To introduce myself, I'm an agricultural economist working for a notorious international development bank. I originally worked in China, then Southeast Asia, and now Latin America promoting rural development, natural resource management, and a better livelihood for the poor. I'm fluent in Chinese language, beginning my career as a China specialist, hence the tag "Chinatom".
Computers have long been a hobby as well as work tool for me. My first microcomputer was a 1978 North Star Horizon, and I went through a bunch of Osbornes before switching to the MSDOS world. Used to program (Z80 assembly, Basic, and Fortran), but that was back when you had to program to get your computer to do anything useful.
I enjoy making my PC jump through new hoops, so was quick to outfit it for sound and attach it to a MIDI music keyboard. If you'd rather hear music, check out my MIDI Interpretations.
A while ago, I added a scanner and began processing my photo album. This page will allow me to show off some of my work and tell of my travels.
These pictures are new, the fruit of this summer's vacation: a dream trip to the mountain temple/fortress ruins of Machu Picchu.
In
1960, I spent a year at Hong Kong U., my first trip abroad. It
was a far less modern city than it is today. I took this picture
of a small boy in a 500-year-old walled village in the New
Territories, which, if it remains, must be a tourist trap.
That
summer, I split a HK-NY airticket as many ways as I could and set
off for a month of $4 a day travel around Asia, the Middle East
and Europe. My first stop was in Saigon, still in the early
stages of the war. A somewhat scared college kid off on his own,
I roamed the city cautiously. Snapped this family taking the
cheapest form of taxi.
Of
all the stopovers, the 4 days I spent bicycling around the ruins
of Angkor Wat in Cambodia were the most memorable. Today the
Khmer Rouge have left, and as long as you fly in and fly out,it
is safe to visit for the first time in decades.
The
valley of Kathmandu in Nepal, then barely opened to visitors,
seemed a real Shangri-la to me, an exotic destination for
shoestring travellers. The price was a hotel which boasted a
single, hole-in-the-ground toilet and no windows to keep out the
mosquitos.
India
entailed more of a culture shock, but there were some great
experiences -- the Taj Mahal in Agra, and the wedding there I
ended up a part of by following the procession. This photo is of
the courtyard of a temple, where the faithful were receiving
water from a priest to cleanse themselves.
Jumping
ahead to recent years, the quality of my pictures doesn't match
what it used to be. A conference trip took June and I to
Budapest, where we enjoyed several days of exploring a town with
a great past and hopefully a better future.
We
took a train through Yugoslavia - still intact - to Italy, and
began our sightseeing in Venice, one of the nicest tourist traps
around. This picture probably ends up in the album of every
visitor.
In the
years since 1987, I visited the Philippines often from 1987-94 on
development business. On this trip, June joined me. Here our
group is assessing one of the few intact areas of tropical
forest. No, we were planning protection, not harvesting!
On the way
to the Philippines, we stopped in Tokyo, where we visited June's
cousin (here in a hotel garden). Pity our dollar is worth so
little there - it is the most interesting modern country to
visit.
Florida is
so close and too much fun for the kids for us to resist. Here the
magnificent estate of the late PT Barnum, near the winter
quarters of his circus south of Sarasota.
Closer to
home, a visit to Monticello, designed and built by Thomas
Jefferson, certainly my favorite of our presidents.
In 1993,
my entire family re-unioned in Whistler, British Colombia -
another area I'd highly recommend. We took a scenic side trip
east on BC Rail.
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