New Roads: Crimefest Writers, and Camilleri’s Sicily
After three days of an excellent crime fiction convention, what’s the next move? Go to Sicily and the province of Ragusa to visit the setting for Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels and home to the TV series, of course. Um, how did this happen? After a lifetime of research and a string of non-fiction books, … Read more
Back In New Zealand
Whatever the artistic merits of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and the more recent Hobbit (undoubted in the former and more questionably in the latter), what really wins in the films is the New Zealand landscape. So much so that much of the tourism to Aotearoa now is focused on visiting Jacksonland, complete with … Read more
Sihanouk Boulevard
There were no elephants. In the past, a Cambodian royal family funeral would have featured them, perhaps even to the point of one carrying a royal casket. This time, King Father Norodom Sihanouk was carried in a jasmine covered massive gold casket, conveyed on a motorised and stylised mythical flying animal, flanked by officials and … Read more
Cricket and the Politics of Representation
In the current round of the never-ending grind that is now international cricket, there are strong reminders that the game, like sport generally, carries strong social and political symbolism with powerful meaning and resonance within the broader communities involved. Take the Australia-Sri Lanka series, for example, in which a rebuilding home side is inflicting heavy … Read more
A Week in Chennai/Madras
I am not long back in Phnom Penh from a week zipping about Chennai during the Cambodian Water Festival period – a good time to get away, particularly as the Chennai weather is now about as good as it will get at any time in the year. And it was good: mid to high 20s … Read more
The Motorbike and Social Change
My Phnom Penh house is close to Diamond Island, the modern name now given to an area formally known as Koh Pich, an island at the confluence of the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Tonle Bassac rivers which leads the city’s development drive with a convention centre, food and entertainment outlets, housing, and a golf driving … Read more
Cambodian Reflections
One night early last week, I joined thousands of Cambodians outside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh as mourning continued for the late King Father, Norodom Sihanouk, who had died in Beijing a few days earlier. The rain was sloshing down in the late wet season throes, authorities had cordoned off the Palace area so that … Read more
Reading, Watching
Once again there has been a blog hiatus, brought on by the combination of preparing a new book for e-distribution (there will be more reported on this soon), project workshops, and a quick family trip to the UK. The latter began with an extraordinary 18 hour flight delay in Kuala Lumpur courtesy of Malaysia Airlines … Read more
Sport Special, or Sport Overload?
This is one of those periods when it seems that the world exists only for sport, so that even an inveterate enthusiast like me can feel overwhelmed, almost. At every turn, though, the inevitable questions arise about why this mania exists, and why people behave the way they do. First, the Olympics. At this stage … Read more
Syria Adrift
This blog has been a touch quiet, and the reason is basically Syria, for two interconnected reasons. The first is straightforward enough. I have been finalising a book put together on the basis of my experiences of living in Syria immediately prior to the current tragic events. It is about living in an old Arabic … Read more
