Archive for the ‘My life & thoughts’ Category
Our round the world trip (6): Melbourne and penguins
March 11th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Day 7 (Monday) was a public holiday in Melbourne because the state of Victoria celebrates Labour Day on the second Monday in March (each state and territory decides when to hold the holiday) and there is local festival called Moomba (the name comes from an local Aboriginal language and means something like ‘having fun’). The […]
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Our round the world trip (5): wizard! – we’re in Oz
March 10th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Day 6 (Sunday) of our trip was effectively a travelling day. Our flight on Qantas Airways Airbus A330-200 was another ‘overnight’ journey east into the sun. The journey from Bangkok to Sydney was nine and a quarter hours, so we landed at 7 am Bangkok time but – since this part of Australia is four […]
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Our round the world trip (4): last day in Bangkok
March 9th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
After a late lunch and some chilling back at the hotel, for our last evening in Bangkok we decided to do something a little different and, following a recommendation from the hotel, had dinner at a restaurant called the “Naj Exquisite Thai Cuisine”. It was a pleasant ambience since it is located in a century-old […]
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Our round the world trip (3): what? more wats!
March 8th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Another day in Bangkok: Day 4 (Friday) of our trip. Another wat – or two: why not? Things did not get off to a good start though. Our hotel called a taxi for us and explained our destination to the driver. However, no sooner were we on the move than he announced in very broken […]
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Our round the world trip (2): Bangkok’s Grand Palace
March 7th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
This is our first visit to Thailand, although we have been to adjacent and nearby countries Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. The country has the longest-reigning monarch in the world: King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) – who is now aged 85 – has been on the throne for 66 years. He rules over a nation […]
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Our round the world trip (1): getting to first base
March 6th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
We have been together for over three decades now and done lots of wonderful travelling as a couple, the last decade and a half mainly outside of our home continent of Europe. We have long harboured a wish to visit Australia and New Zealand, the one continent we have never experienced, but knew that it […]
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Best ever week for my web site
March 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I state on the homepage of my web site that each day I receive over 8,000 visits to the site. In fact, last week, visits on the five weekdays averaged 9,000 a day. Around half of all the visits are to NightHawk. So many thanks for your interest and support. The coming month will probably […]
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Our Valentine’s Day: something very new and something very, very old
February 14th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Vee and I today celebrated our 31st Valentine’s Day as a couple and did a couple of special things. In the morning, we went to The View From The Shard. the top of the new building near London Bridge. The Shard – which has only recently been completed – is already an iconic building on the […]
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The British lecturer and the Chinese students
February 12th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Today I gave a lecture on broadband policy to postgraduate students at the London School of Economics. A third of the almost two dozen students were Chinese. This tells us how international is the student population of LSE and how much Chinese students are seeking British education. All the Chinese students sat together and they […]
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Our travel plans of four years ago: what happened?
February 7th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Exactly four years ago today, I did a posting on this blog about our possible future travel plans. At the time, I had visited 52 countries, but the total is now 57. In that posting, I speculated about five possible future trips. So, what actually happened? Easter 2009 – return trip to Prague to see […]
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