After many visits to Paris over the last thirty-five years, we decided to visit at a different pace and from a different perspective. We chose AirBnB in the 16-ème arrondissement. We spent five days walking – from the 16-ème to the 1-ere and half way back, across the Promenade Plantée,Continue Reading
It is not surprising that Professor Gillian Triggs, President of the Human Rights Commission, gave a thoughtful, though provoking provocateur’s address at the Sydney Salon last night (22nd August 2016). It is a little more surprising that she laid the blame for Australia’s recent performance on human rights issues atContinue Reading
Increasingly the information arriving on the desk of business people comes in the form of the PDF document. Whether the document is the latest industry research, a board report, a tender document, the annual accounts of a subsidiary or a myriad of other information, it arrives as the attachment toContinue Reading
The Sydney Salon emerged from the concept of the Salons of the Paris Enlightenment where discussion was seeded by speakers and moved in the direction the audience chose to take it. So it was fitting that the most recent event was held at the Grand Café in the Alliance Française. The guest speaker thisContinue Reading
My exposure to the United States of America is limited to very small tastes, years apart, with little planning, so it is with some surprise and, indeed pleasure, that I found myself today wandering the Streets of San Francisco. Prior to my leaving home, Dominique dug out the DVD ofContinue Reading
We were waiting, seated, ready to go, tray tables stowed and seat backs in the upright position on Air New Zealand flight NZ 8577 a Dehavilland Dash 8 Turbo Prop service from Tauranga to Wellington. Nothing happened. The door remained open, the flight attendant remained in place at the topContinue Reading
Jennifer Oriel, a recent contributor to the right wing think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, provided an opinion piece to the Australian on 23 September 2015 which was breathtaking in its inaccuracy, curiously unabashed in its misrepresentation of recent history and laughingly inconsistent and self-defeating in is argument. Evenso,Continue Reading
Ulm 48°24′N 09°59′E 1 September 2015 Ulm loves its sparrows. The fascination with sparrows is linked to a legend that during the construction of the Ulm Minster, workers were trying to bring a particularly long log through one of the city gates, but it did not fit. When they wereContinue Reading
The ride from Paris to Mamers can be over in around two hours without much effort. It takes a lot more concentration to make it last three or four days. That is what we set out to do. Hiring a car in Chartres and driving via Brou, Illiers-Combray, Bonneval, NogentContinue Reading
It is easy for a trip to Paris to fall into a groove of the standard, admittedly spectacular, sites. This time we decided not to follow that path, but instead to explore some areas that we have overlooked in the past. This decision was made easier by the fact thatContinue Reading