“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
– Douglas Adams
The Whole Metaphorical Ball of Wax
As discussed previously, here is my digital news writing clip file in its entirety: all of it that is hosted here, unsorted, except by chronological order, page after page. Blog posts, editorials and columns, news stories — a veritable Fourth Estate kit and kaboodle (as opposed to a wax ball), as it were.
Again, if you seek some granularity, try the links in the menu above, or the category drop down and tag list over on your right.
Dashed on the Hot Rocks of the Sichuan Siren
CHENGDU, China — Alas, I have been forever ruined for Chinese food in the United States. It will never be the same; you can’t go home again. I am doomed. Like the mythical Argonauts I have heard the culinary Siren’s song that is Sichuan cooking, but unlike them I have no Orpheus to provide even better tasting food, and no Odysseus to plug my nose to keep it from smelling its intoxicating, peppery aroma or my mouth to keep it from tasting its fiery, eye-watering, forehead sweating pleasures. I’m sure that soon after I...
read moreXiamen: A Bright Light in China’s Tech Industry
XIAMEN, China – If you’ve bought a set-top box recently or perhaps a new appliance – or if you’ve used a remote control in the past decade – there’s a reasonable chance you were utilizing one or components that came from Xiamen Hualian Electronics Co. Ltd. Or if you’re a Wall Street analyst or venture capital firm trying to finger the few start-ups among the multitudes in China that will be successful, or if you compete in the optoelectronics device market, you’ve probably at least heard of a few of the...
read moreTI China Engineers Straddle Two Different Cultures (part 2)
SHANGHAI – Editor’s Note: Electronic News Senior Editor Jeff Chappell continues to discuss how working for a U.S.-based international chip company means more than straddling geography and time differences with China-based Texas Instruments engineers Tan Hui, a member of the technical staff and an application manger in the industrial and home appliance semiconductor group; Michael Wang, system engineering manager in the portable power management semiconductor group; Eric Braddom, director of DLP products for TI’s Asia semiconductor...
read moreThe Best Laid Plans: Part II
XIAMEN, China — Well, we hit the first serious snafu of the journey last night trying to leave Xiamen for Chengdu. Serious enough that as I write this, it is a little before noon of the next day, and I’m still in Xiamen. There is one nice thing about being in a foreign country: you can swear out loud a blue streak of every English curse word and phrase you can think of at the Air China employee in front of you, smiling and nodding the head the whole time as she complicates your life, and she is none the wiser. Although I did shock...
read moreThe Old Journalist and the Sea
XIAMEN, China — One thing always happens to me on every extensive trip — and sometimes the quick ones — to places I haven’t been before: I find some spot to which I’m instantly ready to move. On this month-long trip, that moment, the first one, anyway, came in Xiamen. Now if there is one thing I’ve learned about traveling and moving relatively frequently, being a somewhat restless soul, it’s that falling in love with people and places share the same pitfalls — and I’ve been known to fall...
read moreTI China Engineers Straddle Two Different Cultures (part 1)
SHANGHAI – Editor’s Note: At the behest of Texas Instruments Corp.’s Jeff Smith, deputy director of Asia Semiconductor Communications, as well as worldwide manager for analog media/analyst relations, four TI China engineers sat down with Electronic News Senior Editor Jeff Chappell to talk for an afternoon, but not about TI or its latest products. Rather, they discussed the experience of being an engineer and working for a U.S.-based, global company doing business in China. The four engineers — three of them Chinese —...
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All original content posted here -- words and images -- are copyright © Jeff Chappell 2009-2012 unless otherwise noted.
Jeff Chappell: journalism nerd; web geek. That's the short story. Want the longer one?