It’s been a while. I was on the road in Asia as I think I told you. Kicked off in China ( ‘scuse the World Cup banter ). It was my first trip to Beijing since 1995. Tiananmen Square was still basically square, but that apart I really didn’t recognise a thing. I wasn’t the only one though. It was a recurrent theme on my trip, but no one seems to know where anything is, frankly, anywhere in Asia. Never managed to find a single taxi or even limo driver who knew how to get me to my destination. Initially I thought it was just me they didn’t understand, but more often than not it was a native Mandarin speaker giving the instructions only for the blank look to remain steadfastly on the drivers face. The building or road wasn’t there last week I suppose, though it then struck me maybe it was an accent thing. I studied Mandarin once a week for a full 10 weeks in 1995 when I was at Barings in Hong Kong and, whilst I was the best in the class, – the teacher told me so – it is clearly such a tricky language even the locals have problems with it. My theory was prompted by a conversation I had on the phone to Sophie who told me she was having some work done on the drains at home while I was away. Don’t worry. It was covered by the insurance company who, somewhat bizarrely, arranged for a couple of likely lads from Derby to travel from ooop North to do the work. In time honoured fashion she had sent Bob out to ask them if they wanted a drink. He came back with a perplexed look on his face. “They definitely want something. I’ve no idea what. Couldn’t understand a word they were saying.” It wasn’t the only time the blank look came over him, home for a study week between bouts of GCSE exams. Lottie, who is on course to be the only one of our crew to pass Grade 5 music and thereby win £100 from me, somehow managed, whilst sawing away painfully on her cello practice, to inspire Bob into retrieving his old clarinet from the very back of a cupboard. He disappeared to another room with his copy of “ The Best of Grade 4 for the Clarinet” to see if he could rekindle his old Acker Bilk moments. His enthusiasm was short-lived and he returned soon after summarily returning the clarinet to the back of the cupboard with a cursory explanation. “Seems I can’t read music anymore.” He never could to be honest. ( He also shot 10 of the neighbours rabbits – and cooked and ate seven of them - just in case you thought he was getting a little arty. )
So where was I?…..oh lost in Beijing. I had such an interesting time though. Lots of good meetings exploring the pollution trade albeit impetus was also slightly lost owing to the fact the skies above the city were clear and blue for the three days we were there. I had a great dinner with some local Chinese brokers who cracked open a deadly bottle of Maotai and we then set about “gambai-ing” furiously and putting the world to right in a wide ranging and inspiring conversation which covered the decline of empires / the Great Smog in London 1952 / when a handshake doesn’t mean anything and why the relaxation of the one child policy is meaningless. You want to talk about any of that lot…let me know.
From there it was off to Hong Kong which passed me by in its usual nostalgic blur and then Singapore for our Asian conference. I’ve got to open up to you though. I am not one to brag, but I think you will agree that probably my greatest – if not only - attribute as a broker over the years has been in the field of restaurant selection. Sad to say therefore that I have had a few shockers on successive business trips to Asia. One of them wasn’t entirely my fault. I told you about Andy’s in Tokyo. On this trip, I gave my client food poisoning from a dodgy scallop in the Ming Kee Seafood Restaurant on Po Toi which wasn’t great. Even worse though I was party leader for a client dinner in Singapore and the buck rests with me on the selection of Blue Bali to which we took more than 20 unfortunate souls on Thursday evening. Grim as. And what’s more, and I have to admit I sensed it happening as soon as we got on the coach, the bus driver didn’t have a clue how to get there. Singapore is not a big place as you probably know, and we saw most of it in our protracted and for the most part aimless search for 1D Cluny Road. The driver chuntered blithely on, occasionally and reluctantly accepting the phone I thrust at him, and having yelling matches ( you’ve guessed it…in Mandarin ) with the restaurant receptionist which seemingly left him none the wiser. Alas, somehow he eventually found the place and we were led into a cavernous, air-conditioned cell utterly devoid of atmosphere with some stodgy deep fried pastry items waiting on the table for starters followed by a beef rendang, which I had eulogised about, which was as dry and cold as the room we were in. This was not my finest hour.
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