On Decluttering

I left off last time after a first attempt to manage what we had kept in storage, in preparation for the impending move that would take place before the year end. Since then, we had made two more visits, one lasting some seven hours while the other, barely 90 minutes. The idea was to decant…

An Anniversary

Today marks the 47th anniversary of my wedding with Rosita, and for those who had followed avidly the Sino-British negotiations in the run-up to 1997, the 37th anniversary of the death of Sir Edward Youde. We are also good friends of a couple who celebrate their wedding anniversary today. Let me disclose slowly though not…

Shunde Revisited

We returned Wednesday evening from a 3-day visit to Shunde, which was part and parcel of a reunion programme between Wah Yan College alumni marking the 60th anniversary of their graduation in 1963 when our numbers were around 150 plus or minus 10%. Alumni associations are not the easiest organisations to manage, and jokes and…

Reunion Meetings

Today marks the Singles’ Day or Bachelors’ Day, which I learned from Wikipedia originated at Nanjing University in 1993, but has now spread throughout China and even adopted in the West and highly commercialized.  I first knew of the date when my first mentor, Joe, celebrated his 80th birthday some years back and his wife…

More Weather Talks

I left off nearly a month ago – when the war between Israel and Hamas was in its fifth day – expecting to come back very soon to discuss the position of the United States on Israel. Obviously, I had other priorities. I have a life. My priorities are to stay healthy, corporeally and mentally,…

Weather Talks

Mid-Autumn has passed for more than ten days and the northeast monsoon has been working hard, but we faced more tropical storms and typhoons last week. Koinu had taken a rather mysterious path from the early days, causing severe damage along its way. Earlier weather forecast had some people warning for another direct hit on…

Law of Nature

Before I knew, it was nearly a month since I posted my last blog when I stopped short of saying that it seemed inevitable that the West would continue to decline; and indeed, since then, a number of friends had forwarded me a video on an interview on LBC with a Chinese official who, in…