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In a World without Absolute "Truth," Attempts to Find It is Useless Effort

The author is a relativist when it comes to moral values.  The exact same act, done under different circumstances and background, he believes, can be either positive or negative.  Stealing is a prime example.  From time to time, there are news of poor, desperate people stealing out of basic need to support their families, sometimes to finance needs that can very much mean life and death for the benefactors.  While debates with regard to such news have focused on why society has not helped such people (for which the author believes is a government role ), it also put forth other thoughts.

Death of the "Iron Stomach" and the Doubts of a Casual Traveler

On the road, the biggest enjoyment a traveler can possibly have is food.  Going to new places and indulging on the delicacies that raised a whole new unknown civilization cannot be underestimated in its value in communicating with the locals.  It is like the Chinese says, "民以食為天" (people see food sky/heaven).  The centrality of gastronomy in not only the cultural expression of a place, but also the economic realities of the common people residing there  provides possibly the most concentrated and succinct method to get know the good and bad of a foreign location.

A Portrait of Elitist Existence

Tucked in a little corner of an unmarked road leading into a plain-looking residential neighborhood, a little unassuming row of shops greets guests who may or may not intentionally drove down the one-way street.  At once lost and disoriented, the visitors would be rather surprised that a classy decor in a neat little room would even exist in such a place.  "A brother of a model opened up the place," the author was told as he sat down to have a meal in a shop specializing in crepes.  Despite it being lunch hours on the weekend, the shop seemed empty, with a few quietly chatting away, generating a relaxing ambiance.

Emotions: Floating or Sinking the Ship of Rule-Based Authoritarianism?

The author, as the adventure traveler that he is, often gets the question of where his "most interesting" destination have been.  Generally, without a doubt, the answer has been North Korea, a foreboding land for most who has the yearning to go but no courage to do so.  The author's own trips to North Korea occurred both from the Chinese and the South Korean side, years before the existence of this blog, and thankfully, before the more stringent regulations governing travels to the Hermit Kingdom today.  It was a different time when curiosities of foreigners was keeping a modest state-led tourism sector growing at steady pace.

Birthday Post Part II: a Speakeasy in the Middle of Nowhere

The author, in his jeans and dress shirt, felt quite out of place walking around the dark streets of KL's old downtown.  Centuries-old heritage buildings that combine colonial and Chinese influences graced the side of empty streets, some crumbling under the weight of their (decidedly unpolished and non-maintained) history, and most hosting a couple of homeless going to sleep against the noise of a city celebrating the country's 57th Day of Independence from British colonialism.  The dark streets are occasionally punctuated by a few bright spots of light emerging from Indian eateries catering to, well, not so many clients.

Revisiting Those Birthday Resolutions from a Full Three Years Ago

On this very day a full three years ago, the author was penning a blog post in his room in San Diego , listing down some of the resolutions for the upcoming year as he prepared himself for the year ahead in London for his grad school life in the LSE.  It was a time of disappointment, after discovering the toughness of being the common white-collar worker in Japan and an English teacher in Korea.  It was a time of dismay, facing a prospect of pushing ahead in a completely different direction again as the world of business is replaced once again by the world of academia in a faraway place.

Attitude, Rather than Knowledge, Marks a Successful Educator

In the last weekend of his stay in Taiwan , the author was taken to a college campus by a friend of his.  As the friend was taking the author around her alma mater, explaining every corner of the school that made and unmade a thousand memories of her formative four years, the author noted a group of young high school students on what seems to be a summer camp being held at the school's main auditorium.  Boisterously, the kids were going about discussing among themselves, bouncing ideas off one another as they hatch ideas to bring forth in what seemed to be their end-of-the-camp presentation/talent show.

Malaysia: the “Tame” Home Base of the Southeast Asia Traveler

“God, it’s absolutely too late that I came upon this piece of heaven on Earth!”  Exclaimed the slightly tipsy Indian man from India as our conversation about Malaysia got a bit more enthusiastic.  The location was outside a rather well-known liquor store on the main party drag of Bukit Bintang, and occasion was a casual gathering of the travel-minded on a rowdy Friday night, an alcoholic extension of a dinner gathering.  The camaraderie of complete strangers also felt more intimate than long-time friendships.

A Few Last Words on Taiwan

Sometimes, goodbye can be sudden and unexpected, emerging out of relatively stability, mixed in with new-found happiness.  With age comes longing for a certain sense of sameness, surrounded by familiar faces, familiar surroundings, and a belief that one has, at least superficially, started to belong and blossom in one particular locale.  But the threat of unchanging constancy may eat away at ambitions, gloss over discontent, and level out inadequacy.  The author is not okay with that.  And hence, his Taiwan trip is suddenly coming to an end, and six days, a new life will start in Malaysia, returning to Rocket Internet after a half-year hiatus .

The "Political Solution" of National Disunity

With the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inching toward Baghdad, taking valuable oil assets and key cities in the process, the Obama Administration's decision, for now, to clearly rule out direct military assistance to the Iraqi government reflect a long-held sense of dismay among both American politicians and people toward the increasingly volatile situation in that part of the Middle East.  As someone who remained skeptical of the US war effort in Iraq ever since its very inception years ago, the author, perhaps among many others, now sense the coming of renewed chaos in the region through creation of new divisive actors.

