When I arrived and lived in Chile at the end of the ‘80s and the beginning of the ‘90s the country was at the end of an 18 year right wing dictatorship. The dictator, General Augusto Pinochet had called a referendum to decide on the future of the government, and he’d lost by a narrow margin. It was a point of pride for Chile that they had ended the dictatorship with an … [Read more...]
Travel Health
I have a childhood friend who is an epidemiologist – meaning that she’s an expert in public health and outbreaks. I’ll call her Dr Guest. Dr Guest embraces her profession. When you visit she monitors the amount of times you go to the toilet, and takes an interest in what you do when you are there. More than four visits a day and you have a health problem that might infect … [Read more...]
Agatha Bertram’s Roads Trivia Quiz
We’re in Dubai, and my friend gestures to the road we are driving on and says ‘if you keep going, you’ll get to Riyadh’. Riyadh, of course being located in Saudi Arabia. It is Sheikh Zayed Rd and I trace its progress on a map, along the coast of the Arabian Gulf until it heads inland. This also answers another question about which water I was looking at, while sitting on the … [Read more...]
Shinju Matsuri – Broome’s Festival of the Pearl
Broome is a town in Australia’s far north west. There is no much that it is close to. It is on the bottom of ‘The Peninsular’ that has Broome on its south east side and Derby on the south west. Further east are Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek and north of Halls Creek is Kununurra. It is the Kimberley. Very red soil, very blue oceans and reasonably green trees. Distance from … [Read more...]
Je ne comprends pas!
While I’m in France I’m supposed to be learning French and I want to, I really do. I’m spending a lot of time here, and it would help in so many ways if I could speak French. First I had the idea of doing an intensive French course at the local university in St Etienne. I went to talk to the course controller and he advised that there was a class starting in ten days … [Read more...]
