If You Can't Take a Joke...

by Gordon Gray

  Singapore was first noted as a port in the 11th Century. In the 14th century, it was an important local port but was destroyed by the Portuguese in 1613. Following that, the Dutch challenged the Portuguese for supremacy in the region. They actively excluded the British from their areas, but as this was an important trading route for Opium from India to China, in 1819 Sir Stamford Raffles was sent out to investigate the possibility of setting up a trading post in the region to protect British interests. He quickly recognised that Singapore Island had all the attributes he was looking for with a deep-water harbour, fresh water and plenty of timber for ship repairs.

  By means of some good local politics, he was able to secure the rights from the Malays, who nominally ruled the island, to use it as a British trading post. It was under British rule that it grew and developed into a major city port.

  During WWII, Japan conquered and occupied Singapore by famously attacking it from the ‘impenetrable’ jungles of mainland Malaya. The British had expected a frontal assault from the sea and all their big fixed guns were in the wrong place.

  After the war, Singapore reverted to UK rule, but with increasingly more local government. Singapore then merged with Malaya in 1963 to form Malaysia, but following strong demonstrations against Malayan favouritism and prejudice, Singapore was thrown out of Malaysia and became an independent sovereign state in 1965. Its new prime minister was Lee Kwan Yew. It was under his government that Singapore developed so rapidly over the recent years with major industrialisation programmes, housing development schemes and the implementation of a strong education system. By 1990, Singapore was one of the world’s richest countries.

  During my time with Decca and then Racal Decca, many of the local shipowners were good customers so it was an easy decision to take the computer radar (ARPA) to Singapore for a series of demonstrations to the shipping market there. The equipment was shipped down by air from Hong Kong and was due to arrive in Singapore Airport three days before the demonstrations were to begin. These were to be held over three days in the Marco Polo Hotel. I arrived two days before so that I would have time to check the function rooms, meet with our agent and get the radar set up.

  When I arrived, the good news was that the equipment had arrived at the airport. The bad news was that customs had not released it. This should not have been a problem as we knew the paperwork was OK, but for some reason there was a query on it. I was told that there was nothing I could do but leave the agent to sort it out. I asked whether we should postpone the demonstrations. “No, it will be fine, please do not worry. We will get it to the hotel on time.” I was dubious. They would call me if they wanted any information.

  The day prior to the demonstrations, the agents salesman, Mr Woon, told me that he thought things were now OK. The query had been a simple question of where was the radar going to next. All was well and it would be released later that afternoon, they said.

  The day of the demonstrations arrived. The conference room was set up, the coffees were organised and the invited guests had all confirmed that they were coming. The only problem was that there was still no radar. I went to panic mode. How do I play this one? I thought. Mr Woon was sorting it out. The problem was not customs this time but the lorry they needed to bring the radar from the airport had broken down.

  As the guests started to arrive, I played for time as best I could. I explained that we were a bit delayed by customs and transport issues but expected to be OK later. “In the meantime, I will give you a presentation and show you a slide show on the technology of the system.”

  Mr Woon came in. “It has just left the airport,” he whispered, “but it will be a good hour before it gets here.”

  Maybe if I drag the slide show out it will be OK. We proceeded with the film and then I started on the slide show, slowly. I was about three quarters of the way through when suddenly the doors swung open and four very sweaty Singaporeans in jeans and T-shirts appeared. They were sweating and grunting as they struggled with the radar in its packing case and the other cases that came with it.

  “That’s super,” I said. “Can you just put the crate by the wall there,” pointing at the electrical socket in the wall. They levered it in and then left. I finished the slides and called a coffee break. Everyone went into the adjoining room to have coffee.

  I then took off my jacket and set to work with a screwdriver to undo the packing case. Once I had the top, sides and front off, I set to work on wiring it up with the tape player from the other box. I had no time to take it off the pallet or to remove the back of the case. Everyone could see the display as it was. It was a good job I had done this before!

