If You Can't Take a Joke...

by Gordon Gray

  Time passed and I waited in KL. One would think that staying in the Shangri La Hotel in KL with absolutely nothing to do while I waited for phone calls would be bliss. In fact, I found it frustrating and nerve-wracking as I spent my time going over everything we had done, or not done, again and again. Who should I call? What can I do? At the same time, I knew that there was little I could do about anything. I was totally dependent on others now. The weekend came and the businessman was now out of town. I went to the zoo, I read, I snoozed by the pool, I watched for the message light on my phone. There was not really anything more to report that Jim did not know already.

  I went to see the Marconi guys again on the Monday morning. They told me that the UK shipyard team was arriving that night to make presentations of their designs for the warships and its systems to the navy on the Wednesday. That should include our systems as they were already being installed in the ships the yard was building. On the Tuesday morning, I contacted their technical manager at the hotel, a friendly guy called Bob, who I had met a couple of times before.

  “Hi Bob, I gather you are here to make a presentation to the navy. If you would like me to be present and to contribute anything on the command system side, I am available to help.”

  “No thank you, that won’t be necessary,” was his brusque response.

  What was going on here? Why was the shipyard being so dogmatic when our system was fitted in ships built in their yard, meaning they knew our system and that it worked? This was a positive card that the shipyard should have been playing hard on our behalf. It seemed clear that the navy had already decided which C2 to fit and told the shipyard to include it and it was not ours.

  Later that morning, I got a phone call from the businessman’s PA: “He is back in town and can see you today at 1.45. But just for ten minutes.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be there.” I forgot lunch and made sure I was in his outer office fifteen minutes early. The meeting was short: “Mr Gray, I have spoken to some people. Don’t worry, it will be arranged. There is nothing more you can do here you should go back to the UK. It is done. The navy will be informed.” I thanked him and left.

  The navy had a major function at a big naval base in the north of the country and all the senior staff were going to that and would be away for a week. The businessman was also leaving town – this time for three weeks’ holiday in Europe.

  That night, I rang Jim McDuff and told him the situation. “There is nothing more I can do here, Jim, and even if there was, there is no one to talk to.”

  I waited for the “OK, come home” but instead he blew up. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Are we specified yet?”

  “Of course not Jim, you know it does not work like that.”

  “Then you have done nothing out there.”

  I was a little shocked. The man seemed to have totally lost it.

  “I told you to stay there until it was all sorted, now stay there until I tell you to come home!”

  “Jim, this is not the way we do things. We will be specified but we have to wait until things have worked through the system. I have been told by the locals there is nothing more for us to do for at least three weeks.”

  “Don’t you ever listen to me? Stay there until I say you can come home!” he screamed. Then, he slammed the phone down on me.

  Oh great! Now what do I do? That was an easy one. I went and had a beer. As I took my first mouthful, I reminded myself that: ‘If you can’t take a joke!’

  The next morning, things did not seem quite so bad. I rang Dick, an old pal from the company who I had known well since Plessey days and who was currently in Indonesia so we were on the same time zone. I knew I would get a more considered and cautious approach to things from Dick. We discussed things in general terms.

  “I think you should stay there, at least for one more week and see what happens after that. If Jim has not called you again, have a rethink!”

  Good advice, I thought. I checked with the Marconi guys again on the Monday.

  “The Navy HQ has basically shut down as all the key navy guys have left town for a couple of weeks. “It’s a bloody nuisance,” said one of them “My golf is buggered for the next few weeks now!”

  I rang a few of the local contacts and the message was the same. Nothing will happen for about a month. I relaxed some more, then decided that this was crazy. By the Wednesday morning, I had still not heard any more from Jim, so I decided I would go home and take the consequences. If he sacks me, then I will go to a tribunal I boldly thought. I flew out of KL on the Thursday night for the UK.

