The other day we celebrated my youngest son’s 21st birthday. As is customary for me, the speech was written in my head while out for a run. My family jokes about both the fact that I write speeches years…

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Recently our 20-year-old dishwasher gave up the ghost. To be honest, I quite like hand-washing dishes and we spent the first decade or so of married life without a dishwasher. As I started travelling internationally for work, however, and…

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I’m a big fan of archeology. In particular, I have been fortunate to visit Roman ruins on a few occasions and find myself imagining what it must have been like for those individuals actually in the Roman arena, striving…

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One thing about the passage of time is that it affords us the ability to look back and see how much has changed. There’s an old Bill Gates quote that says that: We overestimate how much we can achieve…

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I’m fortunate to serve on the board of an iwi organisation. Having the opportunity to get to know the intricacies of Te Ao Maori, even at a slightly superficial level, is fascinating. One concept that I’ve started to get…

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I’m an incredibly proud New Zealander. I relish the fact that I was born and grew up in the most beautiful place in the world. I love the fact that, while we have a long way to go when…

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This morning I was listening to a podcast which discussed the life and writing of Adam Smith. For those who haven’t come across him, Smith lived nearly three centuries ago and his most famous book, The Wealth of Nations,…

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I have a habit of turning any sightseeing visit into a running event. The year before COVID I took advantage of a business trip in Europe to meet up with my son who was doing a gap year in…

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It’s incredible the things that become part of a family’s norm and how words uttered casually can inculcate themselves into the familial vernacular. We used to live right next to the main railway line in the South Island that…

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I like listening to podcasts and interesting radio interviews. While I have a pretty poor memory and tend to forget the details, I’d like to think that what I hear makes its way into my synapses and adds to…

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