Bongiorno from Venezia, What does a business do when competitors copy their product? It’s a big problem for some, including here on Murano island in Italy. Branded motorbikes are assembled in Indonesia and Ghana but they don’t come from the company whose brand they bear. Smartphones were quickly replicated by other companies after Apple introduced …Read More
Živijo iž Bleda, If Portugal and Việt Nam were the cool destinations last decade, and Iceland and Cuba are the cool destinations now, what’s next? Slovenia! That’s my tip. It’s been the genuine surprise packet of our trip so far. When Tino from Tarvisio (on the Italian side of the border) said, “Slovenia …Read More
Guten Morgan zum Lindau, As predicted, Linda has fallen in love with Austria (“ I thought Italy was beautiful . . . “). It’s not so much the countryside (“It’s so green, it’s kinda like it’s fake.”). No, not the quaint villages (“look at that dear little town”). It’s not even the lakes …Read More
Bongiorno from Tarvisio, I don’t get why car racing is classified as a sport. I don’t get why Asian women with beautiful complexions want to lighten their skin. And I don’t get why people choose to wear conspicuous brand names. While these things puzzle me, I’m completely flummoxed on another modern phenomenon: why people …Read More
Guten tag von Altaussee, This is a story about heroism under duress, about refusal to obey dishonourable instructions from above and about rectifying a wrong wrought by Hollywood. We are in the Austrian Alps, where even Linda has exhausted the superlatives about the scenery. It’s also where ‘bad’ means ‘spa’, and the salt has …Read More
Guten tag von Wien, I suppose we perceive castles and palaces of long-gone royalty as a curiosity; our visits as tourists a pause for relief (relieved that we no longer govern ourselves like that) or a nod to the decadence, and a determination not to let it happen again. On the other hand, …Read More
Ni Hao from Singapore, Here I am back in Singapore – sans Linda this time – to watch the Singapore 7s Rugby tournament. I’ve dropped over for the weekend to see how the Singaporeans “show us and show the world how we do it in Singapore”. This is the city/country where the standard deviation for public …Read More
Xin Chào from Cát Tiên National Park, With 90 odd million people in a fairly small area of land, and thousands of years of occupancy and development, it’s easy to see why a large proportion of Việt Nam is touched by humans in some way. Add to this, three decades of war. So, preserving natural …Read More
Xin Chào from Sa Pa, At our school in the city – where the majority of our clientele are of Asian descent – it’s sometimes difficult to invoke the spectre of child labour as a problem ie. as an undesirable element of a business plan. This is understandable in a culture where children muck in from …Read More
Xin Chào from Sa Pa in the far north of Việt Nam, Who’d’ve thought that rich Europeans would willingly choose to venture high into the mountains of northern Việt Nam, walk long distances up and down steep slopes, stay in local homes in ethnic villages and pay for the privilege? But that’s what thousands of …Read More