Category: Australasia

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 I wrote it to be read, not to be published.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

I forgot to buy a train ticket this morning. Each week, I buy a ticket that will get me to Waverton, which is the last stop in the zone of my office. It’s now habit to use that ticket and of course it gets me through the gate at Hornsby, but it won’t get me… Continue reading Train Tickets

I’ve rejoined the masses in the daily routine of work. No longer is every day a weekday and every day a weekend. No longer am I working dawn to dusk on my own projects. I now have to rush out of the house to cram into a train to be at work on time. But… Continue reading 9 to 5

Let me drop the aboriginal child sex abuse issue for a while to tackle something really important. When I was in Belgium, I used to buy honey from a specialist shop that sold nothing but different types of honey from all over the world. I managed to try about ten types, but nothing compared with… Continue reading Spreadable Honey

As soon as I turned on the radio this morning, I heard the newsreader saying that a new report has found that indigenous communities can manage themselves. How arrogant and condescending, I thought. But when I looked it up on the net, I instead found an article from last year that stated that this expectation… Continue reading Can Indigenous Communities Govern Themselves?