Burghers, dim sum, and... Chapter 7

One learned mainly through trial and error. Nothing was really explained. If fortunate enough to be given a job- and maybe even one with a title- unless a quick learner, it was some years before understanding what was expected of you and the role you were given.

Why were you given a particular title? Probably because it was there and there might have been some tenuous reason that you could fill it.

It took time before you figured this out for yourself and, to be perfectly honest, how many around you also knew what to do to make things happen in their respective roles?

This was very often the case in joining a music company. Sink or swim, but, most of all make the most of every opportunity that came your way. Most everything was virgin territory and you could be setting new rules.

These titles offered sounded good, but what exactly were you meant to do in order to receive that pay check at the end of the month or a 2-3 year contract?

Frankly, it’s a question I find myself asking of many around me today, especially during these days where there’s more of what one cannot do than is able to do.

It’s also thinking of how you and others reached where we are today. We must

have had our wits about us to figure out our strengths and then fine-tuned these into actual skills.

Having said this, I really doubt most knew shit about what they were doing.

Everything was a learning experience and much depended on how much effort you wanted to put into anything.

It’s not unlike like the character of “Don Draper” in the brilliant “Mad Men” series about the early days of what became the advertising business.

Once “Don Draper” saw an opportunity, he absorbed everything going on around him and was street smart enough to talk himself into wherever he wanted to go and others couldn’t. He was a brilliant salesman.

Isn’t this what we still are today? Salesmen? Some are better than others.

Call it the gift of the gab and that lucky old sun, but it really was making things up as you went along, or being hired because someone might have been hoping that you could help navigate a career path for them. It’s good to be needed, but never good to be used.

It’s something I often think about when going back to those decades when in the music business, especially those early years when the Asia region was still an afterthought.

We understood the roles of the bean counters sent over from head office and those around these bean counters. But what about those like some of us with the sexy new titles and the entertainment allowances to match? Weren’t we mainly the sons and a few daughters of “Don Draper”?

What the hell was “marketing”, anyway, and who knew the difference between marketing, advertising and promotions?

This same beat still goes on today where the blind lead the blind because that’s how it’s always been though these days there’s clutter to overcomplicate things and offer more time for incompetence to be rewarded.

Often this clutter is “social media” and where almost everyone is a “social media expert”.

Ask why there’s a need for a product to be on Facebook or Instagram or any of these online platforms and one can hear tap dancing louder than Jose Greco on a tabletop. No one really knows. One makes it up and everyone is seemingly too busy doing not much of anything to come up with answers.

When first joining a music company, there was the big office and a secretary who was given the title of Personal Assistant.

Other than listening to the latest records that crossed your desk and basically playing “juke box jury”, there wasn’t a helluva lot to do. Maybe this is why there was The Long Lunch? We were quietly trying to figure things out. Sometimes we did.

It came down to seeing what was missing and having the answer to own and sell this, and parlay it into something bigger.

Again, it comes down to “Don Draper” being able to think quickly on his feet and having the supreme confidence in being able to sell himself and whatever it took that would make him successful.

Of course, these small successes would lead to opportunities to make you score some legitimate home runs.

There are then always those who are smart enough to somehow be associated with these home runs. They became enablers and shoeshine people and have always had a role to play.

Knowing how this region worked is what made Norman Cheng and I such a good tag team in the music companies where they needed whatever it is that we had.

Norman was probably Hong Kong’s best guitarist when with Teddy Robin and The Playboys, the leading amateur pop group.

From here, he learned to be a recording studio engineer and producer before rapidly moving up the corporate ladder and transforming himself into an urbane Chinese businessman and music executive. He looked the part and played the part.

The Chinese artists he signed respected him as he came from a music background whereas those in Head Office knew they now had someone who understood how the Asia region worked.

Having been a correspondent for Billboard, the world’s only music trade publication, and seen by some as the person who “created” the Norman Cheng “brand” and marketed this just as I did any consumer good in my full time job in advertising, moving into the music business was the logical next career move.

From here, we became whoever others wanted us to be.

Though there were the old schoolers who resented change as no one had questioned them before, It didn’t take long to dismiss and overtake them and be high flyers at a time when Asia, and especially the Japanese music market, was starting to take off.

Also, India might have had the glamour of Bollywood and numbers and billionaires, but the golden carrot to dangle at global marketing conferences was the China music market.