  After a nervous weekend, I went into the office on the following Monday morning braced for the bollocking I was due to get. I hoped John’s rule about forgiveness being easier to get than permission was going to hold good. As I walked into the sales area, I looked anxiously towards Jim’s office waiting for him to catch sight of me. Jim was not there yet. I walked on and saw Roger, a good friend, sitting at his desk.

  “Hi Roger, Is Jim due in today?”

  He looked at me blankly. “Haven’t you heard?” he asked.

  “Heard what?”

  “Jim was sacked last week. He was told to clear his desk on Thursday.”

  I never did discover what he was sacked for and I didn’t really care; but if I had not disobeyed his order, I would still be in KL.

  The navy contacted us a few weeks later and discussions started in earnest. We won the command system order, but the navy insisted that the extra display features that they wanted were included in the system. Even though we won this contract, it does not change any of the basic principles of export business. It was the exception that proved the rule. If I had not gone out there, then our competitor would have won easily. He was doing all the right things in marketing terms and almost had it all sewn up. We came charging in at the last minute and upset the apple cart. Our last-minute intervention through local business and direct selling caused everyone to re-evaluate the situation. It worked for us that time, but it is really not the best way to win export business.

  Derek’s Fish Head Curry

  Sometime, years later and with a different company, I returned to Malaysia. On this trip, we were talking to a department of the navy that was responsible for some of the larger shore-based test equipment and ship’s signature assessment systems. This was run from the port of Lumut on the NW coast of Malaysia. I had with me one of our underwater acoustic technical experts, John. John was a dyed-in-the-wool sonar and acoustics man who had worked in the acoustic and sonar field all his life. He reminded me of an absentminded professor in his looks and manner. John was well known around the world for his knowledge and well liked as a thoroughly honest guy. He and the customer in Lumut had known each other for years and were old pals. We also had with us an executive from central marketing called Derek. Derek was the Far East ‘expert’ and wanted to meet the navy guys in Lumut. He was a bit younger than me and a lot younger than John. He saw himself as a bit of a smoothy, with his cream lightweight suits and a straw hat. Even though he was the youngest, as he was from corporate marketing and the Far East manager, he saw himself as the senior figure of the group.

  Before we went up to Lumut, we visited the agent in his offices in Johor Bahru – or JB to the locals – just across the causeway from Singapore. Following our meeting, the agent kindly offered us lunch: “I have booked a table at the Royal JB Golf Club, if that’s OK,” he said.

  You bet it’s OK, I thought.

  Then, Derek jumped in, “Oh no, we should show these people the real JB and go to Mrs Wong’s.” By ‘these people’, he was referring to me and John.

  “Do you really think so?” queried the agent, who clearly did not want to go to wherever Mrs Wong’s was.

  I tried to step in. “No we can do Mrs Wong’s another day, Derek, when we get back from Lumut. Our agent has already booked a table at the golf club.”

  “No, I want us to go to Mrs Wong’s,” said Derek.

  As h
e was the senior company man there, the agent and I decided to let it go and we backed off. I did not want a row on day one of the trip.

  It was raining cats and dogs as well, just to add to the fun. We ran for the cars, then drove down into old JB. We hunted around for a place to park and eventually found one not too far from Mrs Wong’s. Derek led the way as we ran, leaping over puddles, dodging bikes and cars, squeezing past food stalls but not missing a couple of large puddles, so I got wet feet for my efforts. As I ducked into the door, I had noticed that I was entering an old brick building decorated with wrought iron grills and with weeds growing from the cracks in the brickwork. It had been painted yellow, but a long time ago.

  As we entered, I saw the kitchens were downstairs and there were open food stalls and tables outside at the front. In spite of the rain, a few hardy locals sat there squeezing up to each other under the umbrellas to avoid the rain. Derek led us upstairs. We were shown to a round table in an open area of the room. The table was covered in coloured oil cloth and there were a number of hard chairs scattered round it. There were french windows at the front which opened out onto a balcony, so we could hear the rain as it lashed down outside.

