It’s a freedom of choice in the market, some argue. If the owner doesn’t care to lose family diners, he is free to do so. By the same token, parents can choose to boycott “family-unfriendly” restaurants.

Some people, on the other hand, are angry that kids are pinpointed. Have you experienced annoying adolescents, young adults, the middle-aged, or senior citizens yelling non-stop in restaurants? If yes, why targets children?

I actually don’t know why this debate is suddenly (re)ignited, unless there has never been a single restaurant in the US banning kids before. “Kids Unwelcome” rule has happened in several occasions before in my experiences, although in Taiwan, the rule is mostly based on heights. On the Taipei International Travel Fair website, for example, kids under 120cm are not allowed in for “safety” reason. I took this photo last time in front of a cafe in Tokyo. The rule is even stricter than US version.

If this “No Kids” rule is justified and, in the end, welcomed in the market, I can imagine airlines banning kids in some long-haul flights in the future. After all, people are already complaining a lot when crying babies are around for , at most 3-hour, dinners. Hey, we are talking about 12-hour flights.

Some people are worried about living in Japan, and some have decided to leave. I am quite confident about this country, however. Not just because I have friends here, or because I have visited numerous times. There are other reasons.

First of all, there are really no safe places around the world. In Iceland, you’ve got volcanoes. If you are living around the Pacific Rim, earthquake and tsunami are always possible. In Florida, you’ve got hurricanes. Tornadoes are also regular features in Mid West, US recently. These are just a few samples.

Japan really has high earthquake-proof standards to buildings. If there were not tsunamis this time, I am quite sure the world would be amazed by how few buildings collapsed in Japan. Compared with many other countries and places worldwide, I actually have more trust to constructions on this island country.

Of course, Japan has their own problems, not least including heavy reliance on nuclear power. After Fukushima and a few other nuclear plants are closed, Japan is destined to have serious power supply issues this summer.

This time in Tokyo, I did notice the city has been dimmer. Many shops and billboards have turned down their lights. Some vending machines are not in operation at all. Many stores have posted a “Energy Saving” flyer on their window.

It’s definitely one of the few positive developments happens after nuclear crisis. When things go to extreme, it normally turns to the opposite direction. Tokyo used to be too shiny. Now my friends and I just hope the current situation will last longer, and people will realize the city really doesn’t have to be that bright at night.

Or I should say, contents alone won’t translate into traffic.

I read an post the other day (Sorry, source forgotten). It mentions we no longer live in the era that solely good quality of contents can make a website famous or popular. Presentation matters. User interface has influences. Even promotion has to do it deliberately.

Global Voices is doing the same as well. To increase readership in the Chinese site, everyday we repost links on Facebook page. Editors try to add a line or two as attention grabber or as a tagline, so it won’t look like being done by robots.

It’s not a traffic-oriented website. We simply hope more people will read and spread the information, and maybe benefit from it, since we already spend time writing and translating. Then a friend of mine mentions, “actually, what you need is recruiting missionary”.

By “missionary”, it means some people who religiously enjoy reading contents on Global Voices, and share the information repeatedly on whatever channels or platforms they can find.

Those missionaries definitely have some unique characteristics, so they can do promotions so comfortably and blatantly. I, for one, don’t have that talent.

Besides, I always find religious missionaries a bit scary and intimidating, with their proactive and aggressive attitude. In my imagination, they will literally drag you into their spaces, if laws allow. And I don’t like crusade stories either.

There is another emerging trend going on as well. As new semester begins, college students sign up for translation courses seem to “discover” GV from their professors, and enthusiastically send us letters to volunteer for Lingua, our online translation project. They may quickly register a post or few posts they would like to translate into Chinese, and hope to contribute to this “great project”, as they often mention. How many of them, however, will be able to finish their initial post, or even continue, remains a big question.

GV Chinese editor Portnoy and myself used to have some expectations when we are invited to talk to college students and share GV experiences. We are well received, and they seem to be interested.

Will it turn into higher traffic or more contributions? I don’t know. It depends on how much you believe in humanity.

My answer is on post title, but of course, I’m still grateful to people who do read and/or contribute.

“It’s a cruel question to ask,” I answer.

I have works to do, posts to translate, bills to pay, trips to go, books to read, meals to eat, movies to watch, websites to plan, meetings to attend, emails to reply, postcards to write, groceries to buy, shows to follow, games to play, memories to recall, problems to solve, and pills to take.

My plants are alive on the balcony, my savings are available in the bank, my jobs are secure at the moment, and my life has been nice to me so far.

I already have so much in life.

“Are you happy?”, she asks again.

“I should be.”

I should.

I plan to fly to New York from September 20th until October 4th. If I don’t answer to your phone calls, it’s probably because I am in another time zone.

My flights would touch the ground in the evening on October 5th.

A couple of days later, I’ll fly to Tokyo on October 8th, and stay there until October 22nd. I won’t answer your calls either, as I don’t even have a 3G SIM card, so it simply won’t work in Japan.

Where to go next? You’ll never know.

I hope everyone is satisfied with the info now.

Before Tim Yip (葉錦添), people in the Chinese-speaking rarely see an arts director’s name on movie posters.

Before he won an Academy Award in art direction with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, most Chinese audience might now know that role exists in movies. Not that we know much more about it now, but at least we are aware there is a character called “art director” in film-making.

Now that he is famous, he is an icon, and his name appears on movie posters. Movie companies believe he sells.

