leesean.net
Above: Modeling the Avaaz “Save the Polar Bears – Stop Global Warming T-shirt”
Get your own T-shirt here
Björn the Bear by HEPNOVA
Lots going on recently, so I haven’t had a chance to blog.
Check out my 2 new photo sets on Flickr:
Coming up (when I have some time): I want to post a reviews of Morimoto and Rosanjin, two Japanese restaurants I dined in with my family, and tell the story of how the NYPD came to my rescue.
Even though I have lived in NYC for almost 9 months now, I feel like there are still so many parts of the city that I haven’t seen yet. Today, Kris and I walked around the city and acted like tourists, looking up at the buildings and taking pictures of everything.
My blog post from April 2006 about cherry blossoms season in Japan has been republished on the Yokoso! Japan Travel blog. Yokoso! Japan is a campaign run by the Japanese government which aims to increase foreign tourism to Japan.
See the original post on leesean.net here.
A round-up of some articles and posts about the on-going controversy of renaming places and institutions in Taiwan (replacing "China" with "Taiwan") and Taiwanese continuing identity struggle:
"Status Quo Club" from Michael Turton's The View From Taiwan.
Taiwan statue removal fuels spat (BBC)
Name change restores history (Taiwan News Online)
From Mutant Frog:
Taiwan rectifies names in new history textbook
More on rectification of names in Taiwan
My quick 2 cents:
Get rid of most of the statues of Chiang Kai-Shek – the guy was a dictator. Imagine if there were still Franco statues all over the place in Spain! But keep some stuff around, just as a reminder of history – lest we ever forget – but rededicate and reconsecrate the space to the victims of the dictatorship.
Name change is good. Taiwan needs to develop it's own global brand as a country/region/place -whatever you want to call it – that is different from Mainland China. Even though Hong Kong and Macao are part of China again, they still maintain a very different brand image internationally. Taiwan should definitely do the same with some solid international branding PR. Look at how Ireland changed it's image from poor, backward, marginalized, to modern, young, vibrant, Celtic Tiger. I am sick of Taiwan being confused with Thailand. People have no clue what the hell "Chinese Taipei" is all about. And "Made In Taiwan" is an outdated brand label for Taiwan. We should portray a different image, more positive image and brand of our Beautiful Island – more than the land of cheap plastic trinkets and politicians that get into brawls.
Today is Rachel's last day at Avaaz.org, so we ordered her a chocolate hazelnut torte from Waltzing Matilda's NYC, an Australian-style bakery in New York run by a fellow JET alum, Laura Epstein. I love the kangaroo!
