Philippines | April 2010

The final countdown

Thailand is in crisis and is once again hogging the world headlines when it comes to news of Southeast Asia. Filipino politicians must be heaving a collective sigh of relief because it has taken the focus of international media away from the shenanigans in the Philippines for a while. Besides which, just how many times can you report on a regime in terminal decay and still find something interesting to say?

Or is it? Filipino President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the president nobody really wanted is into the twilight of her presidency but you do not need to read the teacups to realize that she is planning to be around for a long-time yet. Indeed in all the pre-election manoeuvring that is taking place, much of it seems to centre around a president who far from making a graceful exit appears rather to be simply regrouping.

May 10 is the day that the Philippines goes to the polls to elect a new president, a new vice president and a plethora of other officials. More than fifty million voters—16.5 percent more than in 2004—spread across 76,300 precincts will choose from over 85,000 candidates who are seeking 17,943 national and local posts. By any yardstick that is an enormous undertaking to manage and this time around the entire exercise will be automated for the first time. Knowing the poor track record of the poll oversight body, COMELEC, many observers doubt that the computerized vote tallying will be either credible or accurate.

The presidential race is now dominated by three candidates of which Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, son of the late president Corazon Aquino is the front runner and, if recent polls are to be believed, is increasing an already commanding lead. In second place is property tycoon, Manuel "Manny" Villar while running third is former president Joseph "Erap" Estrada who says he is running for no other reason than he wants to be president again. Knowing the mentality of the man, it is probably as good a reason as any, after all his time guarding the till was cut short. Others believe he may have dealt with the devil and is running as the administration's secret weapon—to take the votes of the poor away from Noynoy. The question is a valid one but the answer is that we don't know. In this toxic environment anything is possible.

Running well behind the front-runners is the administration's official candidate Gilberto Tedoro Jr. Tedoro was only ever given an outside chance and news that the Arroyo family is actually secretly bankrolling the campaign of Villar in what has now become popularly known as the Villarroyo candidacy has further muddied the waters—if that were possible. The undercurrent of opinion is that if elections have to be held, President Arroyo will do whatever she can to ensure that Aquino does not get the presidency so that whoever succeeds her will guarantee her safety from litigation over her failings.

But what if he does win? With Mrs Arroyo and many of her family standing for Congress and with the institutions of governance so weakened over the term of her presidency, a power struggle between Congress and the Administration looks increasingly inevitable in that instance. Not content to be an elder statesperson, Arroyo is standing for seat in Congress where it is believed she wants first the speakership and after that the prime ministership if she can engineer a switch to parliamentary government. Giving up her power is farthest from her mind. As one respected newspaper put it in its editorial "For Ms Arroyo, the speakership represents the one thing she craves most, which is power, and the one thing she needs most, which is impunity. She will do anything to get it."

The watchword is "impunity." As the election heads into the home strait, President Arroyo is remaining true to form. Despite her professions of pious faith, meant to ensure the Catholic hierarchy remains on her side (although in some quarters even that is now doubt), consider some of the other irregularities that have surfaced in the past month.

Firstly, the newly appointed Secretary of Justice, no less than her former election lawyer, Alberto Agra, has cleared Governor Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and acting Maguindanao Vice Governor Akmad Ampatuan of murder charges in the massacre of 57 people from a rival political faction late last year. This has been described in the press as President Arroyo's "debt service" (utang na loob) to the Ampatuan family for their past loyalty and for delivering the vote to Arroyo in the 2004 election. The actions of Secretary Agra have been universally condemned in the local press and Mrs. Arroyo herself has disingenuously called for a review of his decision, but it is looking increasingly unlikely that the Ampatuans will ever stand trial; instead some lower-level flunkies will be made scapegoats for the massacre. Given the transactional nature of this presidency has a further deal been struck to ensure that areas of Mindanao under the control of the Ampatuan clan deliver votes this time around in accordance with the wishes of the Arroyos? The question is being asked.

