Mr Wong Goes West Read online

  ‘Thursday? This week? In Hong Kong? Better be plenty big money. I don’t have time to go to Hong Kong just for small thing.’

  Joyce theatrically raised both thumbs. ‘Trust me, boss man, it’s biiiig money. It’s gotta be. I told him we only travelled business class and he just kept talking. Didn’t phase him at all.’

  ‘Business class? We don’t travel business class.’

  ‘I know, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.’

  Wong scratched his chin. ‘Good. You tell him to give us money for business class tickets. We go economy and I keep the other money.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that. But can’t we go business class just this once? I’ve never been business class anywhere—well, except with my dad, but I was too young to remember.’

  ‘We go economy.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  Wong was wondering whether he could let his hopes rise, just a little bit. Perhaps there was some potential money here? How rich was the British Trade Commission? ‘The assignment is what?’

  She started rifling through her shapeless bag—a knock-off Louis Vuitton from Shenzhen—and brought out a copy of Time magazine. ‘It’s this,’ she said. She opened the magazine to a double-page spread showing a picture of a large passenger aircraft.

  ‘Airplane? We don’t do feng shui of airplanes. Airplanes are moving transports. They have no feng shui.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been in this game a while now, haven’t I? But we do feng shui of venues, don’t we? Listen to this. The British Trade Commission is having an important meeting on that plane and they want it to be perfect. They’re meeting reps of airlines from east Asia, mostly Chinese, and they wanna make sure there are no protocol mistakes or cross-cultural errors. This is the most expensive aircraft in the world—that’s what this mag says, anyway.’

  Now Wong was interested. The most expensive aircraft in the world. There had got to be a way of turning this into a big ticket assignment. People in aircraft sales are always dealing in amounts of hundreds of millions of US dollars. His humble fee of a few thousand Sing dollars would be small change for them. He could surely milk this for a good return.

  ‘Maybe we make exception and do feng shui reading of this aircraft for them,’ he said generously.

  ‘That’s exactly what I told the guy.’ Joyce read out a paragraph from the magazine. ‘Listen to this: “The British party, which includes several members of the aristocracy, is flying in and out of Hong Kong on a specially adapted A380 called Skyparc, which they like to describe as a flying business park, ‘Your office above the clouds’. The meeting is not only an aircraft sales presentation, but the launch of what the chief executive of Skyparc, Sir Nicholas Handey, calls ‘a new vision of flying’. Instead of the usual rows of seats, the plane has a network of multi-use spaces, including lounges, conference rooms, a theatre, two restaurants, a bar and a coffee shop. The event is combined with the launch by MB Dutch Petrochem of a new ‘green’ aviation fuel, which, the company claims, significantly lowers the carbon footprint of the traditional passenger aircraft.’’’

  Wong leaned back in his chair and considered the prospect. It had potential. But still, it was only an aircraft, which was a single, rather cramped tube. How could it be spun out into a high-earning assignment? ‘Just one aircraft? Get it ready for just one meeting? Will not take six to ten days.’

  ‘They want us to feng shui the aircraft before the meeting in Hong Kong. And then they want us to go with them in it on a journey to London.’

  ‘Go to London? Aiyeeah, no, no, no, cannot go to London. Too far. Too busy.’

  ‘What busy? We got no work. Besides, London’s not far. Just thirteen hours from Hong Kong.’

  The feng shui master pulled a face. ‘Full of foreigner.’

  ‘Well, I guess it is full of Londoners. It would be kind of hard for it not to be. But there are apparently some major cheeses on the plane. Aristocrats. They want you…um…us to go with them and feng shui their places in London.’

  Wong considered this. ‘So rich Londoners want me to do readings of their apartments?’

  ‘Not apartments. People in Britain don’t live in apartments. Houses. And mansions. And castles and things.’

  Castles sounded good. One could charge a lot for a castle. Castles must have lots of rooms. Wong rose to his feet: ‘You call man back. Make arrangements. We go tomorrow afternoon to Hong Kong. Book two economy class airfares. Tell man we invoice him for two business class airfare. Also, he pay for hotel, et cetera. I’m going out. I will start work on invoice when I get back.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to the Ah Fat’s. Get some lunch.’

