I saw her hesitation and so decided to try a different tack.
‘I have wide contacts in Jakarta and I can soon get you a position in an airline there, if that’s what you personally are concerned about.’
Still Yossy seemed unconvinced: ‘It’s not that. It’s just that I think Neil enjoys more or less working for himself.’
‘Well, I can understand that,’ I countered, ‘but I think flying all over Surabaya chasing the bucks will soon get old. Look, I tell you what. I’ll leave it with you guys for now and get out of your hair. If you feel this is something you’d like to look into, then you’ve got my number, but if you both feel the time’s not right at the moment, well, that’s fine too.’
Yossy smiled and said she would work on Neil and see what she could do, but she didn’t hold out much hope, and nor did I to be honest.
I was proved right to be pessimistic and it would be another seven years or so before Neil finally did come to work for me.
My business, as I’ve said, turned out to be a lot of hard work for not an awful lot of gain, at least in the beginning. The first thing to deal with was the fact that the franchise purchase fees were rather exorbitant at $50,000 and then 10% of gross income, which proved not far short of crippling once start up and running costs were factored in. It took an inordinate amount of time and effort to recoup just the initial investment, but after three or four years we were finally showing a slight working profit and turnover was increasing.
The mistake I made back in the beginning was trying to do everything by the book and above board. By this I mean I felt all eyes would be on me as a former TNI operative, and so I would have to be squeaky clean – I should have known better, really, but I learnt! I learnt the various little scams and tricks involved in staying ahead of the game. For example, the most obvious scam was to not declare the correct number of students to Head Office and so pay less commission. This wasn’t hard to do, but it was a little risky because if a franchise didn’t show sufficient profit it could, technically, find its licence being revoked. There was also the risk of spot checks and audits from HO, but these were rare and far from stringent. Other little tricks included obtaining contracts to teach in businesses at lucrative rates and not declaring them at all to HO. Again, a risk was involved, but generally speaking it was minimal and as long as HO got a reasonable lump sum quarterly they were quite happy.
What was expensive, though, was the employment of teachers. The unique selling point of the business was it employed ‘native speaker’ teachers instead of ‘local’ teachers. This meant that the majority of teachers were from countries where English is the first language – the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc. – and this meant, theoretically at least, a higher quality of teaching. Of course, the reality was nothing of the sort. The vast majority of teachers we employed may have been natives, but they were certainly no better than the Indonesian teachers. In fact, in many cases they were severely lacking in even rudimentary knowledge of the grammar and structure of their own language. They were, as I say, purely USPs for the business. They did, however, cost a lot to employ as one had to fork out for their work permits and visas, pay the government tax on their employment, and then lay out a disproportionate amount on their salaries – on average they earned (and I use that word loosely) four times that of a (better qualified) local teacher.
I discovered there were ways of reducing costs here too, though – again with an element of risk involved- and so improved my margins slightly. The way to get round these costs was to employ the foreigners on business visas rather than working ones. This was much cheaper as they didn’t then require work permits and no tax needed to be paid. There was a risk of raids from immigration or other such authorities, but even then a word in the right ear – if you get my drift – would ensure advance notice of such raids and thus ample time to take such cautionary measures as to simply tell the bules to stay home that day. The greater risk was actually to the teachers themselves, as the business visas were only good for a maximum of three months before they had to be renewed or extended. Too many trips out of the country could lead to suspicions being raised at the airports and so it was all a bit cat-and-mouse.
A few years after the inception of the company, racial undertones in the country once more came to the fore and the country again erupted. The Asian economic crises of the late nineties had a terrible effect on Indonesia, and once again ethnic Chinese were blamed in some quarters. Riots, demonstrations and racially motivated attacks took place throughout Indonesia, and within Jakarta particularly. Although the number of fatalities was much fewer than of those thirty-three years earlier, the consequences were just as far reaching. The incumbent President Soeharto was forced to step down after more than three decades of iron-fist rule and the value of the Indonesian rupiah collapsed by 85%. It was a time of worry and concern and for a while it looked as if Indonesia was on the brink of total anarchy and disintegration. However, things calmed down and the first totally free and independent elections were held and the country stabilized once more.
A