Secondly, the senior Amapatuan, despite being held in detention, was given the courtesy of holding a press conference from his cell. The press conference he called had nothing to do with his case; rather it was called to announce the support of the Ampatuans for the Noynoy campaign. Now, given that all of this had to be cleared with Malacañang Palace, the only logical explanation for this is that by associating himself with the Aquino campaign, Aquino would be tarnished in the process. If that was the plan, then it appears to have backfired.

Despite ongoing concern at the lack of transparency in the automated vote counting system and continued questions over the accuracy of the machines being used, COMELEC, has again dismissed calls for a parallel manual count to match the computerized tallying claiming this is unnecessary. Since no politician ever loses an election in the Philippines, the stage is being set for some massive disputes to arise. Furthermore the poll body has once again been mired in scandal with new revelations of further rigged contract bidding.

Finally, or at least finally for purpose of this essay, came the news that the seats reserved in the Philippine lower house for marginalized constituents—the so-called "party list" seats—have been hijacked by the political elite. At least 15 party-list groups have been linked to people close to the Arroyo administration thereby ensuring that instead of standing for the poor and dispossessed as was the intention when the present Constitution was framed, these votes in Congress will form part of the Arroyo bloc. Under President Arroyo's watch, the marginalized have become marginalized even further.

We haven't mentioned here the so-called "midnight appointments" but we covered that topic earlier. For a country that takes seriously the concept of delicadenza, the president has none of it.

All of these tales (and they are only the tip of the iceberg) merely reinforces the "culture of impunity" which has pervaded the later years of the Arroyo government just as it did during the Marcos years. As one respected commentator wrote "the rich grab what they want and the poor grant what they must. Thus abuses proliferate, both by state and by insurgents. "

Or as another commentator put it:

"Many of us are stunned by Ms Arroyo's cavalier attitude toward institutions. Unlike ordinary mortals, she seems simply not awed by them. Clearly, her staying power as a politician resides in this-that she looks at the law not as a moral guide but merely as a tool of politics. ... That her weapons of choice, ultimately, are coercion and remuneration. Not since Marcos has the nation seen a politician quite like her.

In the past it has taken up to 60 days to tally the nationwide vote during which time the entire country was in a surrealistic twilight state. This time a result is expected within 48 hours. It may not be the result expected but if will be a result. If we can try and find anything positive in all of this it is that the suspense will be short-lived. Within the week after the election we will know whether order and calm will prevail or whether Thailand will start to look like a Sunday School picnic compared to the mayhem that could be unleashed in the Philippines.

The irresistible force is about to meet the immovable object.

Bouncing back

Taiwan | April 2010

For the "old China hands" news in recent weeks from Taiwan has provided us with a refreshing blast from the past. After all the doom and gloom or recent months there was an air of familiarity about the recent newspaper headlines such as we have not seen for a long time.

True with the Republic of China due to celebrate its centennial later this year, announcement that the slogan for the occasion would be "100 Years of Excellence" seemed to be more appropriate to a venerated department store than a country that has become an Asian wűnderkinder, but then, perhaps after all that is what Taiwan is all about. Democracy, liberty and personal freedom are all very well but it is the ring of the cash registers and (these days) the swiping of the credit card that give people here the warm fuzzies. And after all, talking about democracy and freedom under Ma Ying-jeou are tantamount to treason and best left off the agenda lest someone across the water gets offended.

So for a change, it is good news month! Firstly there is news that Taiwan's economy appears to be well and truly out of the recessionary tailspin of recent times and is once more gaining altitude. All major economic indicators have rebounded, the economy is in expansionary mode and activity has returned to pre-crisis levels. Importantly, consumer confidence is also increasing despite a doggedly high unemployment rate. Unemployment is coming down but only slowly and is proving to be the laggard in the recovery process. Nevertheless unemployment has fallen to a 14-month low but is predicted to remain above five percent for the rest of the year.

Most economic think tanks have again revised their economic growth targets for this year. The Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) is now forecasting GDP expansion of 5.11 percent year-on-year for 2010, while the other government think tank, the Chung Hua Institute of Economic Research is punting on 4.99 percent. The IMF set heads turning with its announcement in the latest World Economic Outlook report that it expected Taiwan to achieve a 6.5 percentage point growth. Amongst these heady announcements, the government is being a little more circumspect; the Council for Economic Planning and Development is saying that it expected the economy to grow "by at least five percent."

