Chan Joeloemsing

Years ago I sold everything I owned and left with a single suitcase. I never really went back to owning things. Not as a statement. It just stayed that way.

I travelled for years, and while passing through many countries I met a lot of people. At some point one of them asked me to check something for him in the country I happened to be flying to next. He paid me and that was that. Then someone else asked. Then someone I had never met, because my name had been passed on.

They were small things at first. A man about to buy a property in a country he had never set foot in. Someone who had agreed to buy something valuable from a seller he had only ever seen on a screen.

None of it was a business at the time. I was travelling, and the requests landed in places I was already going, which made the logistics simple. The work started once I was there. I looked, and I told them what I found, the same way I would if it were my own decision on the line.

More than one of them told me I should be doing this properly. Not as a compliment, as a practical observation. They said requests like this came up regularly, for them and for people around them, and there was never anyone obvious to hand them to. Sometimes because they could not go themselves. Sometimes because it had to happen quickly. Sometimes because it had to stay quiet.

It took a while for that to land. It was only after I stopped travelling that I saw it plainly: I had enjoyed the work, and I liked what it took to get it done. What I had been doing as favours was what I wanted to do for a living. And so CQX Field Operations & Intelligence was born.

Anywhere

I mean that literally. If the question is on the other side of the world, that is where I go. If it is a plot of land three hours from the nearest city, I will spend the day getting there. Long journeys and short notice are not your problem. They are the reason you are hiring someone instead of going yourself.

It helps having a Dutch passport. Most countries I can enter without a visa, or with one issued on arrival. How quickly I can be somewhere is usually a question of flights rather than paperwork.

I travel light because that is how I live anyway. Leaving at short notice is not as disruptive for me as it would be for you.

What I do outside work comes with me, so an unfamiliar city is not an interruption to my life. It is where my life happens to be that week.

What I am, and what I am not

I am not a specialist and I will not pretend to be one. I cannot tell you whether a signature is genuine or a foundation is sound. What I do is go and see it for myself, record what is actually there, and bring in the right specialist when a question needs a qualified answer.

You could send someone local and cheaper. The difference is what comes back. I work under a written engagement and my own terms, I am bound to confidentiality, and I have no relationship with the seller, the agent, or anyone else standing to gain. What I report is what I found, including the part you were hoping not to hear.

Before any of this, in every job I had, I was the one people came to when something had to be sorted out and there was no time to do it the long way. Not because I knew the subject best. Usually I did not. It was because I could see what the situation actually needed, and who to involve to get it done.

Most requests do not arrive as a clear question. They arrive as unease. A place that looks too good in the photographs. An address that exists on paper and needs to exist in reality as well. A decision that has to be made on Friday and nobody has actually been there. First I work out what the real question is. Then I go and answer it.

There is no standard package. Every request is looked at on its own, and I say in advance what is possible and what is not, including when the answer is that I am not the right person for it. What does not change is that I go to the location myself. That is the whole point of it.

What you get back is an independent observation. I have no stake in what you decide afterwards.