China was always the sleeping giant that was about to wake up.

I don’t think either Norman nor myself thought about just how useful we two Asians could be to global companies like Universal Music and EMI Music. But once the penny dropped, we realised our combined and individual strengths.

At the end of the day, Asians only trusted other Asians. This was especially true of the big Chinese music artists.

Being Chinese- and business savvy- Norman made this work for him. I learned from him and added my own recipes into the mix. It worked for us and broadened our horizons and opportunities.

While he, for example, was entertaining his British horse racing buddies at the private club Aspinall’s in London, I was more interested to be with some of the very nice female artists who had passed through Hong Kong.

It was nothing to get hung up about. It was five star fun and where one was never short of interesting company and corporate networking on a global scale.

This lifestyle stayed with us when, for example, flying down to Melbourne for their Spring Carnival of racing. It’s a world into which I dived headfirst- the punt-followed by winning, but more losing, and then the constant chasing to win back those losses. It was stupid and reckless and an expensive lesson.

Having horse racing’s serial enablers around didn’t help. They were bogans, bums and bloodsuckers though I didn’t know it at the time. It took about two years for me to kick the habit and get out of that self-made prison. It’s easy to do when the cupboard is completely bare.

Norman was a far more cautious racing man who owned horses in the States, the UK, a few inexpensive ones in Hong Kong and many in Macau. How successful he was as a horse owner or in betting is something I never knew. But being somehow involved in the game, gave him “face”. It added to the brand.

Away from horse racing, Norman knew I always had his back. I intuitively knew those who were not who they appeared to be. There were always a couple of Keyser Sozes in our midst- in Korea, Taiwan, India, China, Hong Kong.

Norman had many strengths, but being a great presenter to sell what needed to be sold in front of an international audience wasn’t one of them.

This is why every band needs a frontman and every business needs a pitchman.

Those presentations and tricks of the trade from the years in advertising came in handy though when selling to music executives I didn’t need any script.

There were some brilliant and experienced presenters like the great Bruce Lundvall, head of Blue Note, Jason Flom and a couple of others. They were hard acts to follow, but we had the China market on our side. We called it and they bought it.

Later, and after he had retired and the private equity fat boy had taken a jackhammer to EMI, through Norman, I met the quite wonderful Bhaskar Menon, the first Asian to run a major music company- Capitol Records and then EMI Music.

Bhaskar, who left this world a couple of years ago at a well lived 86 years, made the time to meet with me every time he passed through Hong Kong for the Indian Curry Buffet at the Conrad Hotel.

He was there when some of the greatest artists in the world were being signed up and was close friends with everyone from Nat King Cole and each member of the Beatles to Pink Floyd.

Those lunches with Bhaskar Menon were a crash course in the music business by understanding how it began.

To move forward, there’s a need to respect and learn from those days of future passed and people who were there.

We also had a strong portfolio of home runs. Artists from outside of the region who were either past their Use By dates or didn’t have a chance in hell of making it in their own markets had a new market: Asia. Plus we knew our A&R skills and how to create hits for this region. Not many can say that.

The Philippines, for instance, was always a good touring market for international nostalgia acts. We figured this out and pretty much milked it dry.

By this time, Taryn was at university in Brighton and Trina was consumed by her role as Director Of Marketing for the Amanresorts luxury group.

I was happy for her until feeling I was playing second fiddle to her career. But this could have been my insecurity. I was happy in the music business and could see how much further I could go as far as my career was concerned.

Other than a stalker who was in her midst at the start of university life and initially missing home, Taryn was settling into life in the UK. I had to deal with the fact that she was now more than dating.

She would return to Hong Kong for her holidays and everything seemed fine on the surface, but who really knows anything for sure.

The concept of being married changes from almost year to year. I had seen married friends living a lie- many still are- and I was analysing and internalising all this in relation to my own life.

Whenever these questions about our future as a married couple would sweep over me, I would think about the time when Trina contacted some mystery disease after one of her Aman trips into some gawd forsaken country.

Her temperature shot up, her skin started to shed and we gave her the last rites. It made me realise how much in love we were and how we always told each other how we were going to grow older together.

Taryn was around four years old at the time and I had to think about being a single father. I couldn’t see myself without Trina.

Thankfully, our family doctor- the wonderful Dr Bill Oram- cut short his holiday in New Zealand and returned to Hong Kong after hearing about Trina’s condition.