  After about twenty-five minutes, I had the whole system connected up. I switched it on and held my breath. I just prayed that it was OK. The picture came up and I relaxed. It worked and all the functions seemed OK. I went into the coffee room.

  “Whenever you are ready, gentlemen, we are ready!”

  I opened the connecting door and walked through leaving it open so they could all see that the radar was actually working. The guests came through and were all amazed that we had a full working system up and running in such a short time. The demonstrations and questions lasted another hour and a half, then the first morning’s work was over. The guests started to leave, but three officers from the navy stayed behind and questioned me more.

  A few days later, Mr Woon told me that the Singapore Navy had been in touch with him and were going to place an initial order for six radar systems. I was delighted and I think that the delay actually helped in establishing the resilience and reliability of the system, in that we could get it unpacked and running so quickly.

  Downfall in Singapore

  Never fiddle your expenses is an obvious and simple rule. Yet, it is amazing how many people fail to follow the basic rules and common sense when travelling overseas or putting in their expenses. Some people think that the company will happily fund all their activities including those well outside normal work activities. One of the worst examples of this was a technical guy called Robert. Robert was a bright and ambitious project engineer who had worked solely in the UK for many years, but suddenly found himself given the job of project manager for a joint venture project the company was running with its Singaporean partner. Robert was in his 30s, a well meaning guy, but had a reputation for a large mouth and an even larger opinion of himself. He knew everything and no one could ever tell or teach him anything. When he first went to Singapore, most people who knew him felt that there was a disaster waiting to happen. Before long, he was spending significant amounts of time out there.

  A couple of months later, the finance director called me down to his office and started asking peculiar questions about how much I tipped when overseas. At the time, I was unaware of Robert’s activities. “What sort of phone calls would I normally make?” “What is ‘normal’ entertaining? “ “Have I heard of such and such a restaurant or is this place a nightclub or a restaurant?” “Would I take my customer to such places?” I was confused as to what this was about but answered as best I could. Later, of course, I realised that Robert was being watched very closely.

  A few weeks later, I went out to Bangkok for a defence exhibition and out of the blue Robert appeared at the Show. He was not meant to be there as he was not involved in Thailand or the Defence Show.

  “What are you doing here, Robert?” I asked.

  “Oh,” he said nonchalantly, “I just decided to fly up from Singapore for a couple of nights as I have never been to Bangkok before. I have heard about it though, can you tell me the best places to go?”

  His meaning was clear. I had actually had a call from the office that day saying they were trying to contact Robert and did I know where he was.

  There is no question Singapore is a lovely and exciting place, but there are all sorts of temptations lying in wait for the naive and innocent. When he arrived in Singapore, this chump had decided he had landed in heaven. The local agent had taken him out for dinner
, then to some nightclubs. The local girlies had turned their oriental charm on him and he was smitten. I subsequently learnt that he had rapidly progressed to the point where he actually had girls staying in his hotel room for days at a time. They were using his company mobile phone to call their family and friends in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia or wherever; calling for meals on room service while Robert was out at meetings; clearing the mini bar and generally taking the idiot for everything they could. Apparently, Robert was even buying the girls flowers from the hotel florist and charging those to his room bill. Then at night they were all off out to the restaurants and night clubs again, where, of course, Robert was paying. He thought he was ‘It’ and could fly around the region as he wished and do whatever he wanted and the company would pay for it all. When I saw him in Bangkok, I told him he should get back to his project in Singapore as he had no reason, or approval, to be in Bangkok: “You had better cut all this out because the accountants are studying your expense claims and if they find anything they don’t like then it is ‘instant dismissal’ stuff.”

  “No, No, it’s all OK, Gordon,” he told me. “I know what I am doing and the project is going well!”

