For month upon miserable month through the pandemic, HKIA resembled a cross between a ghost town and a military hospital. You could almost sense the tumbleweed about to blow along the arrivals hall. How good it is to see the place humming once more.
Blog
Lifestyle
Heading down Memory Lane with Proust in my slipstream
Proust’s work, ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ (literally ‘In search of lost time’), was first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past. Van Morrison inherited some literary tradition, did he not?
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Events
Kohli or Kane for the Cricket World Cup semi-final? Your chance to win a taste-tempting trio of Sōmrus cream liqueurs
Wayne Barnes reaches into his pocket and pulls out a red card, which he flashes in front of Kane Williamson. “You led that protest with your head. No attempt to lower your voice. There’s a high degree of danger and there’s no mitigation. Off you go Sam!”
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Airports
How a €3,000-plus lucky lighter proves it really does pay to shop duty free
Irish auctioneer Gormleys is putting the lighter under the hammer – hopefully not literally – with a guide price of €2,300. Already it has attracted a bid of €2,900 and that’s likely to go much higher.
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Events
Trinity triumph and World Cup woes
After such events I feel as if I’ve been put through a mental wringer, the psychological equivalent of being run over by the Springboks forward pack, the unrelenting concentration required meaning that relief rather than exhilaration is the dominant emotion afterwards.
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Airports
Somrus tells it straight up but a columnist ends up on the rocks
This is why Americans think the economy is terrible,” wrote the irate critic on X (formerly Twitter) above a photo of a burger, fries and three sachets of ketchup (I know, I know, a journalist should never reveal his sauces).
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Events
Time to enjoy some undiluted Writers’ Tears
It looked as though I might have to honour my pledge to retire, become ‘free of duty at last’ and to rename our title after my Irish business partner Dermot Davitt.
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Events
From an Interim Bureau on the French Riviera to a worldwide HQ in Ystradgynlais
My Interim Bureau over the next few days is a very different place from the dazzle of Cannes but on a personal level offers incalculable riches that a swanky city on the French Riviera can never match.
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Airports
A celebration of speed and sumptuous Qatari hospitality
We are on location for a sporting weekend like few others in the company of Qatar Airways and Qatar Duty Free.
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Events
An All Blacks roasting and a BW Confidential toasting
Our schedules are jam-packed throughout the week and thanks to that and the fact that news from the rest of the world will continue to pour in over coming days, we really will live up to our moniker of ‘the website that never sleeps’.
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Events
Sunrise in Shanghai, tenderness in Tokyo; and the cream of the crop with Sōmrus
I’m up, up and away again on one of those aircraft, on a 16-hour, 8,045 mile flight to New York, the first leg of a two-week journey that will in six days hence see me in Cannes for the TFWA World Exhibition.
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Events
Sunrise turns 24 years young; we reach a sprightly 21; and FAB rocks in Bangkok
I have known Sunrise Duty Free Founder and General Manager Fengyi Zhang for most of those 24 years and am always struck by her kindness and grace when we meet in China or at TFWA’s Cannes and Singapore shows.
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Events
Feeling bleu in Paris but absolutely FAB-ulous in Bangkok
“Allez les Bleus!” I guess the nice immigration officer woman at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport couldn’t help herself when she saw the kiwi on my cap.