This country still has the capacity to surprise me. Mainly with the little things – launching an air-strike against someone in the middle of the night on the other side of the globe, or firing off yet another shuttle from Florida are so passe. But this morning, sitting behind the Capitol in a hole in…
In DC that translates, in my book at any rate, into going to “the Mall” – and not to a shopping centre but to the strip of beaten up turf around which Washington seems to turn.
Any town that can straight faced call a Metro stop (and suburb) Foggy Bottom has to have something going for it. That the train line stop is underneath the George Washington University Hospital suggests someone in the planning department might have had a sense of humour as well. Indeed, this town has a lot going…
We have become docile travelers, tamed and very compliant. Watch us be herded around the appallingly designed Terminal 4 of LAX by TSA teamsters trained (by Heathrow strumpets I imagine) in the cattle yards of Texas and who consequently have little discernible notion of what service looks or sounds like. Service is not their mission.…
It’s been far too long since I stopped here. Stopped at all now that I think about it. The seagulls stand around me silent and sulky. Not a crumb from my pie falls away to catch their eye. But the sky is sunset grey and the harbour is darkening through green to black – its…
Yesterday was one of those glittering Sydney days we all want to bottle and sell to anyone who glances our way – and which we delight to remind anyone living further south (or to anyone living in the UK) is a Spring treat you don’t really find anywhere else. I had reason to be down…
When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book. See his interview on the right hand side of this site. If this does not move you stone your heart is.
(Slunk down in his seat, a quiet night on Macquarie Street). Hey, where do you want to go? St Leonards eh? Strange place. You had a long day? 5.30 in the morning start? You are crazy. It is long enough for me starting to drive at 3pm. I finish at 11pm. That is respectable. But…
I was pleasantly, and genuinely surprised on my first visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to have a police car speed past me on the road from the airport – the surprise came from the familiarity of the car. It looked awfully like an Australian production vehicle. Sure enough, after a few days and…
These words leapt off the page when I was reading this week an article on those from Vermont who have died in the current mid East conflict (Article here, titled Home of the Brave). Apparently Vermont, with a tradition of military sacrifice going back to the Revolution, has recorded more combat deaths per head of…