The Year of the Rat, another Olympic Year, daa dee dah, on it goes.

* Biggest discovery: Absolut Vanilla Vodka. Sublime. A life- changing experience. (PS, Mr Absolut, where's my free case for the plug?)

* Showed a Chinese friend from Beijing around Sydney recently. Been (gulp!)30 years since I've visited the Opera House, and I found the tour fascinating, even though it was in Mandarin.

* Africa. Spent a month with the family in southern Africa, revisiting old haunts of my childhood in South Africa, plus taking in brilliant safari experiences in the Okovanga Delta and Chobe in Botswana, the Zambesi Sun hotel and Victoria Falls in Livingstone, Zambia, plus a dip of the toe across the border into land of my birth, Zimbabwe.

Highlights?

1/ Cape Town, in fact the whole Cape Province for never-ending natural vistas of all types (mountains, beaches, deserts)

2/ 4WD drive over Drakensberg mountains into Lesotho -- combine world's 3rd highest jeep track (crumbling gravel track at sphincter-tightening altitude) with highest pub in Africa and you've got the makings of a great day out.

3/ The Zambian people. Fullstop.

4/ Vic Falls, for sheer unadulterated power of nature to make one feel completely insignificant.

5/ The great selection of African shirts I acquired along the way, some possibly only to be worn at fancy dress parties. Outrageous!

6/ The collection of about 20-odd African music CDs I bought, including four by zimbabwean-in-exile Thomas Mapfumo. Check out his talent some time soon.

What came of the trip? For me, a reconnection with my African roots for sure. Now my kids have been to the schools and houses (and continent) where I grew up, we can share experiences and memories more meaningfully.

* Books wot I read lately: Two by Peter Godwin: Mukewa and When the Crocodile Eats the Sun. The former is a beautifully crafted memoir of Rhodesia, the latter a dark and bleak charting of the demise of Zimbabwe. Gave up on Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari about 2/3 the way through. Just finished A Fortune Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani. A fabulour premise, and chock-a-block full of the intrigues of superstition and beliefs that make Asia so enigmatic.

* The Australian ran my Jim Thompson trail story, entitled Vanishing Point. Have also penned pieces for Travel & Living (on Mongolia), Your Life (on Thai-Burma Railway) and Unwind Asia (on Manila), among others.

* What am I flogging now? The first of my tours to China with Helen Wong's Tours. 'Southwest Leap' tour departing May for Yunnan and Tibet.

* At the moment, furiously engaging in nostalgia as I write up chapters for Tiger's Den. The human experience is amazing, in the scope of what some people achieve and/or endure in a single lifetime. Sadly the times I'm documenting in Southeast Asia are a'changing fast, hence the importance of documenting them now, forever.