Having made the decision to remain based in Asia I am now able to live a life on two halves – one half based out of my Singapore office and travelling around South-East Asia on business, while the other half relaxing at my house in Sri Lanka. With emerging countries such as Sri Lanka now rapidly developing their infrastructure – it is an immediate step up to immediate 4G communications and hi-speed wireless, meaning I can continue to work pretty much from home while keeping in touch our multiple Asian offices. However, every good man and every decent house needs dogs – so to that end for the first time in some 25 years I have my own pets again.

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Front Entrance 

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Hunting for Wolves is legal in Mongolia, although licenses have to be obtained. Out in the Steppes, where food can be sparse, anything that can be caught is eaten, although for most of the world, eating an animal that is 100% carnivorous is not a typical occurance. However, through my contacts I was offered some Wolf Meat. Having said “Yes” – the next question to deal with was how on earth to prepare and cook it?

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Having acquired property in Mississauga – an old five bed detached house in one of the quieter neighborhoods of Toronto – it has been time to explore what the area is really all about. Firstly, about the move – Canada is far too expensive from the tax perspective for me to be tax resident there, so my principal place of residence, (and tax) is Singapore, and I spend a lot of time in Asia with my professional duties. However as over 50% of my clients are from North America, and I have gotten fed up of the debilitating jet lag, it has proven better to invest, and Toronto – with its excellent air connections to the United States – is a great choice.

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One of the sights of Mongolia at any time of year are huge, black birds, hundreds of feet in the air, just catching the thermals, sometimes for hours. These are Cinereous, or Black Vultures, one of the largest birds of prey in the world. While circling high above, they are also looking for carrion – a dead animal will attract a host of these birds all competing for scraps. Armed with ferocious beaks with fearsome tips to them, they can tear apart a horse carcass and leave nothing but bones in just two hours.

I was fortunate enough to be able to come across one of my friends who had one, and drove out to go and see this huge bird as well as have an afternoons trekking up to see a Temple dedicated to a Chinese Princess in Terelj. The bird turned out to be a juvenile – less than a year old. Yet is was still massive and it took all my strength just to hold it steady on the wrist. Back on its perch, it reassumed the familiar hunched neck posture as the image demonstrates. It is rare to come so close to such creatures – and I remain in awe of their sheer size. Despite their reputation as scavengers, I’ll  be seeing Vutures as the creatures they really are – elegant, powerful and highly effective cleaning machines on wings.

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Valery Gergiev conducts the Stradivarius Ensemble

It’s black tie and dinner jacket time as the Classical Music new season begins, and in Toronto I was lucky to have tickets for the Gala performance – entitled “From Russia With Love” and featuring Valery Gergiev with the Stradivarius Ensemble. This took place in Toronto’s magnificent Royal Conservatory, which is 125 years old this year and has a brand spanking new Concert Hall.

As a Gala, I was invited to pre-performance drinks, and with Gergiev in town, vodka was definitely on the menu. That the reception lasted for 90 minutes was also somewhat brave, and Imperial Standard shots, caviar and smoked sturgeon were all consumed with some gusto. The Stradivarius Ensemble, founded by Gergiev comprises a group of musicians performing on the most famous and unique-sounding string instruments in the world, and is made up of the best musicians and leading soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre’s Symphony Orchestra. Some of the instruments are more than 400 years old. The evening concert took in some reflective yet beautiful pieces, with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, a piece being a 1945 lament on the destruction of German civilization during World War II, and scored for ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three double basses. It was composed during the closing months of the Second World War, in particular as a elegy for devastating bombing of Munich, especially places such as the Munich Opera House.

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It is always a pleasure to visit New York, where I am fortunate enough to be able to combine business with pleasure. I have been a member of the Metropolitan Opera for a few years now, and am in the city often enough to have established a routine; places that suit me and enable me to feel quite at home. It was with some relief then that I checked back into the Algonquin Hotel on 44th; this most famous of New York brands (the New Yorker magazine was founded here, guests still receive complimentary copies) has unfortunately been closed for a few months for renovation, and I had to decamp on my last visit in March to the Royalton , which is great but a tad too modern for my tastes.

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Every year I spend about two months in total in Mongolia. I find it a relaxing ambience compared to the rush and hassles of living and conducting business elsewhere in Asia, which is largely over-populated, polluted and dynamic to a heart palpitating degree. I divide my time there into three-four chunks, I bought an apartment in Ulaan Baatar a couple of years ago and that has developed as my “man-cave” – no feminine touches here I’m afraid. Ibex horns adorn the walls, and my collection of Mongolian, Tibetan and Central Asian art hangs alongside. There’s bear, wolf, and reindeer skins on the floors – you get the drift.

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 Midsummer has just been and gone, and the years days are now – gradually – drawing in. Midsummer is celebrated throughout the Baltic – with long evenings never really getting dark. I am reminded about the Finnish anecdote concerning Jean Sibelius, drinking and gambling with his friends at Helsinki’s famous Kappeli bar. Informing them at 4am he had to go away to St. Petersburg for a few days to work on some compositions, he returned, only to find his friends still drinking, and still playing cards where he had left them. “Jean!” they admonished him” “For Goodness sakes stop wandering in and out all the time and close the door!”

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