1974: a big transition

It began with the miners strike and it ended with me sat at a pool bar in Bali. It was quite a year.

(the photo above is a passport photo I got taken early in the year in anticipation of what I would need for visas and the like later on)

In summary it was the year I switched companies for the first time, I left the UK, I travelled around the world (four times) and I met my future wife. It was quite a year.

I was still working for Shell in the UK but itching to get on. A more senior colleague had just moved to Mobil Oil and he suggested I ask them for a job too. So I did and it invited me over to New York for interview.

That was in January and given that all that I knew about New York was what I’d read about I was convinced I’d be mugged as soon as I got off the plane. Well I wasn’t and must have done OK in the interview because I was offered a job, not to work in the US but to move there for a period before relocating to Jakarta.

(A word of explanation. I was working in Shell’s operational research group developing computer models to support its developing LNG (liquefied natureal gas) projects. Mobil had just signed contracts for similar projects in Indonesia. There was some sense in employing me for my ‘expertise’.)

But that wasn’t all that I did on that trip. I had been talking to another company based in Houston and it suggested I visit them when I told them I’d be in New York. They even sent me a first class ticket so I flew down on the Friday afternoon, enjoyed the weekend and then had a further day of interviews before flying back to the UK via the Bahamas. That took my total of countries visited worldwide to 19.

I left the UK with a couple of suitcases in March and moved into the Carriage House, a block of serviced bed-sits on the corner of 38th and 3rd. That was conveniently close to Mobil’s offices on 42nd Street (below) and, more importantly, in easy walking distance of the bars and restaurants on the upper East Side. A far cry from the flat I shared with Ed Libbey on Rodenhurst Road in Clapham!

I was there to work of course and was given an office on an upper floor within Mobil’s Exploration & Production Division. It was a different world. I was surrounded by seasoned American oilmen and attended the weekly briefing concerning Mobil’s success, or otherwise, in finding oil around the world. And I got to travel, twice to Japan and then a round the world trip including Indonesia appreciating the opportunity to sit in the front of the plane!

I moved to Jakarta in August and moved into the Hotel Indonesia whilst I waited to be able to move into my house. On my very first night I met Juni at the hotel.

My travel didn’t stop when I moved to Jakarta. I returned to New York twice before the end of the year and began what were to become frequent trips to Medan in North Sumatra, where Mobil’s production operations were based, and Singapore which was always a convenient and attractive detour on the way home.

I was based in Jakarta because all oil companies were obliged to keep an office there and because my job involved more interface with Pertamina, the state oil company, than with Mobil’s operations. It was a small office and to say that it was four VPs and me is a slight exaggeration but not much. It meant that sometimes I was the most senior person in the office which is a little worrying in retrospect.

I moved into my house in Kemang September. It was a three bedroom bungalow with servants’ quarters. I found myself being looked after by Sami who was effectively my housekeeper, Umi who was Sami’s assistance, Rashid the guard who was also Umi’s husband, and Rais my driver. My tough life continued although the commute was no longer an easy stroll to the office as in New York. Now it was more like a nasty 30 minute or more drive.

Despite the work and the travel there was still time other activities. I played both football and rugby, I joined the Jakarta Hash House Harriers and I rubbed shoulders with other single expat males in the Tankard in Blok M in Kebayoran Baru and other bars in the city.

Indonesia was, and still is, the country with the biggest muslim population in the world and it’s perhaps surprising that the alcohol in freely available and that public consumption is allowed. It was that environment which allowed places like the Tankard to exist and prosper. Blok M was a fairly basic commercial complex with small shops, a cinema, cafes and food stalls. I remember the Tankard was upstairs, it wasn’t a big place, there was a three sided bar, a few tables, a pin ball machine and a pool table. It did simple meals, it never got so crowded that you couldn’t find a seat or a place at the bar but it always seemed to be open. Its clientel were largely expat males with a few local ladies to keep some of them company. It’s reputed that Chuck from the CIA and Ivan from the KGB were regulars and would quietly ackowledge each other’s presence. Although it was a pretty peaceful place someone did pull a knife one evening …