Never one to rest too long on my posterior, I jet in from Hong Kong to Sydney, and arrive rather the worse for Qantas at the airport. A chirpy customs man asks my occupation. When told "journalist" he asks what I intend to write about in Australia. When I reply "financial markets" he says: "Well that'll be pretty dull for you." This does not bode well.
Straight to lunch with an Australian financier who spends most of the main course proclaiming why Sydney will become Asia's regional financial centre. But, say I, isn't Australia distancing itself from Asia (as well as the Queen)? No, all the multinationals are coming I am told. "You get a guy to sail up Darling Harbour, and well if he's got to choose between that and bringing his family to Hong Kong, well where's the choice, mate."
There's something in that. Two cities could hardly be more polarized than Hong Kong and Sydney. Smelly, bustling, polluted, high-rise Hong Kong, replete with average schools and with a standard of spoken English that barely beats a speak-and-spell machine; versus clean, low-rise, barbie-infested Sydney, with a standard of English that barely beats a speak-and-spell machine.