Archive for the 'Fusion Stories' Category

My childhood friend from KL, Mei W, sent me a link awhile back to a blog all about my old school Bukit Bintang Girls School, Back to BBGS in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I was at the BBGS Primary School 2, from between 1973-75, after which I left to come to school in the UK. Although I was there for only a short period, I’ve always had fond memories of the place and the friends that I made there.

Sadly, the school is no longer on its original site. In modern KL, the location is prime real estate, right in the middle of the shopping district. It clung on for as long as it could but eventually gave in to commercial pressures around 1999. The site is now the location of the luxury Star Hill development of condos - Bukit means Hill in Malay and Bintang means Star.

Although the primary school building was more modern than the colonial style secondary school, I loved the school building for its open verandahs and I seem to remember giant banyan trees and rain trees in the grounds. There was a very basic canteen near the playing fields selling laksa and friend noodles as well as stinky salted fish satay sticks and bubble gum. I would sometimes buy a bowl of laksa (10 cents, I think) but other times bring in home made sandwiches - chicken, corned beef fried with onions or fried luncheon meat, or home made fried rice.

I can still remember the names of some of my classmates - Gwen, Bek-Ngan, Jia Yee, Latifah, Valencia, Dolly, Helen. My class teacher was Miss Teh and our Malay teacher was Cik Zaleha. Miss Ma, the principal, was a very elegant Chinese lady who always wore a cheong-sam. Her deputy was Mrs Bux, whom we were all scared of because she had a very stern presence.

There were 50 pupils to class and I always came bottom - 49 or 50! - except in English, where I usually got 100% in all the tests. My family despaired that I was a dunce. At best, I was lazy and didn’t study as I should. They tore their hair out that my father was spending all that money to send me to school in the UK - what if it all turned out to be a waste of his hard earned money and I spent my years in England a layabout, good-for-nothing dunce? What if I never amounted to anything?

I think my difficulty at BBGS was that the text books and schoolwork was in Malay and I had previously gone to an English language school. We spoke English at home. I read in English, wrote in English, thought in English. At that point, the medium of instruction was still English and my friends and I also spoke in English. I was finding it hard to deal with the school work in another language, even though it was the national language of Malaysia. Also, I knew I was going to school in England and that I would never need to use Malay there so what was the point of it all?

In the UK, it took me awhile to adjust but as it turned out, this is where I thrived. I was still never top of the class to my extended family’s disappointment but I’d come in at respectable above average ranking. I never matched the string of A’s that my parents and uncles and aunts boasted of in their O’ and A’ levels but trundled solidly along with Bs mostly and the occasional shocking C and even an E! But I think I found that being in England suited me and I felt free to develop those other talents that I had that couldn’t be measured by exams.

But there are many things about Malaysia that I miss - the food, the climate, the warm and friendly Malaysian way of being, Malaysian English, the rain trees, that orange sunlight in the evenings after school. And although I did dismally at BBGS from an academic point of view, I had a happy time there with my class mates and my memories of the school and the sense of place I have about it makes me sad that it is no longer there physically in the location that I remember. Reading through the Back to BBGS blog has made me feel a bit like an old lady, looking back at her young days!

Back to BBGS is the personal blog of an Old Girl, Joanna Yeoh, and collects the memories and stories of BBGSians. It’s a huge undertaking for one person - thank you, Joanna, and all power to you - and all the BBGSian contributors - for creating such a fantastic resource and archive!

Photo credits:

Modern Bukit Bintang - thanks to Sham Hardy from flickr.com (CCL)

BBGS school sign - thanks to Suriani Sanusi from the Back to BBGS blog

I met travel writer Navjot Singh a few weeks ago at the Creating Value through Web 2.0 presentation that I took part in. I’m always taken by people with fusion lives so as we were chatting, it was fascinating to me to learn that he is a British-Indian who is somewhat of an expert on China and the Far East. It also turned out that we had both been to Dulwich College - I had attended the all boys school for one term to do the Oxbridge exam - and he had recognised me from the Old Alleynians Facebook page!

Navjot emailed me the following blog post:

Hi, Yang May

Many thanks for contacting me. It is a pleasure to be asked to write for your blog. Firstly, a bit about myself, as I am sure most of your audience may not be aware of whom I am.

My name is Navjot Singh (Pronounced “Navjaut Sing”, although to be honest on my travels around the world, I have been known in a variety of different accents!). I am a writer and freelance journalist. I was born in North India in 1980 and came to the UK as a young boy (around 3 years old), however, I am actually classed as a 3rd generation British-Indian because my late Grandparents were one of the first batch of migrants welcomed to the UK from the commonwealth in 1953. I have been back to India twice, once in 1989 and then in 1999, and on both occasions for about a month. I would love to go back again one day as a travel writer or for work and rediscover my roots.

Since childhood, I have always had a passion for travelling, taking photographs and flying (I adore planes). In my younger years, it used to be more for a personal basis, however nowadays that hobby has somewhat turned into a second career!. So, as an example, anytime I used to go travelling, I always took down notes on a daily basis of things which I saw, experienced and people I met. I always used to (and still do!) take photographs of anything that may seem interesting or extraordinary. To me life is a picture in itself, and I always feel that if you do not take a photo of something which may seem interesting, then most likely you have lost that chance and you may never see it again. Its amazing, because in the future, say, 10 or 15 years time, you can proudly look back and say, “Ah, I remember writing about this or that, or taking that photo”, and so on.

