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News

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Stress

The above is not my schedule but it very well could be (photo by Isabisa). The only writing I have time to do these days is of the twitter kind. I am hoping things will quiet down by the new week. Until then here is a list of things I have read on the go:

Why I love working with family people
Poka-yoke
CrackBerrys: Exploring the Social Implications of Wireless Email Devices
Strategies For Interactive Marketing In A Recession
How to Draw a Curved Great Circle line in Google Maps
Two Americas? Stuck?

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Gong Xi Fa Cai

This is the second Chinese new year vacation that has found me here in what is a cold and noisy city. It's raining, the temperature is dipping down belong 10˚C, and I have a boy who has a fever. I really must break this habit of not seeking out a beach during this long break! Happy Chinese New Year.

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Ho ho ho

Please pardon a break for the next few days. Merry Christmas from my neck of the woods.

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Re-opening on the 7th

I didn't mean it for be such a long break. What was meant as a few days from writing of any kind turned out to be a week, then two, and then three. October 7th will mark a month and a return to regular writing with a slightly different approach.

The picture above is of Buster, a pure bred labrador we adopted from an organization that rescues abandoned dogs in the south of Taiwan. I've been pretty busy trying to get him healthy and adjusted to his new family.

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An univited guest

I've been incredibly busy all week finishing up a few projects that magically all reached similar points in their production schedules. I had hoped to take a break this weekend by getting out and doing some urban hiking, sharing some new finds here, and perhaps see a movie. I don't get out as much these days this was a big deal. Unfortunately those plans are off.

Super-typhoon SEPAT, named after a fresh water Malaysian fish (?), is close to the coast of Taiwan and expected to hit overnight. While the center of the storm will pass south of here, I am expecting a pretty intense weather for most of Saturday. I'm hoping the damage will be light.

'The New Hampshire Bushman in Taiwan' has some interesting coverage. I'll likely be updating with any developments on twitter and plazes.

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Still on Vacation

After 10 years of living in Asia I am going through a bit of reverse culture shock but all in all it's absolutely wonderful to be home. It's wonderful to see the differences in culture between my birthplace and my adopted home. And the people - the people in Prince Edward Island can be the friendliest people you will ever meet.

Since the sun started shining here, it's been a pretty cold first 5 days, I have been spending my time with the kids on beautiful sandy beaches, enjoying strawberries and ice cream, BBQ's, and lobster.

We aren't completely off the grid and do try to check email daily but with the sun shines the laptop stays in the bag - at least for this week. Next week I am traveling and soon after back to chaos of life in Taiwan.

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July in Canada

I took off with family this past Tuesday in the middle of the night to spend the summer in our cottage in Prince Edward Island. I haven't been 'home' to visit in over two years and have spent most of the past ten years n Asia. It's great fun to be home (getting here is not so much fun). The first few days are (have been) going to be spent recovering from a nearly 30 hour trip from the wilds of Siangsan to Canoe Cove. Afterwards it's back to a reduced work schedule, strawberry socials, beaches, horse back riding, and spending time with family.

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New house and office

The past two years of inactivity have caught up with me today as I feel like a zombie. I moved my house and office yesterday and though I hired a company to do most of the work I still feel it all over. It's a national holiday here so I will be without a network connection until some time later in the week. It's a weird feeling not having answers to all the minutiae of questions that run through my head everyday.

The house and office is quiet, nicer, and far away from the nearest 7/11 - a feat which is hard to accomplish in this part of the world. This is a somewhat temporary move. Next year it's a decision between China, Vancouver, or possibly Dubai.

Updates will be light this week.

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Feed Changes

I've merged the content from the Sidebar Links with the rest of the site. I'll still be publishing short tidbits and links but will be including it as a part of the main feed. That means there will be a slight uptake in articles and a slight change in the mix of the type of articles you see presented. Not a huge change and hopefully a positive one.

Readers who frequent the site via a web browser won't notice any difference as the layout remains the same.

Main feed url

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That didn't go well

I've received more email since I announced that I would be publishing Mandarin articles than I have in the year and half since I started (intermitently) writing this blog. The overwhelming response to the idea of mixing English and Chinese together was negative. As a result, I'm going to backtrack and do what I had originally planned which is to start yet another side project. Randy (陳彥甫) a phd candidate in nuclear science (!) and others have agreed to lead that one.

My apologies if the Chinese seemed 'odd'.

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Now published in Mandarin

From the beginning this site has been a bit of an experiment for me. In keeping with that tradition, in the coming weeks I'm going to try something different. I'm going to broaden the topic a bit, open up the site to other authors, add features which will appeal to my readers from Taiwan and region, and most noticeably start publishing in Mandarin. Hopefully seeing two languages won't scare away the small group of readers I have now. It will be interesting and fun to see what develops.

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An Enlarged Heart

The past few weeks have not been the most productive. Most of my effort has been spent trying to ensure that I meet my client project deadlines and the periodic visa issues that occur with living abroad. Certainly my own projects, such as this, have suffered.

As I briefly mentioned earlier my son had spent a week off and on in the hospital suffering from high fever and what turned out to be a harmless bacterial infection. During that time he had a whole cadre of tests done to determine the cause of the fever. Hospital costs here in Taiwan are negligible so you tend to have access to all kinds of services which you might not be able to readily afford otherwise. His chest x-ray revealed an 'enlarged heart' and this Thursday we go back to the hospital so we can have more accurate assessment of any problems via an ECG.

Naturally I have been beside myself in worry.

I've been tracking my reading via delicious and you are welcome to track it here. It's full of links to material regarding heart problems in children. Perhaps it will be off some use to you.

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Hospital Wifi

I have been conspicuously absent from here and other ventures of late. A couple weeks ago my son came down with a high fever which after a couple of days resulted in febrile convulsions. An overnight visit to the MacKay Hospital (Hsinchu) ER seemed to stabilize him but some of his blood work showed evidence of a bacterial infection. That meant another night in the ER and a fews days in a special observation ward. Luckily it turned out to be not at all that serious but it was certainly one of the worst weeks I have ever had. Since then things have been slowly returning to normal and luckily for the most part my clients have been understanding of the delays.

If you have ever been in a similar situation you probably realize that you need to understand the problem and make a decision on a doctors recommendation as quickly as possible. I'm not one for automatically trusting any 'expert' without gaining some background knowledge with the purpose of at the very least being able to ask pointed questions. That's where having access to the web can be a godsend. And that's where this hospital completely broke down. In a country with close to the highest broadband penetration in the world, MacKay Hospital in Hsinchu locks down all it's wireless networks to those who are in single rooms only - which are not always available (we were in a double).

In situations like this access to information is not a luxury but a right. I would hope that hospitals everywhere would realize just how important and just how effective this can be in terms of overall patient care.

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Happy New Year

Tonight is New Years Eve with at least the following few days being a holiday for most people. It's going to be a noisy night! Gongxi fa cai . . . hong bao na lai . . . and all that!

Related: China's cellular operators estimate Chinese customers will send around 14 billion Lunar New Year text messages on their mobile phones during the week-long holiday, the Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Source.

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