by Dr. Iain
Corness
The training manager for Marine and Offshore
International (Thailand) is Wayne Hale, a New Zealander who admits that it
took him 25 years of his working life before he began to realize his full
potential. In finally doing that, he has found Thailand and happiness, but
at a price. He has to spend several weeks every year in Kazakhstan, a
place which is definitely not the Riviera of Europe.
Wayne was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, the
youngest of three children. His father was a farmer, but Wayne quickly
said, “He was not a sheep farmer, he was a dairy farmer!”
He
left school at 15 years of age, having not covered himself with academic
honours, in fact, quite the opposite - he had trouble with both reading
and writing. His father, typical of the thoughts of those days advised his
youngest to get a trade. “If anything happens you can always fall back
on the trade,” so Wayne became apprenticed as a butcher, completing the
four years of indentures. However, he knew that butchering was not for
him, even though he still had the requisite number of digits on each hand.
“It was too closed in for me.”
He left NZ and like most of his countrymen, the next
stop was Australia, where he worked in a small pharmaceutical company that
specialized in the use of animal organs to prepare drugs such as insulin.
But this was not Wayne’s destiny either. “I was locked in all the
time.”
He returned to NZ and applied to join the police, the
transport department and the fire services and was accepted for the
latter. He was then trained to be a professional firefighter in New
Plymouth, back where he started from.
He worked 20 years as a firefighter, enjoying the new
challenges which occur every day in that line of work. “Every
firefighter is a hero in his own way,” was Wayne’s way of describing
why there is a world-wide comradeship in that profession. He dodged my
queries re his own heroics, but did admit to having “proud” moments,
such as reviving a little girl.
However, after 20 years, he injured his shoulder
fighting a fire and was medically discharged from his secure employment.
“I was a little bit bitter at the time, but it turned out it was the
best thing that ever happened to me.”
He was offered a temporary position in the safety
division of a petro-chemical plant during its 3 month “shut down”
maintenance period. When the plant was re-commissioned he was then offered
a permanent post as the safety coordinator. This was certainly a step in
the right direction but heralded the start of an enormous 5 year learning
curve. A learning curve that included self-education. “I had to knuckle
down and teach myself. It was hard. You have to have a belief in yourself
that you can do it. My mother always said there is no such word as
‘can’t’ - take the ‘t’ off it and you get ‘can’!” Suddenly
he also found that he was working and dealing with people from all over
the world, “not just a little cocoon in the fire service.” He also had
to become conversant with such new areas as hazardous substances with
‘time weighted averages’ and how to deal with high pressure
hydrocarbon fires, something quite different from domestic fires.
He did well and the company that he worked for,
Methanex began to send him overseas for conferences and further training
in the latest developments, and one of those countries was Thailand 6
years ago. He fell in love with the people, the culture and the country
and came to Pattaya. “The Thais are really personality people.” He was
also fortunate that every year the company sent him back to the Kingdom.
It was now 1998 and he joined a company which was
offering safety training for the on and offshore oil and gas industry.
That company was taken over and after the wash-up Wayne was sent to
Thailand in the year 2000 to get the new company up and running here. I
suggested to Wayne that he would have taken the opportunity with both
hands, to which he replied, “I certainly didn’t look backwards!”
This was Marine and Offshore International (Thailand) Co. Ltd which is
based in Sriracha, and Wayne has the responsibility of being the training
manager.
This was not to be a ‘cushy’ job on shore, however.
In that position he has responsibilities outside Thailand, being seconded
to such places as Kazakhstan, India and Vietnam. Having seen Wayne’s
video documentary on Kazakhstan I am convinced that it may not be the
worst tourist destination in the world, but it would have to go close!
“People say I must have a great job because you
travel around a lot. I hate flying, airports and living out of a suitcase.
That’s the downside. But I do get to places tourists would never go to.
You can learn so much from the people with their different cultures,
attitudes and phobias. That’s what I really love - mixing with those
people.”
For Wayne, success is, “Being happy with yourself and
what you are doing. Material things don’t mean a helluva lot. It’s
your own self pride in what you have achieved. I enjoy helping people to
be safe and go home to their families. It gives me pride that I have given
them something.”
He listed scuba diving as one of his hobbies and in
fact was an instructor in that discipline as well, but he has been too
busy to get his wet suit even slightly damp for the past couple of years.
Now he just enjoys riding around the Jomtien area on his mountain bike.
Wayne Hale is a man who is often smiling. “I’m a
people person. A smile costs nothing to give and people appreciate it and
enjoy it.” But I got the distinct impression sometimes it is hard in
Kazakhstan!