  He did not want to show too much enthusiasm for Joyce’s news, but inside he was feeling distinctly excited. Daswani wanted his money in ten days. A big assignment lasting six or seven days, plus travel expenses—it might just fit the bill perfectly. Indeed, it was possible that today’s bad luck was evaporating and a period of good fortune was coming his way.

  As he trotted down the stairs of his office block, he reflected on the downside of the deal: going to London. He dreaded the idea of going to the Western world—everything he had seen of Western culture had been repulsive. The people were annoying, the culture baffling, the values shocking, and the food inedible. If he was going to have to deal with revolting Western meals for several days in a row, he would need to be well fortified.

  And that meant as many visits to Ah Fat’s Kopi House as could be squeezed into the allotted time.

  Rice was God’s comfort food. There was nothing like the taste of a piece of soft, curried potato, pressed gently with the fingertips into a ball of rice. Somehow, the creamy appeal of the spiced potato combined with the comforting taste of the white rice produced an incomparably satisfying mouthful. And then balance the hand-fashioned rice-potato ball on a piece of poppadum, add a touch of mango chutney, and toss the whole construction into one’s mouth…Joyce referred to Asian food in general as ‘carbo heaven’. Paradise it was.

  Of course, eating with one’s fingers did not come naturally to Wong; it simply wasn’t a Chinese thing, too unrefined and indelicate. But many hours of observation of the enthusiastic dining habits of his friend Dilip Kenneth Sinha had persuaded him to adopt some south Asian techniques.

  Wong was powering into a mammoth, lip-blisteringly hot curry lunch when Dilip Kenneth Sinha arrived. The feng shui master greeted his friend with a flash of his eyes, his mouth being too full to use for speech.

  ‘Aha. Practising the use of digital dining.’ The angular, black-dressed Indian astrologer clearly approved. ‘Far superior to the use of chopsticks and inestimably better than the use of forks and knives.’

  Sinha had a habit of philosophising for some minutes about any scene in which he found himself before actually becoming a participant in it. He thus sort of eased himself gently into situations with a sort of introductory lecture.

  ‘It truly astonishes me that the gourmand around the world takes inordinate care about his drinking utensils, but almost no care at all about the tools with which he takes solid food. I mean, think about it. There has been much written for decades, if not centuries, about the importance of using a good china cup for one’s tea. And there are entire books written about how slight alterations in the precise curve of a wineglass can alter the taste of the wine therein. Yet these same people, who take so much care over their drinking vessels, will taint every mouthful of food they eat throughout their long lifetimes with the taste of cold, hard metal—and never notice. For someone brought up in the south Asian tradition of dining with the fingertips, the addition of the taste of steel to curry is a tragedy. The Chinese habit of using wood or bamboo chopsticks is hardly better. Indeed, a significant number of chopsticks carry splinters, so that the wood not only spoils the taste of the food but actually adds itself to it. And then there are lacquer chopsticks, with their inherent chemical dangers.’

  As he spoke, he lowere
d himself onto a stool and felt inside his pockets. He pulled out an antiseptic wipe, which he used to carefully rub his fingers, and then he flexed his fingers in the warm, midday air to dry, before wiping them with a silk handkerchief from another pocket. At last, after a short period of silence to mentally prepare his oesophagus and stomach for what they were about to receive, he was ready to eat.

  Sinha surveyed the dishes in front of him: white potato curry, siya fish, brinjal, daal and several other garishly coloured dishes, some of which appeared to be glowing radioactively. ‘Hmm. I see you are feeling entirely south Asian today, Wong. What gives? In need of spice in your life?’

  ‘Spicy food clears my head,’ the feng shui master replied. ‘Need to think about lots of things.’

  He may have had much on his mind, but he did not share any of it immediately with his friend and fellow member of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics. For both of them, eating was a serious business, and the activity did not benefit from frivolous distractions such as conversation. Both concentrated fully on the task ahead of them: to empty the dishes on the table in the shortest possible order with maximum possible pleasure. Talk could come later.

