Carousel

After the semi-sedate nature of work and life in Abu Dhabi, events now seemed, in retrospect, to move much more quickly. I arrived in Manhattan in Summer 1980 to work in Mobil’s head office on the fabled 42nd street. The first advice I got was to never go near Times Square because so many muggings were happening there. The city was not in a good space. In fact it may have been around then that the US President said New York should be allowed to go bankrupt. It didn’t, of course.

After scouting out Times Square (of course) for myself, the next task was to find accommodation. I found a house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut which was acceptable. Liz and the kids arrived and I began the daily railway commute into Grand Central Station. The work was peculiar. Primarily only very senior managers worked in NY. Most people were out in the regions of the US and around the world. The manager whose team I was on, was responsible for half the world. He had two very experienced oil men, each of whom had a junior like me.

The job primarily entailed writing letters to the many people who wrote in to the office with weird and wonderful ideas. Every letter was answered. I suppose the other benefit was getting to see up close how the work flowed, and how decisions were made.

One of the more interesting aspects of the work was the opportunity to travel to the regional operating offices in Denver, Houston and New Orleans to review their annual budget proposals. As it happened, the General Manager in Denver was Bob Mills who had been my boss in Libya 10 years before!

I was delighted in summer 1981 when Mammy and Aunt Katy came to visit. We enjoyed a nice time both around the lovely Long Island Sound and also in Washington DC Long Island Sound In the summer of 1981 I was sitting, sweating on an un-air-conditioned commuter train heading home to Old Greenwich, CT when a big boss tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to see him next day. I was to go to Medan in Indonesia as Area Operations Manager of Mobil’s most profitable asset and I was to go soon.

After less than twelve months there we were barely settled in the New York area! I don’t quite remember how we got to Indonesia, but we had a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old and it wasn’t easy on anybody.

The original main Mobil office had been in Medan, a good-sized town in north Sumatra, but had recently relocated to Jakarta on Java.

The result was that there were very few families left in Medan and worse, the work was on a week-on/week-off schedule in the gas field an hour’s flying time away. Indonesia had been going through a hard time economically, with the result that there was very little by way of food to be found in the market. The jungle was all around and provided prolific varieties of fruits and veggies for the inhabitants.

Coincidentally, yesterday I looked through a booklet of photos from Indonesia. They had surfaced when I helped Liz clear the house in McLean for sale. I also acquired the Garuda carving, the sacred bird of Indonesia, which is the best example I’ve ever seen. The one opposite is a lesser example.

Anyway, the photos must have been taken on some special occasion, because I was wearing my best safari suit (standard business attire for all) and there were 4 layers of my bosses up to the General Manager (the same Bob Mills from my time in Libya) in attendance.

The Arun gas field was far and away Mobil’s most profitable asset anywhere in the world. In the 3 years before I went there it had suffered 2 catastrophic well fires. Red Adair had taken 9 months each to extinguish them! Before I left NY I was called up to the highest exec and told to be sure there were no more!

During my 2 years there we built facilities that doubled production and had no alarms. Being solely responsible in the jungle, distant from any supervision or assistance, was both a burden for a 35 year old but also character building!

Indonesia at that time had a dual civil and military administration. Part of my job was to go into the bush to meet with local administrators and establish good relationships, generally by providing water wells and basic clinics. The opening ceremony for these usually involved sitting on the ground, smiling a lot and eating local cuisine which was fiery spicy. In fact some Mobil staff were med-evacced out of the country suffering from extreme stomach ailments.

Dealing with the local military was a whole other issue. They were very demanding and peremptory, always looking for something for nothing. The most extreme example was the Major who came into my office looking for a significant volume of aviation fuel and reinforced his demand by placing his sub-machine gun on my desk. I gave him the fuel.

In Medan we lived in quite a big Dutch colonial-era house. We employed a driver, a cook, a maid and a permanent baby minder.

We had an above ground pool and the kids learned to swim. I think Pierce also learned to cycle without training wheels. They went to a 10-kid school taught by an English woman. There was very limited shopping or foodstuffs in Medan, so from time to time Mobil’s aircraft would fly us to Singapore where we could stock up. We also took mini-breaks to Bali, Lake Toba (in the caldera of an enormous extinct volcano) and Penang (very Colonial era remnants).

In 1982 Liz was pregnant, and with the lack of maternity facilities in Sumatra, she would have to fly to the necessary health care. We decided that it would be best to go to Dublin rather than Singapore. But she had to fly a few months before the birth, so I then fended for myself. In case I never came back to the Pacific I decided to fly to Dublin via New Caledonia. Very interesting…..Paris in the South Pacific. In September ‘82 Gavin was born in the Coombe Hospital in Dublin, and was welcomed with great celebrations by family and friends.

Later, on the KLM flight back to Indonesia with the 8 week old baby, a very large Dutch air hostess told me to stop smoking at once near the baby!

I think we were back in Indonesia for less than a year when I got a call to say I was to go to a new job …in New Orleans! The job was Producing Manager, a big promotion.

So the carousel turned again…..the third new job in 3 years. Head spinning. Onwards and upwards. But hey, New Orleans! That was an exciting prospect, tinged with a lot of apprehension because of the magnitude of the new position.