Our arrival in Manila in 1984 was marked by incessant typhoons and Matt becoming severely ill with food poisoning – I have vivid memories of 18-month old Peter standing up in the back of filthy taxis try to play with the grime on the shelf under the back window as we went back to the Regent Hotel, leaving Matt and his mother in Makati Medical Centre.
In time though we established ourselves and became part of the ADB’s thriving, lively and often amusing expatriate community. Initially we lived at 110 Cambridge Circle, North Forbes Park, and then moved to 1673 Dasmarinas Avenue, Dasmarinas Village.
The boys were lucky to have a wide range of young friends from ADB families (including the Roberts, Cole and Gordevich children and the late Charleson family offspring Christopher). There was always something going on it seemed, with pantomimes, Xmas parties for the children, Halloween Trick and Treating, Little League Baseball and general good times around the swimming pool.
Sunday evenings were marked by hamburgers/steaks and ice cream at the Seafront US service club or pizzas and pitchers of Mountain Dew at the Pizza Hut in Makati. Our favourite holiday break was a weekend at Punta Baluarte in Batangas Province (a 2-3 hour drive from Manila via Tagaytay). Here there were two swimming pools and lots of opportunities for games and videos.
To her great credit, Dianne managed to develop a reasonably satisfying lifestyle working with the Episcopalian Church children’s clinic and the ADB Women’s Club. My non-work interests included being on the Board of Governors of the Brent School (we used to drive up to Baguio for meetings – on one occasion to discuss the behaviour of the headmaster – an Englishman, who was shot at while at his desk and burnt in effigy by the staff at the school gates!).
I also joined the Men’s Hash and spent many happy hours half-lost in the scrub at places like Susannah Heights and San Pedro. We actually organized and ran the 1990 Interhash, hosting about 1,800 visitors from all over the world to three days of solid running and partying.
At work, I was able to publish some substantial research work while I was with the Economics and Development Resource Centre (my good friend Malcolm Dowling was also there). I then moved on to the Strategy and Development Policy Unit as a Senior Development Policy Officer, where I was involved with a wide-ranging review of the Role of the Bank in the 1990s. My overseas assignments included India, China (lecturing for the Agricultural University in Nanjing and the Agricultural Bank of China in Tianjin, accompanied by Dianne), Thailand, and Malaysia (see insert for recent description of life in Manila).
[Biographical note for the Asian Development Bank Association of Former Employees (ADB-AFE) Magazine prepared mid-2005:
In 1983, I was working as a Project Planning / Development Economics Lecturer with the Project Planning Center at the University of Bradford, UK, in the aftermath of 6 intensive years of consulting in the Middle East and Nigeria. Having ‘settled down’ in my home country England with my New Zealand wife Dianne, we soon added sons Matthew and Peter. When an opportunity came up to undertake an ADB consulting assignment on behalf of the University, I was fascinated to find myself in Manila walking every morning down a humid Roxas Boulevard from the Regent Hotel to the Bank.
I soon found a friendly environment, working with very interesting people such as seniors Dr Satish Jha, Dr Kedar Kohli, Dr Frank Tacke, Dr Takase, Brien Parkinson, and rising stars like Shoji Nishimoto, Tom Crouch, Graham Walter and Malcolm Dowling. It was Brien Parkinson who suggested that I should apply for a job with the Economics and Development Resource Centre, and who subsequently acted very kindly as a mentor.
When a large brown envelope arrived from Manila with ‘an offer’, I managed to persuade Dianne that Manila was nearer than Bradford to Auckland and that it might be exciting to become expatriates for a spell. We arrived in Manila in August 1984 in the middle of a series of savage typhoons. Within a week, Matthew was laid low with severe shigellosis and Dianne had to spend the next week sleeping at his bedside in Makati Medical Centre. I took time out to look after 18 month old Peter at the Regent Hotel [which was to burn down some 6 months later with considerable loss of life].
However, we did eventually pull out of what seemed to be an early nightmare and settled into a good life built around the Bank [with Dianne contributing substantially to the ADB Women’s Club], the British School, and Holy Trinity Church [where Dianne helped organize the children’s feeding and medical program]. However, I am sure that Dianne won’t mind me saying that apart from ‘maids, mangoes and massage’, she remained a doubtful convert to the Philippines.
I was, as they say, ‘rapt’ with having access to the Bank’s marvelous resources, including its diverse and entertaining staff members. At EDRC, my colleagues included the exceptionally bright younger selves of ‘Yoshi’ Yoshida, Ifsal Ali and Mohammed Qibria. There as part of that company, I was able to develop a book on Evaluating Rice Market Intervention Systems, with assistance from Dr Peter Timmer of the Harvard Institute for International Development. This may have been the first of what has become a wide stream of similar publications.
The communications section of the Bank was almost non-existent at that time and I remember packing up several large boxes containing copies of my book and dispatching them to the Annual Meeting in Vancouver with the instruction to give copies of the book away. Imagine my chagrin when the boxes were returned to me with great ceremony – unopened! I was also able to indulge my interest in applying Semi Input-Output Analysis to calculating Shadow Prices for Social Cost Benefit Analysis – not surprisingly, it never caught on!
The delightful contrasts in character and style between nationalities were neatly illustrated by the 2 Chief Economists under whom I served – both very impressive men in their own way. Burnie Campbell was an ex College Gridiron ‘jock’ from the Dakotas who placed a copy of ‘Essays in Idleness’ prominently on the small table in the break out area of his office. When he was superseded by Dr Kohli, the reading material was changed to feature a copy of Fortune Magazine that had put a portrait photograph of ADB President Fujioka its cover to match its lead article on Asian ‘movers and shakers’.
