About

I am a linguist and Professor of Chinese Language at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA. In addition to various places in the United States, I have lived in France and in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Cambodia, and Thailand) where I do linguistics fieldwork. I also direct an oral history project in Cambodia.

This blog represents my musings on a wide range of my life’s experience, both mundane and more exotic. I come from a family that loved to tell stories and enjoy telling tales too, but also trying  my hand with more essayistic forms.

I would like to acknowledge my college, Pat Madden, whose course course on creative non-fiction I audited in fall 2013. Of course, he can not be held responsible for my limited talent, but he did inspire me to try something new and  to expand beyond the dry, technical prose of linguistics.