2 min readLife
Views: 0Reading the seasons in two places
Northern Vietnam has four seasons you can name by smell. Southern Taiwan has heat, plum rains and typhoons. Notes on learning a new calendar of weather.
Writing
Journal entries, notes, travel and places, newest first.
2 min readThoughts
Views: 0Learning a third language, slowly
Vietnamese is home, English is work, and Chinese is still a door I am learning to open. Some thoughts on being a beginner as an adult.
2 min readVietnam
Views: 0The rice terraces of northern Vietnam and the people who built them
Terraced fields climb the mountains of the north in curves that follow the land. They are a farming system built over generations by Hmong, Dao, Hà Nhì and other communities, and they change colour with the seasons.
2 min readTravel
Views: 0Hội An old town: practical notes
Yellow walls, the Thu Bồn river and lanterns at night. Hội An is famous for good reasons, and a few simple choices make it much more enjoyable.
2 min readNotes
Views: 0What DEA actually measures
Data Envelopment Analysis comes up in almost everything I read and write. A plain-language note on what it does, and what it does not.
2 min readLife
Views: 0On being a Vietnamese student in Taiwan
Some reflections on studying far from home: language, small routines, and why the distance between Vietnam and Taiwan is both short and long.
2 min readJapan
Views: 0Osaka: merchant city and the nation's kitchen
Osaka grew up around trade rather than a court. Its castle, its canals and its famous appetite for street food all come from that merchant past. A profile of Japan's most down-to-earth big city.
2 min readThoughts
Views: 0Servitization, explained without jargon
My research topic in plain words: why companies that make things are increasingly selling services, and why it is harder than it sounds.
2 min readTravel
Views: 0Osaka Castle, and how to read a Japanese castle
Osaka Castle is one of Japan's best-known landmarks. A little history helps you see what is original, what is rebuilt, and why the stone walls matter most.
2 min readTaiwan
Views: 0Kaohsiung, the harbour city of the south
Taiwan's great port city has spent recent decades reinventing itself, from shipyards and steelworks to riverside walks, art warehouses, temple lakes and lantern-lit festivals.
2 min readNotes
Views: 0Composition with lines and frames
Two of the oldest ideas in composition, leading lines and frames within the frame, and why they still work.
2 min readLife
Views: 0Tea in a Vietnamese home
In Vietnam, tea is less a drink than a gesture. Notes on green tea, lotus tea and the cup of iced tea on the pavement.
2 min readVietnam
Views: 0The Đồng Văn Karst Plateau: a geopark made of stone
On Vietnam's far northern border, a high limestone plateau records hundreds of millions of years of geological history, and the communities living on it have learned to farm between the rocks.
2 min readThoughts
Views: 0What digital transformation really changes
Buying software is the easy part. The harder change is in how a firm makes decisions, who it listens to, and what it decides to sell.
2 min readTravel
Views: 0Taiwan's east coast by train
Between the Central Mountain Range and the Pacific, the east coast is the slower, greener side of Taiwan. The railway makes it surprisingly easy to reach.
2 min readNotes
Views: 0Photographing neon at night
Neon signs look effortless to the eye and surprisingly hard for a camera. Notes on exposure, colour and reflections.