If the documentation/HOWTO/helpfile/hint uses the word “simply” (as in: “mod_proxy should simply send the raw directory list up the filter stack to mod_autoindex, which in...
The Mercy Corps office is terrifically overcrowded. I share a 100 square foot room with two other people, for example. This office opens directly into...
3 am, suffering the usual insomnia. Out of idle boredom I’m browsing Wikipedia, entirely because I can. Although, as Wikipedia itself helpfully notes, as of...
1983: Rhythm of Youth, Men Without Hats
1984: Unforgettable Fire, U2
1985: Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M.
1986: Evol, Sonic Youth
1987: Telephone Free Landslide...
In the last year I generated a hypothesis about global attitudes toward shit:“A person’s aversion to fecal matter is inversely proportional to their cultural distance...
My brother and mother have been visiting this past week. I took them to the usual Xiamen tourist sites: Gulangyu Island, Nanputuo Temple, Zhongshan Road....
Someone recently asked me for some businessy advice about working in China. Specifically, about team dynamics and the decision-making process. All four regular readers of...
The Australian crawl
The backstroke
The Four-in-Hand
The half-Windsor
The non-necessity of training wheels
If you’re bored, read a book
Shake hands firmly and make...
On today’s Dilbert Blog, Scott Adams hypothesizes that:
“A person’s need for social interaction is inversely related to the quality of his or her imagination....
Working with a Chinese team (OK, my particular Chinese team) makes me long for a collaborative work environment like you wouldn’t believe. All my attempts...
AKA The Lazy Man’s Blog Post17 Hates
10 Commandments for Westerners in China
American IPR hawks, remember the little people
Welcome to Boomtown, PRC
Beijing...
We got back from Taiwan yesterday after utterly uneventful flights. Although the 777 (Cathay Pacific) we took from Taipei to Hong Kong had the coolest...
Today we saw Spiderman 3, the first movie we've seen in an actual theater since last August. Hell, it was the first non-pirated visual entertainment...
Jenny and I took the train (not, unfortunately, the High Speed Rail, although it was plenty fast) out to Taroko Gorge, Taiwan's world-famous National Park....
Much of what passes for “Western” in Xiamen would more accurately be called “Sinicized.” A good example is the local version of “coffee shops.” These...
OK, so: here’s what made this past Sunday so damned irritating.First, taxes. This was actually not any more irritating than usual, and actually turned out...
Lately I’ve been adding some older bloggy-type stuff to 大黑狗. I started doing “something new every day” on axoplasm.com five years ago (when I didn’t...
...is occasionally a challenge. The Chinese have not made cults of efficiency, quality, or service as in other countries (like Germany, Japan, and America, respectively)....
I can almost pinpoint the exact time this happened...I was updating the site before lunch (about two-three hours ago).At least they could make up their...
Think you might be homesick? Unfortunately, expatriate life in China means living with constant homesickness, so gauging the severity of this emotion is essential to...
Post-lunch naps
Palm-sized rice bowls held inches from your mouth
Industrial-grade hot water dispensers (for copious quantities of loose green tea), in lieu of office...
It appears that, some time in the last 24 hours, blogspot.com has been blocked by Chinese censors. What this means:People outside China can see blogspot-hosted...
Long, languid, atmospheric dreams of American landscapes occupied my sleep last night. Shopping malls, brick houses on tree-lined streets, farmland under an autumn prairie sky,...
The crazy difficult thing about learning Mandarin are those devil tones. In Mandarin, the way you pronounce a vowel is often more important than the...
Dear Honored Foreign Designer,
The following is a guide to the use of color in Chinese graphic design. Unlike foreign color symbolism, in which colors...
Starbucks
KFC
clothing made in China
Tabasco
instant coffee
TV cop shows
cheering for the high school basketball team
lite beer
soda with calories
Crest...
Only building contractors and heart surgeons carry cell phones.
My guidebook to the Pacific Northwest, in describing the burgeoning Seattle coffee culture, mentions in passing...
Piping hot corn smoothies
Green tea toothpaste
The emergency room
Hocking loogies in public in front of God and everyone
Sausage-filled donuts
Public buses with...
Last night (Michelle’s final night in China) we went to Riyuegu hot springs, a shwanky resort in Xiamen’s outer suburbs. They have a bazillion little...
For Michelle’s pen-penultimate day in Xiamen, we had a big ol’ Chinese-o-rama. Jenny was “sick” and stayed home with Michelle, they visited the big local...
OK, so it's been, what, two weeks now? I have excuses.The day after Christmas Axoplasm.com stopped working. In China. Everyone else on Earth can see...
