My husband has a co-worker from Hong Kong named Edmond. Edmond has assured my husband that my intense interest in the different forms and flavors of fried dough is not only proper, but extremely educational and highly culturally sensitive. He congratulates me on the speed of my assimilation and encourages me to explore additional forms of fried ( Read more... )

I had a really interesting flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Everything was just right for me to see the tundra in its full glory as we passed over Alaska and crossed the Bering Straits into Russia. There had been snow, but not recently, so it stuck on the frozen ponds and rivers, and on cleared ground, but it didn't stick on the tundra. The ( Read more... )

I'm in Hong Kong working once more. I was really surprised when Hong Kong booked me, because my impression was that the money wasn't there for an overseas trainer. I had also trained the in-house instructor in Hong Kong, Eric Chan Siu-Ming ( Read more... )

I'm in Heimstetten Germany, which is a not-quite technological nerdistan of Munich. It's just outside Munich, among the cow pastures and it's boring as anything. I've got five people in my class, two from the Czech Republic, one from France, one from Germany, and one from Switzerland. The only thing they have in common is English, which works out ( Read more... )

Update from the Last Great Wild Places Tour: I ( Read more... )

We're now in Tasmania and have had our first encounter with death in the form of a left-hand-drive automobile. Well, really, multiple encounters with death. Swimming with sharks on the Great Barrier Reef? A centipede in the sleeping bag? Nothing compared to the internal combustion engine, as always. We just got here from Melbourne yesterday, and ( Read more... )

I'm actually not in Queensland any more. I'm in Melbourne at an Internet cafe with a very slow connection, sending annoying jpgs to our friend JJ because his name popped up on an exhibit in San Francisco International Airport. The exhibit was about Karlheinz Brandenburg, JJ's collaborator in the invention of the MP3 standard. This is JJ's favorite ( Read more... )

Matt and I have moved on to Hinchinbrook Island Resort which is an eco-lodge on Hinchinbrook Island. The entire island is a National Park in Australia as well as a World Heritage site. It's a giant rain forest, crocodiles included and the only development is the resort, which has things like no air-conditioning to make it an eco-lodge. It's also ( Read more... )

Matt and I are now in Darwin - the city completely flattened in 1973 by Cyclone Tracy and subsequently rebuilt as (as far as I can see from my limited position) a giant economy-traveler bar. I've been told now many times that over 30,000 people (of Darwin's then 43,000) were evacuated after Tracy. I had actually heard that before, because I was in ( Read more... )

I've already been in Australia with Matt for an eventful week, and I'm seeing a very different side of it than I do working in big cities like Sydney and Melbourne. One of the most remarkable things I've seen concerns the resilience and dignity of the people who live and work and survive in the Australian Outback. Matt and I arrived in Sydney ( Read more... )