  Less than five minutes had passed before Joyce McQuinnie arrived at Ah Fat’s with her news literally bursting out of her: ‘CF! CF. Just wait till you hear this. I called the guy back about the Hong Kong trip. Just wait until you hear this.’

  Wong looked up, chewing.

  ‘You know I said, like, there were some, like, aristocrats coming on this trip?’

  ‘Ah, Ms McQuinnie, how lovely to see you.’ Sinha half stood up and then lowered himself back into his seat and returned to plundering the dishes. The protocols of civilised behaviour had to be followed, but should never be allowed to distract one from the important things in life.

  Before Joyce could launch into her announcement, there was another distraction: the arrival of Ms Xu Chong-li, a fortune-teller who threaded her way carefully through the tables, anxious to avoid staining her clothing. Although she was a rather grand fifty-something lady who was always expensively upholstered (she had been a banker before giving it up for astrological pursuits), she loved cheap kopi house meals and was delighted to slide onto the seat next to Sinha.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ she said, waving her hand to Joyce, whowas too excited to do so. ‘And then tell us about these aristocrats. I have hobnobbed with a great many aristocrats in my days, and it may be that I am a personal friend of the ones who are due to visit you.’

  ‘Er…I don’t think so. But I’ll tell you about them anyway.’

  ‘Sit first.’

  ‘Okay, but I don’t think I want to eat anything.’ The young woman flopped down onto a stool and by habit placed her left leg through the straps of her handbag. She leaned forwards conspiratorially.

  ‘It’s a member of the royal family,’ she revealed. ‘The royal family. Or maybe two. He wouldn’t say exactly who it was, but it was someone very high up—security reasons, you know—they can’t tell us exactly. The royal family.’ Joyce vibrated like a washing machine on spin-cycle.

  Sinha gazed thoughtfully at her over the piece of fried brinjal he was just about to slip into his mouth. ‘There are many royal families on this planet, but one in particular seems to hog the headlines internationally, whether for right reasons or not, so I assume you are talking about the Windsors?’

  ‘I mean like the Queen. A member of the Queen’s family.’

  ‘Indeed, there are a great many Queens on this planet as well, including several thousand in Indonesia and even more in Africa, but the Queen of England is the lady you have in mind, I take it?’

  ‘The Queen is coming?’ Chong-li asked.

  ‘It’s not the Queen. It’s a member of her family. It could be Prince Charles, or…or one of his sons.’ Joyce’s eyes instantly glazed over.

  ‘Prince Charles coming to visit you?’ Chong-li was impressed. ‘My. That is a coup. Well done. How did you set that one up? I have often invited him, but have never had the pleasure. I thought after he lost his wife he might be tempted, but he resisted my blandishments.’

  ‘Or his sons.’

  ‘He has boys, does he? No girls? What a pity. A pretty wife he had. Girls would have been nice.’

  ‘The boys are pretty nice, too,’ said Joyce, and then blushed.

  Sinha at once noticed the reddening of her cheeks. ‘Aha. Instant scarlet. I do believe you have designs on the boys, is that right? Are you planning to let CF do the work so that you can devote yourself to seducing one of the princes from the tower for yourself?’

  Chong-li started singing: ‘One day my prince will come…’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Joyce, looking down at the table, as if there was something in its cracked vinyl-coated surface of great interest. ‘But I wouldn’t mind meeting Prince Will. He is a bit of a dish, although I don’t know if he’s really my type.’ She uttered this last phrase with patently false nonchalance.

  ‘Talking of dishes, why don’t you sample some of these?’ suggested Sinha, sweeping his hand over the plates.

  Joyce shook her head. She lived on processed snacks and coffee, and only occasionally forced herself to eat actual food. She scanned the array of weapons-grade curries with suspicion. Although she could enjoy a mild chicken tikka marsala with some white rice and a poppadum if she was feeling adventurous, the more exotic dishes repelled her British–Australian palate. They kind of had too much taste, sort of thing.

  ‘Mm…no thanks. I think I’ll just have a poppadum.’

