IRD's top Christmas picks - Part 1: Jane Lowe.

Our present to you

We have had an outstanding year at IR Department.  We’ve worked with fantastic clients, we’ve had loads of new opportunities and have witnessed some great successes – from IPOs to rising share prices, to successful capital raises and media/comms outcomes.  It’s been pretty good all-round.

Our present to you

We have had an outstanding year at IR Department.  We’ve worked with fantastic clients, we’ve had loads of new opportunities and have witnessed some great successes – from IPOs to rising share prices, to successful capital raises and media/comms outcomes.  It’s been pretty good all-round.

Outside of hours, we’ve each had the opportunity to have some fun too. So since we’re feeling nostalgic and in the Christmas mood, we thought we might share some of our favourite personal discoveries from the year, let you in on what we might be getting up to over the break, and offer some tips for surviving the holiday season.

This will be a 5 part series where each of us go through our hot tips to survive the silly season and share our special Christmas traditions. We hope you enjoy this little list of favourite items we’ve put together for you, and we wish you all the best for the holiday season!

Jane Lowe and the IR Department team

Top picks from our Managing Director, Jane Lowe

Best podcast: The Moth Hour: Around the Bend – Stories of Coming Home

I’ve always loved listening to radio, and this year, I’ve been extending the concept by always having a few podcasts loaded onto my phone, ready to go if I’m on flights or to occupy my mind while doing chores.

Like most of Australia, I listened to the Teacher’s Pet podcast series and got so into it that I went looking for other gripping stories.  I came across a series called The Moth Radio Hour, which is made up of a series of short stories from both ordinary and famous people.  One episode in particular stuck with me, which was called “Around the Bend - Stories of Coming Home”. 

This episode is made up of three stories, all well worth listening to, but my favourite was the last one, from Michael J. Massimino, an astronaut, who talks about a personal experience he had trying to fix the Hubble Telescope.  It is a mix of gripping, spine chilling and euphoric.  I was listening to it walking around the supermarket and had to stop with a full trolley of groceries, so I could get to the end of the episode before passing through the checkout! 

Read more about it here and download it via your favourite podcasting app (mine is itunes.)

Best book: Dead Man’s Trousers

I started reading fiction by Irvine Welsh (author of Trainspotting) about two decades ago, and he’s drifted in and out of my life over the years.  This year, I broke my wrist at the Bioshares conference and found myself looking for ways of consuming content one handed, so on the plane trip back from New Zealand, hooked into Dead Man’s Trousers, which was easy to read with one thumb and familiar territory with the characters from the original book, grown up and living a mix of civilised and completely traumatising lives.

Worth a read if you liked Trainspotting 1 and 2.

Best destination: Hawaii

My family and I have been lucky to visit a load of countries this year: England, the Netherlands, Santa Monica, San Francisco and Hawaii.  Everywhere we’ve been was special for different reasons, but our most recent trip away to Hawaii (sans kidlets, with favourite old friends) was incredible.  I was surprised by how much I loved Hawaii, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been, given the perpetually warm water, beautiful landscape, cool wildlife (turtles but no snakes!), photo opportunities and lovely local people.  The fact that it’s only 9 hours flying time from Sydney is a bonus and as the time is so close to Sydney, it was easy to keep the home fires burning.