Will Buckingham

Text reads “Chicken or duck, which came first”

As far as I understand it, this isn’t the question….

Shall do! It looks like it'll be just the thing I need.

This looks worth a try.

This looks terrific. Going to give it a go. I've been using iAWriter for my most recent project, but the citations and versioning look incredibly useful.

台灣查某囝 - 李竺芯 (生活影態MV)｜Taiwan Gal - Siri Lee (Life Music Video) YouTube video by 李竺芯Siri Lee

Just discovered that Siri Lee / 李竺芯 is performing here in Pingtung, at the Pingtung Spring Music Festival, which is five minutes from our front door. And free. This it has made my week, if not my month or year.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH0c...

Orange book cover reading Hello, Stranger, with a train in the background.

Catching the evening train to Zhutian 竹田 in the wilds of Pingtung county, to give a book talk.

Striped green cloth background and a framed, faded photo of seven figures.

Taiwanese friends tell us that one household’s ancestors are another household’s ghosts. @drhannahstevens.bsky.social and I just bought this picture of some ghosts from a junk shop. We take full responsibility for whatever happens next.

Evil-doers need not apply!

If you are non-evil, and want to work with some brilliant students (and half-decent faculty), please think of applying to this. www.higheredjobs.com/executive/de...

UK to end study visas for Myanmar, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Sudan students The ban on students from the four countries comes amid a rise in anti-immigration sentiment in the UK.

Thinking of my students in both Myanmar & Afghanistan—their brilliance, humour and intelligence, their humanity, their care and compassion, their desire to make the world better. And thinking about how lacking in these qualities the current UK government are. What an awful, stupid, cruel decision.

Strolling into my local chip shop in Dundee, casually asking if they'll serve me a Deep Fried Horse Hegemon.

For my Mandarin Chinese homework, I have been set the task of promoting the deep fried Mars Bar—pinnacle of Scottish cuisine—to Taiwanese audiences. I am very proud of my translation of the delicacy into Mandarin: 炸馬霸 (Zhá Mǎ Bà), or Deep Fried Horse Hegemon.

Zoom screenshot reading: "How could we make this class more like an Epicurean garden? (That is, a space dedicated to the cultivation of pleasure, and the freedom from pain)?"

Getting my students to re-engineer my philosophy as practice class, in the spirit of Epicurus.

👀🍄

Fall and redemption. Genesis meets Chris de Burgh...

Mural of Adam and Eve, with a snake, a koala, a spaceship, and a sign reading 分別善惡樹 （tree of the knowledge of good and evil）.

Some heavy-duty theological content in this mural spotted in Pingtung, Taiwan.

Labour MPs demand Starmer change course after humiliating byelection loss Scale of defeat to Greens has plunged party into fresh despair and again raised prospect of leadership challenge

What a nasty piece of work Starmer is, with his implication that the Greens are a party of the far left who "want to tear our country apart." Sure. Disagree on policies, make arguments, even show a bit of humility. But this unpleasant, divisive rhetoric is the problem. It is not the solution.

Taiwanese temple at night with two figures in white standing on a stage, performing.

This was the loveliest way to spend a Friday early evening, listening to Hug Muzik / 曾立馨 performing their amazing Bossa Nova / Taiwanese pak-koán 北管 mash-ups in Xishi. Met lots of good folks, caught up with some old friends, then Youbiked back to Pingtung along the bike path under the railway line.

Today's classes on Zhuangzi have been a riot of rambling around, with my students cajoling me into speaking very rusty Burmese, lots of stories about ducks, barrages of jokes in the Zoom chat, and a loud burst of Faye Wong as our break-time musical interlude.

Translation: "You are stumpy and bookish. I'm guessing that makes you British."

Got talking to the Hakka guy in the coffee shop across the road from our home. He said he'd guessed I was British because a) I'm not tall, and b) I seem cultured, whereas (I'm just reporting what he said... this is not an endorsement of his view) Americans are a) tall and b) uncultured.

I'm so excited to see this beautiful little gem of a book coming into the world next week!

Aha. Our washing machines are resolutely determined to wash things cold, and we've not had a dishwasher (we had a dish drier up in Tainan in our last place, which I didn't even know was a thing, and it felt like a missed opportunity, given that it filled as much space as a washer and drier...).

You have machines that wash things using hot water? This is a level of sophistication about which we know nothing down here in the south. 😂

After years of refining & further refining a book proposal, agonising over the market—an abstraction entirely beyond my comprehension—I've started again from scratch, putting words to paper, writing what I want. Who knows where it's going? But there's life there, & fun, & a sense of something real.

Black and white photograph of child on rocking horse

We're gearing up for the lunar new year here in Taiwan, so here's Ludwig Wittgenstein, wishing you a very happy year of the horse. 馬上成功！

Why do the Dutch never get tired of everyday sandwiches, the boterham? At lunchtime on university campus one thing stands out: the boterham (sandwich). Coming from Japan’s elaborate bento culture, I was puzzled that so many students eat the same thin sandwich every day. ...

An excellent piece on the virtues of sad sandwiches by Misato Okaneya.

"Boterham demands no love or effort, and keeps the day going. I feel there is absolute trust in a boterham, not necessarily because it is excellent, but because it is simple and unpretentious."

Yellow booklet on striped cloth. Cover image of woman’s face in black and white, text reads 吉他伴奏台語歌謠精選

Turned up this treasure in Pingtung. Taiwanese language songs with guitar accompaniment, from 1977.

Had a dream last night that Nick Cave popped in to borrow a duster. I offered him a J-Cloth, but he regretfully declined, saying he wanted a proper duster or nothing at all.

Definitely still a thing. I love it.