"Asian Men are less 'manly'?!" Revisited: the Emotional Concerns of Living at "Home"

In one of the earliest (and to this day one of the most read) post of this blog, the author touched upon a personal experience of racial preference among women that come off as deeply disadvantageous to Asian males .  The subject is quite resonating in the recent days here in Taipei as the town is reportedly being graced by the presence of two famed Caucasian pickup artists, who has tallied their victories in Hong Kong and are now making inroads in Taiwan.  The public nature of their exploits, so casually shared through social media and subsequently reinterpreted through mainstream media, are draw huge criticisms.

Why a Girl/Boyfriend's Primary Role Should NOT be Sex

"You know, after going to those kinds of places often enough, you feel that anywhere else you go, the girls are just not pretty enough, and you would not feel any sense of attraction," the young Chinese-Canadian quipped to the author outside the restaurant/bar as the usual crowded Saturday night meetup went on at its rooftop, "It's just, when you know getting girls of even better stature than what's on offer here at this event, it makes you feel like a loser just to put in so much effort for trying to hit it off with them."  The guy, apparently, is just meeting up male friends with whom he can have interesting conversations.

Searching for Those Other Expats: 台湾における日本人コミュニティーを探る

In the past weeks, the author has spent increasing amount of time interacting with the expat community here in Taipei through various meetup events of various "language exchange" and other dubious natures .  These events, unfortunately, are primarily focused on an English-speaking foreign crowd, one that is primarily Western in both origin and interest, distinctively separate both in looks and cultures from the host society that is Taiwan.  But without a doubt, this expat community, biggest as it may be, is not the only active one here in Taiwan.  The non-English-speaking ones are just as important, just not as visible.

Whispers of an Embattled Minority

When a friend invited the author for dinner in a Tibetan restaurant here in Taipei, the author's first thought was, well, a complete blank.  What the hell is Tibetan food?  And it is all the more embarrassing that the author has no clue, as most Chinese people are brainwashed to some degree that Tibet is an inseparable part of China , and by the same logic, Tibetan food ought to be considered an inseparable part of Chinese cuisine.  But the bigger question here is, how does a Tibetan restaurant, in a land where few Tibetans reside and few locals know about Tibet outside casual trips and political news, even survive and prosper?

Establishing the Social Institutions of International Brain Drain

A casual Thursday night, the author found himself having a beer at the local English-style pub with a French academic.  Coincidentally being a coworker at Academia Sinica like the author himself , the Frenchman shared some of his own opinions of what is it like working as a researcher in a strange land with a different system.  The results are by no means flattering and one thing stood out the most in his assessment: it is that a mentality of "let's temporarily be here until we can get a better opportunity abroad" that prevails among the non-tenured employees of nearly all institutes.

Manipulating The Business of Getting Strangers to Meet One Another

Being the not busy person that he is, the author has recently been increasingly using his time off after work and over weekends to show up at various meet-up events across Taipei, trying his best to make acquaintances with the rather small foreigner community here in the city as well as the well-heeled and keen, international-minded, and often enthusiastic English-learning local Taiwanese crowd.  In this process, the author has come across an interesting segment of a small-business owners.  They have no office, little revenue, but plenty of friends they can leverage on to gain revenues through scale.

The Virtue of Not Being Busy

This author is not a busy man at the moment, in fact a man with very very abundant amount of leisure.  There is no getting around this fact.  It is all the more ironic considering a mere few months ago, he was working six days a week, some twelve hours a day, getting so physically and emotionally sick from the experience that he had to quit his job, leave the country , take a massive pay cut, just to recover from the fiasco.  A part of him is starting to miss the days where he had so little time for himself that savings started accumulating not particularly because he was being financially astute, but simply because there was no time to spend cash.

On the Flows of Democratization and the Ebbs of Globalization

The author, despite espousing some strong left-wing views , tend to be in agreement with some neo-liberals on the fundamental direction of humanity's future.  It will primarily be defined by two inevitable, unstoppable flows of history.  On one side is democratization, a rise of the empowered masses, bolstered by labor's increasing ability to leverage their economic roles, utilize independent sources of information, and propagate their own organized opinions to large populations via social media.  On the other is globalization, the gradual breakdown of state control over cross-border exchanges of goods, capital, and labor.

the Bird Chirps of Regret

The first rays of light in the morning accompanies the receding darkness of the night.  When bright colors of nature once again scar off the uniform blackness that enveloped the land, it is time to start anew, completely anew.  The clear blue sky heads into the mind through the eyes, clearing out any mental debris that tired it from the night before.  Refreshing, reinvigorating...it re-balances the senses and reassures one that what is past is the past, and what is future starts now, ready to be written on a new, blank chapter.

3/11 Three Years Later and Reflecting the Ephemeral Nature of Human Life

For those who survived that life-changing massive earthquake rocking much of Japan on March 11th, 2011 , it is difficult to believe that the event has officially marked its third anniversary of two days ago.  For the author, the memories of coyly remaining in fetal position on the 20th floor of a near collapsed office building are emotional scars that will undoubtedly remain with him for the remainder of life.  The Armageddon-like aftermath, with continuing aftershocks, anxious people clogging roads leading out of town, and empty shelves in every store, continue to remind him daily the very fragility of human society.