Kindly Yours

I recall being invited home to Suchart's family - and after a delicious home cooked meal, lying on the floor with Suchart's brothers for the night sleep over. The tropical air was heavy. The next day Suchart had to drop by a nearby army base and I was accepted, even as a tourist or Suchart's mate, to enter the inner sanctum where military outfits dotted amongst young faces and tough bodies.  Best of all, I can still smell the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed tom yum soup made by Mrs Suchart - in a clear soup with fresh and simple produce from the land and sea. Boat trips on water figure importantly in my Thai sojourn, for the lovely isles in both the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand played an alluring role to me in romanticisation and attraction of the region.  I was hinted of pirates plying these waters but luckily never met any. On most of these sea journeys, I sat on small boats with friends, fellow backpackers or independently.   The guys steering and running the...

As reckoned, after the Easter weekend, temperatures began to drop noticeably over night. The end of daylight savings, albeit in early April, brought about a sure but shifting psychological change in our individual perceptions of the timing of  dawn and dusk, moon light and day time, coolness and warmth outdoors.  The angle of the natural light seemed to be different, noticeable as sudden light or darkness appeared through blinds, vehicle wind screens and the horizon. New South Wales does not experience the extremes of the midnight sun or the longest day.  Seasonal change here is gradual, unannounced and gentle.  I feel there is slower growth of flora, as if the plants have wound down its hectic pace of summer and showed a hibernation of their own, sowing the seeds of a re-spurt in bloom in only a few more months. The ocean water temperatures have also taken a turn southwards.  The recent rains are just a continuation of much wetter weather in the past two ye...

Be charismatic plus positively unusual - and break new ground. Nobody notices convention as much as being startlingly different. I recall Dell Computer's' just on time practise to optimise and minimise the holding of inventory. Running alongside this Dell philosophy was the even more important culture of tailor making concisely to each customer's unique and varied requirements. This can be difficult to deliver in the food business, but again, why not?  Charisma can exude from the service, product or  the people that are the face of the business.  Being positively unusual does have a definite shelf life, when being new gradually is accepted as the expected norm - and then an engaging stirrer asks why not and how not, all over again.  I have taken Dell for granted, but now I am captivated by the young chap from Canberra who has a magic glove that interacts effectively with so much of the Internet and modern electronics - with just a natural wave of the hand. Build ...