  While the rest of them were eating, Joyce explained to them that she and Wong had just landed an assignment involving something that was going to be front-page news all over the world. A revolutionary new European aircraft called Skyparc had just flown into Hong Kong. It was a British version of a giant plane built by Airbus Industrie, a European consortium, and was being offered for sale as a luxury skyliner to Asian airlines. One of the group of organisations responsible for the meeting, the British Trade Commission, was assumed to know most about Chinese conventions, because of Britain’s long official history in Hong Kong. There were aristocrats on board, and an executive called Mr Manks, who was something to do with the royal family, had suggested the conference rooms aboard the plane be inspected by a feng shui master before the meeting.

  ‘You have been asked to feng shui an aeroplane,’ said Sinha. ‘Surely a moving craft by definition cannot be feng shuied? Items of transport have no north and south, no east and west. And in the case of an aircraft in particular, it spends much of its time in the air, and thus has no direct relationship to the ground, so no up or down. Surely it is the mountains and rivers and topography that define the macro-feng shui of a place? A moving aircraft…well, every minute, its relationships with the surrounding geography change.’

  The others knew that Sinha was allowed to engage in technical, even adversarial discussions about feng shui, as he was a master of vaastu, the Indian equivalent.

  Joyce agreed. ‘But we’re just doing a feng shui reading for the aircraft’s main conference room while it’s in the hangar. This is not your ordinary airplane. Skyparc is “your office in the air”.’

  She pulled out the copy of Time magazine and showed them the photograph. ‘We just have to make sure there is nothing that can go wrong for this particular sales meeting. Easy. Airplane sales deals are big money. They can’t take risks. They have to get everything right.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Sinha. ‘I imagine a craft like this would cost hundreds of millions of US dollars. So if there is some deal where they are selling a fleet of these, we must be talking very large amounts indeed. A single purchase of a small fleet of aircraft can add up to more than a billion US dollars.’ He turned to Wong: ‘I hope you’re getting a good slice.’

  Now the subject of money had been broached, the feng shui master was happy to turn his attention away from the food and deign to join in the conversation. ‘Normal fees, I bump it up a bit, maybe six
ty or seventy per cent, plus big surcharge for express service. But one bad thing. The man wants me to fly to London to do some work for someone else after.’

  Sinha looked puzzled. ‘You are invited to go on a free trip to the United Kingdom, all expenses paid by a wealthy organisation, but you are reluctant to do so? Is this logical?’

  ‘I think I will not like UK. Too many foreigner.’

  ‘That’s true. There are a lot of UK people in the UK. Odd, that. But you could always hang out in Gerrard Street. You’d feel at home there. They do an excellent cha siu bau, and you can even get a good plate of dau miu. Indeed, Cantonese is the main language of Gerrard Street, as it now is for large swatches of Vancouver. London might be fun. I haven’t been there myself for, oh, half a decade or more.’

  The feng shui master shook his head. ‘Too much trouble. Besides, I have plenty of worry on my mind. Maybe should stay here, raise some money. I have to make a payment of big, big bucks to Arun Asif Iqbal Daswani in ten days’ time. Harmoney deal turned out to be big, big trouble. Aiyeeah.’ He grimaced at the memory of the morning’s meeting. ‘Daswani messed up plenty but still he wants me to pay. Not fair, but what can I do?’

  Sinha put his elbows on the table. ‘Ah. You owe money to Arun Daswani? That’s bad news indeed. He’s not the sort of person to get on the wrong side of. That alone might be a good reason to get out of town and on to the other side of the planet as promptly as possible. Anyway, if you need big bucks at high speed, surely the London deal is what you want? The royal family, no less! Surely it will be easy money?’

  Wong scowled. Given his long history of loathing all things Western, it would be hard to reconcile himself to having to spend several days there. And he always felt long-haul trips were bad value because of the travelling time. ‘Maybe they pay full fees, but overseas trips take so long. I get maybe two-three days’ pay, but have to travel one-two days to get there, another one-two days to get back. End up wasting seven-eight days for only two-three days’ money. Too much time, not enough cash.’