He had me change hospitals and move her records to Canossa Hospital. He took over and Trina started to recover. I still think of those days.

We might be divorced, but those things that matter always live with you. They are life lessons.

Burghers, dim sum, and... Chapter 6

It was singer-actor and friend Sam Hui who was the first to know that Trina was pregnant- even before us. We were visiting him and wife Rebu at their apartment in Broadcast Drive. When getting out of the car, he casually asked when Trina was due.

Apparently, she had a “glow” to her. She always had a glow to her during these days as we were very much in love with each other. It was me singing, “Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey”. And, yes, known only to Sam, after five years together, Trina was pregnant with a girl. There’s a fairly interesting story behind what became her name.

I originally wanted to name her Trina 2. The thinking was that if men can have a Jr or a number 2 to pass down their lineage, why couldn’t women have someone with their first names to ensure that the circle wasn’t broken?

Though talked out of that idea, I was playing around with the letters that spelt out T-r-i-n-a. This was shelved when, I guess, somewhere along the way, we both agreed on Sasha- Sasha Samantha Ebert. Frankly, I thought “Sasha” was trying too hard to sound exotic. Then again, how many who look like me are named Hans? Hans Ebert?

In all the hullabaloo of Trina’s water bag bursting when we were at home and us finding a taxi that would take us to Canossa hospital, I had already decided on what I believed was a better name for our daughter.

For some reason, a photograph of actor Tyrone Powers’ daughter had caught my eye. She was a natural beauty. Her name: Taryn.

As I had been playing around with the words that made up Trina and come up with Tarin, the ‘y’ made the name extra special when written out. Guess I was trying to create a brand.

Though Trina was somewhat surprised to read in the newspaper the next day that Sasha Samantha had been replaced by Taryn Samantha, the name passed her seal of approval.

She was happy which made me happy and I left with her best friend Nancy to have lunch and an interview set up with John McVie of Fleetwood Mac at the Bombay Restaurant on Wyndham Street.

He was great company and mentioned a new band to keep an eye out for with an amazing bass player named Sting. I was to see Police a few months later at a gaudy disco in Wanchai.

As for Taryn, there were some minor hiccups with the name. This was when after moving to a triplex that we were somehow offered at a bargain price in ritzy Jardine’s Lookout, where I felt bad feng shui, Taryn attended primary school at the nearby French International School.

Many apparently thought she was called “Karen” and which resulted in some teary mini dramas and how this was somehow my fault.

It all ended well when the name Taryn started “trending” in the school when new Chinese students with no Western first names needed one. Guess I did something right.

As for that triplex, a French family moved in when, though it looked fabulous and was great for entertaining, I wasn’t comfortable there and always felt someone trying to force me to jump when standing on the balcony. The son of the family who moved in did jump.

As a young married couple we led a simple and uncomplicated life. We had moved from the little Japanese style apartment to a slightly larger apartment down the road in Bonham Street called Bonham Villas, where the rent was a rather “exorbitant” HK$1600 including rates. We somehow managed.

With a supermarket and bank downstairs and a dry cleaner and small park across the road and the legendary “Russian” restaurant Czarina across the road, below, it was one of the most convenient addresses in Hong Kong. It also appeared that many of the Arts Mansion crowd had moved here.

Though we had Conchita from the Philippines as our domestic helper, looking after Taryn was a full time job for Trina. She wouldn’t have it any other way. It was great to see her so happy. She gave up all work for seven years to raise Taryn.

Taryn was a good baby though given to temper tantrums where she would hold her breath until she would go limp in Trina’s arms.

The first few times this happened it would freak us out, especially me, until our family doctor told us that the best cure was to ignore these tantrums. We did. Trina would just say, “Go ahead, hold your breath. You’re still not going to get your own way”. It worked.

Though extremely happy to be a father, I was a very nervous one. I worried way too much about anything bad happening to Taryn.

We took Taryn with us to Sri Lanka with my parents and my mother’s elder sister Doreen.

Far more adventurous than me, Trina and my mother enjoyed roughing it and staying at various guest houses and enjoying real home cooking. This wasn’t for me nor my father and aunt. We were, after all, Dutch Burghers. What were we doing eating with Singhalese and- my gawd child- Tamils!!!

Mosquitoes enjoying feasting on Taryn didn’t help and her constant crying was tough to take.

