With elections in Victoria this coming Saturday to elect a new (or old) State government, I am puzzling again on the question of what issues we put our minds to in order to choose who will govern us for the next three years. (more…)

Life can be like a series of film clips which repeat in changing permutations and which themselves have changed each time they run, or which can seem the same each time through.  I’m in an aeroplane again, on my way to Sydney, again, to exhibit nutritional products at an ACNEM¹ training event, again.  For any of you not aware of it, I was, until a little over three years ago, CEO of ACNEM.  My time with the college represented, when I left, over one quarter of my life. (more…)

What is the purpose served by our knowing of a kidnapping in Italy or a triple murder in the USA or the conviction of a politician for fraud in the UK or an avalanche in the Andes?  How does any of this information change our lives, our behaviour or our beliefs? (more…)

I seem to have come back as two people, or as one person inhabiting two worlds.  Having returned from Europe, I slept on and off for almost four days and it was not jet lag. (more…)

A pleasant exhaustion envelops me as I sit in a crowded Jumbo, waiting to taxi for take-off from Heathrow, to head east; back to the familiar from what was unfamiliar and became familiar very quickly. (more…)

Sometimes the best-laid plans of mice and men … can be as nothing if the workers of the Belgian railway decide to strike.  Plan B for getting to Amsterdam from London: train, ferry, train.  Includes a two-berth cabin for the night crossing.  Travel and accommodation for the same price as the non-existent train through Belgium.  Thank you, striking workers. (more…)

This should be called ‘From the Galley’, as I am sitting twixt two of those on a Boeing 777 somewhere over the Timor Sea, on the way to Kuala Lumpur, on the way to Europe.  Close to twenty-four hours stuck in an aeroplane to spend two weeks on the other side of the world. (more…)

Making sense of the world can be difficult.  We attempt it through our senses, tempered by our mind.  What the mind does with all this input depends to a large extent on its programming through culture, education, parenting, race, peer influence, the environment and the media. (more…)

I like to tell myself that I am in control of my life, that I do or do not do things as I choose.  The reality is that this is both true and not true. (more…)

How often do we worry about the structure and neglect the substance?  We do it within families, in business, in government and individually.  A working structure is useful in any enterprise and essential in some, while many activities can be enjoyed with no structure at all.

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