I wrote such a diary on my first trip to China way back in 2002. China has really opened my eyes the way I think about the country and the people. I remember even as I was preparing myself to go to China in 2002, I did not have any idea of how much of an impact the country would have on me. I did not intend to go to China for a long term basis; it was merely a one week’s vacation. Also I feel fortunate to have made the decision to go to China in those days, because so much has happened since then. Now everyone wants to go to China, and I feel privileged to have lived and worked in all the major cities (including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen), and to have witnessed at first hand the immense growth that’s almost ubiquitous.

Usually travel guides are written by a collection of different writers scattered all around the country or place which they want to write about, and it is not easy to write a travel guide. For me the great challenge was that I had no one to assist me, and in many ways I wanted to write it all by myself. In that way you have more control and freedom over timelines and research.

Sitting down and writing the travel guide is not that time consuming as is the research carried out for the chapters. I have had to speak with hotels, airlines, physically try out food at particular restaurants so I can write about it from my own experience, speak to various Chamber’s of Commerces and Embassies. More importantly I have tried to make my first guide book different by including personal stories about certain events that I have encountered. Writing a business travel guide as opposed to a travel guide for tourists is different because you have to pick things carefully, such as places of interest, hotels and restaurants, because business people don’t have much time for leisure and (usually) have more money to spend on corporate meals and hotels than tourists do.

If there are any would-be travel writers reading this article, my best advice to you would be to start with a short personal diary and note all the things that come across in your mind the first time you see them because its always your first impressions, your feelings and your experiences that will make your article different to other writers because every one has their own way of observing the world.

Always bear the reader in mind and put yourself in the shoes of a reader. When you feel you have compiled a full manuscript, then approach publishers with your idea. If they like it then you have done the hard work. Good luck!

With all good wishes

Navjot

Navjot is the author of “Newcomer’s Handbook Country Guide: China: Including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen” (First Books), and has also written “China: Business Travelers Handbook (Stacey-International)

Check out Navjot’s blog at http://navjot-singh.blogspot.com/

Photo: thanks to Navjot (with permission)

A South African writer, Lois Nicholls, contacted me via a mutual friend in Spain to tell me about her new book, ‘Aussie, Actually’, and also offer this touching “fusion story” about a South African’s return home from Australia.

She writes:

Alive! The word pops into my head as we enter Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport. Ironic really, isn’t it, for a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world? Yet I feel it. Sense it. Am reminded of a friend who says he comes alive every time he returns – feels boring, bland and
disconnected for weeks in his new country, Australia every time he goes back.

“An electricity in the air” is how another friend describes it. People seem to laugh more, live more. These thoughts resonate as my daughter and I arrive jaded yet expectant. We collect cling-wrapped suitcases and plastic piping containing an art canvas paintstakingly painted by my mother in law for my niece’s wedding gift and embark on our flight to Durban.

On arrival in Durban, we load luggage onto trolley, relieved and mildly surprised everything is still intact. We meet my precious parents who are so, so happy to see us. It seems like yesterday yet it is years since our last visit. My friend’s Italian in-laws are there too – collecting gifts and a watch needing repair from the bowels of my cling-wrapped suitcase. In the commotion of unwrapping suitcase, embracing parents and searching for
gifts, I leave the plastic piping carrying painting in the middle of Arrivals. I remember my concentration lapse halfway to my parent’s home.

The joy of arriving is tainted by the concern that I will never see the painting again. Surprise! Euphoria! They have found the painting. Early the next morning, my dad and I brave the hour’s journey back to the airport to claim my well-traveled artwork. I acknowledge the piping looks like a bazooka and marvel no-one called the bomb squad. We repeat the hair-raising journey back home to my parent’s picturesque little retirement village lined with neat homes and colourful gardens. The views are sensational. I marvel at how green and lush everything looks. Plants grow fast. There is broccoli in the garden, a prolific crop of bright red pepperdews (which my dad later bottles for me), green peppers are ready for picking and a profusion of pink dahlias bloom in the front garden. My mother carelessly tosses seeds into a flowerbed of rich, dark soil and they sprout within days. I learn the bright orange flowers that joyfully spill over a trellis in the back yard are Black-eyed Susans. I wonder if they’ll grow in my dry shale garden back home.

I photograph old oak trees and magnificent liquid amber’s dressed in their bright red autumn wardrobe. We take a walk within an extensive boundary of electric fencing and encounter impala, blesbok and zebra. The grass smells sweet. I am reminded of my youngest son who when asked what he loved most about South Africa, thought for a moment and then said: “The smell.” At the time a more cynical me wondered what he meant. I now understand.

A warm, friendly neighbour delivers freshly baked carrot muffins and says she’ll leave cheese puffs at the front door early on Sunday morning. Random acts of kindness are a hallmark of this little village. Green rolling mountains. The Howick Falls – gaily decorated with colourful, newly washed blankets at its summit. Where else in the world?

Everywhere are political posters marking April’s elections. Zuma is pasted on the town’s pillars and posts – his beaming face even covers an entire electricity box like Zuma wallpaper. My daughter is amused by a ‘Vote for the Tiger’ poster and takes a photograph to show her brothers back home. “He looks far too friendly to be a tiger,” she says of a grinning Rajbanzi.

We travel deep into KwaZulu-Natal (more…)

One thing I love about London is the chance connections you can make with fascinating and dynamic people living in or passing through this huge metropolis. Anisa Telwar is an Atlanta-based entrepreneur with a global business specialising in cosmetic brushes, providing innovative product design and sourcing from Asia. Beginning as a manufacturer’s representative and then in 2003 capitalizing on her brush design expertise, this she opened her own brush factory in northern China, Anisa Cosmetic Applicators (Tianjin) to offer a fully integrated operation for her international business. I met Anisa at a friend’s birthday party and I loved her dynamic energy and lively sense of fun - and, given her cross-cultural background, I had to invite her to write for Fusion View, of course!