  Even before we had all sat down, Derek took charge. He called over the waitress. “Now, everyone, we are all having fish head curry. I always have it when I come here.”

  “How about some beer first?” asked John.

  “Great idea, John. Derek is a bit slow on getting the priorities right,” I said with a smile at Derek.

  “OK, some beer then. Who wants beer?”

  The waitress was a middle-aged lady with an apron who had done it all and seen it all before. She was not in the least impressed by Derek’s posturing and stood looking bemused as she waited for some sense to emerge from his mouth.

  When he had ordered the beer he said, “We will all have fish head curry.”

  “Not for me, thanks, Derek,” I said.

  He looked at me. “No, you must have it,” he responded.

  If there is one thing that annoys me, it is people telling me what I will eat. Long trips to Korea had taught me to eat what I want and not what someone else wants.

  “Derek, you are probably not aware, but in an earlier life I worked on Hull Fish Market from 7 until 9 every morning. To me, fish heads are things that are scraped off the floor with the skins and bones and sent in tipper trucks to the fish meal factory where they are made into fertiliser and cat food. They are not what I have for my lunch. I will pass on it, thank you.”

  I then looked at the waitress, who was quietly smiling and holding her order pad and pencil poised to write, “Do you have any chicken satay?”

  “Yes of course,” she said.

  “Thank you. I will have that.”

  Derek looked dumbfounded.

  The fish head curry duly arrived. It came in a large, yellow, plastic washing-up bowl. The brown curry ‘sauce’ slopped around like old washing-up water and from time to time the boiled head of a large fish, minus its eyes and some skin, broke the surface. It looked revolting. Derek served those that were having it, slopping lumps of fish head meat and oily gravy into their plates and shirts. Needless to say, he was at pains to tell me what a fantastic dish this was and ladled another spoon into his bowl. My satays arrived and were excellent.

  As we went downstairs, John whispered to me, “I wish I had had what you had. That fish head curry was bloody awful!”

  The next day, we set off to drive up to Lumut – or rather, Derek drove us in the hire Volvo440 he had organised. The journey was going to be long and fascinating as it gave us a rare chance to see the countryside away from the city and enjoy a quiet day watching the world go by. However, Derek was one of those drivers who had road rage gushing out of his pores, and on the main highway North, no Malaysian was going to get past him – thank you very much. And if they did, they would be chased down for miles. It all became a bit stressed. John gave up and went to sleep in the back.

  Eventually, however, we turned off the main highway and swung down onto some peaceful and relatively traffic-free country roads, passing through small villages and rubber plantations along the way. At one point, we rounded a bend and found ourselves faced with a long, low, single-track wooden bridge that spanned a wide and fast-flowing river. To me it looked secure enough, albeit there were no sides or guard rails to the bridge and the river was just a couple of feet below the wooden plank top of it. Derek stopped.

  “I’m not going over that!” he declared.

  “Fine by me,” said John, stirring from his slumbers in the back “but you do realise, don’t you Derek, that if we go back we have to go miles up to the north before we can turn and come back south again? This is the only road to Lumut.”

  Derek was unmoved. “No way is that safe,” he said, pointing at the structure. “Gordon, get out and see if it is safe.”

  “Yes, Derek.”

  I got out, glad to be away from the car and walked safely out across the bridge for about 50 feet. Derek watched. What he would have done had I disappeared downstream on a chunk of timber was not clear. Anyhow, I felt that the bridge was secure. In spite of the river rushing just below the loose planks, there was no vibration or any sense that it might suddenly collapse.

  “It’s OK Derek,” I called. He was still unmoved.

