OBITUARY Andrew Symon, a valued Asia Times Online contributor since 2007, passed away on
February 24. Long-time friend and fellow ATol contributor Tom McCawley writes
in his memory.
Andrew Symon, editor, writer, traveler and journalist, was first and foremost a
gentleman. I first met him wandering around an aging art-deco corner of
Singapore, clutching a sheaf of notes in his hand and almost wishing he
was part of a Graham Greene novel.
Somehow in an age of nanosecond transactions, he led by example, holding to
old-fashioned values of loyalty, honor and scholarly inquisitiveness. It was
those values that often made him so stubborn in the face of hard circumstances.
He moved to Jakarta in the early 1990s as part of a group of
Australians who wanted to help forge closer ties with Asia, particularly
Indonesia. In Australia, he graduated with honors in history from Adelaide
University, then later completed a degree in economics.
After starting his career at the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper, Andrew moved to
Canberra, Australia's capital, to work in public policy. One of his assignments
was to serve as a speechwriter for former prime minister Gough Whitlam. He
throughout his writing career retained an academic interest in history, in
economics and in public policy.
And Andrew was always concerned with the public interest angle of his work,
even when doing commercial consultancies. In Jakarta, he wrote on energy,
infrastructure and economics. In 1997, he moved to Singapore to edit one of the
Financial Times business publications, and for the next decade wrote widely on
Southeast Asia's energy industry.
Despite that expertise, Andrew was always involved in obscure side projects,
say, a meandering piece on Phnom Penh’s colonial architecture or a hard-hitting
assessment of Russian influence in Indonesia. Andrew was uncompromising in his
quest for quality and work of value. He will be dearly missed by his friends
and ATol colleagues.
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