Botswana is one of the great development success stories of Africa, with a GDP growth higher than even the Asian tiger economies.  And it really shows.  The roads are all paved, there is a sense of infrastructure, tap water is drinkable, people are well educated and ambitious. It almost doesn't feel like Africa at all, except that everywhere there ( Read more... )

I think I have the most beautiful commute to work. I grab a bike from the Vélib' stand at the end of the road, go up to the river, and cycle along the Quai d'Orsay for a mile or so, before crossing the Seine into Place de la Concorde. On the way back home in the evenings it's even better. Coming south over Pont Alexandre III, with the Invalides ( Read more... )

I feel like I might have posted about this before, but I just read another example and it made me jump. So, here are a few sentences to read:

Her camera hews so closely to his world view that you become fully immersed in his sadness. - The New Yorker

She struck me as someone who had hewed to the line of her own ambition without sacrificing crucial ( Read more... )

While I love LibraryThing (being the sort of person who takes great pleasure in arranging his bookshelves by subject and alphabetical order of surname), the reviews posted there can sometimes send me into seething fits of frustration. Here are some that I have been subjected to this week, to give you an idea of the level of analysis some reviewers ( Read more... )

Today the boss offered me a permanent staff job at AFP (the good news)...........

..........in Johannesburg (the bad news).

Well not really bad as such, but not very well-timed.  Maybe in a couple of years I'd love to live in South Africa for a bit (though in my head it is all carjackings and security fences), but I feel like I've only just moved to ( Read more... )

The wedding was awesome.  To give you an idea of the tone, my sister came down the aisle to ‘I'm Gonna Love You Forever’ by Jessica Simpson, and walked out to ‘My Heart Beats Like A Drum’.  Oh, yes.  We were staying in Q1, the world's tallest residential building, and my Christ we were high.  Hannah and I were in a ‘sub-penthouse’ suite on the 73rd ( Read more... )

Brisbane is all clean blue skies and crisp tall buildings and newness. Australia seems even newer and more plastic than ever after Paris, although that is also why it's so lovely here. They call this winter - ha! We have been out sunbathing all day. The disparate members of our family are gradually coming together, which is always a huge pleasure ( Read more... )

I am at Hong Kong airport.  I haven't slept in 18 hours and I'm in that strange beyond-tired zone of jetlag which is made worse by the fact that in another four hours I have to get on another 10-hour flight.  The airport here is enormous but I am taunted by the huge windows everywhere, showing me Hong Kong, one of my favourite places in the world ( Read more... )

Notes to myself on semantics of the French word dérober, in the hope that I don't have to keep looking it up EVERY GODDAMN TIME, with examples from Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris.

The root meaning (from Germanic, related to English rob) is ‘to steal’ (construed with à to indicate ‘from’):

... quand il fut sûr, bien sûr qu'elle n'y était plus, que c'en ( Read more... )

This could be my last morning in Shayne's flat.  Hannah arrives in Paris today - all our things from England are packed up and being held indefinitely by a removal company until we find an apartment for them to be moved into.  I was out last night and didn't get in until after 4am, so I am sitting here at my desk, grateful for a brief burst of wifi ( Read more... )