No invention has transformed our world so comprehensively as the computer. It is only fifty years since the successful running of the world’s first stored-program computer at Manchester University. From that pioneering work has flowed computer applications that touch all our lives every minute of every day. The scale of the achievement comes from the ability to integrate computer technology with communications technology which, together as Information Technology (IT), can deliver information almost instantaneously around the globe.

No other technology has advanced so fast. Every year new advances make possible information systems that were previously impractical. Building the vast systems that run on today’s computers is an engineering activity that stands comparison with the greatest achievements of the nineteenth-century engineers who transformed that society. Modern information systems are now the most complex artefacts yet made by human beings.

In the case of most postgraduate qualifications, you can move straight on from a first degree to a postgraduate course. While it is not absolutely impossible to take an MBA in this way, it is certainly inadvisable.

Why do an MBA?
As Mike Jones, Director General of the Association of MBAs says “The MBA is focussed on themes and techniques applicable to the business world and demands that students bring to it some business theory and experience. What distinguishes it from other business-led masters degrees is that it is both a postgraduate and post-experience qualification,” so apart from a minimum of two years work experience, what qualifications do you need to be accepted by a UK business school?

There's something romantic about travel by train, and there are some great railway adventures to be had throughout the world.

Commuters reading this might disagree, as they sleep walk to work every morning on overcrowded trains and return in the evening to find their favourite window seat taken by a grubby traveller who hasn't showered for a week.

Every traveller has a different budget.

One person's budget for a fortnight in Egypt might well run to a couple of thousand dollars, for others it would be a few hundred.

Generally, budget travel is considered shoestring. Lonely Planet almost made the name their own with their original travel guide to Southeast Asia; for travellers on a tight budget. I even used the yellow book myself in the eighties.