Month: August 2017

TWIST: What You Need to Know to Talk Sports This Week

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

You don’t love professional sports, but your livelihood and/or personal happiness depends upon your being able to converse intelligently about it. It’s a common dilemma with a simple solution: you need to learn a new language. You need to learn how to talk sports. And we’re here to help! The TWIST is our weekly Dandelion Chandelier guide to what’s happened on the field, on the court and on the ice — read it every week and we promise you’ll know how to talk about sports like a champion.

How to Talk Sports: What You Need to Know about Football

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

Eager to climb the corporate ladder? Totally uninterested in professional sports? Finding this combination to be problematic? There’s a simple solution. You need to learn a new language. You need to learn how to talk sports. Anyone who has been in a corporate setting for very long will have noticed that one of the core bonding rituals in many workplaces is a group discussion of professional sports (the sport of choice will vary by country, so ex-pats have it particularly hard.) The sports talk is usually seasonal, but not in the way a non-sports aficionado might imagine. In America in August, for example, you would think that baseball would be the topic, since the MLB season is in full swing at that point. But you’d be wrong: in most US offices, the topic in August is either the US Open tennis matches, or the upcoming NFL season. You see? It’s a puzzle for many of us.

Private Around-the-World Jet Trip Is the Latest Luxury

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

If money were no object, how would you choose to see the world? Would you do it “all in one go” on the luxury trip of a lifetime? Or would you spread it out over several years and multiple journeys, so that you could absorb and appreciate everything that you experienced? Would you travel with strangers? With just one other person? Or with 50 of your closest friends? It’s a champagne dilemma. And one that the uber-rich are increasingly faced with. Taking a Grand Tour of the civilized world was a cherished ritual of the wealthy in the 19th century – the trips lasted for months, sometimes years, and were an important facet of becoming a sophisticated adult in high society. Fast forward to today, when such a trip can be completed in a matter of days if you have the right budget. New York, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Jaipur, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Sydney – if you’ve got a couple of weeks and lot of stamina, you can check all of these destinations and more …

August’s Sparklers: Those Who Choose to Shine

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

Here at Dandelion Chandelier we like to celebrate the people, groups and institutions who have spread light in the world, even in the midst of great darkness. Every day around the world, people choose to shine in ways large and small. These moments of grace and generosity don’t always get reported on, and unfortunately they can be quickly forgotten. We need to hear and repeat these stories: sometimes good news and kindness is the sweetest luxury of all. To inspire us all to keep reaching out, here are some Sparklers that caught our attention in recent weeks:

At Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Perfectly Natural Luxury

Published by Pamela Thomas-Graham

Luxury lovers of the world, have you ever visited a national park in the United States? If you’re like us, the answer is likely to be no. Members of the global elite don’t tend to spend their vacations in public parks, perhaps because they still harbor childhood images of grizzly bears eating leftovers from campground trash containers, park rangers in funny hats, collapsing tents, outhouses and the antic cartoon goings-on at Jellystone Park, home of Yogi Bear and friends. We confess to being guilty of dismissing the national parks as “not for us.” Grand jeté, yes – Grand Teton, no. In the interest of research, however, a team from Dandelion Chandelier made an expedition to a national park for the first time ever while on a 4th of July holiday trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton, both of which are day trips from Amangani, the luxury hotel where we stayed. Turns out, this is an outstanding way to mark Independence Day. Or any day, really.