Be careful, dear tourists!

Some visitors to Australia recently had an unpleasant surprise because of their GPS.

Three Japanese tourists came unstuck on their planned Australian holiday on Thursday when they abandoned their hire car in Moreton Bay after they tried to "drive" to North Stradbroke Island.

Yuzu Noda, 21, said she was listening to the GPS and "it told us we could drive down there".

"It kept saying it would navigate us to a road. We got stuck . . . there's lots of mud."

Yuzu and and her travel friends Tomonari Saeki, 22, and Keita Osada, 21, were all looking forward to a day trip to the island, but headed back to the Gold Coast courtesy of a lift from the RACQ tow truck driver who was called to the stranded car.

Read more from Brisbane Times.

Be careful, dear tourists! Water and road safety are very important. Hope to see you back in Australia.

Happy Holidays!

We extend our best wishes to you for happy holidays and a wonderful 2012!

MMM will reopen for business on Monday 9 January 2012.

Language and air safety

From a news report yesterday:

A Chinese airline pledged on Wednesday to improve its crews' English skills after one of its flights took off from a Japanese airport without authorisation.

China Eastern Airlines did not say what caused the error, but pledged to "further improve the English communication skills of our flight crews to assure flight safety," suggesting it may have been a misunderstanding.

The latest incident comes after the privately-owned Chinese airline Juneyao said in August one of its pilots had refused to give up his landing slot to a passenger plane that issued a distress call to say it was running out of fuel.

Read more from NDTV.

Any solution? What do you think?

Asian languages and Australia's economy

Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article today about language education in Australia. Hugh White, a professor at Australian National University, argued that it's better for Australia's economy to send young people to learn Asian languages in the source countries.

That is a lot of money, but $375 million is less than 5 per cent of the $8 billion a year that Australia's rapidly growing overseas aid budget is planned to reach over the next decade. This is where the money should be found. We need to ask whether our future in Asia might be better secured by spending a bit less on teaching our neighbours how to do things, and a bit more on learning about them.

Press here to read more. What's your opinion on this?

R U OK? Day founder Gavin Larkin dies

I knew Gavin briefly from when I worked on the NSW Lotteries multicultural marketing account. Gavin was working at John Singleton Advertising then. He was always helpful and had brilliant ideas. I was saddened to learn of his death on Thursday, after a long battle with cancer.

R U OK? Day is a wonderful way to remind people to take time to talk to others, to help prevent depression and suicide.

Gavin, your legacy is benefiting many people. My prayers are for your wife and children.