TICKET TO THE WORLD
JANORRNERT TICKET TO THE WORLD
© 2023 Orrnert, Jan
Förlag: BoD – Books on Demand, Stockholm, Sverige
Tryck: BoD – Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Tyskland
ISBN: 9789180803090
To Leia
The cover photo was taken in a mountain desert in Oman
Contents A president and a murderer 13 Growing up 16 Friends 18 Train ticket to Beirut 20 My first real job 23 Moving out into the world 26 Our first home in Singapore 29 Tough times 32 Surprise visit by Jakob Wallenberg 35 Confrontation in Jakarta 38 Earthquake in the Philippines 42 Gate crashing at a general’s party in Saigon 45 Meeting Dr. Mahathir 47 Nine years in Singapore 50 Pioneering in China 53 Road to Baghdad 58 The Islamic revolution in Iran 62 From London to Miami 66 The capital of Latin America 68 Robbed in Rio de Janeiro 71 Working in Latin America 73
Surprise return to Malaysia 75 Are there ghosts in Malaysia? 77 Establishing Astra in Greece 80 House of Prevelakis 84 An unknown Greek island 86 Buying an office building in Athens 87 Buying a house in paradise 103 Our most frequent visitor 106 Signing a contract in Wuxi 108 A not so normal morning in Hong Kong 112 Dinner with a mafia boss in China 115 One step into North Korea 118 The sad story of Raymond Ho 120 From Hong Kong to Prague 123 The merger between Astra and Zeneca 125 The day Peter Wallenberg shocked me 128 Meeting a depressed President 130 The Octopus 132 Cutting the tentacles of the Octopus 136 The death of the Octopus 140 Third degree burns and a broken nose 144 The beggar at Oxford Street 147
A dinner that changed my path in life 150
A schedule change that saved my life 152
Divorce 154
Starting all over again 156
Meeting a French singer in the rain forest 159
Meetings with Göran Persson 161
Getting married again 163
Interrogated by Singapore police 166
Driving from Stockholm to Skiathos 168
The big forest fire of 2007 171
The filming of Mamma Mia 173
Living the dream 175
Our life in Malaysia 177
Our life on Skiathos 180
Nudists on Xanemos Beach 184
Enjoying the food of the world 186
Passionate about travelling 188
Hippo attack on Chobe River 190
In the footsteps of Charles Darwin 194
First Class 196
Would I make the same choices again? 199
Carpe diem, memento vivere
The longest journeyyou can make is the journeyback in your life.
When you write yourmemoirs, youtravel backintime. Back to your roots. Back to your past. You are opening up a closed world. A world that you thought that you had forgotten. But as you go through this process, memories are slowly coming back. Events, names, forgotten since long, appear again. The details are there, hidden deep in your brain.
Small and big decisions, even decisions that you might have felt were unimportant at the time, have paved your way in life. These decisions have given you a path forward. So manythings couldhave led you in a different direction. Youcouldhave been a completely different person, you could have been in a completely different place, if you at times had made some decisionsinanother way. Youcouldhave hada different spouse and different children. You could even have been dead a long time ago. Many small matters have made you who you are and have placed you where you are.
Life is a gift. A long and healthy life is the best gift of all. But we are all at some time coming to the autumn of our lives. The days in your life will come when it is time to write the last chapters.
Ourgrandchildren growup ina worldthatisso differentfrom the one we grew up in. This world is the new normal to them. To write your memoirs is to save something for future generations. Behind every person there is a story. Every life is interesting. If you do not write your story, you will soon be forgotten after your death. You and your life will slowly disappear into a fog of non-existence. A few generations down
the line, you will then, in best case, just be a name with a birth dateanda date ofdeath. Bysharing yourstory, you will increase the understanding and knowledge of the world for the future generations that you leave behind.
I am writing these memoirs for my granddaughter Leia. One day, when I am no longer around, I hope that she still has a place for this book in her bookshelf.
Thisbookisthe storyof a manwholeft hiscountrytoexplore the world. It is the story of Leia’s grandfather. If you want to know who you are, you must know where you came from. Hopefully, this book is one piece in Leia’s life puzzle the day she wants to know who she is.
A president and a murderer
I am sitting on the terrace of our house on the Greek island of Skiathos, a glass of red wine in my hand, looking out over the sea. It is a warm, pleasant evening. I am thinking back of my life. A life on the move. A life in many countries.