When Taiwan comes out of recession it does not mess around, it is bouncing back with a vengeance.

Exports are now expected to grow by 26.83 percent over the course of the year to US$258.3 billion, according to the TIER. This exceeds the previous estimate of a 10.51 percent increase to US$225.1 billion, by a wide margin.

This optimistic forecast comes on the strength or a rapid rebound in export sales during the first quarter. In March alone exports rose US$7.8 billion, or by 50.1 percent, year-on-year to $23.4 billion; while imports were up US$9.74 billion, or 80.3 percent to $21.9 billion. These were the highest levels recorded since the onset of the global financial crisis. The trade surplus reached US$1.5 billion in March according to the official figures.

Looking at the first quarter as a whole, exports rose by US$21.28 billion, or 52.5 percent from a year ago, to US$61.8 billion. This was the second-highest figure for that period in Taiwan's history. With export activity strengthening, local manufacturers are taking the opportunity to retool and reinvest in plant and equipment. This in turn is driving imports, which were up US$25.1 billion, or 78.4 percent, year-on-year for the quarter. Now admittedly, with the economy mired in recession this time last year, these numbers are influenced by the low base effect but it does mean that Taiwan's export driven economy is back on track—and in the fast lane.

Exports to China, including Hong Kong, rose to a record US$10.26 billion in March, accounting for 43.9 percent of total exports, followed by ASEAN at 14.4 percent and Europe at 10.5 percent.

Export orders in contrast to shipments are a means of looking ahead at the position in coming months. Again the figures are pleasing. Taiwan's export orders in March grew by 43.66 percent from a year earlier to US$34.39 billion. Reportedly this was the highest total in the Taiwan's history and came on the back of strong demand from Asia-Pacific markets for Taiwan's sophisticated electronic products. For the first quarter of the year, total orders amounted to US$92.2 billion—up by almost 50 percent from the same period last year and 28 percent higher than in the final quarter of 2008.

For the first quarter, total orders amounted to US$92.17 billion, up 49.31 percent from the same period last year and 28.03 percent higher than the previous quarter.

Foreign exchange reserves reached a record high of $355 billion topped only by China, Japan and Russia and higher that Korea, Hong Kong and India.

Now these are the numbers that Taiwanese like to hear.

Despite all the good news coming out of the statistical bureau, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was quick to sound a cautionary note claiming that Taiwan's export competitiveness had steadily declined over the past nine years in comparison with its major trade competitors, especially the other Asian tigers. Of course, this was meant to signal the need for Taiwan to sign the economic cooperation framework agreement with China (ECFA) which, so the government claims, will ensure Taiwan will not be marginalized in the wake of the creation of the ASEAN Plus One (China) free trade area.

Others disagree claiming that despite the agreement between China and ASEAN, Taiwan's economy is proving exceptionally resilient—as the latest export figures show. The fear is the hub and spoke effect whereby Taiwan's future exports to ASEAN would be funnelled through China rather than allowing Taiwan to continue to deal directly with its ASEAN neighbours.

The problem with any proposed agreement with China is that the "devil is in the detail" and the government has been rather coy about revealing any of the detail. It hopes that the framework agreement will be ready for signature within the next two months but President Ma has repeatedly ducked questions as to whether it will be put to the legislature for ratification or not. The implication is that it will not.

What is in the proposed agreement is still a matter of conjecture. Since negotiations are still underway and the issue has such sensitivity—very few people are neutral about it; most have either strong views in favour or strong views against—this is understandable. Much has been made of the so-called "early harvest" provisions which, so the government claims, will bring early benefits to Taiwan by reducing tariffs on a number of items—but so far we do not know which. President Ma has stated that the agreement will not allow Chinese agricultural items into Taiwan thereby protecting Taiwan's own farmers; nor will it allow Chinese labour into Taiwan. Probably it does not need to do so because already most Taiwanese factories are located on the Chinese mainland anyhow. If there has been any rational debate in the local press it has been over the investment conditions, and more precisely, the laws that limit China's state-owned corporations investing into Taiwanese companies. Already China is circumventing these conditions by investments through Hong Kong companies to gain greater leverage in Taiwan's commercial and financial sector.