Anisa writes:

“Where are you from?” has probably been the most frequently asked question for me from the time I can remember.

I was raised in Nashville TN. My father was from Afghanistan and my mother’s decent is Russian yet she was raised in Turkey. So we were a mixed lot when it came to noting our nationality. When I was growing up in Nashville, no-one had a clue to what I was - usually they guessed by whatever country was in the news that week. When I was younger it was more of the Middle Eastern fare yet now I get Spanish, Italian, Greek, Asian.

I have so many people come up to me in airports asking me for help in their native tongue and all I can say is ‘no Espanola’.

No one really knows what I am from my features or skin tone or accent. It used to be a big cause of contention for me and yet now I love it.
I am a Global citizen. I feel I literally belong anywhere now.

Yet, I was born in New York, raised in the south and now reside in Atlanta GA. This is where my office is, my home, my dogs, my friends.

And yet now my boyfriend lives in London.

(Fun Fact: I made my first International trip to Turkey when I was 17. I am a million miler under Delta airlines and I am only 42. 1% of this airline’s clientele travels this much. And I feel I still have so more many places to still go)

When I met Yang–May, I felt comfortable with her immediately. Her energy was also of someone who understands diversity and multicultural aspects and it was not weird to her that I was American at a British birthday party for someone I did not know, with my British boyfriend.

I told her about my business in USA that I am growing more intentionally in Europe ( mainly due to the boyfriend status : ) ) Also, I told her about my ties to Asia. I built my own factory in 2003 and have been traveling since 93’ to Korea, China, Hong Kong. And that I was about to embark to my first adventure in Malaysia this year.

It is so normal to me to be going somewhere or to be in a place that is considered foreign. It is the way I have learned to grow and challenge myself and expand my life and mind.

I feel I am constantly creating by this use of travel.

Creating and being creative to me is all about the energy in my world. I have been very creative when it has come to creating money and abundance in my life. Travel to me is new energy and that energy is the same as that creates a painting, music or a meal. Travel assists me in creating new pathways in my mind. It opens it all up to see things newly and openly and to be flexible. This flexibility I feel is what has created my happiness. I am able to be adaptable and willing to bend more than if I stayed put.

