Patience may be a virtue but........me no got any!

One of my favourite cartoons shows two vultures on a tree limb, the caption reads, “Patience my ass, I’m gonna kill something!”
In this image taken in August 1985 there is Ian Robinson, also known as Lobinson, he was our “Greenie” or electrician in Shenzhen. The two Chinese are Liu on the left and Huang. Our allocated pilots were, as far as we ever found out, from the Chinese Navy, a more useless bunch of……….calm down lad, think of your pensions. Their attire left a lot to be desired; their boss was an Admiral. These two, plus their oppos, (friends) thought they knew it all, of course they did. I can be impatient, intolerant and downright stubborn. These two made my blood boil. 
I spent an hour or more preparing Huang for a radar approach to a rig, using the rig Navigational Direction Beacon plus our weather radar. A simple procedure, it must have been, I could do it. When we got to the rig he flatly refused to carry out the approach. It appeared that if he made a mistake he would lose ‘face’ in front of the female interpreter. 
Liu gave up the ghost while I was trying to get us back into the Pearl Estuary during a Typhoon. He just took his hands off and said, “No more.” On 1st Sept 1985 we received a call for a medevac of a Chinese national from Nanhai 2 a drilling rig working in the islands south of Hong Kong. Liu was my co-pilot. We located the rig, landed and I got out to check the stretcher was fitted properly etc. It was then I noted the casualty was one of two Americans working as instructors. He had been observing a pressure dial, the size of a large old fashioned railway clock when it exploded in his face. He had lost one eye, the other was just swimming in wet red stuff. I yelled in his ear that I would have him in hospital in HK within minutes, the poor man grabbed my hand and squeezed hard, very hard. 
As I strapped in I explained to Jenny our interpreter that we had an ex-pat with severe facial damage and we were heading for Kai Tak, the brilliant former airport in HK. She passed this to Liu as I pulled power and got us into the hover, I was about to rotate away when he reached forward and switched off the autopilot. Yes, that’s just what I said! He was insisting we had to clear immigration in China. Once more he was made to sit on his hands and shut up. Kai Tak were brilliant, they had an ambulance, eye surgeon and nurse waiting for us. 
I had to walk away and calm down, one of the HK Chinese search and rescue pilots came over and listened to my tale, he then went and reamed Liu a new bottom in very coarse Cantonese. On return to Shenzhen I was arrested and I thought brills, they’ll kick me out, save me resigning. Six police and customs/immigration officials took me to my shared flat and demanded all my papers. Jenny was with me, I told her to act as if she was interested in my collection of tapes, and to ignore the pillocks. After 30 minutes of face off they trooped out and never kissed me goodbye. Jenny thought it was hilarious to put one over on them. 
Lobinson and I would let off steam by heading to “Ned Kelly’s” in Kowloon for a long wet lunch.