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Thursday, July 28, 2011

And Now a Word from the Blogger

It's been a bit since my last post.  In fact, I think this is the longest I've gone without posting since I started this blog.  In short, it was a perfect storm of sorts.

But, looking at the news from around the world, my storm was immensely trivial compared to what many other have gone through or are going through.  Whether it was the terrorism attacks in Norway or the train crash in Wenzhou, China, not only were the events themselves saddening, but so was how some reacted to them.

Right now, I have nothing to add on a grander scale that hasn't been said elsewhere so just a few words on the crash in Wenzhou simply because I've visited the city and arrived & departed on high-speed rail.

While the train I rode to Wenzhou had many empty cars when pulling out of Shanghai, on later segments the high-speed trains I rode on that line seemed full of people.  In Xiapu, a city to the south of Wenzhou in Fujian province, I arrived at the station hoping to simply board the next train (all the trains that go through Xiapu are high-speed) and was disappointed to discover that I'd have to watch several trains go through the station until there was one with an available seat 6 hours later -- very different from the experience in departing Shanghai.

My memories of the train rides included marveling at the wonderful convenience it was providing me and viewing some incredible scenery on China's east coast in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces.  As I look at scenes of the crash those memories feel ever so dissonant.

Even in the best of circumstances, accidents happen and getting accurate information about disasters such as the one in Wenzhou can take time.  We'll see.

I have a lot of stuff in the works.  Soon back to the regularly scheduled programming.

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