I’m back in the US, spending a quiet Christmas with my family. Until my uncle Thomas, and my cousins Frida and Alex arrived, I spent much of my time the last few days in the Bartlesville, Oklahoma library where my sister works, making slow progress on translation and catching up on various journals that I [...]
“Good riddance, the world is a better place without you,” says Bush about the recent capture of one of world’s tyrants, Saddam Hussein. There is indeed much cause for celebration. While I agree wholeheartedly with the US president’s statement, we should remind ourselves of a number of things: 1) My government has put into power, [...]
I’m back in the US until the end of the month spending time with family. I was sitting in the airport in Houston, Texas (at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport no less) yesterday and getting my first taste of American media in a long time via airpot CNN. On the debate program “Crossfire” a CNN [...]
You know…after close to 27 years on this hunk of space debris, I realized that I haven’t a clue what culture is. Note to self: Figure out what culture is. What prompted this was a simple question? I was translating a debate from a Japan/Korea joint conference on religious education as a part time job. [...]
A Taipei Times article mentions the results of a new survey which includes a question about Taiwanese identity: “…given the choice of identifying themselves as Taiwanese, Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese, the proportion of people identifying themselves as Taiwanese had risen from 37 percent in late October to 50 percent. Those who considered themselves [...]
Just went to the hospital. No no, nothing life threatening, but that’s where you go when you get sick here. I have had a breathing problem of late and went to have it looked at. I went once before to the Adventist hospital in Ogikubo, which is the biggest hospital in my area, but the [...]
I posted a short article on the recent news of released archival records on the comfort women issue over at ISSHO.
Postman Pat has played a formative role in my childhood, but an ambivalent one at best. For those who had no exposure to the world of this happy postman, his cat, and the red Royal Post van that he drives through a sleepy country village, this posting will mean little to you. I am, you [...]