People tend to say that ahead of various big events. Especially the breathless folk who work in media relations or advertising. It also sometimes can be heard, chanted, during a demonstration against the authorities. The whole world is watching. It pretty much is never true. Sober and realistic is the way to approach this. John […]

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In a previous lifetime I spent four months as a temp editor for the Asian edition of the International Herald Tribune. Many of the entries from this blog, commencing in October 2008 and continuing through January 2009 were about our experiences there. First memory: The crowds. Second memory: How different it was from Beijing, where […]

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This blog commenced on March 10, 2008. Ten years ago today. It was four days after I had been fired by the Los Angeles News Group, and I wanted to let co-workers and other journalists know what had happened, with as many specifics as I could recall pertaining to the (then mostly novel) concept of […]

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This dawned on me the other day. Even before we made the drive up (and back) through California’s Central Valley. I have spent nearly the whole of my life breathing bad air. Polluted air. Sometimes thick enough to taste. Sometimes particulates so tiny they never come back out a person’s lungs. Didn’t plan it that […]

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We now have added the Languedoc to places in the world where we have had Thanksgiving dinner. That ends a period of five years out of seven when we celebrated Thanksgiving in Abu Dhabi. The exceptions were … when we spent it in Paris (inviting some people over to where we were staying) and when […]

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It can be jarring or amusing to do a bit of investigation on the “flavor” of potato chips, while traveling the world. In the U.S., “original”, barbecue and sour cream-and-onion flavors probably cover about 90 percent of the chips sold. Not so in the rest of the world. In Hong Kong, shrimp-flavored potato chips are […]

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  Over the past few decades, most humans came to grips with the reality that in exchange for “progress” we were going to have to breathe bad air. Life in nearly any megalopolis is an invitation to huff ozone and particulates. Conditions are particularly dire in the big cities of rising economies like China’s and […]

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An American Christmas. We had not done one of those since 2007. A semi-surprising stat, in retrospect, given that I had not been outside Southern California on December 25 for a very long time … and maybe never, through 2007. Then came Hong Kong in 2008 and Abu Dhabi from 2009 through 2014. And I’m […]

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I am a sort of Arsenal fan. Not a live-and-die fan. I would never say that. Not when I was only vaguely aware the club existed for at least the first half of my life. Not until we spent four months in Hong Kong, 2008-09, did I consider the concept of having a preferred Premier […]

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Soccer in Asia tends to be predictable, when it comes to teams showing up at a World Cup. It will be Japan, South Korea and Australia, and the fourth will probably be Iran, though China someday may seize the last berth. Or maybe Uzbekistan. Or the UAE. But getting there, during qualifying, that’s where Asia […]

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