So is the ECFA a Trojan horse, a gun to Taiwan's head or a panacea to solve all problems? You can find it described as all of these and much more. One thing is certain however, President Ma intends to push it through at whatever cost. People can do nothing other than watch and hope that it will not be a replica of the closer economic partnership agreement Chine signed with Hong Kong.

And now for something completely different...

Ask any visitor to the Queensland Gold Coast what they like about the place and invariably the answer will be "the beaches." Australia has a huge coastline with many fine beaches but perhaps nowhere else does the carefree lifestyle that centres around sun and surf mix so easily with city convenience as it does on the Gold Coast.

It is after all Australia's most rapidly growing city. With a population of more than 500,000 now (2010) but which is expected to grow to more than 750,000 by 2030, it has transformed the area from almost nothing but mangroves in the space of 30 years. It was only a short while ago that development first started with the opening of the "Pink Poodle" – the first motel on the Gold Coast and which can still be seen on the Gold Coast Highway at Broadbeach – but not for much longer it seems; even that icon will soon give way to redevelopment.

The Gold Coast is strung out for 37 kilometres from Paradise Point in the north to Coolangatta in the south, But looking at the urban area from east to west, the width of development is barely 10 kilometres, leaving aside the communities nestled in the surrounding bush. It is the close proximity of the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range that hems development into this narrow ribbon.

And this is the hidden charm of the Gold Coast – known as the "hinterland" that for many locals provides the real appeal. There are not many places in Australia or elsewhere for that matter that you are so close to so much convenience and so much natural beauty – and, if needed, Brisbane is less than an hour away on one of the best motorways in Australia.

So when we have visitors, as we did last week, we make a point of showing them not only the beaches but also the lush green hinterland which after the heavy rains of recent weeks is looking particularly magnificent. There are many communities nestled in the surrounding hills and valleys and more often than not these villages are host to vibrant artisan communities from potteries to art galleries, folk museums and tea rooms.

One of our favourite "tours" for out-of-towners is to drive the Gold Coast Springbrook Road. To drive the full distance from Mudgeeraba to the Springbrook National Park is a 27 kilometre drive which, through the winding road will take a journey time of around one hour, despite the good road conditions. Along the way there are a number of places of interest, tea rooms and restaurants and usually we don't drive the entire length of the road opting instead to stop, relax and enjoy the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. One such place, Polly's Kitchen, is a particular favourite of ours. It is an older style Queensland house converted into a restaurant and sitting out on its wide wooden verandas overlooking the bush is one of the best ways to spend an afternoon that I can think of. Sadly though it is only open three days a week – from Friday to Sunday – as we discovered last week when we decided it would make a perfect place for lunch. Because it was a Thursday, the place was closed.

Because our visitor had a plane to catch later that day we decided not to venture further and turned the car around. "Plan B" was to lunch at the Palms Beach Surf Life Saving Club where we are members and which provides an equally pleasant opportunity to sit on the veranda and dine al fresco but instead of the bush and the birds, you have the sea and the seabirds. The advantage of Palm Beach is that it is just a hop, skip and jump to the nearby Gold Coast Airport.

When we turned the car around that day, we did not have "Plan C". But very quickly another alternative presented itself to us and we are so glad we took it.

Driving back along the Springbrook road we noticed a number of cars parked off the road but without any obvious sign of a restaurant; curious and hopeful that something undiscovered lay ahead, we turned in. We had found the Tokonoma Gallery and Green House. What a surprising and charming find!

Tokonoma is unique; at least I have not discovered a place similar to it anywhere around here. It combines a modern Japanese-style art gallery with a fusion restaurant that presents Australian and Japanese flavours in an interesting combination and in a manner that only the Japanese can do – exquisitely!

