~~~~ odd man out ~~~~
Once long ago I was interviewed for a job as language director of the Defence Cooperation Language School in Melbourne, Australia. (The place pretends to teach English in three months or so to exchange military officers from places like Indonesia). It was a pretty strange detour for [...]
The deal was 8am. I’m a just-in-time guy, but here she was knocking on the door at 7:15. Jeez. Can I offer you some breakfast? We sat looking at each other across a big wooden coffee table, the golden drapes suffusing a soft glow of early sunshine. She’d never tried anything like my special concoction [...]
Winter morning light had broken clear and cold, so early that night’s shadows were still about and a wispy moon hung in the sky. A small collection of street food vendors had already parked their hand carts by the college gates, and by this time there was usually a crowd of girls in jeans and [...]
China has one of the world’s biggest rail networks. With 20% of the world’s population that is hardly surprising, and it still comes nowhere near meeting demand on existing networks, or on actual network coverage in densely populated provinces like Henan with its 100 million + people. It is a mind-bending logistics operation, greatly improved [...]