Flying in the USA

I admit it, I’ve been spoiled. Flying for the past ten years around Asia had lulled me into a kind of weary contempt. Planes that take off as advertised, cabin attendants who at least pretend to experience human emotions, brisk boarding and deplaning procedures, movies that are still showing in the cinemas, business class amenities that are actually amenities, food and drink that doesn’t stop until you raise your trembling hand and cry ‘Enough!’. All these things I had taken for granted… How does that saying go? ‘You don’t miss your water til your well runs dry’? My well . . . → Read More: Flying in the USA

In Memoriam

This post is in memory of a man whose name I never knew. As I’ve never learned to speak Chinese, although I have lived in Taiwan for more than ten years (what are families for if not to translate?), and realizing early on that in this almost village like environment of Tainan I was sticking out like a gum tree in a rice paddy, I decided that my best demeanor would be a smiling, friendly manner; that way at least I would be casting a beneficent glow instead of looking like what I was – a unassimilated, linguistically-challenged alien. This has worked [...] . . . → Read More: In Memoriam

Smoke The Bed?

Taiwan has one thing in abundance – one-, two-, three – star hotels, and I have stayed in my fair share of them over the years. I used to wonder at the abundance – why so many and why one on almost every corner? Was this the sign of a flourishing tourist industry? I have never equated Taiwan with tourism despite the cheery signs that now appear at the airports – although these days boisterous groups from Mainland China do in fact tour about in large highway buses. But twelve years ago it was not a tourist destination by . . . → Read More: Smoke The Bed?