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Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » LAST Friday I found myself in weather-related travel network chaos, caused, not by a blanket of snow, but by searing heat.
As I came to the end of a two-week trip to Oz, heatwave conditions caused temperatures to soar to 44 degrees, putting Melbourne's rail network out of action.
A few days (and a mammoth, backside-aching journey) later I witnessed the very same disgruntled huffs and puffs I had seen among the antipodean travellers, on the streets of London as transport networks also gave way to the weather - albeit for very different reasons.
My contrasting climatic experience, which has left me with the onset of man-flu, is best summed up by the local newspapers of the day.
The front page of the Melbourne Herald Sun I bought on my last day Down Under read: BRUTAL HEATWAVE SPARKS RAIL CHAOS.
Meanwhile, returning back to the office with a bump, The Journal greeted me with: FORECASTERS WARN OF FURTHER CHAOS: WINTER WHITEOUT CAUSES MISERY ACROSS THE NORTH.
Same, same but different, as they say in Thailand.
Another interesting contrast I discovered on my first trip to the Southern Hemisphere was the Aussie nation's attitude to the global financial crisis.
In Blighty the credit crunch has replaced the weather as the most popular topic of moan at bus stops, in chip shops or among snoutsiders in their smoking dens outside bars, offices and supermarkets.
However in Australia nothing could be further from the truth.
Although Oz has not escaped the ill effects of the credit crunch that we've seen here in the UK, the people of Victoria I came across didn't seem half as miserable as us.
In the two weeks I was there I only overheard one conversation which gave so much as a mention to the credit crunch, and even that was dismissive, upbeat and brief.
Maybe their optimism comes from the sunny climate which puts a shine on even the gloomiest of financial news or perhaps it's down to their innate laid-back approach to life.
Or maybe it's because, as far as I know, there is not a cork hat-clad Australian equivalent of Robert Peston. No bringer of doom Down Under who, in Crocodile Dundee-style, exclaims: "That's not a gloomy prediction, THIS IS A GLOOMY PREDICTION."
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