When she had one of her tantrums while at the zoo in Colombo, I smacked her on her leg. She looked baffled. Dad? Smacking me? It’s the only time I’ve ever touched Taryn.

Most touching for me during this trip was seeing my dear Podi who had looked after me when in Ceylon. We were so happy to see each other.

I was also very moved when my Auntie Berniece who had committed suicide and Uncle Maurice’s son Leon heard that we were in Sri Lanka and made the journey to see me. He had embraced Christianity and become a Chaplain.

Though he couldn’t speak, we knew what each other wanted to say.

I cried for hours after he left thinking about his life and everything he had to overcome.

I wish I could spend those moments with Podi and Leon all over again. They would definitely have a new meaning today.

Back in Hong Kong, there was the time when Taryn was around seven. We were at the bookstore of the China Fleet Club where we would get our favourite magazines.

Suddenly, we couldn’t find Taryn. I had never seen Trina panic before. Every parents’ worst nightmare was going through our heads. We ran to everyone on every floor begging- yes, begging- if anyone had seen our little girl.

I forget how we found her, but she had wandered off. She was okay. Trina hugged her and told her to never ever do that again. I watched and made a promise to myself that if anyone hurt my baby girl, I would have no hesitation to kill them. It was that simple.

To this day, I grieve thinking of parents losing their children to violence and wonder how they cope and forgive and carry on. Revenge, to me, is the only answer.

It’s about being Charles Bronson’s character in “Death Wish”. Or Liam Neesen’s character in “Taken”. It’s being John Wick.

It no doubt had to do with being an only child and not having a very close relationship with my mother and father.

We were simply not touchy feely people. All that kissing on both cheeks that went on in Hong Kong was something foreign to my mother. She found it “silly and artificial”. It made her uncomfortable.

Trina, coming from a tight Christian family unit, took to motherhood right away. She’s always been a brilliant and supportive mother to Taryn.

Me? I was starting to get anxiety attacks, but nothing crippling. It was worrying, but something that I kept to myself.

We would take Taryn in her stroller to the park across the road from where we lived and drive up to the Peak on weekends for walks.

These trips outdoors was also a way to get me out of the apartment. Trina could see that I was sleeping more and more and almost becoming reclusive.

I was starting to become dependent on Trina for everything and having her around me. It somewhat eased the anxiety that was coming from gawd knows where.

I was trying to fight it, but fighting an invisible enemy is not easy. Work and writing was overwhelming me and certain words would almost paralyse me with jumbled thoughts and bring about waves of anxiety.

I even needed an intern working at the ad agency pick me up and take me to work as even crossing the road became difficult.

One day while at work and inside a colleague’s office, I felt everything starting to give way from under me. He helped to take me to my parents’ apartment and where the anxiety started to subside.

I still needed a doctor to attend to me before Trina came by and helped take me home. But there was always this fear of what happened that day at work happening again.

It’s a full time job working on this. There are various “tricks of the trade”, so to speak, that us sufferers use to hide the fear and get by.

For me, coping was being with different women. They helped by mainly making me forget and gave me some some false sense of bravado.

With Trina, I would expect to fly into another brick in the wall and often did. She was a carer and it was okay to fall apart in front of her. She would put me back together. It’s probably why I was to later change girlfriends so often.

It was only until a Danish girl whom I was to meet much later in life gave me the confidence needed to lead a normal life though our relationship was anything but normal. Whatever it was, it worked for what it was at the time.

When married to Trina, tranquillisers, namely Mogadon, which was then available in Hong Kong over the counter, and which I would wash down with a Black Russian cocktail, helped numb the anxiety. It didn’t, however, cure the source of the problem.

Until needing to make regular long haul flights when with Universal Music and EMI and until the Great Dane came into my life, having to fly was pure hell.

It was the same for my father. He had to have a few stiff drinks to give him courage days before a flight. He would panic just to get to the airport.

I never talked to him about his problems and also his inability to cope without my mother.

After she passed away from Alzheimer’s, there was the need to have friends around him- some of whom he barely knew and whom he happily gave away family heirlooms.

I should have asked him what exactly he was scared about. But we barely spoke to each other.

Thinking back, he was mollycoddled by his sisters- my aunts- and my mother and all this probably became a crutch.

