With my chin cupped in my hand and elbow propped on the arm rest I found myself on short finals from Singapore into Kuala Lumpur reminiscing about my first experiences of the country. Actually they were not the absolute first – I think that was a project in primary school on alluvial tin mining in…
There is a view of Singapore that gets my attention every single time. Sometimes you see it in all its glory as you fly into Changi from the south. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of it through the trees as you ride to the city in the cab. And if you indulge some of that…
I do know better, I really do. I rationalised the $25.00 hotel breakfast yesterday as being necessary since I had a busy day coming up. But it was an “American” breakfast of indifferent tomato’s, cardboard bacon, and rubber eggs. All leaving me with the impression they were cooked up the previous night and run under…
The evening started perfectly. I had turned the air-conditioner off, opened the windows and pushed aside the slats. Warm moist air flooded the room to the accompaniment of bird chatter and the background hum of air-conditioners hanging off walls in the lane I look onto. A few minutes after doing that, as if by invitation…
When I read that the author’s father swore at him for making him cry when he read this book I did not feel quite so bad about my own reaction to it. The unusual narrator had me guessing at the very beginning (I picked this volume up on the way through the airport without having…
Getting around a city in the early hours always opens up a new vista on a place. This week I am staying down on the outskirts of Chinatown (Duxton Hill to be precise) and am therefore well away from the tourist and shopping end of town. A travel “snobbery” I am happy to admit and…
Sometimes people touch and shape your life when you least expect it. And continue doing so even after they have gone. David was one of those guys. Dr “Herb” Money was another, pictured here in his MA gown in the 1920s. It is hard to know where to start with Dr Money. At the beginning…
In 2006 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer.
You can’t help it. You sit in the front row of a Mavis Staples concert and you are conscious every now and then of the grin you can’t wipe from your face. You wipe the tears as well but in the end you give up and let them run.
I suspect I am not the only one to think so but there is no small stirring of pride when I read that the HMAS Sydney, heavy cruiser lost in battle 67 years ago, has been found sitting upright on the seabed, 6000′ down. Ambushed, shot up, carrying so many of her crew with her,…