Nic Gibson

The idea of incongruity carries a bad rep. It's right there, in the word itself. “In” often implies something ineffective, inefficient or incompatible. But the picture becomes muddier when we consider inventiveness, ingenuity and incredibility. Hold that incongruity in...

Staring back on my time in China, the feeling that all was not as it first appears was a near-constant companion as I adapted to the inevitable cultural obstacles any foreigner feels leaving home.  Specifically, though, for me, that feeling ...

I must confess from the get go that I don't have any tattoos. I flirted with the idea of getting song lyrics in my teenage years; I would have gone for somewhere understated, like a tricep or inner thigh....

As an English teacher, I have to fight my natural urge to mock and demean geography, at least as a school subject.  It is all too easy to dismiss it as “colouring in maps” and quizzes about flags, (although I...

Common folk-wisdom runs that happiness is found in community. That we were happier in the past, in smaller, more tightly-knit communities; villages, towns, family units. That a big cause of the modern malaise is the fracturing of communities into...

“The convenience of the high trees” Convenience is a hot topic in China. There is much talk of the convenience of life here, all of us app-tapping our way to easy food, shopping and travel. Convenience had a super-boost with the...

Perceptions: cultural, historical, and biological. Our perceptions colour our experiences, influence our judgments and shape our interactions with other people. An oft-quoted anecdote runs that in 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution....

A good explanation is an art form, if a slightly mysterious one. We can all recognize a great explanation, yet picking apart the intricacies of how it is done remains elusive.  I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but...