Overview

TRAVELS, TRAVAILS, TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS AMONGST THE TROPICAL CANE FIELDS Once upon a time, long before the advent of the internet, the email, the personal computer, the pocket calculator or the mobile phone, intrepid groups of men bravely set forth to explore the far-flung world; to discover and tame the potentials of its wild, isolated and uncharted lands; to experience their cities, towns and villages; to advise companies, governments and kings. They called them international business consultants. Frank was one of them. These are the tales of his adventures. Frank Edwin was one of the last of his kind: a practical, adaptable, hands-on, problem-solving agricultural and mechanical design engineer. From his initial training in wartime Derby, England, his career led him to become a world-recognised expert, consultant, adviser, project manager, and general trouble shooter in the mid twentieth century sugar cane industry. From the fields of the Caribbean to the unmapped African bush, from Central and South American rainforests and jungles to the exotic wonders of the Far East and Asia, follow Franks exploits and adventures as he wrangles with incomprehensible bureaucracies, negotiates complex deals and simple extortion, avoids coups and terrorist insurgents, fends off entrancing female advances, rescues stricken comrades, samples the delights of both town and city, becomes lost and marooned on remote surveys, crosses some exceptionally-uninspiring bridges, survives all too many highly-undesirable aspects of local road and air travel, and helps to build a few factories along the way. Covering the mid 1950s to the late 1980s - an age long before any of our modern communications and computers - Franks's unique and remarkable anecdotes recall the amusing, the bizarre, the pleasurable, the frustratingly-annoying, the foolhardy and the simply downright dangerous, offering a valuable, thought-provoking, inspiring, and at times sobering behind-the-scenes glimpse into the realities of a world of travel and work - indeed, often an entirely-different world - which few, then or now, would ever know.

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9781913898953

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Born in Derby, England, in 1920. Became a mechanical design engineer, international consultant, negotiator, surveyor, planner, project manager, trouble-shooter, and world-renowned expert in the twentieth century sugar cane industry. Explorer of uncharted lands, and survivor of many challenges and adventures, not to mention endless and infinitely-varying bureaucracies. Observer of people, events, countries, customs and cultures. Visitor to and traveller through Africa, Central and Southern America, the Caribbean, and the Far Eastern Asian regions. Practical, hands-on problem solver. Rather frequent flyer. Excellent pantomime dame.Formerly employed by Tate & Lyle, Tate & Lyle Technical Services (Director, retired). Member of International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists.Member of British Society of Sugar Cane Technologists (British Society of Sugar Technologists) - founding contributor.Member of Institute of Plant Engineers (Society of Operations Engineers).Fellow of British Society of Research in Agricultural Engineering.Member of Institute of Tropical Agriculture. Lives in Cumbria, England. Motorcycle builder and rider, keen mountain and fell walker. Should have been an engineer, as she shares her father's approach to many things, but instead ended up as a retired Chartered Accountant (amongst several other things). Frank's youngest daughter, who travelled with him to Brazil and Swaziland.

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