I'm about to board Air Canada 827 from Boston to Toronto. Yeah! This last week in Cambridge has been a wonderfully rich one. The goal was to blog during the course of the week-- but I never managed to fit it in the busy schedule. Moreover, I tried to work and keep (some) tabs on what was happening in Berkeley while I was in Cambridge. During the meetings, I paid attention to the speaker and to the non-verbal dynamics of the participants. I noticed that many folks were physically at MIT but mentally back home.

More when I get to Toronto. My last day in Cambridge was a rainy one -- a marked contrast to the heat and humidity of the early part of this week. I wanted to see Boston; I walked most of the Freedom Trail but gave up near the end because of time constraints and because I had developed a blister that made walking a bit painful. So I treated to the Harvard Coop, read excerpts from a few books, trank some earl gray tea at a nearby cafe and then rushed back to catch a shuttle that brought me to where I am now.

(Wish me a safe flight -- I hope my luggage doesn't get lost!)

Even when I'm tired, I am usually able to write something coherent on my blog. But I'm really struggling to get something down tonight. Maybe I'm distracted by the latest "reality tv show" that I stumbled upon while channel surfing: Cupid . After thinking about educational technology interoperability all day, my mind has been reduced to the mush that can contemplate interoperability only of a more primal nature.

This is one of those days in which I just check in, dear blog, to say that I'm ok. Dear blog, I had a wonderful dinner last night -- wish you could have been there at Casa Portugal. Nothing like hanging out with cool, smart people who get what you are doing from around the world (places like Australia, Sarajevo, Berkeley, the UK, and Canada). The duck was good too, though the lack of vegetables made me long for those big salads you get in Berkeley.

Today was full. I didn't have my notebook computer on during many of the sessions -- so dear blog, I was not in touch with you. Sorry. I felt that I needed to pay attention to my fellow human beings. Dinner with Ken and Lisa was the highlight for me, however. First Harvard Square; then Davis Square -- I love this city already. Cambridge is one cool place.

Goodnight dear blog. Sleep tight.

As I noted on The Architecture Lodge, I'm here at MIT now. It's already 12:15pm my time -- and though I'd love to tell you about how I learned to find the local mall so that I can buy clothes to hold me over because of lost luggage; the rediscoverd pleasures of hot weather; the splendor of the mix of people at the conference; the joy of recoverd luggage (Jesus talked about searching high and low for a lost coin); how thrilled I am that my friend Krista has started a new blog focused on transportation; how I finally did something I've putting off for a long time -- too long.

But I must hit the sack and blog tomorrow!

Bright and early tomorrow morning, I'm flying to Montreal to attend my sister Shirley's wedding. I don't anticipate having any network connectivity until I arrive at The University Park Hotel @ MIT on Sunday evening to attend the alt-i-lab meeting all next week.

I need to get packing rather than blogging....

Happy Canada Day! I'm going to be in Montreal in a couple of days for my sister's wedding. Truly exciting. Until then, there's so much to do that it's easy to lose sight of the most important things in life. (I'm very grateful to have been born in Canada. I'm also very pleased to be living in the U.S. Any contradiction in that?)

Lynn, I'm sorry about Dan's car being stolen. You recounted being attacked in daylight in Berkeley some years ago. My former housemate Christo and I were also mugged in Berkeley. In our case, it was around 9pm and we were walking along Benvenue. Frankly, we weren't terribly alert during our walk; we were distracted by the topic of our conversation: women. The price of inattention was being accosted by a man who jumped out from the bushes. Luckily, he seemed to know what he was doing, displaying little nervousness at all (beats a jumpy robber any day). He just discreetly held his gun (or what appeared to be a gun) to his side -- but it was obvious enough to the two of us. We handed over our wallets. He then ordered us to turn around and run. The thought did cross my mind that he was then going to shoot us. Instead, we heard the engine of his accomplice's car roar away.

That incident shook us up, naturally. It's sad that the language of self-blame creeps back into how I described the situation. Yes, we could have been more alert. But I shouldn't be blaming the victim (namely, ourselves)! And it can happen again, no doubt, with worse consequences. But is there a truly safe place? Maybe. I certainly behave as though there are safer and less safe places.

