The mouse that roared and the SK-II campaign that soared

The sceptics’ voices have fallen silent. As day three of the four-day event begins, it is clear that the organisers have a triumph on their hands. Dead MICE? This is the mouse that roared.

How Hong Kong Airport is getting all dressed up and ready for take-off

Better times are coming at this magnificent gateway and the Airport Authority Hong Kong team is more than prepared for them.

Songs from the sky in China and scenes of madness in London

When comparing notes while, like me, working on the weekend, Tian Qin quoted me an old Chinese proverb, ‘Happy life is from hard working.’ I guess that makes me a very happy man indeed.

Lifeguards, drag queens and Dave Dobbyn all say welcome home

I would just about concede the Wallabies the Bledisloe Cup if all of us could start to travel freely again and sing our own equivalent of Nau Mai Rā.

Tuning into Edvard Grieg’s Morning Moodie

Amid all the talk about sector ‘recovery’, the reality is that any such curve is going to be country by country, route by route, step by step (in both directions). Inch by bloody inch.

Farewell Joe Porcelli

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” – St Francis

The heroic tale of the WanderSafe wonder woman

“I made the tough call, and I am pleased to inform you that the prognosis is positive, the pain has been removed and I will walk again, on robotic feet.“

My Neil Armstrong moment is complete

I know that I am a lot safer as of today and that so is the world, thanks to the outstanding efforts of the teams here in Hong Kong and all around the globe.

Sergei Bozhok, the correspondent who got away

There may be no full moon in Paris tonight in the hauntingly aching words of Marianne Faithful but I suspect a figurative one at least has arrived early in Vladisvostok.

How I avoided my Rudy Giuliani moment and became the face of Clinique instead

Would my opening remarks turn into a reprise of the risible Rudy Giuliani’s infamous Four Seasons Total Landscaping post-election press conference as dark hair dye ran down the side of his face in the Philadelphia heat?

People

April 4, 2021

How a chocolate called Pauline tells us that dumbing down in travel retail is a mistake

This underlines one of the key dilemmas facing travel retail as the sector emerges battered and bruised from the pandemic. Should consolidation of ranges spell the exclusion of new and exciting products such as Les Chocolats de Pauline?

People

March 31, 2021

#Changedestiny – How Rikako Ikee returned to The Center Lane

“Now there’s a second Rikako Ikee – the leukemia survivor. I’m now capable of empathising with so many people. The very fact that I’m alive is in itself an immense experience.”

Travel

March 28, 2021

Pondering a post-batch 210102 visit to Mauritius

Today, my eye has alighted on Mauritius, all 2,040 sq kilometres of its loveliness perched out there alone in the Indian Ocean. I reckon I could be there in around 9 hours and 45 minutes.