In 1988, I moved to the Development Policy Office where I was again lucky to interact with people of the caliber of Paul Dickie, Werner Schelzig and Kunio Saito. At that time, I also got to know Marion Bond who was one of our consultants on the Blue Ribbon Study ‘The Role of the Bank in the 1990s’. Paul, Malcolm, Marion, myself and our much loved and sadly missed friend Lai Ah Hoon used to frequently lunch together at Seafront or the Manila Club.
By the late 1980s, Manila in all its color and drama had begun to take its toll on the family. The excitements included the People’s Power Revolution, several impressive earthquakes and typhoons, the ‘Honasan Coup’, and the volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo. I remember watching from Peter’s bedroom as Government forces shelled the rebels held up in Makati during the Honasan episode. I also began to feel that I ‘had come to good, and was staying to do well’. It was time to put the family first, downsize my savings rate and move on.
In 1991, after spending 7 years with the ADB, we moved to New Zealand, where I joined the Ministry of Energy, as Unit Manager, Resource Economics.
My marriage to Dianne broke up in 1993 but we remain good friends. She is a very successful businesswoman in her own right, having set up a consulting group on building construction and disputes resolution.']
Picking up the story again .... However, as a family, we had suffered a good deal of insecurity during the People’s Power Revolution that deposed President Marcos and brought Cory Aquino to power, the abortive but bloody Honasan Coup (I remember being in Peter’s bedroom watching Government forces strafing the rebels in Makati) and the Gulf War in which the British and International Schools became potential targets).
It was therefore with relief to all (despite the loss of tax-free income) that I was able to take up an appointment as Unit Manager, Resource Economics, with the Department of Energy in Wellington in 1991. Nevertheless, the Philippines touches all that live there – not least for the warmth and simplicity of the ordinary people.
We grew to love people like Carlito, our driver, Inday the masseuse, and our maids Amparo (Parang), Celia and Delia.
It is a place of vast contrasts in wealth, wacky humour and constant insecurity – there is never a dull moment. Visitors are told, if they complain, ‘the Philippines spent 400 years in a Spanish monastery and then 50 years in Hollywood as a US colony – what do you expect?’ To this extent, I have to admit to missing it when I left – and I got quite teary and misty-eyed when I first returned in 1999 as a balikbayan (home-comer) to undertake consulting assignments with ADB. As the old adage goes ‘God wanted Jesus to be born in the Philippines – but they couldn’t find three Wise Men – and they couldn’t find a Virgin’!
WORK ASSIGNMENTS DURING THIS PERIOD
Asia Region Asian Development Bank 1991 Development Economist Evaluated problems and alternative approaches surrounding the preparation of meaningful ex-post evaluation assessments for projects by the ADB
Asia / World 1991 Development Economist / Senior Development Policy Officer Evaluated and compared the comparative disbursement profiles for ADB and World Bank projects across the entire range of development loan sectors
Philippines Asian Development Bank 1990 Development Economist Evaluated macro-economic and sector adjustment problems and the success of associated policy initiatives and responses for the Philippine economy, with particular emphasis on the transition of the economy 1985-90
Philippines Asian Development Bank 1989-90 Development Economist / Policy & Institutional Development Specialist Member of Secretariat for comprehensive review of the role, functions and structure of the Asia Development Bank in the 1990s by a high level international panel of experts, including Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
India Asian Development Bank / Economic Development Institute of the World Bank1990-1 Development Economist / Policy Specialist ADB Manager of Regional Technical Assistance project on the Policy Innovation in Rural Poverty Alleviation in South Asia (in collaboration with EDI).
Myanmar Asian Development Bank 1990 Project Manager Led research, compilation and drafting of the Myanmar Country Strategy document, covering policy reviews of key sectors and recommendations for sector restructuring, policy reform and future collaboration with ADB
China Asian Development Bank / Nanjing Agricultural University / Agricultural Bank of China 1989 Development Economist / Training Manager Managed / presented 2 courses on basic price theory, agricultural pricing and policy implications of marketing through Public and Private Sector entities - for middle level managers (follow up to SEARCA course)
Philippines Asian Development Bank 1988-91 Senior Development Policy Analyst Monitored ADB policies, procedures and provisions for project and structural adjustment loans, including formal comparison of ADB and World Bank approaches to disbursement
Philippines / Asian Region Asian Development Bank / South East Asia Agricultural Research Council 1989 Development Economist / Training ManagerManaged / presented course on Agricultural Pricing and policy implications of marketing through Public and Private Sector entities - for middle level managers from SE Asia
Asian Region Asian Development Bank 1984-7 Development Economist Monitored ADB projects through the project sequence, with special focus on the design and evaluation of ADB's portfolio of agricultural projects. Conducted special investigations on application of techniques such as risk analysis.
Lao PDR Asian Development Bank 1986 Development Economist Re-evaluated and restructured ADB's Lao PDR Agricultural Support Services Project - rice milling capacity, pump irrigation from Mekong, agricultural implement factory
Philippines Asian Development Bank 1986 Development Economist Evaluated differences between market and real resource cost prices for the Philippine economy using advanced shadow pricing methodology
Thailand Asian Development Bank 1985 Development Economist Conducted review of the ADB's agricultural lending policies in Thailand as part of Country Programming
Asia Region Asian Development Bank 1984 Development Economist Evaluated alternative approaches to the use by ADB of risk analysis in the appraisal of project loans
