Surviving on the Beach

Daymer Beach, Cornwall
(c) Amanda van Mulligen

"I don't understand this settlement behaviour," my husband said as we plonked ourselves down on Daymer Bay beach in Cornwall.

Couples and families were camped out on the overpopulated beach around us with fold away chairs with built in cup holders, portable tables, tents, wind breakers, transistor radios, enough reading material to stock a local library and a cool box filled with enough to satisfy the most ravenous of hungers for a few days should the world's food chain suddenly implode. One group had even brought their own full size BBQ and looked like they were there for the long haul.

"You don't see this in the Netherlands," he uttered, genuinely bewildered.

Anyone beg to differ?

The surprising boomlet in newspaper M&A

Beyond the headline-grabbing purchases last week of the Washington Post and Boston Globe, there has been a surprising recovery in M&A activity in the last 1½ years involving newspapers in places like Vicksburg, MS; Everett, WA; Nashua, NH, and Waco, TX. 

The boomlet has been fueled by an improving economy, the growing desire of many long-time family owners to exit the publishing business and

Smartphones are so 2012. What’s next?

With more than 50% of the population packing smartphones and tablet penetration not far behind, it’s time to start thinking about the next-generation mobile devices that will further disrupt the media landscape. 

The next wave of mobile devices will change media creation and consumption – and therefore, economics – by autonomously delivering unprecedented levels of personally relevant

Teeth Meat

That's right, I said teeth meat.
Photo: Pam Roth

Whilst I am on the subject of teeth (hop over to Expat Life with a Double Buggy for more on wobbly teeth and tooth fairies) I'd like to share my distaste with you of gums. Not about actual gums (not that gums are particularly pleasant - google gums and choose images and you'll quickly see what I mean) but about the Dutch word for gums. You know, the more I type the word gums (and hence read it in my head) the weirder a word it sounds. Gums.

Anyway, I digress. The word for gums in Dutch is tandvlees. A literal translation for that is 'teeth meat'.  If that isn't a word that conjures up horror films then I don't know what is.

Digital doctor Bezos takes on the ailing Post

The purchase of the struggling Washington Post by Jeff Bezos may be the best news the news industry has had in a long time, because it finally puts a true digital native at the helm of a newspaper company. 

Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.Com, is uniquely equipped to bring unprecedented innovation and fresh energy to an industry whose managers run their businesses like the people of

Digital usage overtaking all legacy media

Americans this year are likely to spend as many hours consuming content on digital devices as the combined amount of time that they devote to gazing at TV and paging through print, according to eMarketer, a research-aggregation service. 

After culling through reports from more than 40 institutions, eMarketer forecasts that the average amount of time likely to be spent on digital media this year

Cliffs and Rock Pools

Land's End
Photo: Amanda van Mulligen (c)

On our last family summer holiday we went to Cornwall, England. During the two week holiday my Dutch husband managed to astound me on a number of occasions. The Cornish coastline may as well have been Mars as far as he was concerned. Cliffs and rock pools really were alien landscapes to him.

As we stood atop the cliffs at Land's End he marvelled at the beauty of the seascape before him. The jagged rocks and the rough sea, waves forced upwards by the hurdles in their path spattering sea spray into the air, the sheer drop down to the sea off the edge of the land. It is beautiful, don't get me wrong, but I knew what I was going to see. My husband had no idea what awaited him at Land's End. He was awestruck by what he saw. He was mesmerised by nature's offerings at the end of England. It was like watching a child with candy for the first time. Bright eyes, open mouth, noises of pleasure.

Confused by his remarkable reaction to the coastal scene at Land's End, I asked him what his issue was he found so novel about the cliffs and rocks.

"We don't have cliffs and rocks like this in the Netherlands," he responded matter of factly "the country ends in flat sandy beaches."

And the penny dropped. Of course. I realised I hadn't seen a cliff or rock pool for quite a while myself. Childhood holidays along the Cornish and Devonshire coast had blinded me to the magic of an English coastline. I took them all for granted: the majestic cliffs, the small, beautiful sandy coves and bays that litter the south coast of England, the numerous caves to explore and the rock pools to scour with nets for signs of life.

Exploring rock pools on a Cornish beach
Photo: Amanda van Mulligen (c)

"This is so cool," said my husband on a beach a few days later "I've never seen a rock pool before!" My children echoed his excitement, armed with nets and buckets as they watched a little crab scurry from under a rock to find safety under seaweed. The kids jumped from one rock to the next, looking for little bodies of water hidden between them. Their joy took me back to my own childhood days on the Cornish beaches, combing rock pools with my brother. I understood then my husband's reaction to Land's End. How lucky he was to see the Cornish coastline for the first time as if through child's eyes.