My brother and his wife visited this weekend. They drove up on Saturday, and we visited our Yapese friend, Theo, who is in the area because his granddaughter just had a liver transplant at Children's Hospital. We got the low-down on the transplant, which sounded very scary but apparently went very well. We also got a lot of stories about what's ( Read more... )

It's probably been well over year since I posted about an initial announcement of Chinese interest in developing an enormous resort complex on the Micronesian island of Yap. For a while it seemed like the chiefs on Yap were going to say no to this incredible intrusion into the Yapese social and economic fabric, but now one village has given the go ( Read more... )

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This morning I got to work and opened up my e-mail and got a terrific jolt. First there was a name that looked vaguely familiar, except it had a "Dr" in front of it. Then there was the subject line: "greetings from YAP". Then there was the message, and yes it was from a woman who was a childhood friend out on Yap back in the '60s. She's out on Yap ( Read more... )

Okay, this is one of the most bizarre stories I've seen in a while: "China eyes huge tourism development for Yap". Essentially a private Chinese investment group is looking to build eight to ten hotel complexes with up to 20,000 rooms, and "convention centers, casinos and entertainment centers, and from eight to 15 golf courses." To put this into ( Read more... )

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Over at theinferior4, Lucius Shepard recently posted ten excellent capsule stories of exotic Christmases past -- although I guess jail isn't an exotic location for everybody. It got me thinking about my own Xmases in foreign lands. There are only three I can remember, not counting the four we spent on Yap when we were living out there (besides which I don't ( Read more... )

AOSIS: Alliance of Small Island States

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is a coalition of small island and low-lying coastal countries that share similar development challenges and concerns about the environment, especially their vulnerability to the adverse effects of global climate change. It functions primarily as an ad hoc lobby and ( Read more... )