The results that are created assist with a vision, imagination and desire. I have used my business to work on myself by trusting and growing those around me so that I can have this life I currently lead and to find out what is next for me.

~~~

More info:

Video: http://www.atlantawomanmag.com/video/ and click on “Anisa Telwar”

Website: www.anisa.com

Susan Macaulay is a dynamic Canadian living in Dubai, whom I met while in Barcelona for the IABC EuroComm Conference earlier this year. Susan is a public speaking coach and also the founder of the social network for amazing women, aptly called Amazing Women Rock. I invited Susan to share her cross-cultural experiences for Fusion View.

Susan writes:

I got to the United Arab Emirates by accident. Like the castaways in the 1960s American sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” my then-husband Bob and I set out on what was meant to be a little adventure in 1993, only to end up marooned on a desert island for the next 12 years. It was all terribly unplanned, but then I guess most adventures are.

Our collective travel experiences had been rather limited until then. I had wandered around New Zealand and Australia for a year and half in my early twenties. He had been to Hawaii and Mexico I think, and we had holidayed together in Europe for six weeks in 1990. But that was the extent of it.

Our move to the Middle East (from Canada), was driven mostly by boredom (his, with a routine job in Calgary), and thirst (mine, for adventures in exotic foreign lands). When a friend who worked for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company called to say there was an opening for a technical instructor, Bob jumped at the opportunity and I prayed he would ace the interview.

He went on a 10-day reccie to Abu Dhabi just before Christmas 1992, and was offered the job. We gave the move some thought over the yuletide holidays, got married on January 9, 1993 (after seven years of co-habitation), and he hopped on a plane a few days later – leaving me to hold the fort for six months in case things didn’t work out.

Fifteen years later, Bob and I are divorced, he’s based in eastern Canada (working 28-day shifts at a refinery in the Algerian desert), and I’m in Dubai making the most of one of the few places in the world where the economy is booming, and people are arriving in droves to stake their claim in a 21st-century Middle-Eastern version of the Klondike gold rush , which, by some accounts was started by a woman in 1896.

Unlike their 19th century counterparts, however, many of these latter-day prospectors are panning for property, instead of the nuggets of old. Scores of speculators who have bought into the Dubai real estate dream are banking on ‘happily ever after’ not turning into disaster, as it seems to have done the world over in the last year or so.

Whether the whole thing will implode (or explode), leaving investors holding the proverbial bag remains to be seen. Time, as they say, will tell.

Back in 1993, expatriates couldn’t own property in the UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai weren’t global household names, the Dubai World Trade Center (at 34 floors), was the tallest building in the country, and I couldn’t find work in my profession, because public relations was still unknown in the Emirates.

So I wrote. A lot. Mostly to friends and family “back home.” Mainly about my experiences as a successful career woman suddenly having to cope with being an expat wife.

A few weeks ago, I began republishing those Letters from Abu Dhabi (LADs as I called them then), on www.amazingwomenrock.com , a website I conceptualized, created, and finally launched in July, after three frustrating years of development.

It’s interesting, and a little ironic, to be posting those long-ago LADs on this internet creation of mine, which is as much my passion and joy today, as the LADs were a decade and a half ago. I could hardly have conceived of a website then. In fact, it would be years before we could even access the internet in the UAE.

(To steal the words from a 1970s cigarette ad targeted at women, I’ve “come a long way, baby.” So has the UAE. We’ve transformed ourselves in tandem, and at light speed, my adopted country and I.)

Even more interesting is that, alongside my LADs of the mid-1990s, I’m publishing a series of recollections by Gertrude Dyck, a Canadian nurse and missionary, who went to the UAE in 1962 (almost a decade before it was even a country), and who lived there for more than 40 years.

We are collaborating: two expat women of different ages, from different eras. The result is two sets of impressions about the same initially-foreign-to-both-of-us country, seen through totally different lenses, 30 years apart, and yet presented side-by-side (years after they were originally written), on the internet.

As I tap out this blog entry (sitting in an airport in Germany), for UK-based Yang-May (whom I met at a conference in Spain in February), Gertrude is reviewing the next installment of her story from a retirement home in western Canada. I wonder where you will be if and when you read the fruits of our joint labour?

All of this suggests something about culture change, I think, about how small our big world has become. Here we all are – you, me, Yang-May, Gertrude and who knows who else – continents apart, or perhaps unknowingly sitting next to each other in a café somewhere, paradoxically separated, and yet interconnected (by choice), through time, space, and experiences – some shared, some uniquely ours.

But I digress. Let me see. Where was I? Oh yeah, Abu Dhabi, 1993…

Veteran explorer John Blashford-Snell has been an inspiring and controversial figure leading some of the most extraordinary expeditions in modern times. Fusion View’s occasional guestblogger Alan Lane talked to Britain’s own Indiana Jones about his life and the continuing passions: scientific research, the future of the planet and solving inner city problems.

John Blashford-Snell will be giving an illustrated talk about ‘Stanley and Livingstone’ at the Royal Geographical Society, London on 1st October 2008 at 7pm. Further information from Anne Gilby: Tel: +44 01747 853353

The Royal Geographical Society on London’s Kensington Gore is a place where you don’t easily forget the past. In the Map Room, a portrait of explorer Henry Morton Stanley stares solemnly down on the crowded room. In a glass case just outside, is a copper bolt used by mutineers from the British Navy ship HMS Bounty in 1789 to split wood. Next to it are Stanley’s boots, repaired with canvas from his tent during the 1887-89 Emin Pasha Relief expedition.

By the door, relatively unnoticed in a sober business suit stands who I had come to track down: Colonel John Blashford-Snell; Royal Military College Sandhurst, Royal Engineers, Order of the British Empire (OBE), Doctor of Science, Doctor of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Within the hour, in the great lecture hall he is recounting tales from 40 years of expeditionary life to help raise funds for the International Trust for Nature Conservation.

Blashford-Snell is difficult to tie down. We were to meet next at a London gathering of the Scientific Exploration Society (SES), which he helped to found in 1969.

Now, some years on after our first meeting, I am at the Society’s headquarters deep in the English countryside, ready to pick up our conversation. It is an historical moment for him. A month ago, he stepped down as Chairman of the SES after almost 40 years to follow the many other passions on his agenda.

The telephone rings incessantly, bearing messages of progress from the latest expedition or inner city project as I begin to unravel an extraordinary life.

HIS REPUTATION AMONG modern-day explorers has inspired admiration, controversy and a feeling that he is perhaps Britain’s answer to Indiana Jones. He led the first descent of the Blue Nile and forced the first vehicular passage through the jungles of the entire Darien Gap between North and South America. He navigated 2,700 miles of the Zaire River. In the wake of these expeditions, he set up Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh to give young people exposure to expeditions and responsibility.

More recently, he has tackled aid and conservation projects in the Mongolian Gobi Desert and discovered giant elephants, lost cities and unknown tribes. Headlines have been made by other equally exotic projects: lengthy voyages on reed boats along South American rivers, delivering a grand piano from the UK to the music-loving Wai Wai people of Guyana, and discovering a two-nosed dog in Bolivia.

Now 71, Blashford-Snell is very much a product of the British Army: just over six feet of durability, quiet authority, and a clipped, no-nonsense delivery.

As we rewind his life and career, the pale blue eyes at times resemble gun sights which look through you, preoccupied with the next logistical challenge in some far-flung corner of the world.

The family history is, like his life, unusual. The Snells were common in the south-west of England. The Blashford came from a small hamlet in Hampshire to where the family had moved. Around the late 1700s they went to Jersey in the Channel Islands, which he regards as his roots. Grandfather Blashford-Snell was a sea captain who commanded a packet steamer between Jersey and the south coast. John Blashford-Snell’s aunt thought many of the ancestors were pirates; and she was probably right. He recalls with fondness, great uncle Albert, a beard to his navel, sitting in his great deck chair looking out to sea with a telescope to a bloodshot eye. Everyone thought he was looking at the ships but he wasn’t, he was watching the women on the beach.

A childhood he describes as “heaven”, was split between Jersey and Herefordshire, where his Army Chaplain father had a parish. The only child of adoring parents - “my father prayed for several hours when he saw me arrive” - he began life as a shy, sickly child with a slight disadvantage. This was a withered arm from a difficult birth. Mother was a determined woman who claimed an impressive assortment of forebears, including King Louis XV of France and Oliver Cromwell, leader of Parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars of 1642-51. Using her considerable skills with animals, she put the arm into a splint to stretch it and encouraged exercise.

Blashford-Snell’s early health problems persisted. Shortly after he was born in October 1936, a nurse at the hospital dropped him on his head and split his head open like an egg. “I’ve got the scars to this day,” he tells me, bending to (more…)

by Guest blogger Alan Lane

Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest with the late Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, died in New Zealand on 11 January 2008, aged 88.

As a tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary’s extraordinary life, writer Alan Lane steps back in time to recount a conversation with Hillary in Canada on the 30th anniversary of the Everest climb. He talks about the ascent and his life at that time.

Big Ed

It is no coincident that Edmund Percival Hillary has become known as ‘Big Ed.’ As he rises from his chair to greet you, there develops a feeling of size (he is 6ft 3 in tall, broad- shouldered and close to 200lb). There is also a breadth of vision gained from a lifetime embracing challenges which for others remain permanently in their fantasies.

The appearance is craggy, but unlike the ascent on Everest, approaching the former bee-keeper from Taukau, New Zealand, is considerably easy. The grin on the weathered face is genial, and deep-set eyes trained from years of scanning distant horizons peer searchingly from beneath cliff-like brows. The handshake is firm without trying to impress.

Hillary has never given any time to pretence or the fineries of society. Loping through the Toronto headquarters of Simpsons-Sears, who he advises on sporting equipment, he is unmistakable among the well-groomed secretaries and executives. A rumpled suit and bulging, battered briefcase which has seen many a base camp, underline his down-to-earth informality and aversion to the cocktail circuit. “I have never been a great social butterfly and can well do without it,” he tells me.

For many people all over the world, Big Ed dropped out of sight after Everest. As one Australian student told him at a Sydney high school: I’m glad you’re looking so well. I have read abut you in the history books and I thought you were dead.”

Since then he has led the first vehicle expedition overland to the South Pole and headed an international group searching for the Yeti (the Abominable Snowman). He also led an expedition travelling in jet boats up the Ganges River in India to trace its source in the Himalayas.

Physically-fit

Now in his early 60s, this maestro of the snowline has always striven to stay physically-fit. He never trains formally for expeditions but walks an hour a day. To maintain his best climbing weight he will walk for five days in the Himalayan foothills in Nepal to his work building schools and hospitals with the Sherpa people. He would rather walk than take an aircraft. Once he walked 240 km (150 miles) in 12 days, climbing to 1500m (5,000ft) when monsoons grounded flights.

This firm grasp on his physical condition has at times been elusive. One day in New Zealand as his 50th year approached, he took a look at himself and became disenchanted with what he saw.

“I had a mild hangover from a surfeit of good food and wine, my discarded clothes reeked with other people’s tobacco smoke. Almost unconsciously I was slipping into the easy habits of most of the well-meaning, self indulgent and well-heeled members of society. If I became too physically soft I would be worth nothing to myself or to anybody else.”

On a notepad beside the bed he wrote a short list of resolutions – things he had wanted to do for years which would help to keep him reasonably fit and adventurous.

The first task was to escape the telephone and the concrete jungle – his term for a city. This was achieved by building a cottage on the cliffs above the Tasman Sea, outside Auckland, in New Zealand’s North Island – facing the setting sun and without a telephone. The list of objectives has continued to grow.

Such a life has not been without its personal traumas for Edmund Hillary. The death of his wife, Louise, and daughter in a Katmandu air crash several years ago has left “a great gap” in his life. Louise was a constant companion on his aid projects in the Himalayas – the place where he has directed most of his energies in recent years, away from the high profile glories of mountaineering.

The lectures he gives have increasingly reflected deeper involvement in world problems – racialism, the population explosion, conservation of the environment and the increasing gap in wealth between the rich and poor nations.

Nepalese mountain people

During his years among the Nepalese mountain people he became committed to improving their physically demanding, harsh lifestyle. He set up his Himalayan Foundation in New Zealand and established a Canadian equivalent to raise funds for this work.

Since the early 1960s, he and a team of helpers and the Sherpa people have provided hospitals, schools, airfields and piped water for the mountain people of Nepal. It’s a major contribution to a country of 13 million people, where only nine out of every 100 can read or write, and the nearest medical care for many is several days’ walk away.

Working, planning and climbing in Nepal can take up to six months of his year. During this time he strives to prepare the mountain people for inevitable changes in their lifestyle.

“Tourism has become an important business and quite a lot of money is involved,” he says. “There is nothing much I can do about these changes but I can try to ensure, with the agreement of the local people, that they do not get left behind.

“What has happened so many times is that the local people become needed just as a source of labour. By providing education, health care and communication facilities I have been able to ensure that the Sherpas have the knowledge of how to do things for themselves – such as running the hotels and trekking businesses which have been established. I prefer to see the Sherpas steering their own ship rather than just being trampled on.”

The changes for which Hillary is preparing the Sherpas are already influencing their way of life.

“Divorce is much more common now in the community. The Sherpas are under great pressure of a type they had not previously experienced. Their previous tough, hard lifestyle had a regular pattern of habits but now they have a great deal more money and their lifestyle is changing. I want to see them confident in their new environment and I have been able to play a small part in achieving this.”

Hillary’s no-nonsense style and earthy approach to life is legendary. A suggestion that a larger share of New Zealand’s national purse should be devoted to assisting the poorer countries drew the following reply from the Minister of Finance (described by Hillary as “well nourished”): “I think Sir Edmund Hillary knows as much about the New Zealand economy as I know about mountain climbing.”

Even at what was the pinnacle of mountaineering achievement, his style remained unchanged. After the descent from Everest’s summit he told fellow expedition members: “Well, we knocked the bastard off.”

Everest ascent

Thirty years later, Hillary cast his mind back to 11.30am on May 29, 1953, when he stepped on to the summit of Everest, with the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. It was a time of climbing with simple army equipment, leather boots which froze and thick hemp rope of the type used by ships – far removed from the specialized gear of today.

“My first reaction was one of surprise. I had been brought up thinking this mountain could never be conquered. Now, here was Ed Hillary on top of Everest. Who’d believe it. Everest was just another mountain. There are dozens of projects which have all been just as important.”

Would he do it again?

“I am physically incapable of doing it again. If I did try, I would tackle the most difficult route.”

He is amazed how the mystique of Everest has been retained. “We really felt it would all fade away when we conquered it. But there are still people lining up waiting to climb.”

On climbing and challenge today, he has this to say: “It is nonsense that people climb mountains just because they’re there. You wouldn’t put up with all that discomfort and grind your heart out just for the sake of it. It’s the challenge of fear and danger. You struggle with them. You extend your limits.

“There are challenges all around us if we take the trouble to identify them. Modern mountaineers are doing much more difficult things today than we were. The purpose of climbing then was to find the easiest way up. The route we took on Everest was only moderately difficult. Now the challenge is the difficult route.”

Rather a tent than hotel

As the interview draws to a close, Edmund Hillary prepares to leave for the United States, where he will test camping equipment for Sears Roebuck.

“I’m looking forward to that,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “I’d rather sleep in a tent any day than stay in a hotel.”

We shake hands and it’s time to say farewell to this giant of a man.

As he sets off down the street, I recall his style of parting from fellow climbers at a crossroads deep in the Himalayas. They would be simple affairs. With a cheery “see you in a few months,” Big Ed would set off on foot heading for perhaps India, Tibet or Pakistan, quietly disappearing into the mist. In comparison, some of the traumas in our own lives could seem a little overdone.

While in the United States, Hillary will continue to raise funds for his work in the Himalayas. There, among the great mountains, he is known by the Sherpas as ‘Burra Sahib’ (Big Sir).

These hill people are never far from his mind. They gave him his most prized accolade for climbing Everest: a decoration from the Katmandu Taxi Drivers’Association.

His concern for the Sherpas’ future is well founded.

Tenzing, now 69, and known as the Tiger of the Snows in his home town of Darjeeling, said earlier this year: “There is a lot of change since Nepal opened for trekking. Everything is too commercial. Even the monks are having tea shops now, not praying any more.”

Alan Lane Toronto 1983

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A tribute

11 January 2008. The news of Sir Edmund Hillary’s death made me dig deep into my files for a copy of this interview. Past conversations are not normally worth resurrecting; but the life of a bee-keeper from New Zealand was different. Here was someone who saw the big picture. Here was someone who managed fame and humanitarian work with equal humility; someone who grabbed life and ran with it.

Meeting the great man, the first on the roof of the world, left a lasting impression.

© Copyright Alan Lane Poole, UK January 2008

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

Photo: thanks to achievement.org

This is the last in a three-part series by Alan Lane, about his experience of being inadvertently caught up in a war while on business in Beirut.

Part 1 of Escape from Beirut was posted here on Fusion View two weeks ago.

Part 2 of Escape from Beirut was posted up last Wednesday.

