Well, it's 10 months now since I stepped down from the MPG Chair and moved to Brisbane and it seems like no time at all, and also like an age... it's been a pretty full on year, mind you.

I came back to the UK after a month here and played some gigs with Gong in Norway, the USA, finishing with Glastonbury. That was hectic enough, but then my wife and I came back to Brisbane in early July and promptly skipped off to join Gong again at Fuji Rock Festival in Japan.

I could see that by now my senior at Queensland University of Technology was getting just a little shirty, but I told him that this was not a typical year! So I capped the year off by joining Gong again for the last - UK - leg of the European tour. I do feel like I've been having my cake and eating it, but hey - wouldn't you!

Right now we are into the end of the second week of implementing the new music degree program I was brought here to set up, and so far so good. It's a fascinating project - to create a whole new course that is trying to give a relevant and useful experiece to young aspiring musicians, but serious enough to be worth a degree.

To start the course off, the first day I randomly selected students and formed them in to groups of 5-6 and asked them to make a new arrangement of "Teardrops" by Massive Attack - it's one of my favourite songs and there have been some fantastic versions done - Newton Faulkner, Elbow, and a great country-folk version that really shows what a great song it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJiGHl_KPWQ

The first assessment item is for the students to write every week in a reflective journal (that's uni jargon for a diary), but it is online and I can read what they are thinking about their experience - so far it is excellent - the masterplan is working... today Brisbane - tomorrow the World! Well, enough for now, but next time I will talk about the music scene here, which I am really thrilled about... until then, cheers mates!