Category: Australia

Christmas decorations started going up at work on Friday, but it didn’t really feel like christmas until I went shopping on saturday and caught the scent of peaches, apricots and cherries, all with a background hint of pine. It’s a uniquely southern hemisphere joy – tropical fruit and christmas holidays together.

I was away for almost all of John Howard’s 12 years as Prime Minister, but I saw the Australian economy boom under his leadership and believed he was doing a good job. Unfortunately, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, sent soldiers into Afghanistan and made a farce of the Republic referendum against the wishes… Continue reading Howard’s Out

The Higher School Certificate exams have finished and today marks the beginning of the reward for school leavers. Twenty thousand NSW students will spend time in the next month on the Gold Coast drinking, lying on the beach, flirting and enjoying the results of the last. A report on the radio today said that an… Continue reading Schoolies Week

The first Tuesday in November is the Melbourne Cup. Australia’s premiere sporting event. It was in doubt this year following an epidemic of equine flu, but all was right on the day. Sydney weather was sludgy, but sun shone inside the office when the traditional sweepstake opened for business. I placed my $5 and drew… Continue reading Melbourne Cup

I went to see the Cat Empire at the Metro last night. The venue was a favourite in my uni days and that alone made it a pleasure to be there. But the Cat Empire were everything that a live performance should be – a bunch of blokes (it doesn’t have to be blokes, but… Continue reading Smoke Free

I wrote the book on Japanese culture to try to help westerners understand Japan and its people. I wrote it to be read, not to be published. Lately it’s been getting in the way of me writing a book on Bhutan. To get it out of the way, I’ve decided to put it on this… Continue reading Download my book

SBS broadcasted an interesting group debate last night about immigrants and Australian values. Apparently Australia is about to bring in a compulsory values test for Citizenship applicants. I don’t think any of the people involved were happy with the idea, whether they were immigrants or generational Aussies. I certainly don’t get the point. How can… Continue reading Multiculture

Yesterday on the train, I heard a couple of businessmen talking. One was commenting at the absurdity of a law that prevented him from taking a picture of his own kid at the beach. I see the same restrictions at work. We provide the option of recording videoconferences to all our customers, but we have… Continue reading Child Photography

The teaching profession has a retention rate of less than 80% (I’ve heard) of new staff. In the next 10 years, half the teachers active today will retire. This is going to be a huge problem. I’ve worked hard to get to the top in my career, but right now I’m not doing much that… Continue reading Teachers

In my new role, I’m supporting an event for Priority Schools of NSW. As far as I can make out, these are schools where the students consistently get poor marks and have literacy / numeracy problems. One of the speakers today put up some interesting census statistics relevant to the kind of students that live… Continue reading Native Tongue