I am continuing my time in India, most recently hosting some old friends from Brazil as well as my daughter (and her friend.) As we have been taking them around, I have been again paying attention to the advice, warnings and cultural highlights I have shared with them. I recently blogged about some of those same things and this blog entry is ANOTHER collection of advice to anyone considering visiting India, including people in my future workshops in India. Read More
In January I spent three weeks in Asia, mostly in Singapore. As always it was a stimulating trip on many levels. The food was great, the company equally good and the workshops were a blast. I have been trying to put a bit of distance between myself and that experience. I want to figure out which parts were really important and blog-worthy (and which parts were fun when they happened but don’t have much long term meaning.) I do this because unlike some bloggers, if I write about something to soon after it happens, I usually emphasize the wrong thing. Read More
I just finished up a series of workshops in Singapore. Throughout the ten days I was there, I jotted down notes, which were little musings that popped into my head based on things that caught my attention. As I was leaving Singapore (for Vietnam,) the various notations reached a kind of a critical mass and so I am sitting down during my first few days in Ho Chi Minh City and writing this blog entry. Read More
Normally, I try really hard to stay away from political commentary in this blog. Partly out of fear of offending readers of divergent political views. Mostly though, I am afraid that I have nothing else to add of any value to the discussion of the day. This week was one of those rare times where the fates came together and I feel perfectly comfortable writing what looks like, on first glance, a politically focused blog entry. The astute reader will follow this piece to its conclusion to see how it relates to many of the ongoing themes I blog about (probably too often.) Read More
A week in China is hardly enough time to see much of anything, let alone make any kind of serious analysis. So what I am writing is not remotely all-encompassing. Still, I have been to India enough times and traveled enough in the developing world to be able to make a few reasonably well-informed comparisons. Read More
I am on my way to China. I am not going on any work assignment. I am going to accompany my wife, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, (http://annumatthew.com/) who has work in the Guangzhou Photo Biennial. The hosts at the museum (and the University of Rhode Island) have been especially generous in making her trip possible. Our abundance of frequent flier miles has made it possible for me to go also. I am going to see China, obviously, but I am also going to see if I can get any perspective on what has changed in China since I went there back in 1986. Read More