Unlike the wasteland of over-sized drinks and decay-proof food in the USA, the 7-11's of Taiwan are a vibrant and vital node of connection and exchange. You would need to roll UPS, Kinko's, a … [more]

This is a demonstration of Jane Lewis using the process of facilitative questioning to get to the heart of what began as an unspoken dilemma. This process can be done with an individual or group to h… [more]

It's crowded in Taiwan. Crowded in a way that most Americans would not want to think too long about. Crowded and with rules of human brownian motion seeped from a culture that avoids conflict and … [more]

It's a complicated perfume of lurid tropical flowers and scooter exhaust, mixed with outdoor kitchens, acrid-sweet temple incense and wrapped all together into a humid embrace. The first thing I w… [more]

The synchronic adjustment between time zones is only one part of the shifting required when settling into a time zone that crosses oceans, languages and customs. Certainly, there is the internal clock… [more]

I bought a ticket from one of Taipei’s kabillion 7/11′s for the the high speed train that time slices the journey from Taipei to Tainan. For a 35 cent service charge the pre-ticket sales l… [more]

I always enjoy the language lessons from cabbies. Quite often they are the lessons learnt from the stumbles of my less than “standard” mandarin. Other times from the miscommunication of th… [more]

Tea is not a quick affair. It takes time. Time to settle into a chair and visit the steaming water and leaves. It is a rare moment in our point-and-click UPS delivered life, to drop the to-do list and… [more]

Weeks of planning, preparation, mentally packing and unpacking as the pile of clothes gets weighted against the long range forecast of cities that are seasons apart from each other. There comes a poin… [more]

Learning how to wrap my ears around the sounds of Chinese was the hardest part of learning the language when I lived in Taiwan. The four tones and using them correctly were a relentless trip through s… [more]

Portland’s rain-soaked cotton sky paints a multi-grey canvas against the blooms of cherry and the emerald green that everywhere holds this part of the world in its gentle evergreen embrace. Cool as … [more]

Qi is not pronounceable in English. Its whistled aspiration is not a sound found in our language. And much as we can approximate it with the “chee”, as in the beginning of “cheese”, it will fo… [more]