Birds in flight, claims the architect Vincenzo Volentieri, are not between places, they carry their places with them. We never wonder where they live: they are at home in the sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world. –Geoff Dyer Found on P. 80 of Pico Iyer’s The Global Soul, a book that [...]
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Maybe you’ve heard of the Navajo Indian concept of living your life fully in harmony with nature and the world around you. They call it “walking in beauty” and I can not think of a better nor more “beautiful” way to say exactly that. Through all of my travels and frequent moves, I have come [...]
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Forgive me, I’m not at all sure whether Veteran’s Day was yesterday or today… My family, like a lot of American families, has a strong history with the military. My mom, dad and brother all served. My grandfather spent WWII in India, my uncle in Vietnam. I even have a great-uncle who flew U2 spy [...]
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Or, Something Infuriating. Censorship sucks. Plain and simple. Yahoo promotes censorship, of this I’m sure. Yahoo Betrays Free Speech New York Times Editorial – 02 December 2007 For a company that ostensibly believes in the Internet’s liberating power, Yahoo has a gallingly backward understanding of the value of free expression. The company helped Beijing’s state [...]
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“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.” ~Mark Twain So it’s not the orangutan after all.
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Is burning books ever a good idea? I’m not sure how I feel about this. A bookstore owner in Kansas City had a warehouse full of books he was unable to sell – close to 20,000 books. After libraries and thrift shops refused the books, he decided to hold a monthly book bonfire. He views [...]
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You must go to this website and watch this video. I wish I had thought of this. Where the hell is Matt? He is dancing. Across the world. Seriously, happy dancing Matt made me smile. I hope you enjoy it, too.
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This morning I stopped in to McDonald’s to get some breakfast. I don’t normally eat at McDonald’s, but every once in a while I do get a craving for a sausage’n’egg McMuffin, especially after a long 12 hour night shift. As I approached the counter, a very scared looking Chinese-Canadian girl (Ahem, the China connection…) [...]
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So it seems that going native is a registered trademark belonging to a company that sells “world foods” like soups and wraps. Their “Ethos” (philosophy) is along the same lines as mine, I just didn’t get the domain name first. I guess this means that I won’t be moving my blog to goingnative dot com.
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When I first started blogging, I called my blog Going Native. As you can see, it is now known as On the Fringe. This post explains why I chose Going Native. I still ascribe to this philosophy, but found that I am not so much going native as I am hanging out on the fringe [...]
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I'm an American expat living on the fringe of Chinese society. Thanks to a lifetime spent moving around, I often feel like an outsider. This blog explores life in Beijing, China, the occasional aviation topic, expat issues, random travel experiences and interesting things I see, read and hear. If you want to know more about my latest hobby, visit Sewing on the Fringe, where I blog about learning to sew in Beijing. And for daily documentation of Beijing's ever changing air quality, visit My Beijing Window.
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