The Australian, Wealth IT’S time for Christmas shopping and many people will be visiting Singapore and Hong Kong or the duty-free halls for their seasonal spending sprees. But retailers could be taking-advantage of the festive spirit by offering payment in Australian dollars and adding a surcharge to foreign currency conversion fees. Called dynamic currency conversion, surcharging payments made in Australian dollars is perfectly legitimate. But this is one of the many pitfalls when spending abroad and is a matter of […]
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Social media is the new thing, and it’s rapidly being integrated into business.
IN THE BLACK Are you a knowledge worker or a pen pusher? The likelihood is that you are the former, which means you are about ideas and -collaboration. In that case, the expressions ‘social media’, ‘Web 2.0’, or more importantly, ‘Enterprise 2.0’, should be in your vocabulary, even if you don’t have a profile on Facebook. While these ideas may seem a threat to old-school types, the reality is that most social media users are Generation Xers and Yers – […]
Fine food no truffling matter
The Australian, Entrepreneur Importers accept the necessity of strict biosecurity measures but can find that their implementation is hard to swallow, writes Ed Charles | November 30, 2007 LAST month Melbourne-based food importer Friend & Burrell was forced to destroy 80kg of the prized Porcini mushrooms. Another exotic food importer reports that truffles — the underground fungus — were ruined because they heated up and spoiled during fumigation. It’s all part of the bureaucracy and sometimes heavy and slow handling […]
Local secrets
Herald Sun, Citystyle For diners wanting a cheap, authentic Asian or African meal, Melbourne’s suburbs offer a world of flavours. To get some insider knowledge, ED CHARLES talks to five people about the neigbourhoods they visit for a taste of their homeland. The secret to a memorable experience, he discovers, is to know which dish to order from which restaurant Ethiopian IT’S the coffee ceremony and the traditional meals that Elleni Bereded-Samuel misses most from her homeland of Ethiopia. She […]
Flower power – it’s my summer of garden love
Too young to have participated, too old to be conceived then I really feel that I missed out on the summer of love. Now, the 40th anniversary of the summer of 1967, I enter what can only soon become my autumn of Viagra. For now though I’m enjoying flower power. Last southern summer while traveling in Cambodia and Laos my structured front garden of small hedges died. I didn’t like the design too much and replaced it with a 4 […]
Graze of our lives
THE CURIOUS COOK: Ed Charles THERE are so many excellent markets, cafes and food shops in Melbourne it is sometimes difficult to know where to start. Even as an intrepid local I relax into my shopping comfort zones and forget to explore new territory. Curious cook Luckily, I’m one of about 20 souls from as far away as Brisbane, Perth and Auckland taking Melbourne’s Foodies’ Bus Tour this Saturday. Our host, Allan Campion, is the embodiment of a Melbourne foodie. […]
Cabbage turnip beats grapefruit into space
Today we celebrate the anniversary of the start of the space race, the Soviet cabbage turnip beating the American grapefruit into space. Adapted from the archives: Stone cold sober, this vegetable does pass for Sputnik, the first artificial satellite sent into the earth’s orbit. The only thing is that Sputnik was 23cm in diameter, this veggie is about a quarter of the size. Sputnik was metallic while the kohlrabi comes either in a light green or purple variety. According to […]
Putting out the garbage
The Australian, Entrepreneur An online questionnaire can help employers sort the chaff from the grain when it comes to recruiting workers, writes Ed Charles. THE internet is a wonderful thing for job hunters. Once an online resume is created, it can be sent almost effortlessly to as many potential employers as the applicant wishes. The SME recruiter, however, is fast becoming overwhelmed by resumes — many from people who are inappropriate for the job. According to Carolyne Burns, managing director […]
Some retailers are not playing fair
The Australian, Entrepreneur: FAIR-TRADE COFFEE A lot of companies are selling Fairtrade products at a different price to free trade products and pocketing the difference, Ed Charles reports SOME companies are exploiting the fair and sustainable certification schemes by charging over and above the premium they pay for Fairtrade coffee beans and boosting their own profits. Getting to the bottom of which is the best and fairest way to buy coffee is a tricky one requiring a deep knowledge of […]