~~~

Alan writes:

Day six. The evacuation from Beirut’s Forum is orderly, well planned and a credit to Britain’s armed services. Families with children, those in wheelchairs and back-packers are part of the ensemble gathered for passport clearance, a feeling of desperation obvious among those taking a chance without the right documentation.

Security is tight. A British TV journalist filming the scene has his video camera confiscated by a guard. One by one we pass through passport control before leaving by bus for HMS York. On the quay, members of the media are anxious to gather our impressions on leaving a war zone. I do a live satellite feed interview with Ben Brown of BBC News 24. Once on board, we are asked to stay below while the ship negotiates the ‘safe passage’ negotiated with the Israeli and Hizbullah forces within the 12 nautical miles inside Lebanese territory.

Emotions are high as my fellow evacuees tell their stories in the cramped quarters of the warship, with children playing or asleep on the floor. It’s a story of separated families, abandoned homes, husbands electing to stay behind to run businesses, and an uncertain future of ‘not knowing if we will see each other again.’

We dock in Limassol in Cyprus at night after a surging 30-knots, six-hour journey. A clearing house for passport control with the Cypriot authorities has a Union Jack on the wall to welcome us. Calm is the order of the night, with rows of chairs each with a bottle of water. We are tired, hot and glad to be on neutral ground.

The fate of those who stayed is uncertain, especially for the Lebanese people. Without doubt, we had been the lucky ones.

Buses take us to the RAF Akrotiri NATO base, where immaculate, tanned British soldiers and women volunteers await to welcome us. One genteel volunteer asks me kindly whether I have been ‘affected by the bombing.’

Here, our quarters are a huge aircraft hangar lined with camp beds complete with clean sheets and towels for some 500 evacuees. Echoes of war-time Britain begin to stir.

After a shower in portable units outside, a welcome dinner is chips and beans, bread and drinks before we turn in for the night to the sound of helicopters and jet aircraft taking off.

Day 7. I rise early for the chartered flight to Gatwick, where on arrival I do a live satellite feed interview on the SKY News channel, and home in Dorset. Thoughts flood in on my escape from Beirut which had taken some 30 hours.

I recall the sights I did see in this troubled and historic country which would experience 34 days of war before a cease fire was called. The stunning caves of Jeita whose size and magic are straight out of the Lord of the Rings. The ancient harbour of Byblos, inhabited continuously for some 7,000 years. I recall the sights I missed. The Roman ruins at Baalbek, said to match anything in the Eternal City. The famous Cedars of Lebanon, said to have been used to build Solomon’s Temple.