  I have no idea whether he went back to Singapore or not, but he did vanish from the Bangkok Show. I learnt later that when he got home from that trip, the finance director was waiting. He called Robert down and presented a dossier to him which detailed all his expenses since he started his trips to Singapore and demanded explanations for every single item. Of course, Robert was not able to provide any. He had to put his car keys on the desk and was escorted out of the office in minutes.

  As a direct consequence of this, every expense claim that anyone in sales submitted was dissected by the accountants to such an extent that we had to state who we called and why for every telephone call on our hotel and mobile phone bills.

  Unfortunately, many years later and with a different company, expenses were the cause of the downfall of another colleague called Adrian. Adrian was well into middle age, a sensible, intelligent man with a fine military background. The financial director had caught him out on a couple of small expense claims in the past and was known to be gunning for him. Adrian had been on a overnight business trip in the UK. He was caught out after he falsified a receipt and that was that. The poor guy knew he was doomed. He resigned on the spot before anyone could fire him and he was home before lunch. He then had to explain to his wife why he was home early and without his company car. Not a lot of fun!

  CHAPTER 8

  Saudi Arabia

  “Bismillah, Al Rahman, Al Raheem.” The opening announcements in a deep baritone voice on the Saudi Airlines flight to Jeddah reverberated through the cabin. Translated, it means: “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.” The flight was long and dry and the last two hours were in the dark. There was nothing to see outside the aircraft windows; it was black, black desert. Even though I had spent many months in the Gulf on an RN Minesweeper, I was genuinely nervous about visiting Saudi itself for the first time. However, after the ten days, I found some parts of the trip very frustrating but some really fascinating. During the flight, I got chatting to the guy sitting next to me. He introduced himself as Sean; he was Irish but an old Saudi hand who worked in the heavy plant business – excavators, bulldozers and that type of thing. He visited Saudi often and so knew a lot about the place. As we sipped our orange juices, he began to explain things in his slow Irish drawl.

  “You will get used to no alcohol,” he began, “but you have to remember that Islam rules OK. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Mohammed and Mecca is the centre of Islam. Mecca is not far from Jeddah but non Muslims are not even allowed to go there. All the oil fields are on the East coast near Dharan. The oilfields and refineries are run by expats in the Arabian American Oil company, or ARAMCO. Saudi is still a closed and insular country and Jeddah is the commercial and diplomatic centre. All the foreign embassies are in Jeddah. Riyadh, the capital, is reserved for the royal family and government ministries. Foreigners need special permits to go there. I have been coming here for years but not yet been to Riyadh. Sheikh Yamani, a former Oil Minister, once said, “The Holy cities of Mecca and Medina are on the other side of Arabia from the oil fields but in our eyes they matter more than anything else.” Nothing is more important to a Saudi than his religion. It is more important than his job and, often, his family. Islam comes first in everything they do. The one thing you must always remember in all your dealings in Saudi is that Islam is what drives every action there. The Muslim pilgrimage, the Haj, happens in Mecca and Medina every year when literally millions of Muslims follow the call of the Koran to visit the two holy cities and associated sites at least once in their lifetime – if they are able to.”

  “Do you like Saudi?” I asked.

  “It’s OK if you stick to the rules but I would not bring my wife here, or live here. Most of the expats hate it and tend to become pretty miserable and short-tempered. They are only here for the money, then find that they are trapped as they cannot afford to go back to the UK again and live on UK salaries. Today, Saudi is a well developed country with every modern technological facility at its disposal. However, well into the 20th century, it was little more than an empty desert inhabited by Bedouin tribes.”

  We landed in Jeddah and spent a seemingly endless time going through Immigration and Customs. I was tired and my mind drifted as I stood in the queue. Suddenly, I was brought back to reality. There was shouting at the front of the queue. A customs official in a sandy coloured uniform was waving a magazine in the air and berating one of the passengers in Arabic. His colleague wandered over and joined in. A young guy from our flight was having his briefcase searched and the official had obviously just found a Playboy magazine which was immediately confiscated. The poor guy looked very sheepish and embarrassed as the customs officers made a big play of it before sending him on his way.

