Got five minutes? Or maybe even ten? Here are some of the spectacular and wonderful things I’ve loved this week, brought to you from Sydney.
Awww of the week
I spent the day at Taronga Zoo on Sydney Harbour and overdosed on cute! Penguins, wombats, sea-lions, meerkats… but still, the cutest sight of the week has to be the baby giraffe born at Taronga’s Western Plains zoo. How’s this for cute? (Also, kind of messy, but you’ll get past that!)
Song of the week
This has been out for a few months now, but I’ve only just discovered it. Legendary Australian songwriter Paul Kelly joins equally legendary and soulful Australian indigenous singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, who sings in the Yolngu language, in an exquisite rendering of Amazing Grace. Close your eyes and breathe it in.
Quote of the week
Person of the week
In the work I do when I’m not writing romance, I have the privilege of quite often hearing wonderful insights and ideas from amazing people. This week was one of those weeks when I was surrounded by ideas, courtesy of the World Business Forum Sydney. The best of them was from a man I’ve admired for a very long time – Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab and also the One Laptop Per Child project, which influenced provision of over 50 million – that’s million – laptops to help educate the world’s poorest children.
Negroponte has had lots of amazing ideas over the years, but the one I loved this week was this: “connect the last billion people” by establishing a constellation of low earth-orbiting satellites, beyond the jurisdiction of any country. Why? Because access to the internet should be a human right and a civic responsibility, and if you assume that kids are our most precious natural resource and that education is the key to developing that resource for the good of everybody, then it just. Makes. Sense.
Negroponte costs such an initiative at $10 billion – that’s billion. That’s a lot of money. That amount of money would fund the US’s operations in Afghanistan for… oh, around five weeks. It would fund Australia’s illegal detention of 25 asylum seekers for a full year. So, you know… priorities.
Views of the week
Finally, here are the Vivid views I promised! I took a harbour dinner cruise with Vagabond Cruises and between scoffing canapes and quaffing bubbles managed to snap a few of the views I loved best. Hope you enjoy the Vivid colour and magic!
What have you loved this week? Drop me a line!
Gracie Macgregor 