Category: China

My Tchou Tchou is having an important exhibition of her artwork at the Today Art Museum in Beijing. The opening reception will be on the evening of March 29th. I hope you can join us there.

More information can be found on her website: Gulistan Art.

Well, when I started my new feature last week, I didn’t realize what effect it would have on my blogging routine, if you could call it that. You see, it’s going to look like I’m not very active with this blogging thing once I start piling up “This Week Online” postings back to back. Well, the weekend is coming, so the pressure’s on.

Certainly, I have material for the new “This Week Online”, but what can I put in a normal post today? Let’s try this.

I am looking forward to Halloween, which is just a few days away. Halloween is one of my two favourite holidays. The other is election night. I like these two “holidays” because they are both times when people in urban North America actually get out onto the street and talk to each other. They look around. When they’re riding the bus, they look at each other. People are more open than ever because they’re sharing a common experience. And that’s what I love about Halloween and election night. The rest of the time we live our lives ignoring other people.

Of course, I’m no where near North America right now. And I’m living in an odd situation where lots of people notice me (and stare) because I’m white. And I spend most of my time on the street not looking at other people. But the approach of Halloween is a good reminder to open up and connect.

A new manuscript came across my desk this morning which pleasantly surprised me. The author was Samuel Shen, my Master’s thesis research supervisor with whom I continue to have a mentoring relationship, and the subject was detecting climate change signals using statistical methods.

This topic in particular brought me back to a moment in 1999 when I was floating around the university in my home town, trying to decide what to do next in my life. I noticed a posting in the math department for a colloquium talk on this topic to be given by a visiting researcher. The topic interested me, even though I had no background in climate studies, so I went and checked it out. Samuel Shen, whom I had not known before, was the host professor for the talk, and I was sufficiently impressed by what I experienced in that moment in time. A few days later, I found myself in his office requesting to study a Master’s degree under him. This led to two and a half years of study, and upon graduation, the opportunity to work in China. The rest, they say, is history.