Papua New Guinea, or P.N.G., as I will refer to the country from now on, is known as “The Land Of The Unexpected,” and it certainly lived up to its reputation, as far as I was concerned.
My first surprise after being met at the ram-shackled airport (which has since been upgraded) and driven to the office by my future flatmate was that I had to climb up six flights of stairs in complete darkness due to a power cut, which rendered the lifts useless. This was no great coincidence as the power went off for several hours at a time, about twice a week on average.
I was ushered into an office, where I was introduced to my immediate boss, a junior partner called Ho. He was an Australian of Chinese extraction. After we had shaken hands, he accompanied me out to a balcony. “Currently, this is the tallest building in Port Moresby he said but in two or three months, when the building is completely finished, we are moving down to occupy the seventh and eighth floors of the building you can see down the hill to our right, on the shores of the harbor. The eighth-floor conference room we are planning will have a great view over the harbor, where you will be able to see the remains of an Australian ship that the Japenese bombed during the war. Across the road is The Travelodge, the biggest hotel in Port Moresby, or “POM” as it is more commonly known. We all cheekily use their car park when we are in the office. Down the hill to our left is Ela Beach and the open sea. Sail southwest from there, and you’ll land on the Northeast coast of Far North Queensland in Australia. Now let’s go to your computer room.”
There, I discovered that the computer that the original advert for the job had stated that the Chartered Accounting company made “considerable use of” was still in the box it had been delivered in. “Oh, that was just a misprint in the advert,” Ho blurted out after I quizzed him on it. Yeah, and pigs can fly,” I thought to myself.
My future boss quickly changed the subject. “The smaller box next to the computer is the U.P.S. You must use that all the time,” he said.
“A U.P.S., what the hell is that?” I asked.
“The letters stand for ‘Uninterruptible Power Supply,” he answered. “As you have already experienced, power cuts are a common event, but with the U.P.S. between the wall socket and the computer, it will provide enough electricity to enable the computer to run for an additional ten minutes or so, which gives you and your operators enough time to back up your work and turn the computer off properly, so you don’t lose anything.”
Once I, with the help of my two future operators, who had been employed a few days earlier and had spent their time reading manuals, had unpacked the computer, the three consoles a printer and the U.P.S., we were, surprisingly enough able to put the “jigsaw” together without too much difficulty. When speaking to me, the girls spoke in perfect English, but when they conversed with each other, they used a language that sounded to me like a blend of English and French with some completely unfamiliar words thrown into the mix. Little did I know then that twenty years later, I would be 95% fluent in the unifying language of P.N.G., Melanesian Pidgin. Both girls turned out to be excellent operators and assistants. I could not have had two better subordinates anywhere in the world.
During the setup process, I discovered my first hard drive. It was 14 inches in diameter, 2 inches thick, and had to be screwed into the computer using a special plastic handle. Its capacity was a “huge” 5 Megabytes. That seemed mammoth to me at the time. Though its capacity was tiny compared to today’s standard drives, it was big enough to store the whole accounting program, so my days of sitting, doing nothing but changing program discs at the whim of the computer were finally over.
When data was being worked on, it was held on the second hard drive. However, only three clients could be held on the data dive simultaneously, one for each monitor, so data not being worked on was still backed up on 7-inch floppies. This meant that creating and maintaining a system of backups was extremely important.
It took me all of six months to get my little department running anywhere near as smoothly as I wanted it to run. Several of the problems that had to be faced and overcome were:
- The accounts numbering format was completely different from the one I had known in England, so the standard chart of accounts I had developed in London had to be modified a great deal. The new format offered much more flexibility than the old one. Looking ahead and visualizing how best to utilize this flexibility was challenging.
- The formatting system was again completely different from the one I had known before, not to mention much more difficult. More akin to actual programming than anything else. The layout of standard accounts, which followed Australian standards, also differed a little from British standards. I had to start almost from square one when it came to creating standard formats.
- Then there were the tasks I had to do because I was in a developing country with limited access to knowledgeable support. For example, during the first six months, as Ho had warned me would happen, we moved to the new office near the harbor. It was left to me to order an Australian fire-proof safe in which to store the floppy disks containing clients’ data. Before authorizing the purchase, I had to ask how much the safe weighed. Then I had to contact the architects of the building we were moving into to check if the seventh floor would support such a weight. I was told that it would support the weight, but that it would be necessary to place the safe against the outside wall next to one of the upright concrete pillars that supported the whole building. I will never forget that half-hour when I witnessed ten young Papua New Guineans, in BARE FEET, manhandle the heavy safe up in the lift and then to its designated resting place. My heart was in my mouth during the whole procedure, as I expected a scream of pain at any moment. I needn’t have worried as all the boys were able to leave unharmed after the safe was in position.
- And so the list went on and on.
However, after about six months, my girls were almost able to run the department on their own. Both my small business department and audit department colleagues knew how I wanted their information presented on the standard input forms I had designed, and, more importantly, they were beginning to see the benefits that a well-run computer department could bring to their productivity. After a long battle, I was beginning to win them over to my way of thinking.
It was time for me to spread my knowledge around the company’s other, but much smaller, offices in other parts of the country.
The company had offices in Lae, Madang, Goroka, Mount Hagen, Wewak, Rabaul, and Arawa. Over the next three and a half years, as it turned out (yes, I extended my initial two-year contract to four years and became a manager in the process), I tried to visit all of these offices at least once every three months. Some more often than others.
On these visits out of port Moresby, apart from training in the systems I had designed and the occasional specialized formatting exercises, my “expertise” was often extended further. The computers in the other offices were all smaller than the one in the main office, but they were all manufactured by Honeywell. There was only one Honeywell engineer in the whole of P.N.G., who, of course, was based in Port Moresby. On many occasions, I was known to spend my time in the Highlands or Islands of P.N.G., phone in one hand and screwdriver in the other, trying to follow instructions on how to fix a small mechanical problem. On these occasions, I was completely out of my “comfort zone”. However, to survive in P.N.G., all expats had to be flexible, to say the least.
The other computer development that started during my first four-year stint in P.N.G., was the advent of the first spreadsheets. Something that I took to with enthusiasm. I immediately saw the immense potential their use could have in the accounting arena, both to help with the compilation of figures and the production of reports, especially in the arena of management accounts. However, it wasn’t until I changed employers that I was able to master the art of spread-sheeting and incorporate it into my overall strategy.
Moving to a new job in a new country is, in many ways, similar to deciding to try one’s hand at Affiliate Marketing. Apart from having a basic understanding of the use of mini-computers of the day, I had no idea of the problems I was about to face, both in and out of the office. Similarly, people who take up Affiliate Marketing have little idea of what awaits them “on the other side”.
So, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, you must be flexible and be able and happy to turn your mind to solve any unexpected problems that you suddenly find are impeding your progress. In both scenarios, you must change your thoughts and beliefs about how to attack problems to the way people with more experience in the situation you find yourself in would attack similar problems, even if “your way” has worked fine in different circumstances.
For example, because of their religious beliefs, one of my girls refused to work on a Saturday morning, while the other refused to work on a Sunday morning. I had never experienced such a situation back in the U.K., where, if the three of us had to work an extra half-day to finish some urgent work, I would get the girls to agree on a day. I would go along with their choice and turn up then, as well. However, in P.N.G., religious beliefs are paramount, and I was forced to turn up on both days. You can compare this with your Affiliate Marketing mentor holding a training session that, because of time differences, would be held at a time when you would normally be asleep. If you wanted to ask a question important to you, waiting for the recording would be useless, and the only way to achieve your objective would be for you to upset your normal sleeping pattern.
Cheers
Phil