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Showing posts from September, 2013

Future plans

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After more than two fantastic years at the Jakarta Globe, I'm moving on to other things. It was a great privilege to work with such an exciting group of journalists from around the world in the newsroom - we had a great core of talented and enthusiastic reporters, editors, designers and photographers from Indonesia, complemented by some ambitious young foreign staff. Like in any job there were some frustrations along the way, and yes, some of those contributed to me choosing to leave. But I leave the place with many fond memories and hope that it can once again offer authoritative and incisive coverage of a country that many English-speakers are rightly keen to understand. Newsrooms are workplaces like no other. There's a contagious energy pulsating through the place, especially when a big story is breaking. Deadlines are constant, and few tasks can be pushed back from one day to the next, so stress remains high and desks remain messy. That's what I love, and what I'

Things I brought back

There are few things more dispiriting than being subjected to the stories of someone else's holiday in excruciating detail, with every delayed flight, serendipitous encounter and historic ruin recalled as if it mattered. Those things are great to live through (except perhaps the delayed flight), but aren't nearly as captivating in facsimile form. So with that in mind, I'm sparing you the predictable travelogue of my just-completed two-week jaunt around Central Europe (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Prague) and Middle East (Dubai airport, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Istanbul) with the delightful Miss Melanie. Instead, you get quirky bite-sized observations. Enjoy. - Central Europe seems to have been spared the worst of the continent's economic crisis, at least to the lay observer. In the cities we visited, there were few beggars, idle working-age people, abandoned buildings or cases of petty crime. Instead, there were plenty of tourists and businesspeople bustling arou