There were three of us checking in for lunch last week and we opted for a veranda table overlooking the greenery. There was plenty of custom; both Australian families and ladies of Japanese extraction enjoying the afternoon with their friends. The chef was a Japanese Australian who looked decidedly Japanese but who spoke with a broad Aussie accent. He told us he had been in Australia since the age of 11 and trained as a chef in one of the top Japanese restaurants on the Gold Coast before striking out on his own.

My wife ordered Japanese style curry as she needed her "rice fix" for the day. I had been craving pizza all week and opted for the Teriyaki Chicken pizza with avocado topping and our visitor took the salad bowl. Sadly, and this was my only gripe, there were no diet or low calorie drinks available (other than the green tea) so I opted for a skinny Cappuccino. It was a good choice.

The meal was very reasonably priced and lunch for three people including drinks came in just under $60.

We dawdled over our meal as sitting at our table outside on a warm autumn day with a gentle breeze flowing along the wooden balcony gave us little incentive to move.

As a result we did not have time properly to explore the art gallery, the main part of which was located on the floor below; but we did manage to venture a glimpse of some of the exhibits on our way through.

As a place to view (and buy) modern Japanese art this place has no rival locally. The gallery housed a good collection of both traditional ink on paper, paintings on canvas as well as carved artefacts using Australian woods.

Tokonoma will now become part of our own tour itinerary for those friends visiting us on the Gold Coast. Sadly though while it has slightly better opening hours than our previous favourite, it is still only doing business from Wednesday to Sunday between the hours of 10am and 4 pm.

We did not ask if they had a breakfast menu but it would be a perfect place to stop by for an early or late snack on the way to the Purlingbrook Falls at Springbrook. With a round trip of less than 100 km, finding a better day out away from the beaches would be hard to find.

Preface to my new book – Effective writing | Combining creativity with productivity

As you may have seen already, this manual is dedicated to my former English teacher at Marion High School in South Australia, Mrs. Durney (or was it Gurney? – fifty years is a long time) who first encouraged me to write. My top three subjects at school were English, Geography and Physics and those subjects seem to have dogged me throughout my life. I went to Adelaide University, studied Science/Engineering (subjects that in the sixties were deemed more useful than writing and map reading) and when I was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to undertake a Ph.D., the engineering side fell away.

For my postgraduate years I moved into a university college (Kathleen Lumley on Finnis Street or "Mum Lum" as we affectionately called her) and enjoyed the student life to the full. Many of my friends came from the Zoology Department and a life transforming experience occured one evening when they returned from the bush with a dead emu in the back of the departmental ute. They had run over it in their vehicle some miles north of Adelaide (that at least was the story). "What to do with a dead emu?" was the question being tossed around and the obvious answer came from one of our number who asked rhetorically "I wonder what it tastes like?" For the next week, the dead emu was strung up in the men's shower block "to cure" much to the consternation of those among us who were not "in" on the background to the story.

One week later, on a balmy Adelaide Sunday evening a group of us gathered in the college courtyard, donned our dinner jackets, fetched our escorts and sat down al fresco to eat the slow-roasted emu. It was a memorable evening for two reasons: firstly it kindled in me a love of cooking—a passion that has stayed with me thoughout my life— and especially well-tempered dinner parties with fine home-cooked food, good companionship and copious amounts of red wine to lubricate the occasion; and secondly because my date that evening was a beautifal young woman, a nurse from the Adelaide Hospital by the name of Roma Carboni. Roma was a striking young woman of Mediteranean extraction; quite tall with beautiful long legs that she displayed to advantage, jet black hair that flowed down to her waist and piercing eyes that made her the look like the younger sister of Nana Mouskouri. At last, she had consented to go out with me. Yes, it was a memorable evening, but the rest I will leave to your imagination for a while.

The point in starting this book with a story is simply to stress that there are such stories in all of us. Many of them will never be written down or passed on. What a great pity. In this age of e-mail, voice-mail and Twitter, the art of writing anything beyond a shorthand message "CU L8er" is slowly passing from many of us. Yet, being able to marshall our thoughts and write something that will be both informative and pleasurable for the intended readership is, like cooking, a skill worth cultivating; especially for those of you studying at (or for) college and called upon to write term papers, academic reports or thesis dissertations; or for that matter, those of you in business where you may be the member of your team tagged to draft the annual report or corporate compliance document. Learning to write is a skill worth cultivating.

