Robert Bell of PriceWaterhouse Hong Kong had phoned me in Samoa to see if I was available to head up a team of consultants to the Penang Port Commission. Never one to baulk at a new challenge, I accepted - without ever pondering what a beautiful job and life in Samoa I was giving up for the cut and thrust of short-term consulting work with one of the biggest management consulting firms in the world. After a night's stop-over on Nauru, we arrived in Penang in early April and booked into the grand old E & O Hotel which faces the Strait of Malacca and is one of three gracious hotels built by the Armenian Sarski Brothers at the beginning of the 20th century: the Raffles in Singapore, the Strand in Rangoon, and the Eastern & Oriental in Penang.