Tell me what you really think Enrique. A couple of weeks back a very prim and proper lady of probable Chinese descent came up to me at the Club Med disco and asked if she could request a song. As money dripped off her wrists and fingers, she pointed at my computer screen and commanded: “Tonight…
Countdown To The 2011 Cricket World Cup – New Zealand’s All Time ODI Team
Martin Crowe in his prime at the 1992 Cricket World Cup. With the 10th Cricket World Cup just a week away, I thought I’d put up my list of the all-time greatest New Zealand ODI team. This is always much more fun when the Black Caps are doing well, but if you cast your mind…
Lindeman Island, Whitsundays 2011: Surviving Two Cyclones, An Evacuation And An Unexpected Return
Right now is the first time in more than a week I’ve been able just to stop, relax and think about what has been happening. Granted, on one of the days in the past week I was being saved not from cyclones but from baddies and mock-collapsing subways by Superman and Batman at the Movie…
The Music Star Who Kept All His Tennis Stats Since The 70s – What If I’d Been Doing The Same?
Nadal and Federer. With the Australian Open on and men’s tennis at one of the undoubted peaks of the modern era with the Nadal / Federer rivalry, it’s got me thinking about my own epic tennis rivalries and what if I’d kept all my stats. I’d interviewed the great songwriter Jimmy Webb (MacArthur Park, All I Know, Witchita…
Bee Gee Maurice Gibb 8 Years On – Song Of The Week
Today marks eight years since Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees died while on the operating table in Miami after suffering from a twisted intestine. He was only 53 and as a lifelong fan of the brothers Gibb, I remember feeling extremely sad but also privileged that I was on the radio and could…
Just Who Or What Is Glenn’s Dance?
Click here to link to Glenn’s Dance Glenn’s Dance is a new blog I’m collaborating on and this is the rundown according to the site’s ecstatic welcome note: Starring a Club Med set designer, this website is where you can enjoy the unique and at times controversial dancing of Glenn Davis, a phenomenon which takes…
The Bests Of 2010: Best Day, Best Scare, Best Celeb Encounter, Best Beach….
With the year nearly over and almost a year of traveling behind me, here are my “bests” of the year that was. Best Day: Venturing through the Green Canyon in Pangandaran on the southern coast of West Java with a great bunch of mates including Chris “Card” Andrade, Djoeke “The Duke” Van Dijk, Teatske “T-Dog” Van Dijk, Rosey…
What Would Your Version Of ‘Eat Pray Love’ Be Called? Merry Christmas From The Whitsundays, Dec 2010
I spent the last nine months of 2010 travelling through Asia, Canada, the States, Australia and a little bit of New Zealand (just to keep my Kiwi-ness topped up) and wherever I was around the world I saw people (mainly women) reading the Elizabeth Gilbert memoir Eat Pray Love. The book follows a wealthy, recently divorced…
Living In The Whitsundays – Where No-One’s Heard Of Leslie Nielsen!
Living on an island, you can be more than a little isolated from the outside world, particularly here in the Whitsundays where reliable Internet access is about as common as a score past 30 from Kiwi cricketer Craig Cumming. No newspapers on Lindeman Island, little time for radio and TV, just intermittent Internet checks to…
Brandon Flowers’ Ode To The Bee Gees & Vangelis On His Stunning Solo Song ‘Only The Young’
Life at Club Med in the Whitsundays has been a hectic combination of dodging torrential rain (November had five times the average rainfall and well over double the record for this part of Queensland), playing tennis, killing cockroaches, kayaking to tiny islands, dealing with tropical mold, doing the sound for the nightly shows, shooing wild…
The Arcade Fire & My Favourite New Song Of 2010
I’m not going to lie, it’s not a short flight from Vancouver to Auckland, particularly when you’re enroute to Brisbane enroute to Hamilton Island enroute to Lindeman Island. Needless to say, I had a bit of time on my hands and discovered this song by Canadian band (and fellow Springsteen fans) The Arcade Fire called…
The Mad Fun Of Vietnam: From Halong Bay To Ho Chi Minh City – My 3-Part NZ Herald Series, 2008
In 2008 I spent a couple of weeks travelling down the Vietnamese coast from Hanoi and Halong Bay in the north, through Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang and in the centre of the country, and finally into Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south. For a blend of cultural history, war history, beaches, jungle,…
