This is Michael in Sarawak in the 1960s helping to hold back the Indonesian army who were determined to destroy the ambitions of the country’s first prime minister. Tunku Abdul Rahman’s establishment of Malaysia. I had in those early years ambitions to be a journalist and for my first employment worked in the London offices’ of the popular magazine Illustrated. I inexplicably left after a few months and took up employment with a local Middlesex printers. It was here that I first met my future wife who was then just fifteen years of age. That was just the first of several fateful happenings that seemed to map out my future life, including how I first discovered the lovely island of Penang.