SANCTUARY RESORTS ... a journey

Saturday, January 28, 2012

When Andrew met Harry and Judi

When I was still working for Marco Polo Hotels in Hong Kong, often I would go from my office to one of the hotels in the Ocean Centre complex for lunch. On the way back I would always go through the Ocean Centre Shopping Arcade which joined the properties, and from there the route was to turn left into the Hong Kong Hotel where my office was located.

On this particular day however, as I approached the entrance to the Hong Kong Hotel, I felt that instead of turning left and going straight into the hotel, I should be turning right and going into the Ocean Terminal area, which was on the harbor front, where the cruise ships docked. There was no real reason to do this as it added an extra five minutes to the walk, it also meant that I would have to go one floor down by escalator and then one floor back up by stairs to reach the elevators to my office. However, somehow I felt it was the right thing to do.

As I was riding down the escalator near the harbor front where the cruise ships came in, I saw, standing at the bottom was Harry and Judi Mullikin, my previous boss when he was President of Westin Hotels & Resorts, and his wife. They looked up, saw me and exclaimed, “We just got off a cruise ship and were looking for a telephone to see if we could find you and tell you we were here, as we weren’t sure where in Hong Kong you were.”

I said, “I guess I got the message!

It must have been the Universal Extranet working!

Read more about the Universal Extranet in my upcoming book...

It’s all about Intention…


I remember it was a Wednesday morning, sometime ago, and I needed to speak to three people about some of my charity work that I was doing for the KELY Support Group. It was very important to me to get these matters finalized in a timely manner, however I got busy with my “day job” and wasn’t able to do anything about contacting these people.

Later in the day busily rushing to a luncheon appointment I jumped onto the MTR (mass transit) to find, standing next to me, one of the people I wanted to talk too. We exchanged the information required and I proceeded to my luncheon.

After being heavily involved in discussion during my business luncheon, I got up to leave the restaurant, and as I turned to leave the table, I saw, sitting a couple of tables away, the second person I needed to speak to about KELY. We exchanged the information required and I went back to my office feeling pretty pleased that I had, with no outward effort on my part, at least managed to see two of the people that I needed to see that day.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty normal and as I made my way home I thought it had been a good day’s work and fortuitous that I had made two out of the three contacts I had in mind.

Then something interesting happened.

I was in Pacific Place, a shopping mall in Hong Kong, and as I was about to get on an escalator to take me to the place where I normally caught my bus home, I suddenly felt that I was going the wrong way. My logic said get on the escalator that’s the way home, but my feeling was get off the escalator you are going the wrong way. Although tired after a hectic day, I decided to go with my feelings, and jumped off the escalator. I then took a longer route to the bus stop that led me past several shops including a McDonald’s, and as I passed McDonald’s the third person that was on my list to see that day came out of McDonald’s. I had managed, without any perceived effort to see all three of the people I needed to that day. However the lesson for me was not that I was able to manifest this experience just by the power of thoughtful intention, but that by going with my feelings, not my logic, I could achieve so much more.

If you would like to know who that third person was, maybe get a copy of my upcoming book…it may have been you!

There are no coincidences...

I don't believe in coincidences...Everything happens for a reason.

We may not always understand or appreciate it at the time, and it may be connected to something in the future rather than the present, but if you are open and observant to such happenings they will happen more often, and you will enjoy a more abundant and meaningful life…that's the way it's meant to be.

In the coming posts I will be sharing some of the experiences that I have appreciated in recent years, and more so since I started my journey with Sanctuary Resorts.

As you may know I am based in Hong Kong, and my mother called me the other day from the UK, and interestingly, mentioned that there is a study being undertaken by a Cambridge University Professor on this very subject, which propelled me to share these happenings on my Blog, and also in my upcoming book. I will add these postings to the research site as well.

I thought I would start these posts with an interesting happening some years ago.

Before leaving my corporate position with Marco Polo Hotels, and starting the process of setting up Sanctuary Resorts I had an unexpected meeting with my friend Ronnie Ng. I had first met Ronnie a few years earlier when he was engaged as the first outside trainer for our Rotary International District Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) program. Subsequently Ronnie conducted some training programs for the Marco Polo Hong Kong Hotel, and it was during this time that we reconnected. We had some interesting conversations in between the programs and during one of them I remarked that I admired the style of jacket Ronnie was wearing, as it was casual, and while it had a Mandarin style collar, it was more contemporary in design. Ronnie thought it would look good on me and suggested next time I had a suit made I get one similar.

A few months later it was time to get a new suit, and to be honest I “chickened out”, and when my tailor, Andy, asked me what sort of suit I would like, I just said “my usual,” meaning a classic style double-breasted black suit. Interestingly he then said, “Actually Mr. Jones I am making a new style of suit for another client of mine, that I think would really suit you”…and he brought out a black suit with a jacket that was nearly identical to the one Ronnie wore! I just knew it was meant to be and had one made the same…

(To be clear the other client was not Ronnie and my tailor didn’t know Ronnie).

There is more to this story, but perhaps I will save that for my Book…