008

THE SCARIEST thing about Jerome Kerviel is not that he managed to commit the world's biggest solo bank fraud of E4.9billion ($8.2 billion).

The truly frightening thing is that the damage could have been much, much worse because the 31-year-old junior trader at French giant Societe Generale had worked out how to beat the security systems of one of the world's great banks.

If the nondescript young trader had not made one relatively simple error last Friday he could have cost his bank 10 times as much money, wreaking enough damage to threaten banks and economies around the world.

As it is, Kerviel, a low-flyer who was never going to be a star banker, contributed to this week's massive sell-off of shares around the world, reducing the savings of millions of investors and helping to push the US Federal Reserve into its biggest interest rate cuts in two decades.

Kerviel's secret build-up of massive speculative investments in the name of Societe Generale forced the bank to launch a costly fire sale that we now know exacerbated the fall in share prices from Sydney to New York.

Embarrassed bank officials in Paris have revealed that Kerviel's unauthorised trades cost his employer four times the losses accrued by Nick Leeson, the man who broke Barings Bank, and 22 times those of the rogue currency traders who cost NAB $360million in 2004.

It was scandals such as those that led banks around the world to spend hundreds of millions of dollars devising sophisticated systems to prevent further frauds by keeping tight controls on their own traders. SocGen alone has a compliance team of more than 2000 workers, with instant checks on cash flows, and computerised alert systems to detect suspicious activity.

The man in charge of those defences, SocGen corporate and investment banking chief Jean-Pierre Mustier, was driving home on Friday night when he got a call telling him something was wrong.

When he got back to the bank's glass office tower in La Defense, the business district in the west of Paris, Mustier was told that a compliance officer had detected something fishy about a transaction.

It was the early hours of Saturday before Mustier and his team realised that Kerviel seemed to be behind the problematic trade.

Kerviel had begun his career eight years earlier in the unglamorous middle and back offices that help supervise the traders.

A clean-cut, good-looking man who had graduated from a mid-ranking university in Lyons with a masters degree in finance, he spent five years learning the details of the compliance system.

A judo teacher and excellent English speaker, he was also something of a computer geek and took a close interest in how the various security systems worked to monitor the traders.

Some banks make a point of keeping people with those skills away from the trading floor to stop gamekeepers becoming poachers, but the backroom people often agitate for a chance to move over to where the bigger salaries are.

Kerviel was given his chance in 2005, although his salary package stayed below E100,000 ($165,000), less than 10 per cent that of a star trader.

His job was to place relatively simple transactions to reduce the risk of other investments.

If the bank's traders bet heavily that the German market would fall, he was supposed to make balancing investments in case they were wrong. But that is not what he did.

Late last year, he started taking his own punts on the markets, using his computer skills and understanding of the compliance systems to remove the limits on the amounts he was authorised to invest.

Kerviel got around the detection systems by setting up fake companies to hide his rapidly growing transactions. Using other traders' passwords, he hacked into the system to approve his own trades and skilfully "switched off" the automatic warning systems designed to flag any unusual trading patterns.

Bank executives say they only detected a problem last Friday because he forgot to turn off those alarms on one transaction.

On Saturday afternoon, Kerviel was called in from his $3300-a-month apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a walking distance from the office, and locked in a glass conference room with Mustier and his team for questioning that went all night.

"He said he had come up with a great new trading strategy, and if he was given time it would make a lot of money for the bank," one executive said.

He had made a small profit last year and some losses in the past few weeks but they could be turned around, he insisted.

To their horror, Mustier's team discovered he had placed bets worth more than $80 billion of the bank's money.

"He understood he was taking huge positions but I don't think he understood the impact," Mustier said.

"He kept telling me during the night that he had discovered a new trading technique which was performing very well."

The bank insists he worked alone, and Daniel Bouton, the chairman and chief executive, said Kerviel was not siphoning off any money for himself.

"His motives are totally irrational. It doesn't seem that he was able to benefit from these colossal trades and directly he did not."

Philippe Collas, of the bank's global investment management division, said: "This wasn't done to get rich. What was his motive? I don't know. Maybe he wanted to prove himself. It's difficult to get money out of a bank -- as soon as you try you will leave atrace."

Executives speculate that he may have wanted attention or approval. Others say he had recently suffered personal problems including a family death -- believed to have been his father -- and a break-up with his girlfriend.

Kerviel had gambled on European markets rising, and when he helped Mustier to uncover his punts they showed losses of E1.4billion ($2.34billion).

The bank decided those investments would have to be quickly and quietly sold off when trading resumed on Monday.

"We had no choice," Mustier said. "For the sake of our shareholders we cannot speculate with such a large position."

Bouton said: "If we had announced it on Monday morning, the loss (for the bank) would have been 10 times higher. Its scale would have destabilised the whole market."

To keep a lid on things they allowed Kerviel to go home, rather than reporting him to police.

He kept his passport, but his lawyer said yesterday: "He is not running away. He is at the disposal of the police."

The problem was that it proved a disastrous time to be selling.

In the early hours of Monday in Paris as they drew up their plans for the sell-off, the Australian market was tanking, suffering its biggest fall since the 1987 crash. Tokyo followed it down and the French were locked into selling into a falling market.

By some estimates, SocGen's sales added 10 per cent to the volume of sales of European indices futures, exacerbating the price falls.

The slumping prices prompted the interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve, which had not been alerted to the French bank's sell-off.

The falling markets tripled the bank's losses on Kerviel's deals. Six of his supervisors have since been sacked, SocGen's credit rating has been downgraded, and trust in even the most elite banks has been badly dented.

Without that single slip-up last Friday, Kerviel would have been free to plunge his bank even deeper into the red, and there is no reason to believe "le rogue trader" was the only trader in the world capable of breaking a bank.

 

I still can't believe

I still am amazed that one rogue trader in a big French Bank lost nearly 7.6 BILLION American Dollars in trading losses. Don't you wish for the good old days when the banker would steal some money - say a million or so - and run off to the Swiss Alps? And get caught in Geneva by interpol.

In this case- the Bank has totally lost the money. 7.6 billion dollars.

how many zeros those that make???

lets see.

7 600 000 000. Doesn't seem like a lot now does it.

You could buy a lot of Fergus hamburgers for that.


Its sad but the trader was just trying to meet his quota and make up for his losses and it just quickly spiralled quickly out of control. A bit like a gambler at the casino.


He should have just been straightforward dishonest and just walked off with a million dollars in his brief case. And gone to Bora Bora and buy himself a different identity.