I recall the noisy and joyous wedding celebrations around the hotel swimming pool that kept me awake until one in the morning before the serious bombing had started. How in a few days, an evening watching the World Cup on a terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea turned into a fully-fledged war zone. How locals despair that after years of rebuilding, their country once again is being demolished. How this beautiful, ancient land continues to be the punch-bag for Middle East politics.

~~~

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

© Copyright: Alan Lane All rights reserved

Photo: showing Alan on his home balcony holding up a local paper with front page headlines
and pics of destruction in downtown Beirut -t thanks to Alan Lane

~~~

I really appreciate Alan taking the time to write about his experiences for this blog. For many of us, we are lucky enough never to be caught up in such a frightening situation. Watching the news reports from afar and in safety, it can be easy to numb ourselves and forget that real people suffer and real homes and lives are devastated. His account, for me, brings home the surreal feel of war and the beauty and humanity in a country torn by conflict beyond the control of ordinary people.

This is the second in a three-part series by Alan Lane about his experience of being inadvertently caught up in a war while on business in Beirut.

Part 1 of Escape from Beirut was posted here on Fusion View last Wednesday.

~~~~~~~~

Alan writes:

Day 3 (continued). It is Sunday and the feeling of being trapped and alone increases. Experiencing an attempted coup against the military government in Nigeria some years ago had been frightening; but at least the roads and Lagos airport had been left intact.

Chances of an evacuation by sea become slimmer when we hear the Israelis have bombed Jounieh and other ports along the coast road. It is the last straw for Tony and his family who plan to leave the next morning via taxi to Syria. But now it is even more dangerous, expensive (US$150 for a taxis has now become $1500) and crowded (some 300,000 refugees are to cross the border by the time I leave Lebanon).

I walk into the nearby village to collect my thoughts as the last expatriate at our hotel. Bells at the small church announce a service is being held. Clearly, despite war, people’s faith is still strong. I am working on the basis of assurances from the British Embassy that there is a plan to help Brits. I am advised to stay put, wait for the Embassy’s call and prepare to go the sea route. When and exactly how, I know not.

My loyal and wonderful driver Maurice confesses he is taking the stranding of visitors in his country badly. Maurice had showed me the Green Line in central Beirut. Across this no-man’s-land, Christians and Muslims had fought a Civil War for some 15 years. He talks of still having a bullet lodged in his neck from those troubled days.

I sit with him over a cup of coffee in his modest shop where he makes chocolates and runs a taxi service. He is a true humanitarian in all senses of the word and worries that soon there will be shortages of essentials: food, water, medical drugs and gasoline. Likewise, I struggle to deal with my own feelings on the tragedy unfolding in his beautiful land.

Day four. Tony and his family leave at 6.30 a.m. for the Syrian border where they then plan to head further south to Amman in Jordan. I ask their taxi driver for his view of the situation. His reply does nothing to re-assure me of my predicament. ‘The Israelis and Hizbullah have stopped fighting for 48 hours to allow all those left to evacuate,’ he tells me. ‘The Irish Embassy went in convoy towards Syria today.’

I ask Maurice to take me to Beirut port as I hear the French Government has arranged for a Mediterranean ferry boat to pick up expatriates today. He warns I may not get on board, being British. To test this out I phone the French Embassy and am told in a terse and very Gallic way: ‘Non, you ‘ave to be French.’ Understandable, but so much for the European entente cordial.

Several hours later, Britain’s Ambassador in Beirut, James Watt announces an evacuation plan by sea has begun for Britons, with HMS Illustrious and HMS Bulwark on their way from Gibraltar. I have already registered with the British Embassy, so I intend to continue my pattern over the next few days: hours of frantic telephoning to ensure I am included on any evacuee list.

I tap into the BBC News website which gives chapter and verse on the extent of a multinational evacuation – thought by some to be potentially the largest since the D-Day landings of the Second World War. Some 20 countries may be involved accounting for around 100,000 citizens living in the Lebanon if they all decided to leave.

By far the largest numbers are from the UK (10,000), the United States (25,000), France (20,000), Australia (25,000) and Canada (16,000), with considered options including aircraft, landing craft, military and commercial ships and convoys of buses over the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Later, I learn, many elect to stay.

Day five. The war becomes a hot debating issue among leaders at the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, which seems far removed from the reality that is Beirut. Meanwhile, it is reported Israeli troops have crossed the Lebanese border, a further ominous sign for those of us still stranded. We are told we are in a ‘safe Christian area,’ but in war, nothing is guaranteed. During the Civil War, I am told, there was fighting in the grounds of our hotel and bullet holes in the walls.

Tell-tale signs that politically, the situation is reaching serious levels begin to emerge. I go to the bank to draw US dollars against my credit card to bolster a dwindling cash flow. I am told the government has stopped the issuing of the currency to prevent funds leaving the country.

Later that evening, I hear the good news from John Barrett, an area warden working with the British Embassy: that I am among some 350 Britons to be evacuated the next morning by the Royal Navy destroyer, HMS York. John, I later learn, in his unofficial and amazing ‘Schindler’s List’ role, helped many people leave the Lebanon during the war.

~~~~

Next Wednesday: Evacuation at last…

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

© Copyright: Alan Lane All rights reserved

Photo: showing view from the mountains in Beirut of Israeli ships blockading the harbour - thanks to Alan Lane

When I met Alan Lane earlier this year on a balmy September evening in London, we started talking about cross-cultural lives as I told him about some of the fusion stories that I have showcased here on Fusion View. We found that we shared a global outlook and an interest in cultures across the world. Alan then told me how he had been in Beirut on business when he was caught up in a war.