  I was cleared and emerged into the balmy night air. Geoff, the agent, an Englishman in his early forties, had a worried look on his face and was holding up a small board with my name on it. We introduced ourselves and he drove me to the hotel. On the way, he gave me, what must be, a standard lecture for all new arrivals into Saudi – all the dos and don’ts. “Do not to worry, stay in the hotel and you’ll be fine. I will come and get you sometime tomorrow, but I cannot give you a time yet. This is Saudi and things don’t really work to any sort of timetable.”

  The Jeddah Port Authority was interested in developing the port and extending the docks area and had asked for someone to visit them to discuss harbour radars and vessel traffic management systems. Geoff collected me early in the following afternoon and we drove to his office which seemed to be on the outskirts of town. The area was made up of single or two-storey sand-coloured buildings and it was hard to work out which were offices and which were homes. The thing that struck me was that there were no people on the streets. But it was not surprising really as the temperature was well into the high eighties.

  It transpired that the meeting with the port officials had not yet been fixed but they thought it would be in the next couple of days. Clearly something was still being set up, so all I could do was wait. On the way to the office, in his air-conditioned Range Rover, Geoff explained that none of the roads in the newer parts of town had name signs so you had a hell of a job to find anywhere as there were no upto-date maps of Jeddah. He was clearly far from enamoured with Saudi Arabia. He hated it, his wife hated it, he hated the Saudis and all he wanted to do was finish his contract and go home.

  “Haven’t you found those copier people yet, Geoff?” was his secretary’s friendly greeting as we entered the office. “No I haven’t, have you?” was his sharp retort. In the office, the major issue of the day was immediately apparent. An ordered delivery of copier paper had not appeared. Local office runners were sent all over town to try and find out what had happened. In the end, it seemed that the copier shop had moved but no one knew its new address. Fi
nally, the following afternoon, they found it and collected the paper but only after ringing everyone they could think of to see if anyone else had found it. While this was going on, I was left to read magazines. It had taken the whole office of about five people nearly three days to find photocopier paper. Clearly, things worked differently here. Now, after two days kicking my heels, I hoped that Geoff would concentrate on fixing our meeting with the port authority.

  This took place about two nights later in the office of the port director. It was a big office in a modern building near the entrance to the main port of Jeddah. We were ushered in by a male receptionist. The room seemed quiet, even though there were at least a dozen men sitting around it. There were about six long white sofas round three walls, while the port director himself sat behind a large mahogany desk that took up most of the fourth wall. The air conditioning purred quietly and the room was cool and brightly lit. The desk was covered with framed photographs and at least four telephones. The director was wearing a white goutra and thobe, as were all the others in the room except Geoff and I. The director appeared to be a tall man of middle age with gold-rimmed glasses and he sat, leaning back in his reclining office chair, watching and listening. He spoke softly and gently in Arabic to the others in the room.

  Without any introductions, other than a slight nod of the director’s head, Geoff and I were ushered to an empty sofa where we were then promptly ignored. We then sat for an hour while the others sitting round the majlis, discussed their business with the director. Sometimes, one of those sitting on the other sofas would stand up, bow slightly to the director and leave. Others seemed to discuss their business but then remain in the room. I sat listening to the Arabic chatter trying to work out what they might be talking about, but without much success. Finally, just when I was thinking that I should have to come back tomorrow, the port director spoke to me in perfect English and asked me curtly what was my company and what did I want. As he was the one who had asked us to come to Saudi, I thought this was a bit off. However, I outlined the company, what we did and why I was there. He seemed happy enough, spoke about increased traffic in the port and the need for vessel safety, then granted me permission to tour the docks and carry out an initial site survey. Then he asked me to submit a preliminary proposal and sent us on our way. We carried out the survey the following day and I made some initial observations, so that the technical guys back in the UK would be able to turn my report into more solid budgetary proposals.