
“I was an outsider before I was a traveler; I was a traveler before I was a writer; I think one led to the other.”
Sober Kerouac and the Tea Muses: A Vancouver Diary
I tell Peggy I’m drinking the hell out of pu’erh these days. It connects me to the earth. And Tang Dynasty sages. I imagine living as a hermit 1000 years ago in some remote cave somewhere, uninhibited by tech workers, Virtual Reality sycophants, people on the bulletproof coffee bandwagon, or any of the usual bullshit in Silicon Valley.
Basel: A Thrash-Punk Crossover of Swiss, German, and French Influence
At the table, I opt for pasta as the slim-suited waiter takes my order. Not because I want pasta. Not because it's the only item on the menu I can identify. But, rather, so I can claim that I ate Italian food in a French restaurant in a German train station in Switzerland.
Fusing the Opposites in Geneva
Here in Geneva, everything started to click. I could almost imagine the opposite halves of myself beginning to alchemically fuse. The counterculture piece of myself no longer felt incongruous with the business traveler part of myself.
An Evening at Jules et Jim
I was drinking on a Saturday night, in a Québec City bar called Jules et Jim. Dark, smoky and its subterranean walls adorned with old movie photos befitting a place named after the classic François Truffaut film...
Roppongi Vignette, 1999
As we walked, he spilled the lowdown on scams perpetrated by some of the seedier karaoke joints. Once midnight hits, he told us, the prices go up and you never know what you’ll get charged.
The Great Wall at Simitai
One of the first stories I ever wrote, way back in 2000, as I was concluding my SJSU era and trying to break into travel writing. Originally published at one of those co-op blog sites of the day, 2000/01, although I forget where.