Funny thing is that none of those councillors and life coaches and shrinks I saw over the years ever delved into this part of my life. It’s no doubt why I have such a strong cynicism towards psychiatry.

Trina, being American and where everyone she knew seemed to go to a shrink, and with an elder sister, a qualified nurse, who wasn’t shy to admit that she couldn’t function without Prozac, believed mental illnesses could only be solved by professionals. Or prayer.

She might have been right, but, to my parents, only “crazy people” needed to see psychiatrists.

This was what I had grown up to believe and which added to my anxiety problems- and why I kept them hidden. I saw it as a sign of weakness.

It took me a few years to enjoy fatherhood or being married. I felt very nervous about carrying Taryn or spending any time alone with her in case I suffered an anxiety attack.

I really didn’t know how to find happiness nor what it was. Only now am I really getting there.

Unless you’ve been lost in the darkness, you won’t understand how this horrible illness sneaks up on you- and how much those who live with it suffer in silence.

Burghers, dim sum, and... Chapter 5

It was her missionary shoes that first attracted me to her- flat, plain, black shoes that somehow accentuated her fabulous legs.

Of course, there was the beautiful gamin-like face, short short hair that she had been coerced to cut for the start of a possible career in modelling and which gave greater emphasis to her long slim neck.

All these years later, I am still writing songs for and about her.

This was Trina who attended Hong Kong International School and friends had mentioned as being very different to the other girls we knew.

She was extremely pretty and the youngest daughter of a Lutheran missionary and his wife who had moved to Hong Kong from Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

I first saw her at the Star Ferry magazine stand on Kowloon side. Commercial Radio disc jockey Mike Souza introduced me to her. Mike knew everyone in a kinda bright and breezy snap happy way.

Trina had just started her first job as the assistant to a Filipino film critic who had his own radio show despite having one of the strangest voices in broadcasting. But these were early days when Hong Kong was coming of age and where anyone with something to offer could find a job.

Trina’s job really was to escort this roly poly gentleman to cocktail parties.

At a time when homosexuality was still very much in the closet, she was his handbag. Nothing to do with Trina, but he and I had a mutual dislike of each other.

Meeting Trina that day didn’t exactly rock my socks off though she certainly had an unspoiled lack of bullshit and je ne sais quoi.

She was very much “in demand” and was dating someone I knew reasonably well- nothing serious, but she was still “taken”- and by someone I couldn’t see her with. He reminded me of television’s Mr Kotter. I could have been biased.

I had my own apartment by then which was more of a crash pad. It was shared with Mike Souza though I hardly saw him.

As the song goes, this was where women, they would come and they would go and where players only loved you when they were playing.

Plenty nose dived and crashed at where my apartment was- Arts Mansion in Caine Road.

It’s when many who were starting their careers in Hong Kong and trying to make sense of “it” all stayed. The rent was cheap, and it was like some bohemian ghetto for, especially, young foreigners in Hong Kong.

With my parents having emigrated to Melbourne, it was just me and Kitty, my cat and whoever came through the turnstiles, passed the auditions and got that ticket to ride and stay for as long as things worked.

For quite a few months this was a very attractive Chinese fashion designer whose dream was to work in London.

Apart from dinners at a restaurant called Pink Castle, we stayed in and got to know some of the other girls from everywhere in the world who would come and go. This is what gave Hong Kong an incredible buzz- the unpredictability of it all.

She eventually left for Swinging London and became a success as the main designer for a fashion house.

We met up after she left Hong Kong, but though we thought things might last, it was mainly to say our goodbyes.

I was too busy taking in life and the music scene in London to have a serious relationship. She also had a new priority which was her career.

Trina was different to all of them. She was worth bothering about. She was very, well, clean.

The first time this dawned on me was when she gave a party at her place in Shouson Hill while her parents were away.

I was invited to attend by the guy she was seeing at the time. I really didn’t wish to leave after almost everyone else had gone and stayed for as long as possible to get to know her better.

Can’t remember how it happened, but I managed to persuade one of my clients to use Trina in a television commercial for Wrangler Jeans.

Required was a girl with long hair, but a good wig and some quick talking got Trina the job.

The television commercial was hardly “high concept”- a couple in a hammock while a jingle I had written and sung by Sam Hui, who was still to become the Canto Pop pioneer that he became, played in the background.

Important was that I got to be around Trina for a day. I also helped out a British kid named Richard who hung out with us to be in the commercial.