I'm really quite gratified by the responses I've gotten to my new personal
blog. I still think of the encouragement I received in the early moments by
Lloyd and Laura.
I'm thrilled that I have a group of loyal readers -- and their responses energize
me. For example:

• Tonight, I took to heart Catherine's
  encouragement to see Ursula K. Le Guin. Not surprisingly, tons of people
  filled the 2nd floor of Cody's Books. It was better than the usual book reading,
  not only because the stories read were so fine but because Le Guin is a really
  charming respondent. She seemed quite unpretentious, mixng humor with rather
  sharp insight in her answers to questions. More than that, she had an audience
  full of fans intimately knowledgeable about her work who wondered about that
  essay or this story written over decades.
• My friend Ginny Hearn responded to a whole slew of my previous posts. I
  responded to one
  of her comments and plan to answer some others when I'm less sleepy
• I wonder what Lynn
  will have to say about my new blog when she has a moment.
• I didn't realize that there would many others in our
  blogging community writing about faith, Christianity, and religion.

Off to bed -- I'm still hoping to turn my daily blogging ritual into a morning
rather than a late-night activity.

I'm tempted to go hear Ursula K. Le Guin speak about her new book Changing Planes: Stories at Cody's Books tomorrow. I knew nothing but her famous name until I read a review of The Birthday of the World: And Other Stories by Margaret Atwood in (you guessed it), The New York Review. I wish the review were publicly available (because it turned me on to both Le Guin and Margaret Atwood) -- but this quote should give you a flavor for both:

Which brings us to Ursula K. Le Guin. No question about her literary quality: her graceful prose, carefully thought-through premises, psychological insight, and intelligent perception have earned her the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugos, five Nebulas, a Newberry, a Jupiter, a Gandalf, and an armful of other awards, great and small. Her first two books, Planet of Exile and Rocannon's World, were published in 1966, and since then she has published sixteen novels, as well as ten collections of stories.

Collectively, these books have created two major parallel universes: the universe of the Ekumen, which is sci-fi proper—space ships, travel among worlds, and so forth—and the world of Earthsea. The latter must be called "fantasy," I suppose, since it contains dragons and witches and even a school for wizards, though this institution is a long way from the Hogwarts of Harry Potter. The Ekumen series may be said—very broadly—to concern itself with the nature of human nature: How far can we stretch and still remain human? What is essential to our being, what is contingent? The Earthsea series is occupied—again, very broadly speaking—with the nature of reality and the necessity of mortality, and also with language in relation to its matrix. (That's heavy weather to make of a series that has been promoted as suitable for age twelve, but perhaps the fault lies in the marketing directors. Like Alice in Wonderland, these tales speak to readers on many levels.)

Only the lack of time during the week I leave for the east coast makes me hesitant about attending what should be a great reading.

China, Chinese, Chineseness, Chinese-Canadians (and by extension, the Chinese-American experience) have been on my mind a lot recently. Much of my interest has more to do with connecting to my own family background: hence, the creation of a "Finding My Roots" category in this blog.

Not surprisingly then, the profile of Ang Lee in the lastest issue (June 30) of The New Yorker caught my attention. The first Lee movie I saw was Eat Drink Man Woman. I was then surprised (but delighted) to learn that Sense and Sensibility was another of his films. I later found myself repeating the quip that Lee's most famous film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was Sense and Sensibility with martial arts.

There's a lot in the profile to which I reacted. Let me recount the easier-to-blog about matters and see whether I reach the more challenging materials. (In blogging, I find it a challenge not to do what I'm about to do: when faced with a rich source that provokes multiple and deep responses, I often do not have the resources of time or energy or courage to publicly respond; when I do react in my blog, it is often to point to the quirky, fun, delightful. My blog entry barely does the source justice, but if I wait to do it justice, I will have nothing to say.)

Back to matter at hand: I laughed in reading about a date between Ang Lee and his-wife-to-be Jane Lin (p. 76):

On that bus, Lee met his future wife, Jane Lin, an independent, outspoken graduate student in microbiology (on whom Lee later based aspects of the fierce, intrepid character Yu Shu Lien in "Crouching Tiger"). "I never pursued a woman," Lee says, "She came and talked to me. She's a good listener, and she has the smallest ego of anybody I know. I was a shy guy, but I was a future director--I had that ego thing and I wanted to express it. I couldn't find anybody to listen to me. And there she was, interested in what I did." Lin also remembers their meeting. "I could be a chair. I could be a bucket of water. It doesn't matter, he just talks--about everything," she says. "I fall asleep, I wake up, he's still talking."

Interestingly enough, Lee is also described in the following way: "Lee doesn't hector; he doesn't bluster; he doesn't insiste on his own superiority; and he's not materialistic....In fact, there is nothing conspicuous about Lee's behavior but his talent. 'He has the most quiet footprint, a tremendous humility,' Hope says. 'He once said to me, describing his process, that movies pass through him.'" (p. 72)

A major theme of John Lahr's profile is the role of Lee's Chinese/Taiwanese background on his work and his psychology. I'm still working through the piece, wondering whether Lee is caricatured/stereotyped in the profile or whether he is indeed as he is described....

More later perhaps.