With the power of modern word-processing programs, especially Word 2007 which is a writer's dream (I'm a computer program and Word 2007 was my idea) writers and editors now have high quality tools at their disposal to help them in organising, writing and tracking their work. My own experience as an editor suggests that few authors realise the full extent of the tools they now have and use their computer keyboard in much the same way as they did the typewriter of old. Breaks at the end of each line instead of allowing word wrap to do its job and indents using the tab key or space bar are very common and it was traits such as these that first gave me the idea that many writers may need help.

But I have digressed somewhat and must first finish telling my own story. During my final year at college and no doubt because of my culinary skills and ability to quaff Coonawarra Claret (as it was then called) by the bottle, I was elected President of the Adelaide University Postgraduates Association. Aside from getting to carry the ceremonial mace at the annual graduation ceremony, my chief role was to nag at the government in Canberra to give more money to postgraduate scholars. I must have been a pain in the neck because I was deemed good public service material and was invited unexpectedly to apply for a trainee diplomat position with the then Department of Foreign Affairs. Out of 1500 applicants they took forty that year and I was one of the lucky ones. I spent a year being retrained as a political and economic analyst before being shipped off to Vienna to learn German and work with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Subsequently, my diplomatic career took me to Hong Kong to spend three years as a China-watcher. Those were the days when the China Daily (or Xinhua Times as it was then called) carried banner headlines such as "Chairman Hua Guofeng urges cadres to firmly grasp electricity" and the other memorable one that I saved for many years "Chairman Hua Guofeng urges Xiangzhi peasants to go all out to promote rape".

I well recall my first visit to China when I was taken to watch a local Shanghai ballet by my minder
(... I mean "tour guide") and sat three hours in agony through a concert which was titled "Vigilently kill all American imperialists and their capitalist running dogs". If this was not enough, it was performed entirely by a group of precocious 10-year olds carrying rifles and wearing uniforms of the People's Liberation Army. How times change.

No, actually the incident above was the second most excrutiating experience of my diplomatic life. The very experience was in Budapest on a consular visit during my Vienna days where I was kindly given VIP seats to the Budapest Circus by the protocol department of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. How they took their revenge on the West at that time!! Dear reader, never sit in the front row of a circus especially if you are within touching distance of a herd of performing elephants each one experiencing flatulence from their last meal of fodder as they posed on one leg for the crowd. The occurrence was excrutiating and, in my entire life, I have never held my breath as long as I did during that performance. And all throughout, for the honour of Australia, I kept a smile on my face. If anything was worth an AO I reckon that was but the letter never came.

After Hong Kong, I spent almost four years in Seoul, Korea. For one year I was a language student and for the other three I worked as Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy. I was the best Korean speaker in the embassy for much of the time and was judged to be an "intermediate speaker" by my language school. The truth finally came rudely home when I was about to leave and at a farewell dinner hosted by some good Korean friends, the wife of the host turned to me and said in perfect English: "Dr Clancy, you try so very hard to speak Korean and we admire you for that. But, I have to tell you, you speak it like a four-year old." At that point I decided I was not a linguist and had better stick to English as my medium of communication for the future.

In 1988 I decided to strike out on my own. I had been smitten by the dynamism of Asia and the transformation that was occuring on Australia's doorstep. It was an exciting place and the region where I wanted to be. Had I stayed in DFAT I reckoned I was overdue for a stint in deepest Africa or worse as the consul in Los Angeles ("The Ambassador to Disneyland" as the post was called).

