When fine foods and Penfolds create the perfect match

By Kimberly Johans
Published in The Macau Daily Times
September 13, 2007, page 5 (615 words)

Crown Macau is taking cuisine to another level with its promotion of Penfolds wine and fine food pairings.
Over the next three days, award-winning executive chef of Penfolds Magill state Restaurant in Adelaide, Jerome Tremoulet will be gracing Aurora with his presence and knowledge of Australian wines.
Since landing at Penfolds in 2005, the [perhaps] 37-year-old has been dishing out classic French fare and putting to good use his extensive experience garnered throughout France, Switzerland, England, America, and Australia.
Previously at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, California, he describes Adelaide as having “a pretty good lifestyle.
“Very nice, no traffic. They have a great market with the Central Market. It’s very liveable,” he adds.
Since becoming an Australian citizen 11 years ago, Jerome conveniently changes from a French to an Australian national on certain occasions.
“When the French lose I am Australian!” he says laughingly.

Task force to address Macau’s salinity problem

By Kimberly Johans
Published in The Macau Daily Times
September 13, 2007, page 4 (523 words)

Macau’s salinity task force resumed operation yesterday to address potential problems that may occur this winter, said Ms Susana Wong, Director of the Maritime Administration.
Speaking at the meeting she added that with Macau heading into its “shallow season” between October this year and March next year, the group had rejoined for a preparatory session.
“The river has a full and shallow season so we took a break during the full season because there’s no salinity problem between March and September,” she said.
“The reason [for the task force] is that we have been contacting the continental governmental body, the Pearl River Water Resources Commission,” she said, the organisation that has been observing and co-ordinating all water issues in the Pearl River Delta.
“They are organising some kind of transfer of fresh water from upriver to downstream by central coordination,” she added.
The transfer in question is the Penggang Project which was constructed last year, significantly helping to improve the salinity problem, one that Macau suffered severely from in the winter of 2005/2006.

Visitor numbers up again, package tours up

By Kimberly Johans
Published in The Macau Daily Times
September 13, 2007, page 3 (394 words)

Visitors on package tours from Taiwan and Hong Kong recorded the greatest change in numbers year-on-year during July 2007, according to figures from the Statistics and Census Service.
While visitors from Mainland China increased by 18.3 percent (to 218,995), those from Taiwan and Hong Kong rose dramatically, by 131.2 percent (30,086) and 227.3 percent (26,540) respectively.
There was also an overall increase of 41.1 percent year-on-year, of visitors arriving in package tours, totalling 320,378 in July.
Looking over the first seven months of 2007, visitors arriving in package tours also increased by 35.6 percent over the same period in 2006 to 2,276,872.
on the other hand, the number of Macau visitors travelling on package tours during July fell by 14.4 percent to 21,391 compared with the same period in 2006.
The most popular destinations were Mainland China, Thailand and Japan, accounting for 66.5 percent, 10.2 percent and 6.5 percent of the total respectively.