dtcwee: The Value of Nothing

As bullets buzz through the African dusk and clink into the armoured SUV's flank, it becomes hard to believe that the tour operators have not lost a passenger yet. The most dangerous prey, we are assured by authors and fictional villains, is man, and the poachers shooting at us are determined to prove the point.

Singapore, Adelaide (Australia), Tokyo. Asked by a friend about different lives in each, my pithy responses are: Singapore: progressive but controlled, cheap but expensive. Australia: ostensibly progressive, ostensibly fair. Japan: one man's exotic tradition is another man's foreign pedantry. But things weren't always like that.