This is the first of a three part series that Alan has offered to share on Fusion View about his experiences of the war in Beirut.

~~~~

Alan writes:

Israeli jets began bombing the Lebanon on 12 July 2006 in retaliation when three of its soldiers were captured by the Hizbullah Islamic group in the southern part of the country. What followed was a 34 day war.

The frightening reality sinks in at around four in the morning. Through the open balcony door of my hotel room overlooking Beirut comes the distant whine of an Israeli jet aircraft.

Reaching the window, I see and hear the crackle of red tracer fire from anti-aircraft guns. A huge ‘crump’ shakes the building as the aircraft’s guided missile hits the southern suburbs. Nearby, the sky is lit by a fire raging at a fuel storage tank destroyed by a bomb.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am in a war zone and my worst nightmare has begun.

Day 1. I realise I should have known better the previous afternoon. In retaliation for Lebanon’s Hizbullah (Party of God) capturing two of its soldiers on the southern border, Israel had carpet-bombed all airports just hours before I was due to leave Beirut for home in the UK after a five-day business trip.

But I was naïve. Like many others, I believed this was just a warning shot by the Israelis to their sworn enemy.

A sense of panic ripples throughout my hotel, considered a safe Christian refuge in the hills above Beirut. Rumours begin to spread. Had Gulf States embassy groups escaped along the main Beirut to Damascus highway into Syria before it was cut by Israeli bombing? How long would it take for this road to be blocked? The answer comes within hours as Israeli bombs slice through this route crossing the beautiful Bekaa Valley.

By now, it is clear Israel intends to trap Hizbullah – and us by default – within Lebanon’s borders, having already blockaded the port with gun-ships visible from my balcony. We begin to realise this is no short, sharp military response but potentially a long, drawn-out affair leaving us with few exit options.

Day two. Tensions build among my fellow guests. Exit plans are being desperately considered as Israeli precision bombing takes out more roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Night-time bombardment from the air or sea is becoming a regular part of life; and although seemingly distant, we don’t know for how long we will be safe.

Both expatriates and Lebanese consider routes through Lebanon’s northern valleys, a stronghold for Hizbullah. Others opt for the longer and potentially safer coastal route through Tripoli into Syria, or the almost circular drive through Syria into Jordan. Either way, the situation is beginning to mirror Saigon’s last days during the Vietnam War; the only difference being, we hope, that no-one is coming to kill us.

Day three. It is decision time for me and my fellow guests. The coast road is now being bombed and many thousands of evacuees queue at the Syrian border, some with visas, those without often being turned back. Stories abound of refugees walking for several kilometres across the border with their baggage, of people sleeping on the streets of Damascus as there are no hotel rooms available. For those of us left in Beirut, the exit window is gradually closing.

We hear one group took a bus up over the Syrian border and somehow made their way to Aleppo, leaving us wondering how they would make their way from this relatively remote small town noted in the annals of Lawrence of Arabia’s desert campaign.

Dubai-based Briton Paul Drummond and Washington-based David and Lois Khairallah take the gamble and opt for the coastal road by taxi. So too, does a Kuwaiti, who joins a convoy leaving from his country’s embassy in the hills. Paul had been worried about rumours pointing to civil unrest in the Lebanon following the onslaught of war. David and I had spent many hours walking the hotel gardens agonising over the decision.

I, in my cowardice or perhaps good sense, choose to stay and consider my options. I am joined by Tony and his family from New York, who, in generous style says if my government can’t get me out, then ‘we won’t leave you behind’ and I can go with the Americans.

Hour by hour, the hotel’s TV broadcasts in English and Arabic relay the heightening conflict. While Israel pounds Beirut from the air and sea, Hizbullah sends showers of rockets over the border into Israeli territory. We watch transfixed as Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah provides a ‘watch this, as it happens’ live commentary while his forces set fire to an Israeli gun-boat in the port with what is thought to be a self-propelled drone bomb.

Meanwhile, the political rhretoric becomes more alarming in this potential scenario for a full-blown Middle East regional war.

Lebanon Prime Minister Fouad Siniora describes Israel’s actions as ‘opening the gates of hell and madness’ while ‘cutting his country to pieces.’ Israel responds by repeating its demands for Hizbullah to be disarmed and threatening to ‘turn back the clock 20 years for Lebanon’ if the captured soldiers are not returned.

Among the guests, Lebanese people I talk to are split on what is unfolding before their eyes. Some see the Israeli action as an unmitigated disaster for their country and a gross intrusion backed by the United States. Others, at this point in time, see it as a way to weaken Hizbullah’s unwelcome influence in their society.

Refugees from southern Beirut continue to pour into our hotel in cars, mini-buses and four-by-fours loaded with personal belongings en route to the border. To my surprise, I am advised by locals to ‘watch what I say’ as some of our visitors are from Hizbullah territory. I tend not to judge those I know nothing about; yet the unwelcome ghosts of Terry Waite’s fate as a hostage in the 1980s drift in, and as a precaution, I check my normally open conversational style.

Meanwhile, down the hill, restaurant trade is still booming as the durable Lebanese insist on trying to live life as normal while the ‘thump’ of bombs can be heard below in central Beirut. Against a history of conflict and culture dating back to Phoenician times, the Lebanese are born survivors and traders with a phlegmatic approach to war and unrest. A 15-year civil war from 1975 to 1990 has cultivated an approach of ‘whatever the risks, life has go on.’

I ask one of the kind and helpful Lebanese staff at my hotel for his views on the situation. His reply is as honest as it is chilling: ‘It is very bad; I think you should leave right now.’

~~~~

Next Wednesday: Day 3 continues as, trapped at the hotel, Alan waits for the British Embassy to come up with an evacuation plan.

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

Photo shows view from the mountains in Beirut of Israeli ships blockading the harbour - thanks to Alan Lane

© Copyright: Alan Lane All rights reserved