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Showing posts with the label Travel

The Office

(In which I ponder its future) A solitary visit to the office, early June left me in a somewhat sombre mood.  We've had the current office for over three years and, by any measure, this is a good office.  Once it was clear we had to make the move form our rather run down old office, a great deal of effort went into locating the new office and then designing the form and function of the place.  Not perfect and certainly not funky but nevertheless a pleasant, modern and productive place where, unlike the old office (pictured below in its sad, final weeks), I'm not the snot monster several days in a month. I can't speak for my employer's thinking, but what once looked like temporary changes, brought about by the pandemic, now has me contemplating the future of office spaces and work in general.  Since March we've worked from home with no apparent difference in productivity.  Will the old order re-assert itself, post pandemic? Of course, there is both a human and ec...

Shrinking Horizon/Shifting Horizon

(Pandemic, demagogy and geopolitics collide) A friend has an Uncle who, in the early 1970s, won the Pools and went and travelled the world.  Postcards sent home include one from Afghanistan, taken soon after crossing the border from Iran.  That's two countries most people wouldn't think of visiting, right now, and a border most would would rather not cross.  And postcards from Afghanistan!  Do such things still get made? I've been to Hong Kong on three occasions.  Thanks to unrest, Hong Kong had ceased to be a tourist destination before the pandemic emergency.  Fast forward to today, and I don't know when/if I'll be going back to this favourite (and most photogenic) city. I've been to mainland China once.  I have a friend who lives and teaches in Shanghai.  I have a multiple entry visa, valid through to August 2021.  That visa wasn't cheap, so I'd rather it didn't go to waste.  Likewise, I don't know when/if I'll be going back to Ch...