In addition to the glaring error regarding the ‘news’ that both the former president Nursultan Nazarbayev and his appointed successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, fleeing the country (not), and leaving aside the admission from this article regarding the Russian-led forces that Tokayev called in to help, let's look at the currency story…

I live on the New South Wales Central Coast, with a one and half hour train journey to get to Sydney International Airport. The increased security and earlier check-in time would have meant doing the trip with the early morning commuters going to Sydney. Something to be avoided with suitcases…

MIQ: Managed Isolation and Quarantine — The official Kiwi acronym for the current 14 days compulsory quarantine for all international arrivals to New Zealand. Back in October 2020, and on the urging of my sister in Singapore, I decided to begin booking a Christmas break in New Zealand to visit…

On Monday, March 23, 2020, New Zealand announced it would move to a Level 4 lockdown to combat the Caronvirus. Among the directives and guidelines regarding the lockdown, there was the introduction of the word “bubble”, as in “You can only go outside to exercise with the people in your…

This all started during a discussion with my brother in the United Kingdom two days ago. I live in Australia and have many family connections with the UK and Europe, so the subject of when long haul flights will resume has started to come up frequently. It is a truism…

It took ages to get there. Shinkansen north from Tokyo to some remote town, and then on to a regional Japanese train to a small village in the middle of a rural area. I seem to recall we got off one stop before the training centre, and my American friend…

Darkness had completely fallen as we left the decrepit 707 and made our way to airport buildings at Murtala Muhammed International Airport with reassurances from the Air Nigeria flight crew that a plane would “soon” be available to take us to Kano, and that refreshments would also be available as…

We were supposed to take a plane from Bucharest to visit the Port of Constanza on the Black Sea in Romania but there were no flights available, so we took the train. In the dark days of Nicolae Ceausescu, I was told by the firm I was visiting that the…

We landed in Lagos just as the African dusk was falling that shuts off the daylight like someone switched off the lights. We were not supposed to be landing there at all, but it was the time of the Haj pilgrimage and flights to Mecca had used up all the…