Adil has asked members of the travel retail community to pray to their respective gods for Khaliq’s recovery. If you don’t have a god then just hold Khaliq in your heart for a moment.
Blog
Travel
Only three more sleeps until Christmas
Who would have possibly believed back then that most of the photos of people working in the travel retail community less than two years later would show them in masks?
Read More
Travel
Up the Creek but not without a paddle
Guess who was cast as Captain? Yep. I must have been all of four years old. Man the laugh boats as the movie’s tagline ran.
Read More
Travel
If dogs run free, why not me?
Just like Uncle Chu, this workload sometimes causes me to paws for thought and look up with a sad face for sympathy. That’s what comes from being an old newshound, I suppose.
Read More
Quirky
Twinkle Twinkle Little Earth – a timely tune from Sestus Omicron 3
“The closing four pages are so cataclysmic and catastrophic as anything I’ve ever done—the harmony bites like nitric acid – the counterpoint grinds like the mills of God.”
Read More
Events
Omicron anxieties pale in the wake of Kentucky tragedy
The darkness that dominates world headlines over the pandemic is nothing compared to the despair of catastrophe and loss in the deep south of America. We must strive to retain perspective, insist on it in fact.
Read More
Events
Political insanity, media inanity, and wailing into the wind
“CNN and other Western media have misunderstood China. They only see China’s ‘calm’ but they seem to forget how China has firmly adhered to the path of ‘dynamic zero-case’ policy.”
Read More
Events
Why Penny’s Bay remains key to the big prize
I get the Hong Kong government’s position. We’re just going to have to take it on (and in) the nose. While that means further frustration for Hong Kong residents and the tourism industry, it’s all about the size of the prize. And no-one can doubt which is bigger.
Read More
Events
They may both be Greek but Omicron is not Armageddon
Omicron is a variant of concern to the WHO, to governments, to all of us. But it is not Armageddon. Nor was Delta nor Mu nor will be any of the variants that inevitably emerge while much of the world remains shamefully unvaccinated.
Read More
Travel
Flying with butterfly wings towards better times
Qatar Duty Free and Hainan have been the two shining lights of our channel during this prolonged period of deep gloom. Both are set to glow even brighter in 2022.
Read More
Lifestyle
Irish swarms, Aussie blitzes, and Plague Island own goals
Photos of a maskless (and clueless) Boris Johnson in a hospital ward just add to a widespread external perception that the UK is what the New York Times famously dubbed ‘Plague Island’.
Read More
People
Making 50:50 calls on equality and rugby, and watching flashing lights up ahead ‘round the bend
“This community was founded at the peak of the pandemic when everyone felt isolated. Women were leaving the workforce at four times the rate of men at that period.”
Read More
Quirky
From A (Angostura) to Z (Zacapa): Toeing the line in a new kind of Rum Diary
The crack had appeared in the all-important distal phalange, one of 14 phalanges (a posh word for bone, as in ‘I’ve got a phalange to pick with you’ or ‘My favourite red wine is Côte de Phalange’).