Sometimes I stop and think for awhile about my job, and about the long chain of assumptions that lead out into its final goal, which nine times out of ten is that people will purchase (or remain loyal to) a product that did not originate in their own culture. Localization is primarily about making theContinue reading “Localization, Thailand and the global market”
Category Archives: Travel
An expat in any country
One reason I love other cultures is the possibility that they will be more familiar than the one I’m currently living in. I grew up in a microculture, one with its own way of dressing and thinking, its own news services, textbooks, cultural heroes, way of speaking English. Since the moment I set foot inContinue reading “An expat in any country”
Back to Sandpoint
I arrived home to yellow and red leaves on the trees, and brown, crisp ones on the sidewalk. The air was cold; 40 degrees colder than it had been that morning in Newport Beach. I had been thinking on the airplane, as I tend to do to pass the hours in that buzzing, monotonous in-between,Continue reading “Back to Sandpoint”
Remembering Fiji
My last stop in California was Newport Beach to visit David, a writer I’d met in Fiji and asked for advice every so often since then, and his wife Jan. Their house was quiet and soothing, often open to the sunlight and the air, full of art and books. David turned out to be aContinue reading “Remembering Fiji”
SLO wine tasting
Ever since we were on a press trip in Fiji together, I’ve kept in touch with David Lansing, because he’s always full of good ideas and interesting stories. In this case, the good idea (and potential interesting story) involved him virtually introducing me to his daughter. I was going to be in her neck ofContinue reading “SLO wine tasting”
Hewn into the (non) living rock of Stonehenge
I’ll admit it: the mock documentary This is Spinal Tap made me want to visit Stonehenge. Specifically the line from the song “Stonehenge,” delivered with deadpan idiocy by Christopher Guest, “The Druids! Nobody knows who they were, or… what they were doing.” Who could resist such an enticing summary? This is actually somewhat accurate aboutContinue reading “Hewn into the (non) living rock of Stonehenge”
Salisbury and the Magna Carta
One of the first essays I ever wrote was, quite pompously, about what “abuses provoked men to demand the Magna Carta.” My research consisted of reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on Magna Carta. I mean, hey, I was 12, and that seemed sufficient. I vaguely remember writing something about unfair taxation, loosely tied into myContinue reading “Salisbury and the Magna Carta”
Taking in Bath
If you’ve read Jane Austin, you’re familiar with how trendy it was during the Georgian period for parties of people and particularly sickly women to take the ancient waters at Bath; something that generally turned into a social/tourist outing in which young people would happily subject themselves to a variety of entertainment. Not entirely unlikeContinue reading “Taking in Bath”
Scenes from London
London was predictably gray (or more appropriately, grey) and I had to resort to taking timed self-portraits while balancing the camera haphazardly on a traffic cone.
1984
To be honest, I’d never heard of the Sikh riots, called genocide by many groups because widespread ethnic killings occurred, until I ran into several thousand Khalistan Sikhs marching in downtown London, to the bewilderment of onlookers, for a remembrance and freedom protest. Intrigued, I walked with them all the way to Parliament Square, whichContinue reading “1984”
Botkin Creative 