When I was 17, I crossed the Atlantic Ocean byship. Twelve days. Rotterdam-Le Havre-Southampton-New York. Then a longtravel byGreyhound bus to Iowa in the AmericanMidwest. I had been given a scholarship to study at an American high school for a year. At the end of the school year, I received, together with a group of other foreign students, an invitation to visit the White House. An invitation from the President of the United States.
It was a sunny, warm summer day in July 1962. President John F Kennedy received us in the Rose Garden outside the White House. President Kennedy talked to us. He talked to us about the Peace Corps, an organization he had started, sending young Americans into the world to help developing countries. The president urged us, “you young people” to go out into the world, “to learn, to understand, to assist”.
President Kennedy became my idol. Back in Sweden, I read everything I came across about JFK. Biographies, his speeches, everything. And by now, my mind was already set. I was going to move out into the world.
In high school, by chance, I started writing articles for our local newspapers in Sollefteå, a small town in the north of Sweden. And occasionally articles for our national newspapers. I made much more moneythan anyone of myschool mates. Just by writing.
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I wanted to become a journalist. My parents did not like the idea. That was not a real job. No, they had other hopes for me. I should be a banker or a businessman. “Look at Uncle Wilhelm”, my mother used to say. “See how successful he is”. Uncle Wilhelm, Wilhelm Rodius, was a successful banker, married to one of my mother’s childhood friends. He was a banker in Stockholm, had a big apartment at Drottninggatan Street and a big countryside mansion, Hessle Gård in Örsundsbro, one hour’s drive from Stockholm. My parents saw me walking in his footsteps.
We often stayed with the Rodius family, travelling through Stockholm. I remember my younger brother and me sitting on the floor in the library at the mansion, listening to Uncle Wilhelm and my father talking, a whisky glass in one hand and a cigar in the other. I can still remember the smell of the cigars.
One day, the bubble burst. All national newspapers carried the same headline. “Stockholm banker arrested for murder”. A banker in Stockholm had embezzled a client’s money. A rich, retired dentist with no close family. While the family was at their country mansion, the banker had killed his client in his Stockholm apartment and burnt the body in the three fireplaces there. In Swedish crime history, the banker became known as “Kakelugnsmördaren”. “The fire place murderer”.
The name of the banker was Wilhelm Rodius. Uncle Wilhelm confessed. My role model was sentenced to life in prison.
By this time, my path in life had already been outlined. I was a good boy, listening to my parents. I would live a life of budgets, marketing plans, product launches, bottom lines, money. I never became the journalist I wanted to be. But once, one of our CEO’s gave me a compliment. “You write the most easily read marketing plans in the whole Astra Group”.
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I take another sip from the wine glass. The sun is starting to fall behind the horizon. Aferry is slowly movingawayfrom the island towards the mainland.
Life is strange sometimes. The two persons, besides my parents, who directly or indirectly influenced my path in life were an American president and a Swedish murderer.
If it were not for these two people, my life would have followed a different road…. I would have lived in a parallel universe…. I would have lived a different life….
But now my life had been given a direction. This is the life I am going to tell you about in this book.
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Growing up
I was born in the small town of Sollefteå in the north of Sweden on April 18, 1944, at 03.05 in the morning. I was 55 centimeters tall and weighed 4,070 grams. Sollefteå is a town with a population of 10,000 at that time. A beautiful little town surrounded by forested mountains with a big river, Ångermanälven, cutting straight through the town. At Hallstabacken skiing slope in the outskirts of the town, a place for many competitive skiing events, I learnt skiing at a young age.
Sollefteå housed two military regiments and my father, an officer in the army, was attached to one ofthem. Myschool was two kilometersaway. The winterscouldbe severe uphere inthe north, lots of snow and temperatures sometimes of twenty or more degrees below zero. I used to walk or ski to school in the winter darkness with thousands of stars lit in the sky. Not only stars, the northern lights were often strong and fascinating. But I never understood what an attraction the northern lights were until I moved abroad. To me in those days, the northern lights was just a normal part of winter life. Just like the snow and the moon.
As a family, we were probably quite a normal family. My father, an army officer. My mother, a housewife. Me and my younger brother Stefan, four years younger. My mother did most of the work at home. But my father cooked sometimes. I remember him standingin the kitchen, nothingon the upper part of his body except an apron, lots of smoke coming from the frying pan, with a glass of whisky standing nearby and a big cigar in his mouth. His steaks came out very well.
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