On the Editor's Bench

摘要

Hopefully this issue will be reaching you around the holiday season, so I would like to wish a very happy Christmas and a productive New Year to all our readers. As the New Year celebrations roll around the globe they will be enjoyed by readers in many countries. The list is long and includes New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, South Africa, Namibia, Finland, Russia, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Canada and not least many in the United States. My apologies those readers whose home countries I have left out.With so many uncertainties about the future, it is reassuring to reflect on how our hobby brings so many different people from different countries and backgrounds together under our common interests. In these days of instantaneous communication over the internet our forum regularly has people from across the globe discussing some technical problem or sharing anecdotes and ideas. One of the pleasures of my job is to speak to readers, often from far afield - yesterday a Dutch reader rang me up on behalf of a Russian friend! From time to time I get the welcome distraction of a call from down under or North America. These days my post box is mostly filled by little jiffy bags and the regular envelope stuffed with readers' ads, but I do sometimes get letters from around the world, most recently a brown envelope with two articles on CD that arrived from the Philippines. The stamps feature a durian fruit and gumela flower; nice to see as all those years ago I studied Botany and Zoology!