Archive for April, 2008
Teaching romance in Singapore
Yes, teaching romance. The Singaporean government, you see, is concerned about a low birth rate. Singapore has a rate of just 1.24 per woman of child-bearing age, while 2.5 is considered a normal rate just to maintain a population. Aggravating the situation, in the view of the government, is that the rate among highly educated women is [...]
Sabbatical resources
I’ve promised more coverage on the topic of sabbaticals (or career breaks), so to that end I’ve developed a page on this site devoted to the topic of life sabbaticals. An excerpt: Who is taking sabbaticals? Sure, college professors have always been able to take a sabbatical, but what about the rest of us? You’d [...]
A life list for travel
Have you seen the movie The Bucket List, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, in which two terminally ill men set off on a global road trip in order to check some items off their life list of things to experience? Do you own the book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die?” Well, then, [...]
Riel World photo – Paris, France
Paris, France A crepe sizzles on the skillet at a French creperie near Montmartre.
Obama and the world
I’ve long believed that, if Barack Obama were to win this year’s presidential election, the most important outcome would be a sea change in America’s relations with and image in the rest of the world. I just came across two articles that look at how some foreign leaders see the prospect of an Obama presidency and, although [...]
Inspired by Guatemala
So, what’s a reasonably successful, fiftysomething writer to do when her kids are grown and she finds herself falling in love with Guatemala? Well, buy a house and move there for part of the year. Why not? That’s the somewhat surprising turn that Joyce Maynard’s life took a few years ago, as described in this story. [...]
Meshing Chinese and Western business cultures
There was an interesting column by Joe Nocera in the New York Times business section a few days ago. It started by looking at the relative lack of MBA-type skills among Chinese managers, but then diverted into an examination of Chinese and Western business cultures and the difficulties that companies have in meshing the two. An excerpt: [...]
Off the tourist trail in Egypt
Gill Harvey went to Egypt to do research for a novel. While there, she enjoyed getting off the tourist trail and appreciating the sights and sounds of everyday life in Cairo and Luxor. She wrote about her experiences for the U.K. Independent. It’s five years since my last visit, but it only takes one ride in [...]
Pondicherry, an oasis in India
Tranquility is not a word often associated with tourism in India, but that’s just how Matt Gross described Pondicherry, a French colonial coastal city in southeastern India, in a recent travel article. An excerpt: Today, Puducherry, as it is officially known but rarely called, is capitalizing on a glammed-up version of that history, and emerging [...]
A lot to see in Ecuador
Ecuador doesn’t get a lot of tourist attention, save for its renown as the jumping off point to the Galapagos Islands. But there is a lot to see in this small Andean nation, as K.C. Summers and his wife discovered during a recent trip there, which he wrote about for the Washington Post. We had it all [...]
Contemplating sabbaticals
I’ve been seeing more press these days being devoted to the concept of taking a sabbatical from work. It’s an idea that particularly interests me, since my wife and I have taken two sabbaticals since getting married in 2001 – experiences that I chronicled in my book, Two Laps Around the World. So I thought I’d [...]
Riel World photo – Ladakh, India
Ladakh, India Well, it isn’t Nepal, but it is the Himalayas. These are Buddhist prayer flags flapping in the breeze outside a gompa above the 12,000-foot-high city of Leh, in the Ladakh region of India.
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Bob Riel is a writer and a traveler. Go here to read more about Bob, his work and the Travels in the Riel World blog.
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Two Laps Around the World
My travel memoir - Two Laps Around the World: Tales and Insights from a Life Sabbatical - is about two round-the-world journeys with my wife.
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