Musings by Grace Chng

It’s been a while since I blogged. Two trips got in the way. One was to Germany where I had the opportunity to see what Nokia was doing. The Finnish company is trying really hard to be a services company. I give them full marks but their journey is a long one.

The other trip was my annual holiday. This time I was in Melbourne where I’d originally gone to see Beyonce perform. It’s a great performance, 2 solid hours, very good production. She’s a great performer, her songs are good, the dancers good. And the atmosphere was electric at the Rod Laver Arena where it was held. For 90 minutes before, Flo Rida performed the opening act. It’s a rapper group and from the environment at the arena, it looks like it’s a popular group.

Sorry, rap is out for me. I don’t like the sensation of having my heart in my ears! Anyway, Beyonce came on at 9.10pm (ticket says performance starts at 7.30pm) and the whole stadium of 60,000 people came to their feet. And they stayed on their feet for most of the time. She sang for 2 hours, with several changes in costume. Her songs came from her current and previous albums - Halo, Single Lady etc - all the hot songs people dance to. She even paid tribute to Michael Jackson during her encore, when she sang Halo. Quite appropriate I thought.

Melbourne was cool, such a nice change from hot Singapore. Went to Morningnton Peninsula and Nippean Point which is the narrowest point of Australian between the two great oceans  - I think it’s the Pacific and Atlantic. Anyway, visited the military barracks on the Nippean Summit. Why is is that the artillery guns were also pointed south?

What’s in the south? Apart from icy Antarctica, there’s only New Zealand. What other enemies were Australia expecting?

Anyway, I had to write a couple of stories. Not that I was hard working but the stories were for a project that I was doing and there’s no time to be lost. So I’d arranged for a mobile broadband from the subsidiary of the red camp in Singapore. Unfortunately, after the dongle turned out to be a lemon! No one’s fault but did it really have to happen?

Anyway, good old Internet service in a hotel was reliable and I managed to write and send off my story for A$5 an hour Internet connection.

Now I’m ready for another holiday…. without any mobile broadband.

• Good friend and PR person, August 28, 2008
• Internet access, September 15, 2008
• An iPod shuffle that talks?, March 12, 2009
• Macworld 09, January 7, 2009
• An era has ended, January 8, 2009