Classical
By all accounts, Maestro Alexander Lazarev is a hyperactive conductor in a hurry. According to Tennant Artists, from 1987 to 1995 he was “Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Theatre, the first person for over thirty years to hold both positions concurrently”. Not only is his repertoire said
Leadership
Here lies the €uro A fine dream born of Lofty ideals Brought down By the brutal reality Of the difference Between rich and poor It is sometimes amazing how simple things at a personal level can become such complicated matters when raised to the national level. Paying for things we
Communication
It has been a harrowing few weeks, and finding time to write original material for the blog has been a challenge. I tried to recycle material I had received from friends and associates, but that turned out to be quite inadequate as well.Instead I spent the little time I
Pop and Rock
I’m a late comer to the music of Harry Connick Jr. I had heard his name often, and had been aware that some considered him heir apparent to Frank Sinatra, but I had never bothered to find out what his music was like, until recently. After all, I thought,
Communication
A colleague and I changed our travel plans at short notice and decided to take an earlier flight than the one we had booked. There were no seats available in business class on that flight, so they had to re-book my colleague into economy. This was the question the
Pop and Rock
According to allmusic.com, Laura Marling “was only 16 years old when she emerged on the British indie scene in 2007 thanks to a handful of infectious singles made available on her MySpace profile”. I discovered her through a Timesonline article which features a stream of her new album entitled
Language & Writing
“Language,” André Brink says, “is the starting point of literature, an invention in and through language.” As someone who writes in both English and Afrikaans, he should know. He tells me that since the transition to multi-racial democracy in South Africa, more literature is written in Afrikaans, often seen
Miscellaneous
My friend Professor Robin Stuart-Kotze has just pointed me to the following chart in Pat’s Papers: Pat comments: "The The water utility in Edmonton, EPCOR, published the most incredible graph of water consumption last week. By now you’ve probably heard that up to 80% of Canadians
Management
In two blog entries in the Wall Street Journal over the past couple of weeks, management guru Gary Hamel has taken a stab at analysing the success of Apple Inc. You can find Part I here, and Part II here. He begins by going through a set of surprising statistics
Language & Writing
John Naisbitt the futurist held a discussion session at the AustCham Regional Conference. The gist of his talk: - The Western representative democracy model is essentially “horizontal” with two parties slugging it out every few years - This model has been rendered dysfunctional and inoperative by the information revolution - An alternative “vertical”
Miscellaneous
The annual TED conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs is on now, lasting until February 13th. According to the description on its web site, TED is “a small nonprofit devoted to ideas worth spreading”. Founded in 1984, it started as a conference bringing together people from the areas of
Management
An article in the Wall Street Journal lists the top ten mistakes managers make with e-mail. Since the newspaper has started charging for subscriber content, I'm careful not to reproduce everything, in case the law catches up with me, but the following highlights should be enough to