See Clarence Henderson's Retrospective: Reflections on half-a-hundred random thoughts: (16th September 2002), for his 50th column.

It was around 3 and a half years ago that I took a call during lunch at one of the APMF crew's regular haunts - the bar of Bourbon Street Restaurant in downtown Bangkok. It was from a guy who had chanced on some of our earlier columnists and during munching on crawfish I convinced him to start writing a column, not knowing that it would grow to be 50 in short time. Since then, Clarence has provided some of the most incisive, personal, and colourful material on Asian business you can read on the APMF, and indeed anywhere on the web or in print.

Not only that, but almost every column is backed up by sometimes hours of research, and is delivered to my editors desk almost copy-editing proof. His personal fan club expands monthly, and I am honoured to be the first of them.

...For in a part of the world where the most savvy advice on doing business and keeping face is to keep the lower half shut, Clarence breaks all the rules and mixes his modest observations on life and business from Manila with uncommon honesty and personal disclosure, set in a raw rockabilly style that honours his origins.

Pearl mirrors perfectly an expat experience of wanting to immerse in a foreign culture, knowing that you can never become truly accepted in that one, and the longer you stay, the less you are accepted in your old one. Humour and love for humanity and diversity is what can turn a potential purgatory into triumph. It's also what makes every column such a zonk of a good read and every one a true Pearl...

September's retrospective chronicles just a few of the high points (yep you know what I mean) of Clarence's enormous contribution to the APMF and the Asian Business Strategy and Street Intelligence Ezine. (Ed.)