The post I wrote several months back titled 'The Pirate Returneth was correct at the time of publishing, as it were. However, events and revelations that have taken place since then compel me to write this post – a corrigenda of sorts.
As I wrote in that post, Rick a.k.a. Hobo (of "Memoirs of The Interant (sic) Hobo" at http://uselesstraveller.blogspot.com ) and I met in Blogistan. He asked a mutual friend to introduce me to him. We started chatting and got on like a house on fire – finding so many things in common, thinking alike and enjoying each other's online company. (I know now that he told me lies and untruths just to make it seem that we have so many things in common when in actuality we are as different as chalk and cheese.)
He told me that he was a GEOLOGIST by profession (although he won't know his 'datum plane' from his 'delta kame' if either jumped up and bit him in his lying ass :P). He told me he is the COUNTRY MANAGER for SCHLUMBERGER in Brunei. Had said that being part of TOP MANAGEMENT he didn't need to be out in the field at all except for the occasional 'offshore jaunts'. (Uh-huh. --Ed.)
He told me that he was DIVORCED with two children. According to him, his wife had left Brunei to move to Singapore after their DIVORCE IN 2005 and had taken the children with her. He had told me he sees his sons only during their school holidays. Being a divorcée myself, I could empathise with the recurrent feeling of loneliness and emptiness that he said he felt. We both became each other's "sounding boards" about the trials and tribulations of being on our own again after years of being one-half of a 'partnership'.
I didn't for once think he could have been lying. I took everything he said at face value because it all sounded credible enough. For example, he told me that he graduated from Northwestern University, an Ivy League institution in Chicago and backed up that story with anecdotes of his time as a student there. (Although the reason he told me he went there -- "because of its architecture", is really rather laughable). His stories were all very detailed and elaborate and he was very consistent in all the details, not just with me but with others who knew him online from his blog.
Maybe I should have suspected something was amiss when others who knew him online said that he had told them his wife was of Japanese-American descent *matiiiiila Devon Aoki* whereas he had told me something totally different (Red Flag #1). He had told me his wife is Malaysian, given me her full name, background and education. He had even shown me her photo. He told me they had divorced because he couldn't bear her continued jibes at him over his past infidelity. As the story went, he had been caught having an affair, one which he entered out of frustration because his wife had turned cold on him and for the last 4 years of their marriage had not allowed him to touch her sexually at all. I had asked at that time how could it be possible for a man and a woman to be in the same bed together for 4 years and not play hide the salami even ONCE. (Hel-lo! Red Flag#2) He had adamantly insisted that this was the case. He said he couldn't bear the 'bunyi cicak' sound (of annoyance) she would make each time he reached out to touch her.
The things a man would say to garner sympathy untuk mendapatkan sesuap ciktek (not that he was going to get any from me though), I tell you. *rolls eyes and gags*
So as the story went, HE DIVORCED HER and she LEFT BRUNEI WITH THE KIDS and went to WORK IN SINGAPORE. During the time we were chatting, he would often tell me that he had to go down to Singapore to "pick up/see the boys". I had thought that for a divorced couple they sure spent a lot of time together. (I am divorced too so I know how it 'rolls', as it were.) However, he told me they acted as 'professional parents' around the kids just to make them feel that they were still part of a family unit but said that he always REFUSES his ex's repeated entreaties for them to get back together.
(Riiiiiight… and I am Giselle Bündchen – The Meluat Tahap Gaban Ed.)
He liked to wax lyrical about his material possessions – his 3-door fridge with a TV, his 46" plasma TV, the BMW X3 he drove, the Audi A6 that his COMPANY gave him, his huge bungalow that he said he lived in all ALONE. He would yammer on ad nauseam about how guys like him who WORK IN MNCs and paid as an expat professional earn 5-figure salaries in USD. He told me how he wanted to 'come back to KL to be close to me' (excuse me whilst I look for a bucket, the urge to puke is high) but cannot do it now because he would lose his lucrative 'expat package' with SCHLUMBERGER and will not be able to afford his children's international school education IN SINGAPORE. I told him I don't want him to do anything for me, we are only friends after all. He would say, "What if I want to?" *LMAO* I had told him to do whatever he liked but don't ever make me the reason for it.
