Like a couple of Hong Kong hamsters desperately clutching onto their exercise wheel as the men in hamstermat, sorry hazmat, suits come to take them away, Boris is hanging on like grim death.
Airports
Travel retail as an auction house of the future
The best airports (and Istanbul is high on that list) are magnificent amphitheatres that house not only people but emotions (sadness, excitement, anticipation, joy) and are therefore ripe for great experiences.
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People
Free the Kerry One – meet travel retail’s most-quarantined man
Deep and dense (the wine, not Sunil) and bursting with cassis and blackcurrant flavours, it’s the kind of tipple that is simply made for travel retail’s most illustrious inmate.
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People
Say a prayer for Khaliq
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.