Category: Blog
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Six Weeks to Japanese – Progress Report #2
Well if you haven’t heard by now, either on this blog or Twitter or your panicky friend, China is undergoing a bit of a crisis here during its Spring Festival holiday. The novel Coronavirus has hit the country particularly hard over the last few days with cases jumping from only 2700 to under 10,000. This…
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It’s official: We’re living in an outbreak
So the most recent news is that the World Health Organization has issued notice that the Coronavirus outbreak in China now meets the criteria to be a public health emergency. Why this decision? There were a few reasons listed on the website, among them the fact that human-to-human transmission has occurred both inside and outside of…
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Beijing has gotten really quiet
How quiet is “really quiet”? I no longer hear the cleaning lady use the elevator to go up to the top floor to begin her morning garbage duty. The elevator itself is being used far less (I live right by the thing). And if the fridge isn’t doing its cycle and I just sit in…
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Be careful of the Conspiracy Theorists
I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, particularly anything to do with Area 51. But it seems that some people want to stir up some panic by posting their unfounded thoughts on Twitter. I know to many this would seem like an obvious statement (what else is Twitter for?) but when I…
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Chinese New Year 2020: The Year of Rat
With the end of the CCTV Chunwan gala (and the striking of midnight), it is now officially the Year of the Rat and the start of a new lunar year. Though this year has been dampened a bit by the outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan, it still is an important time to get together…