But Tim Yip is more than that, as he wants to show in his own website.

On a weekend afternoon, I visited MoCA Taipei for his solo exhibition Summer Holiday. He wanted to present his diversity, so we got photographs, installations, videos, words, and costumes, almost all focus on a figure named “Lili”. Sometimes it’s a real girl wandering around Taipei. Sometimes it’s a still mannequin. Sometimes it’s an atmosphere recreated in a room.

How will people recognize him? Photographer, writer, curator, or art director? We’ll see.

So far, I have been resisting those e-books and digital devices, as paperback book covers are still very attractive to me. In the past few years, many books published in Taiwan have more and more beautiful covers. Publishing houses obviously realize that good covers may not influence sales, but bad covers certainly do. Many of them come from the same person, later I notice, Wang Zhi Hong (王志弘).

When buying books in Japan, bookstore staffs will cover your books with their wrapping paper in a proficient way, like the photo besides. I am not sure if it is for book protection (so book edges will not be damaged), for privacy reason (so people don’t know what you are reading), for promotion (so people know where you buy books), or for aesthetic reason (because cover design is too ugly to represent my tastes?). I think it’s a waste, though, if books have greatly-designed covers but get covered.

Sometimes you don’t need to understand the language to appreciate the beauty of a book cover. Wang has a website to showcase his works, though it’s not Chrome-friendly. His Flickr album also has a good collection, but I like the slideshow presentation the best (it takes a while to load).

21 year-old Emily Henochowitz was shot in the face on Monday by Israeli soldiers at Qalandiya checkpoint with a teargas canister. She lost an eye. Please check out her stunning artwork on her website.

Contemporary artworks are always more attractive to me. With the power of internet, we can now receive information about exhibitions around the world, such as via New Emissary blog by Ulara Nakagawa. We don’t get to visit them physically, however. Fortunately, many people nowadays display their artworks online, so we get to visit virtual galleries.

Hopefully this pleasant discovery will continue.

As many people may know, vast majority of our contributors are volunteers. A small number of editors, managers and directors receive compensations, but almost definitely not enough to cover their monthly expenses. Global Voices Online, no matter in English or in other languages, is still working until now, mostly due to continuous enthusiasm and active participations of volunteers/contributors. At least I am grateful to them EVERY SINGLE DAY. It may sound cheesy or cliché to some people, but I am always delighted to see new articles on the site for me, as a reader, to understand more about the world. I am always inspired to see new translations on our Lingua sites, so other people can benefit from these information in their own ways (and their languages).

Afterwards, some people, within or outside GV, ask me, what the difference is between Budapest Summit 2008 and Santiago Summit 2010. The obvious answer is bigger. The number of GV people is bigger, the venue is bigger, and even people are bigger (both age and size). But, there is actually an undercurrent before, during and after the summit this time, that I didn’t notice in Hungary.

Some (long-term) contibutors are leaving, or at least considering to leave Global Voices.

Several editors are very curious, during the summit, in learning how other teams/editors recruit more contributors. It’s of course a good news seeing more people joining in the community. This time in Santiago, however, when I talk to people in private, leaving Global Voices seem to be like a popular topic not on the agenda.

Global Voices now almost has a standard welcome rituals for new members in the community. First the designated editor will send out a notice to our (by far) biggest Google group mailing list to welcome new people. Then, people will receive dozens of emails from all over the world, saying welcome in different ways (and often in different languages).

Isn’t that warm and sweet?

But when people decide to leave, they disappear quietly.

They leave the community by stopping receiving emails from mailing lists, by not participating discussions within groups, and by not writing or translating articles in Global Voices. Sometimes it’s a sudden end; often it’s a gradual ebb.

I am not saying that no people left GV after Budapest Summit in 2008. There were, and quiet a few of them, but at that time, their major reasons were different. Some people started a new job, some people started a new stage of life (e.g. marriage or having a baby), and others moved to an new industry not related to internet anymore.

This time in Santiago, however, many people are leaving, or thinking about leaving, because of some frustrations.

Maybe the community has grown so big and complicated. Maybe the information within the community is longer transparent enough. Maybe they feel insufficient communications between teams. Maybe their suggestions are never recognized or adopted.

The topic becomes so common in the venue and in the hotel, that makes me even start to wonder if I am just too complacent with the status quo in GV.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I never feel frustrated with current situations in Global Voices, which I believe some people have heard from me before in private, but I am still here, not intended to leave yet.

This topic makes me think about what happens, though. These people join the community, sometimes long time ago, with wholehearted passion, ideas and insights. What happens that make them feel disorientated, disillusioned, disappointed, disconnected and disenchanted enough to leave Global Voices? Where is the downpour from to put out the inner fire to write/translate/contribute to Global Voices?

I assume there must be a reason. Why do they, if as authors, no longer feel excited when seeing their articles are translated into more than half a dozen of languages? Why do they, if as translators, no longer feel eager to translate new articles into their languages for local readers? Whey do they, authors and translators alike, no longer feel overjoyed when their contributions are read and spread by thousands and thousands of readers, directly or indirectly, around the world?

So far, I don’t have a short and clear answer, but as a middle director of this growing community, I believe it’s part of my faults. Honestly, it’s never easy to manage an online community, especially like this one with so many different cultures and backgrounds involved. Clearly, I am never a good-enough director. I am still learning and thinking of new ways to serve these contributors, and hopefully my learning curve will be able catch up with growing curve within the community. Otherwise then, it may be my time to say goodbye.