Recently, I caught him out in a lie. The lie in itself was not a big deal but it opened a can of worms that has now led to the demise of his long-standing blog and him going under the radar. The upshot of it was that I called Schlumberger's (SLB) office in Bandar Seri Begawan only to be told that there was no one by the name of AINOL RAZMAN GHAZALY on their list of staff, so it logically followed that he couldn't possibly be their COUNTRY MANAGER *matiiiiiila veranganz takmo kalah*. Just to make sure, I called the SLB offices in Miri and Labuan only to receive the same answer, no one by that name worked for them.
That was the starting point, that made me want to check out the veracity of his stories to me. Circumspection and discretion prevent me from going into detail as to how or what I did to gather all the information I have on him now but I found out that all he said to me, apart from his name and location were all LIES*. During the time I was doing my 'independent collection of facts' I pretended to still be OK with him. I wanted to lull him into a false sense of security and see how much DEEPER of a hole (than the one he already was in) he would dig for himself. Moral of story here: Don't kid a kidder. It isn't for nothing I won the "Best Acress" award for three years running at school. Meryl Streep eat your heart out. *LMAO*
And he DUG deep like the GEOLOGIST he was supposed to be *snorts*. Dug so deep that at I am sure at one point he must have really felt that the net was closing in on him that he told me he was going to be sent to GUAM by his company for two weeks because they were considering exploration of oil and gas there and would be incommunicado.
Riiiiiiight.
By this time I knew enough to know that this was his way of buying time to create more elaborate stories to cover his pathological-lying ass. One lie on top of the other, each more elaborate and 'fantastical' than the one before.
What made me absolutely livid was that he thought so little of me as a friend to actually INSULT MY INTELLIGENCE in that way. We weren't in a relationship, we were just friends who were close to each other, who talked everyday online… but I still felt betrayed. Disrespected… because he must have thought so little of me to think he could keep lying to me the way he did, thinking I was stupid enough to continue believing his lies.
*The TRUTH:
- He is NOT Schlumberger's Country Manager in Brunei nor is he working in the oil and gas industry at all. He doesn't hold a position in any MNC of any kind there. (No wonder he was always free to chat, always could take half or even whole days off willy-nilly, whenever he pleased.)
- He NEVER went to Northwestern University, never finished any formal education after SPM. (Although when I pretended to ask him about his time at NWU, he said he played rugby the first season he was there. I checked NWU's Rugby Club website and it states that at the time he was SUPPOSED TO HAVE PLAYED for them, the Club was under a ban that lasted 2 years. Can you say kantoi with a capital K? *lmao*)
- Therefore he NEVER did any 'internship' with Murphy Oil in Texas and then Louisiana before he purportedly "joined Schlumberger" in Sudan. (With an imagination as vivid as this he gives Sidney Sheldon a run for his money! *LOL*)
- He NEVER worked all over the world like he told so many of us – Sudan, Dubai and Jakarta (before he went to Brunei kononnya).
- He followed his WIFE to Brunei (not the other way around) when she got a job there. They moved there to start anew after his wife found about his affair.
- He is NOT divorced from his wife, they are all still there in Bandar Seri Begawan.
- His sons attend school in Brunei instead of Singapore, of course.
- His wife is Malaysian, not Japanese-American.
- The reason he claims he is so well-travelled is not because he is the urbane jet-setter he makes himself out to be but because he could get tickets at a massively discounted price (up to 90%?) having worked with our national carrier as a member of their maintenance crew at one time.
- He isn't the one who 'brought rugby to Brunei', as he always likes to tell anybody willing to listen. (How could it be when the BRFU was set up in 1977 and he only arrived in Brunei in 1999? Check this Wikipedia entry, rugby has been played in Brunei since the 1950s. Hel-lo. Brought rugby to Brunei my mammoth ass.)
He's just a sorry, pathetic semblance of a man with insecurities deeper than the Mariana Trench. I say semblance of a man because throughout my acquaintance with him not once did he show honour, dignity nor integrity that truly make a XY-chromosome carrier a real MAN. I bet he got so caught up in the alternate reality that he created for himself that he actually began to believe in it.
I wondered why he always had to put others down, scoff at others' achievements. Now that I know what a pathetic existence he leads, I know he very likely does it to make himself feel better. Prolly to make it more palatable to look at himself in the mirror (if he even owns one) because deep inside I am sure he knows what a loser he really is.
*Next post and final in this series: What to look out for in case he reinvents himself in Blogistan -- Standard Operating Procedures of the Loser Liar and his preferred Modus Operandi.
