One day I was lunching in Bangkok with my colleagues from the UN. There was a lull in our conversation. I asked them which Asian country do you prefer to work in? Much to my surprise, they agreed on Vietnam.          As I was about to go there to do a job for UN-Habitat, I…

There was a strong cold wintery gale blowing  in Wellington. I was cold and miserable. My phone rang. It was a Professor  Bewley from Massey University in Palmerston North.  “We need an emergency lecturer to go to the University of the South Pacific to teach agricultural extension. Some of the staff  have cleared off home…

          On Tamaki we were woken up before sunrise with a loudspeaker chanting “Wakey, wakey, rise, and shine. You’ve had your time and I’ve had mine. Hit the deck, Hit the deck, Hit the deck!”. If we were slow we were tipped out of our hammocks, and they were slung up high.           Our first…

Laos 1989 “You must be joking. No one can get into a communist country at a week’s notice. You want me to go to Laos, collect information and be back in a fortnight. The last time I went into Hanoi it took me four months to get in.” I told John Hayman.           He told…

APIA, Samoa 1980          Doug Gibbs rarely missed a trick. We were waiting in Tonga for a plane to take us to Samoa. Doug did a head count and said we should board the plane as soon as possible as there were too many passengers for the number of seats on our plane. We made…

Jaffna in Sri Lanka 1978         When you see a platoon of soldiers pointing rifles at you it does tend to focus the mind. This happened not once,  but three times on our eight-hour drive from Kandy to Jaffna.          At the time we did not realize it but we must have been one of…

Moss Memories 7 – P.N.G 1987        One morning my phone rang and a  voice said he was calling from the Finance Department, in Port Moresby.           The Government of Papua New Guinea is running a planning conference and they wanted me to come over and make a presentation.  I have never been to PNG,…

When I was first asked to present a paper at their annual conference at the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center,  for Asian and the Pacific, in Taipei I was flattered to have been asked.  I was curious to find out how this country had been turned around from a food importing country to a strong…

Q & A – Moss Memories –  Memorable Events -5 The March-Past If I had a motto I would chose  –‘ Never a dull moment.’ It’s hard for me to believe the unexpected things that have happened in my life. In 1979 I was invited by the U.N. and the Government of Sri Lanka to…

We lived in Bangkok for eighteen months. We rented a nice little two-bedroom apartment in a guarded compound largely occupied by people working for United Nations organizations. Our compound was a very pleasant place with gardens and a swimming pool. It even had a tennis court. It was situated in an affluent area handy to…