#2 - In Christchurch, New Zealand

• Australia’s resource boom is strong enough that employers complain in the press about their inability to stop the drain of service sector workers leaving to become miners. Feeding these workers is now a significant problem, with reports suggesting managers at KFC in certain towns in Western Australia are now paid in the region of $100,000 to ensure they too do not move sectors. [Report in Australia’s equivalent of the FT.]

• Melbourne is the third largest Greek city in the world. Athens and Thesoloniki are numbers 1 and 2.

• The Largest polling station in the last Australian federal election was Australia House, in London. 40,000 Australians voted there.

• The 4^th richest woman in China is a muslim, who made her money from nothing in paper recycling.

• The world’s most expensive real estate is next to Heathrow airport. [New York Times Sunday magazine, short article on Aerotropolisis, or airports that look like cities.]

• There is a reputed to be an unwinnable Australian drinking game, in which participants must drink every time the group can identify an occasion on which cricketer Shane Warner was a disgrace to the nation. Aficionados of Warnie’s misdeeds can apparently name up to 30-odd occasions upon which he has tarnished Australia’s good name. Only one of these involved parading in his smalls with two blonde prostitutes, and a giant inflatable penis, and being photographed by a British tabloid newspaper.