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The road has had her hooks in me as long as I can remember.
I was a teenage bike messenger, dodging cars and pedestrians with fanatical diligence through the stone and steel canyons of Manhattan. By eighteen I'd had my fill, and headed upstate to complete my formal education, graduating four years later with a degree in creative writing and a powerful desire to see the world through different eyes. I moved around North America for a couple of years before deciding to hit the road for real.
In the early nineties, moving to Japan to chase the mighty Yen was fashionable among recent college grads. I chose Taiwan instead, largely based on the suggestion of a lady who ran a restaurant I liked. After a few dips into various vocations -- including teaching kindergarten (tales from which wound up in my first book "Vignettes of Taiwan") and busting sweatshops in China (which formed the basis of my first major magazine article, confessions of a sweatshop inspector) -- I began writing full time.
I headed to China to accept a gig, sight unseen, at Beijing Scene magazine. After this I worked as a nomadic stringer for a variety of publications in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, and a couple of papers and websites in Colorado and California. I also contributed regularly to Things Asian Website and literary journals like Dim Sum and Cherry Bleeds.
In 2005, Things Asian Press published my first book of short stories, "Vignettes of Taiwan", which I promptly thrust into the hands of Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler at a Hong Kong book fair, asking him for a job doing the next Taiwan guide. A few weeks later I got an email from his office offering me my first Lonely Planet gig.
I was, as they say, off to the races.
For the next seven years I traveled and wrote for Lonely Planet, authoring and co-authoring guides for the company on Taiwan, Singapore, Belize, Malaysia & China's Yunnan province, leading the nomadic-obsessive logistic junkie's dream life, earning my way around the world reporting from exotic locales and connecting the dots from A to Z.
The stories in "How Not To Avoid Jet Lag & other tales of travel madness" come from these years on the road.
The road can be a bitch mistress, and lonely at times. In 2013, after three months in Belize working on two different guides, I made the decision to settle down for a couple of years. Outside of a few dozen short articles for Lonely Planet and several others for Bicycle Times magazine, I've largely remained true to the logo on top of my blog Snarky Tofu and lived the life of a "Recovering Travel Writer."
When not writing, I work as a tour guide in Portland, showing visitors around my adopted city.
Once Jet Lag is properly launched, the next project will be the novelization of a Buddhist Comedy screenplay two years ago. It's called Spinning Karma, and will no doubt cause me trouble.
Of course, there's always the road, which has never stopped calling me.
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