I can see that lots of you are interested in Australia, and are perhaps planning to visit us in the future. As I stated previously the Australian dollar is at a six year low, .74 USD, and probably only headed down. Of course if you have a Travelex Card or other Multi Currency card you can lock in the rate, but personally I can't see it rising above .80 USD anytime soon. I'm quite bullish on the United States economy, and I think the recovery is sustainable, particularly because of the cheap energy from Fracking and your insurmountable lead in the Digital Economy businesses like Apple, Microsoft, and digital manufacturing etc. As Asia becomes richer, they will tend to buy more American consumer products, at least thats the historical trend, which of course results in a stronger American dollar over time and stronger economic growth.
Whilst I was on my walk/run (more walking than running) this morning I thought about some blog posts I'll do on Australia on different topics. For example, about possible itineraries, eating out, going out, studying in Australia, doing business in Australia, and of course the fun things to do in my hometown Sydney. Australians work hard, but we also play hard too - we love to have fun. Some of you may actually be out here on business trips or being posted here as many companies have their Asia/Pacific headquarters in Sydney - and why not? Its more fun here than Singapore (sorry Singapore). From a business angle Australia has signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Japan, China and other countries in this region and Sydney's time zone is more conducive for doing business in this region of course. Plus, its only a 9 hour flight to Hong Kong. I'll do a more detailed blog post on doing business in Australia with a list of some business websites that you will find helpful.
Studying in Australia is of interest to a lot of US college students, because at my university, Macquarie, we have lots of American students and indeed students from all over the world doing a semester here, which is a great idea. I can recommend Macquarie University, although I am biased of course, because its one of the more progressive universities in Australia. We are the home of 'Big History.' We are the only university in Australia that meets the Bologna standard (EU standard), and are also heavily focused on research with our Masters of Research program. That basically means you can do your Masters or PHD here and be able to work in the EU. I'll explain further in my blog post on studying in Australia.
In the meantime what you can do is look at some of my old blog posts on Australia, including my driving trip to the outback and Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory via Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road. Its probably easier to just use the search engine on the blog page and then move from older to newer posts.
