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Showing posts from January, 2012

First day of class after Chinese New Year

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Classes began today after the Chinese New Year break. It's good to have things open and to see people on campus again. Back on the home front, my son, Robbie, ran a fantastic time trial, 10.62 100 m fly, and 24.10 200 m standing start. Last year he pulled his hamstring early in the season and couldn't compete. Hopefully this year he'll stay healthy. His coaches told him his 100 meter time would count as the 2nd fastest in school history! He gets his fast twitch muscles from his mother and not me. I never ran faster than 26 sec for 200 m. Those interested in seeing news from Macau, I recommend the Macau Daily Times . It doesn't have a lot of news, but gives some information about what's happening here. I've just updated preferences allowing for comments. So feel free to comment.

Sunny Day in Macau

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Today the sun was shining after a foggy and cold morning. In the morning I went on a long run, going from the University of Macau campus to the trails of Coloane, then running the long circuit of the trails, and then heading back, for a total time of 2hrs 4 minutes. I've signed up for the Taipei marathon on March 18 and need to increase my mileage to get in shape for the race. So I'll have to increase the runs to 2:30 to 3 hours. The run was great! The only problem was lack of water. I didn't plan well and failed to bring any with me. But on the way back, after leaving the trails, I had my bus pass and hoped to use the money on my card to buy water, which you can do at convenience stores here. There was an Esso gas station near the bus stop. I went in to see if I could swipe my card for water, but there was no machine set up. The man in the store was nice and gave me a bottle for free. I guess I looked like I needed it! Later at noon I took the bus back to Coloane, stopping

Year of the Dragon

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It's Chinese New Year, the year of the Dragon, "my year." The University of Macau has the week off, which gives me some time to get caught up and do a little exploring. This past week I went to Dongguan, China and visited a friend there. They treated me very well and took me on a trip to nearby Shenzhen and Hong Kong. We had wonderful meals and did a lot of shopping! I also met people from many parts of China and the world. The few people I met had stories similar to those narrated by Leslie Chang in her book, Factory Girls . "Jackie" is a 30 something woman from western China. She came to Dongguan about 10 years with no money, little education, and few connections. Now she is a successful manager in an international company. Likewise "Tiger" came from western China with only a junior high school education at about the same time. He now drives a nice car and handles orders in his shoe company that are made by Taiwanese managers. I also met a musician f

Macau Musings

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This is my first posting from Macau. These first few days have been busy as I’ve been filling out forms and navigating the local bureaucracy. Progress has been made on many fronts, although I’m not “finished” yet. The bad is that there is a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. The good is that resources for accomplishing what I want to do are available. I’m just getting to know and understand the students at the University of Macau. I’m teaching two undergraduate classes this semester, one in Interpersonal Communication and the other in Intercultural Communication. Both are for non-majors. Most students are local residents of Macau. A sizeable minority come from other parts of China, and some are international. In my intercultural class I have two students from Japan who are English majors. They are polite students. Yet what is bothersome is that many come to class late. I’m trying to break this habit by commenting on it (it is disrupting to me when they come in 10-20 minutes late