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Archive for the 'travel' Category

Common sense needed in security response to “thong bomber”

TORONTO – Common sense is sorely lacking in the media hoopla and political response to the latest failed attempt to bring down a civil airliner. Perhaps it’s time to look dispassionately at the challenge and identify some potential responses that might help.
Christmas Day Recap
For those of you living on Mars: On December […]

A very worthy cause

( Politics and Marketing and travel and Canada and World )

TORONTO — I’m back in Toronto and am interrupting my normal program of venting and unsolicited prosthelytizing to bring you a blatant, but entirely worthy, non-commercial advertisement.
I have been involved with Youth Challenge International for a number of years and believe it’s an outstanding organization that does two exceptionally valuable things very well:
1. It sends […]

Healthy Lessons Learned from U.S. Fast Food Restaurants

( travel and USA )

LIMBO — If you’re trying to eat healthy (”healthfully” just sounds like a mouthful and I’m trying to cut back) then consider this lesson I recently learned in an American-owned fast food restaurant:
If everyone eating in the restaurant is fat, eat someplace else.
The simple rules are, so often, the best.

Listening in on other peoples’ pasts

CAIRO – Just a very quick post to comment on a brief moment, well in fact about five minutes, of unusual oddness. Not to be confused with run-of-the-mill oddness, mind you, which abounds in my circles these days.
As I returned to my hotel room, the message light was flashing on the telephone. This, on its […]

Pakistani perspectives on war with the Taliban

ISLAMABAD — I returned last night from two and half days in Lahore, where I spent some time socially with a few well-educated business associates and asked their opinions on the war in Afghanistan, the one here in Pakistan and the political mindset of average Pakistanis.
But first, as I sit to eat a late afternoon […]

Just a thought… on H1N1 and pandemic preparedness

ISLAMABAD – On arrival in Islamabad I had to declare if I’d visited Africa or Europe in the past six days — just to make sure I was free of bird or swine flu, presumably. Naturally, I forgot that Egypt was in Africa… is it?
Now, if they’d asked me that question on arrival in Dubai […]

“A is for Allah. B is for Bandook (gun)…”

( Politics and Strategy and travel and Pakistan )

ISLAMABAD –  Thus begins a primer used in some Pakistani private schools, according to the May 23 international edition of Time Magazine.  How Pakistan failed itself by Aryn Baker alleges the primer goes on to teach:  “T is for Thakrau, collision, which is illustrated with a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames… Z, […]

Welcome to Egypt, now turn your head and… cough

CAIRO — Egypt is gripped by swine flu. Well, as gripped as a country can be where there is not a single solitary case of the H1N1 virus. Yet.
On arrival at Cairo International Airport, which is slightly larger than the airport in Kelowna B.C., I was greeted after being disgorged like undercooked fish from the […]

One credible threat is worth 1,000 bombs

( Strategy and travel and Pakistan )

ISLAMABAD – On Friday, my laptop stopped connecting through it’s 53 layers of corporate IT endorsed security systems so I couldn’t receive any business emails from the great mother ship in the sky. So, I bundled it up in the little black bag and hiked into the local company office to connect directly to the […]

Please keep your seatbelt fastened while seated

KHYBER PASS – Well, okay, I was actually about 3,000 feet above the Khyber pass when I noticed the sticker carefully applied to the tray on the seatback in front of me.  It was cloudy, you see, so the infamous Khyber looked an awful lot like the prairies of Saskatchewan on a cloudy day.  Hence […]