A year ago, I was in Hong Kong. I had arrived in October, and caught the end of the island’s bad weather. (A typhoon alert, the first week. Heat and rain, in general.) But by mid-November, things were fine, and in January I actually recall running a space-heater at night a time or two in […]

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Another rough year for the economy. The world economy, the national, the state … People losing jobs. Unemployment of, what, 12.5 percent in California? Something like 10 percent in the nation? Even higher, when you include people who have stopped looking for work and the scads of people not fully employed. U.S. print journalism is […]

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I’ve been in Paris for almost five weeks now. And not for a single day was I without an Internet hookup. Actually, I spent several hours most of the past 30-some days looking at this computer. Yes, while in Paris. I know that’s ill but it’s the truth. OK, here’s my excuse: I do two […]

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I wrote most of this hours before leaving Hong Kong, back on Jan. 31. I just now finished touching it up. I’m leaving in the “I’m still in HK” references. But I am not. Here goes. I saved this for my last day in Hong Kong. So I would have the maximum exposure to the […]

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I did a couple of items on choosing an English Premier League team. The first when I was in Hong Kong, trying to figure out which team I ought to prefer, if I was going to see EPL soccer six hours a day. Then a second item, last week, in which I revealed I hadn’t […]

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In the nearly five months I spent in China, going back to last August, I was most impressed by one characteristic: A capacity for hard work. And beyond the mere ability to work hard. The eagerness to work hard. The acceptance of hard work as the gateway to progress and prosperity. The drive to work […]

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This is my second full day back in Southern California. And on my first full day back, while watching the Super Bowl, my younger brother asked me, “So what was the first thing you wanted to do when you got back?” At that moment … I hadn’t thought about that. Now, I have. And I’m […]

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I’ve been back in the Western Hemisphere for, let’s see … 16-plus hours now … so I’m back to being an expert on all American sports. Thus, I can speak authoritatively on the Super Bowl, which begins in only XLIII commercials from now. Which reminds me of something else:

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That four months took forever. That four months went by in a blink. Well, actually, it seemed like a long time. I wrote back at the end of October that the month just concluded seemed like the longest 31 days of my life. And I can’t say any of the next three months sped by […]

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David Beckham is playing for AC Milan, in Italy, and playing well. Two goals in four matches, that is. Including a classic Becks-ian “how’d he do that?” score off a dead ball in his last match. And it now is clear Becks would like to go back to Europe — although he is under contract […]

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