Today, on Australia Day, it seems appropriate to write about The Secret River, by Kate Grenville. Australia Day commemorates the day in 1788 when the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove with a cargo of convicts from Britain. The first recorded time that Europeans settled in Australia. Many Aboriginal peopleContinue Reading
The school holidays are nearly over here. Chatterboy goes back to school next Wednesday, and Hungry Boy has his first day at big school next Thursday. So they will both have had five weeks of pretty relaxed holidays – going to the beach, and museums, visiting friends and other bits andContinue Reading
This week, in the post, I got a cheque for $50 from Morris Iemma, Premier of NSW, which included a cheesy message reminding me that he is the father of four children. It was the back-to-school allowance for Chatterboy (I get Hungry Boy’s in a month’s time after he’s actually started Kindergarten).Continue Reading
Hugh McKay has a very grumpy rant in the SMH today about the excessiveness of children’s birthday parties. He starts with a description of a two year old’s party, which is more extreme than any two year old’s party I’ve ever been to (I must move in the wrong circles),Continue Reading
In a front page story in the SMH today, the NRMA (NSW’s peak motorist lobby group) accused the government of wasting money on cycle lanes. “The Iemma Government is building a cycleway alongside choked Epping Road, despite as few as 25 cyclists using that corridor each day. At $7.6 millionContinue Reading
Today’s book review is Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, by Philippe Legrain. Legrain is a British journalist (but with a complex heritage involving Estonia, the US and France) who started writing this book just after the July 2005 terrorist attacks on London. The book’s introduction is titled “It’s time for freshContinue Reading
Today’s book review is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I first came across the concept of Flow in my previous job, where it was presented to us as a concept that will help you manage people better – that you should try and manage people soContinue Reading
There was a story last week about how the new government has issued a directive that major statutory agencies (for example the CSIRO, ANSTO and Questacon) will not issue any “strategic media releases which relate to the Government’s key messages” unless they have been vetted by the government – specifically theContinue Reading
Today’s book review is Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy, by David Maister. First, a disclosure. In a first for me, I got this book as an advance copy for review on my blog. And given that David Maister has been one of my favouriteContinue Reading
Mark Bahnisch in Larvatus Prodeo has a post celebrating the start of the festive season (for political junkies, who had to get the election out of the way before they even noticed that the decorations were up in October). In passing, he comments that: it’s interesting to note, just quietly,Continue Reading