Ibu Icih

Jumping on the bike and heading up hill could become a daily routine as there are so many interesting people out there. I suspect just as many down hill in the more urban environment, but more of a pain having to dodge the police doing spot checks, you can hear them singing "happy birthday to me" when they see me coming.

Introducing Ibu Icih, who I spotted on her hands and knees, cutting the grass with a pair of scissors, not altogether an unusual sight, but heart wrenching all the same. She looked up as I was approaching, so I waved and she gave me a huge smile. I thought I have to get that smile on blip, but it wasn't to be, no matter how much I wiggled my eyebrows, this was the only look I was going to get.

Once the camera was down, she laughed and joked with me. I crouched down and then pretended not to be able to stand up again, with my back, well, not pretending that much, She thought it hilarious. The older girls have such a wonderful sense of humor. What a wonderful dear she was. Several others came around to see what was going on, judging from the laughter, I think she claimed me as her toy boy.

As promised, The Bandung story - part 1

It is difficult to know where to start with the story of how and why Bandung. I guess the Asia thing started with my Uncle Alan, who worked in Kuala Lumpur as an aircraft maintenance supervisor when I was around twelve years old. He was a big influence on me, he seemed very happy and he was easily the most successful of any of my family, so I kind of used him as a life template and landed an apprenticeship with British Aerospace.

Bandung was first mentioned in the late 80's, when I was a staff design engineer at British Aerospace. Bandung has an aircraft factory and they were designing a new passenger jet and employed hundreds of western aircraft design engineers to do the job. Because of the anticipated distraction of a portion of the female Indonesian population, the management decided it prudent to set an age limit of 45, thinking that mature, married men would be less of a problem.

Unfortunately, I did not qualify, as I was too young. However, they soon discovered that the age limit decision was wrong and the older guys were much worse than the younger men. I applied again a few years later, but was turned down again, due to lack of international contracting experience. This was a recurring message from lots of job applications, the hard part is getting your first job abroad, a chicken and egg thing. Even landing a local, UK, contract was difficult without contracting experience.

A close friend got me into a contract company in Manchester. The company landed a contract in Belfast, which I volunteered for, not quite abroad, but close. From there, I followed a couple of guys and landed a car job at SAAB in Sweden. Finally overseas and future contracts became much easier, also, the car industry was providing far more work than the aircraft, so that too was a good move.

I found myself designing business class aircraft seats for Recaro in Germany, when two new car contracts came available, one in Istanbul and one in Bandung. I really fancied the Turkey job after seeing the film midnight express, but one of the guys I was working with had recently worked in Bandung and had so many stories to tell and sold me on the idea. So, armed with $15 in Indonesian money (maximum allowed), a photocopy of the world atlas and a list of good bars, off I went.

To be continued.

Dave