So I parted ways with the Australian Government and became master of my own destiny. I spent ten years in Taipei, Taiwan—a place I had often overflown but never been able to visit and which I thought was little understood by Australia. With the opening of China I saw Taiwan as crucial to North Asia's future. Alas, I had overlooked the even greater potential of Shanghai. Business went well for a while although as Shanghai boomed many of my clients left town. It is a place I remember with affection but the beginning of the end came for me on 30 June 1997 when a group of us assembled on the roof of the Ritz Landis Hotel on Min Chuan East Road to bid farwell to Hong Kong as we knew her. At that gathering one dear Canadian friend of mine, in introducing me to a newcomer to the town, turned to me and said to the newbie: "... and this is Mike Clancy, he is one of the old hands; he will never leave." Thank you Lee, you gave me another of my life-changing epiphanies. The following day I got up, made coffee and started to plan my exit strategy.

My business at that time was primarily in the area of market research and risk analysis and I had done some work for The Economist drafting specialised EIU reports related to Taiwan. Through that connection I had been approached by the Butterworth Heineman Group out of Singapore to write a "Business Guide to Taiwan", an assignment I accepted with alacrity. It took almost a year to write but was another formative experience—it opened me to the world of publishing.

Writing that first book required a lot of background research as well as data entry and with one of my friends from Sydney days now resident in the Philippines I opened a small office there to process data and key in all the spreadsheet information I needed for my book. That gave me the idea to relocate from Taipei to Manila, a transition that was two years in the making. I actually arrived in Manila in January 2001 on the same day that the Philippine Senate, investigating the shenanigans of then President Estraa voted not to open the Jose Velarde envelopes. It was a short-lived victory for the Estrada camp and one that quickly backfired. Less than a month later he was deemed to have resigned the presidency. So began a rambunctious decade living in Southeast Asia.

I stayed in the Philippines for more than eight years, met and married my second wife and became friends with some of the most generous and wonderful people on the planet. Sadly, however, it is a country bedevilled by politics and can never quite get ahead. It is either a country you love to hate or a country you hate to love and I was one of the latter. Our business prospered there in a quiet sort of way and for the last four years our small company was the local franchisee of Corporate Network, a business-to-business service of Economist Intelligence Unit. I continued to write my monthly newsletter on Taiwan that I had started in 1998 and in 2001 added to it a similar newsletter on the Philippines. Both of these I publish to the present day through NewNations.com an online NGO dedicated to democracy and transparency, especially in the emerging economies. Having been infected with the bug, I now find the discipline of writing to be quite therapeutic.

Our company included a small team of research analysts whose work I supervised and edited. Aside from producing a business guide to the Philippines as well as regular business reports for our members, we also founded the Philippine Business Review, a journal dedicated to showcasing the best of the country. I also began writing and editing under contract and that allowed me to develop my own exit strategy. In 2008 I left the company behind me and struck out on my own once more as an independent writer and editor with contracts from the Asian Development Bank and the International Labour Organization.

My life has come full circle. I now live on the Gold Coast, Australia with my wife of eight years and after a lifetime of learning geography the hard way, I am now making my living as a writer and editor, specialising in scientific and technical subjects along with political and economic analysis. Having worked over the past eighteen months full-time with authors whose first language is not English, and finding some of them quite suspicious of editors (we are not as bad as we are made out to be) I saw a need for a handbook written by editors for authors.

If i learned one thing from living in Asia, it was never to confront a person directly with criticism; rather make your point indirectly. The first handbook on effectrive writing, prepared for the Manila Office of the ILO in 2009 was the result of that approach to dealing with problems. Now back in Australia, I have been encouraged to "Australianise" the original piece and develop it as a course that can be used to train people in the art of writing—or at least give them some ideas to think about. So in the final quarter of 2009 I sat down to start the rewrite. Since the ADB uses US English and Chicago Style while the ILO uses British English and UN style; as a good editor, I used this as an oportunity to reaquaint myself with Australian English and learn about Australian style. I also reengineered the material somewhat so that it could provide the basis for a short course in effective writing.

So it has taken me four pages, about 2,500 words and forty years but that is the story of how I came to write this book. We all have our stories. I hope I can encourage you to tell yours.

Michael Clancy
Mermaid Waters, Queensland 4218

January 2010

PS. Emu meat is quite strong but tastes very good; alas Roma moved on to greener pastures and I did not see her again.