‘Sounds good.’ Rachel went to pick up her glass, but Jan grabbed her wrist. ‘No, no! Not like that.’ She looked blankly at him. ‘It is the c...stom. You must slurp down the first drink of spirits.’ ‘Slurp down?’ ‘Hands behind your back,’ Dirk instructed. ‘Both of you.’ They did. ‘Now, lean over the bar and slurp.’ Kate looked at him in disbelief. ‘You’re having us on.’ ‘No, no, not at all.’ Jan shook his head. ‘It is the custom. We show you.’ Kate and Rachel watched as the two men expertly. In Andrew’s experience, derivative financial schemes eventually lead to financial ruin. Such financing was, in his view, pure gambling with the depositor’s money. When the CEO and his team decided to double down on their bets, Andrew went to the board of directors. The directors promptly handed Andrew their request that he retire with, of course, adequate compensation for his years of service.At sixty-four, he was out of work. It was not that Andrew needed work or needed the money; he was by. I met her online at a site called ‘Red Hot Pie’ and after a number of emails and sms’s she asked that I meet her in the city at a bar of my choosing, the only stipulation being that it was a ‘nice’ venue. Given I work in the city it was an easy task and I chose Siana as it’s always busy of a Friday after work, has a great atmosphere and afforded me the opportunity to have a good mate of mine check out my ‘date’. For the sake of her privacy and as Brisbane is not a huge city I’ll call her. They swept into the China Beach corridor with a vengeance. Civilians were considered collaborators just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.Thank goodness most of the Marines in our compound were seasoned “Bush Rats” with more combat experience than most Marines experience in a lifetime. The almost naked “Charlie” elements that filtered past us into Danang must have already gotten word to avoid our compound because they kept their distance. It reminded me how the North.