Richard was a good guy who took the wrong short-cuts and ended up like too many other expat kids in Hong Kong during those days strung out on heroin. He always needed money and this “modelling” gig helped him out.

His father worked for the government, they stayed in a fabulous home on the Peak, but, too often, none of this brought happiness nor clarity.

After his mother took her life as his younger sister had her own problems, this ended their Hong Kong misadventure. I never saw Richard again.

I continued to bump into Trina at parties and around town, but though she wasn’t seeing anyone by then, she was happy being with her family or her best friend Nancy.

It was pretty much impossible to make any headway with her. So, like the song went, if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with.

Though there was no one like Trina, there came the time when I felt I was getting nowhere with her. It was like pursuing the impossible dream like a love sick puppy from La Mancha.

I even had disc jockey “Uncle” Ray play a song for her on his late night radio programme and which I requested to her- Dylan’s “Positively Fourth Street” about “what a drag it is to see you”. It just might have made an impression.

This “pursuing” was less than six months, but when getting nowhere, it seems like an eternity.

After another bout of rejection when asking her out on a date and me telling her off and slamming the phone down, the doorbell rang about an hour later and there she was with a pizza for dinner. We were together from that day on. It was my birthday. She used to tell friends that I “wore her down”. It worked.

Despite being asthmatic and allergic around cats, she was somehow immune to Kitty.

What a special cat Kitty was. She would test potential female “stayers” for me by jumping onto their laps. If they screamed to “Get this f***ing cat off me!” or found cats “creepy”, the sale was off.

Kitty jumped onto sat Trina’s lap- and purred. Trina petted her. There were no signs of any asthma attack. That said it all.

Her parents- absolutely wonderful and supportive people- and two younger brothers might have been a bit shell shocked at her choice of with who she wanted to be, but it all worked out. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

Let’s not kid ourselves that there was no racism in Hong Kong at the time. A coloured guy marrying a white girl was still something difficult for most parents to get their heads around. That Trina’s parents did without flinching was extraordinary. They were fine people.

There was also reverse racism. Think my parents would have liked me marrying someone who was a Chinese? Or a “dark” girl?

Racism will never go out of “style”.

As for Trina and myself, six months later we were married at the Lutheran Church Of All Nations in Repulse Bay with the wedding reception held at the iconic Repulse Bay Hotel.

The photo below is with Norman Cheng and “Uncle” Ray Cordeiro and where Trina looks in shock and I look like a Bee Gees reject.

My proposal was one that hedged all bets: “I could marry you, you know.” It was that fear of rejection. I think her reply was something along the lines of “I could marry you, too”.

The photo above might not show it, but it was a very happy day. Mike Souza was my Best Man and my parents returned to Hong Kong from Melbourne for the wedding- and what turned out to be an extended stay.

It was a good marriage because it was a decision made for all the right reasons: Love.

Money mattered, but it never ruled our life. We more than managed.

Love brought us together and really did keep us together.

Could we have done with more money? Maybe. But the wedding gift of HK$25,000 from my parents which they could barely afford, and our combined salaries of around HK$1300 a month helped us setup home in a tiny but beautifully designed Japanese-style apartment in Park Road.

Quite rightly, Trina couldn’t think of us continuing to live in the “gweilo” ghetto at Arts Mansion. Kitty agreed with her.

Though she lost her job being “the handbag” for the movie critic in Old Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard who believed that Trina could have done better than being with me, we slipped effortlessly into wedded bliss.

She wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest cook, but between the excellent tacos, Sloppy Joes and Spaghetti Bolognaise she made plus dinners at nearby legendary La Taverna and Czarina restaurants, we really didn’t need much more.

My family loved Trina and she and I were particularly close with my elder cousin Carl. I was friends with her two younger brothers in Hong Kong and got to know her elder sisters and their families when we would visit her folks in St Louis.

Going to church every Sunday with her mum and dad was a pretty surreal trip for me as one doubts many in middle America had seen anyone who looked quite like me. But once those in the congregation knew I had eaten potato salad and liked its taste, everything was fine.

Family for us could wait as I was still finding my feet in advertising with Tse Needham and Trina had started work for Adrian Zecha Associates.

AZ was and is a visionary, someone never short of businesses. A small fun project he started in Bali- a luxury resort named Amanpuri and the Amanresorts brand was to become a huge career move for Trina.