Asia
I went from Africa (Gabon) to Asia (China) in 1984 to open up a subsidiary that would cater to the oilrigs of the American Sedco off-shore drilling company. China had only recently opened up its waters to foreign exploration and Sedco was the first company to become operational. They had experience with SHRM (my employer at the time) and had requested them to cater their Chinese adventure. As one of the rare fluent English speaking manager of the French SHRM I was sent to lead this effort. This included setting up joint ventures with local government in the regions where exploration would take place (Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhanjiang), a very interesting job.
After the oil bust in 1985 (prices dropped below $ 36 per barrel – the expected exploitation cost in China), all exploration activity ceased and I had to find another purpose for our joint ventures. It soon became clear that there were many opportunities, but they all involved rather heavy investments, a path normally not taken by a service company so we called it quits. I moved to Singapore, via Hong Kong, to start working for the Dutch dairy company Friesland.
It was in Malaysia where my flair of working with(in) different cultures came to full force. Although a single country, it has three very distinct groupings that do not always fully cooperate: Bumiputra (indigenous ethnic people) – Chinese – Indian. When you add the ‘expatriate’, itself hardly a homogenous group, to the stew, you know you are in for treat, especially if you are, as was one of my functions, the Human Resources Director for 6,000 FTEs. But in truth, I loved it; yes I had the occasional run-ins when groups closed behind one of their members, but in the end I always managed to ease the situation and to rally all behind our common goals.
My first stay in Asia lasted for 16 years until 2001, most of which in beautiful Malaysia. Early 2014 I returned, this time to Thailand.
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