The 2012 East-West Center Alumni Conference in Beijing wouldn’t have been complete without a field trip to climb the Great Wall of China. And climb we did! After a rainy conference morning which looked like it was going to put a damper on our climbing fun, the weather cleared in the early afternoon as participants young and old crammed into several charter buses. By the time we reached the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall that we would be climbing, […]
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EWC Beijing Alumni Conference
Every two years the East-West Center, a Honolulu-based Asia-Pacific research institute that funded my M.A. studies in Hawaii, holds an alumni conference biennially somewhere in Asia. Having served as the official photographer for the last three conferences (Hanoi in 2006, Bali in 2008, and Honolulu in 2010), I almost had to miss the conference this time around despite it being held here in Beijing. Another job in Los Angeles came up at the same time as the conference, but the […]
read moreHawaii Engagement
While visiting my fiancee in Hawaii, one of her good friend’s Li Juan also had her fiance in town visiting. Actually officially they were already married, though they hadn’t had a wedding ceremony yet, nor taken any engagement pictures together. While I couldn’t help them with the first problem, I did offer to take some engagement pictures for them. In the end they only had a couple of hours to take pictures and didn’t want to go overboard with them, […]
read moreJay Hubert: Exploring Asia With a Camera
Recently the University of Hawaii’s monthly magazine Malamalama ran a short article about me entitled “Jay Hubert: Exploring Asia with a camera.” My friend Jason had wanted to submit some freelance articles to them, and thought I would somehow make a good subject (and up until that point I thought that Jason always exercised exceptionally good judgment!). I don’t think either of us realized during the ‘interview’ process just how short the article would be, as Jason sent me a […]
read moreFood and Culture – A Cookbook Article
This is a nice little article I enjoyed writing for the upcoming edition of the East-West Center Cookbook, a collaborative effort of East-West Center participants from all corners of the Asia-Pacific region. There is a fantastic variety of delectable recipes every year in the cookbook, but since all of my recipes involve using a microwave I was told submitting an article might be more useful. So here it is. Food. Culture. Two very important, and seemingly different, aspects of our […]
read moreThe State of the Internet at Hale Manoa
This is a State of the Internet address I made by e-mail to the East-West Center participants in late 2005 in response to a number of people on the listserv complaining about the slow internet connection. If you don’t know what the East-West Center is and never lived in Hale Manoa nor faced the wrath of the quarter nazi at the front desk, you might want pass on this one. However if you love your irony thick and juicy, and […]
read moreRice University Asian Studies Letter
Although my primary focus of study at Rice University was Mechanical Engineering, my fascination with Asia and my four study abroad sojourns there as an undergrad helped me to attain an Asian Studies degree as well. I didn’t really need the degree, and I certainly didn’t think it would be of any use in the job market. But I was certain that I possessed a much greater interest in Asia than in engineering, and planned to spend a fair share […]
read moreRoots :: a poem
Roots I had roots once… I hated them… They tied me down… They kept me in the same place… I wanted to break free… I wanted to explore the world… I had places to go, people to meet… The world was mine to conquer… I didn’t need my roots… I cut my roots… I pretended it left no scars… I traveled the world, far and wide… I met people, dark and light… I forgot about my roots… […]
read more2005 EWC Olympics Soccer Competition
I recently served as coordinator/referee for the soccer competition portion of the newly revived East-West Center Olympics. This is basically a recap of how things went down (in the form of e-mails I sent to the EWC listserv about the competition), with only slight embellishment for effect. Day 1 Hello fellow footballers, The football/soccer tournament will take place tomorrow. It will begin at 2 PM, and it will go until everyone is passed out on the ground from exhaustion. Or […]
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