And so that’s what I was tasked with. I think that’s probably was my most important role that I did. I just kept pumping them out. And so I developed a team that we call it the creative design team. At its height, before I left, it had four architect,… Read More
Can you tell me, do you have a favorite story about him and possibly your relationship, one that makes you smile?… Read More
Not offhand, not offhand. I may think about something later, but not at the moment. So now you have the chairman support. Mm-hmm. He wants to build the zoo. Read More
How to write reports. He really talked about how to write reports. (Bernard laughing) I’m not kidding. I do it tongue-in-cheek, but he really taught me how to write reports. It just relentless, relentless corrections, corrections. I thought you were gonna give me something philosophical. I think he taught me… Read More
He drove the zoo forward. He thought about it day and night. He just wanted to just get this thing. He was his baby. He wanted it to do well. He wanted it to be successful. He wanted it to be commercially successful. He wanted it to be the best… Read More
Those were his goals. And so he pushed those and so I could see that was what he wanted to do, and so that’s what we did. And I could help tremendously by the development side, the design side. Read More
What would you say you learned the most from him?… Read More
Was it management style?… Read More
And so I started to understand that he’s actually all not bad. He’s actually quite a nice guy, but he’s just incredibly officious when he’s playing his role as chairman of the zoo. And so one has to, well, respected, of course, but I mean understand that’s the way the… Read More
Would you say he was your protector or would that be too stronger a word?… Read More
He took care of me. Protector is a good word. I would say he was also my mentor. I would say that I was the son that he had, but was not interested in the zoo. His son is to retired as chairman of Pricewaterhouse. Because we were the same… Read More
Suddenly, I see this guy who’s like so officious and suddenly standing up on his bench and shouting and applauding or telling them that they’re horrible. They should be kicked off the field. It’s just a whole new dimension to him that I hadn’t realized. And I think through those… Read More
We were staying at the Beijing Hotel, which is on Tiananmen Square. It was a beautiful old hotel where all the foreign correspondent used to stay. But it was still in the communist, very communist era when everybody’s wearing Mao jackets. And you go up to our floor and there… Read More
Initially, a very draconian character. A huge stickler for writing reports, grammar, spelling, punctuation. We’d have this thing called dispatch where we had a dispatch boy who would typed stuff and send it down to him and he would kind of go through it and send it back. The dispatch… Read More
And why is this statement so bold?… Read More
And so it’s just dealing with him was quite painful. But there was obviously a good side to him, and I really found that out when I used to travel with him. Like one day, he said, “Okay, come, we’re going to visit Zoo Negara.” Zoo Negara is the zoo… Read More
But he hated that idea of that because he was anti-colonialist, brought up under the British, detested the British, detested the fact that I actually asked half British, but accepted the fact that has half Chinese as well, and told me when I joined, don’t ever bully the director. And… Read More
How did he shape your life, your career?… Read More
What would you say your relationship was with him?… Read More
He’d seen a lot of horrible Asian zoos. And he had a very strict policy of not dressing up animals. Technically, he hated the concept of animal shows, but definitely if there were kind of chimpanzee tea parties, he had known of the chimpanzee tea parties in London and thought… Read More