  In the meantime, John had worked out that the detour to avoid this bridge was 150 miles and would take us about five hours. Then, just as we were beginning to despair of Derek deciding to risk it, a big yellow tipper truck appeared on the road on the opposite bank heading towards the bridge. Without even slowing down, it drove straight onto the bridge. Derek had to reverse from the entrance to the bridge to avoid getting crushed as the truck roared towards him. The planks rattled and dust flew up from the road surface, but the truck made it across and the bridge remained intact. After the truck had gone and the dust cloud and diesel exhaust fumes cleared, we looked at Derek.

  “There you are, safe as houses!” John said.

  Derek had no choice. Gingerly, he drove the car slowly out on the bridge and crawled across in first gear with me walking ahead like a red flag man.

  Once in Lumut, Derek decided that we were going to eat at the Chinese food stalls and he started again, “I think we should all have the steamed crabs, they really are great here.”

  I lost it then. “Derek,” I said, “if we are to get on for the rest of this trip, then you really must stop doing that. Why can I not choose what I want to eat myself? I am not three years old, I can choose food from a menu myself.”

  I had my sweet and sour pork with rice, John had a chilli beef, while Derek had his steamed crabs. To Derek’s amazement, we all survived.

  In later life, Derek ended up running a small hotel in Norfolk. I often wonder what he fed his guests.

  CHAPTER 7

  Singapore

  I first visited it as a midshipman in the Royal Navy in 1971. I loved it then and have loved it ever since. It was green, lush and full of fragrant scents. Since then, Singapore has changed a lot, but the atmosphere, the buzz and the whole feel of the place has not. It is still an exciting oriental city. People sometimes complain that it is too sanitised, that the rules are too strict and that everything is too clinical. Well maybe, and those living there will feel it more than visitors, but it does make for a clean and safe city. The MRT railway system is clean, fast, efficient and safe. Changi Airport is one of the best in the world, and taxis and MRT can get you anywhere you want to go on the island.

  Some of the old parts of the city have been kept or restored, like parts of Chinatown and other old institutions, such as Raffles Hotel, have undergone massive refurbishments to restore them to their former glory. Raffles is not like it was twenty or thirty years ago. Then, it was rundown, half full of hitchhikers and backpackers lounging on the floor; the long bar resembled a youth hostel lobby more than a fashionable cocktail bar and weeds grew from the outer walls. Today, Raffles is as good as any hotel in town,
just as it was in its golden days.

  Big duty-free shopping complexes with hundreds of shops in them – huge new developments such as Marina City and Raffles City – seem to have appeared out of nothing. Bugis Street that used to be a magnet for nightlife of all sorts back in the 1970s has now been restored, but to a clean, family-friendly environment. Today’s Singapore retains the history in a modern climate. The vast harbour stretches right along the south side of the island where the many hundreds of anchored ships lie waiting to load or unload, or waiting for spare parts or repairs. On a hot tropical afternoon, there is nothing nicer than sitting on a pleasure boat under the awning, with a cold Tiger beer in your hand and a sea breeze blowing across the deck, just sailing past all these ships – large and small, new and old, smart and rusty – that have arrived from all over the world. It brings back the feeling of what a massive trading port Singaapore has been since Stamford Raffles first set up the trading post in the early 1800s. It is one of the busiest ports in the world with ships arriving and leaving every few minutes, twenty-four hours a day.

  Much of the city centre is relatively new. The skyscrapers and office blocks of the financial area could be anywhere, but away from that Singapore is still Singapore. It is lush, green and jungly; it is an island no bigger than the Isle of Wight, but with a population of over five million. Eating out here is a delight. Food is everywhere – from the food stalls at Newton Circus and out on the East Coast Parkway to the seafood restaurants around the town and the smart ‘fine dining’ restaurants in the many new international hotels. Unlike many oriental countries, the food stalls are to be recommended. They serve fresh, hot and delicious food, big chicken satays and huge grilled prawns – to name but two – and both washed down with Tiger Beer. Without Singapore’s strict hygiene rules, you would not dare eat in these places. But now you can and, indeed, you are encouraged to by the Government Tourist Department.