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[The picture on the home page was taken during a speech to the Italian Container Repairers' Association ARDIC in November 1985]

MY WORKING LIFE

My address to the ARDIC (Italian Container Repairers' Association) in November 1985 was delivered in my capacity as Secretary General of Container Aid International - a "trade union" of worldwide container repair companies, of which ARDIC was an associate member.  The strange way in which my life and career had brought me to this situation requires that we first examine my earlier employment by the Sea Containers' organisation as Far East Marketing Manager based in their Hong Kong office as well as Director of their Japan and Taiwan subsidiiaries - and this, in turn, would benefit from a description of the amusing and synchronous way in which I joined Sea Containers.

So let us go back to the beginning!

I have already described how my ambition to become a journalist, fairly early in my school career, led me via evening classes to the perfection of skills in shorthand and typewriting (and, incidentally, since it was part of the same course, book-keeping: subsequently also to prove useful in my working life).  This ability enabled me to work as a temporary secretary during my university vacations.