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	<title>In Retrospect</title>
	<link>http://francisca-lordson.net</link>
	<description>Our lives in Asia, from the mundane to the supernatural</description>
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		<title>No ordinary man, Dr Wang</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We drove into the ordinary rural village and were met by what at first glance looked like a very ordinary man.  
 
Under a searing sun, he stood there on the dry gritty earth calmly waiting, wearing the typical navy blue pants and once-white cotton shirt, in effect the national uniform in those early [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2008/02/29/no-ordinary-man-mr-wang/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Life and death: the power of a phone call</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On the day the first part of this account was written, I had no idea whether Wong and his wife were alive.  Or whether they were condemned to be, or had already been, executed by the communist government of China.

Time was running short – it was less than a month before the 11th Asian [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2008/02/25/life-and-death-the-power-of-a-phone-call/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Unbridled power: Deng</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We first heard the name of Deng Chung Leung aka Deng Yu back in December ’89 in Hong Kong from an eccentric Canadian, Ross Sinclair.

Ross and we became good friends over the years that followed our first meeting in the coffee shop of the Prince Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui.  We had been referred [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2008/02/24/unbridled-power-deng-yu/</link>
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		<title>X-treme weather spoils the biggest party</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You’d think I’d have something more substantive to talk about than weather… again.  But when it poops on the biggest party going, it’s impossible to stay mute.
In our office, the party is simply referred to as CNY – Chinese New Year.
For the few that don’t know, CNY is based on the lunar calendar and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2008/01/30/x-treme-weather-spoils-the-biggest-party/</link>
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		<title>Breaking a leg in the rice terraces</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This story was originally the content of a letter written April 25, 1994, for Lordson’s twin nieces Karen and Kelly in Los Angeles.
:::
By now it is no longer news that I am stuck at home with a heavy cast on my left leg from top to toes and moving around slowly with a pair of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2007/11/16/breaking-a-leg-in-the-rice-terraces/</link>
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		<title>The first telephone call</title>
		<description><![CDATA[These days you can rarely traverse the length of a town block without seeing a person walking with a cell phone plastered to his or her ear. Everyone in China – from CEO to driver – is busy. On the phone.
Face-to-face meetings are blithely interrupted when a cell phone rings, with not the slightest trace [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2007/10/09/the-telephone/</link>
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		<title>How I got out of China</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To this day, almost everyone I meet, after I tell him or her that I was born and raised in China, asks me the same question: “How did you get out?”

Sometimes I say, “Easy!” and other times I say, “It’s a long story.”

Some would know to ask, since it was long after the border between [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2007/09/03/how-i-got-out-of-china/</link>
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		<title>A postscript to my story on the floods in Manila</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Instead of the start of the rainy season headlined in our newspaper last May 31, it became a season of drought for the Philippines.
The farmers weren’t made happy after all.
A bad situation became worse last week when President GMA started to hint at declaring her need for emergency powers. That touches a collective nerve-ending for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2007/08/10/a-postscript-to-story-on-the-floods-in-manila/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>The I Ching and fengshui stories of Doctor Yu</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We were introduced to Doctor Yu, then in his 60s, by an old friend of my father.
Old Yu, as he was called by friends and intimates, was not a licensed doctor and never officially practiced medicine. Yu “retired” in his ‘20&#8217;s in 1949 and never worked a single day under the Communist regime. When the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2007/08/06/the-i-ching-and-fengshui-stories-of-doctor-yu/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>A Week of Life After Mount Pinatubo&#8230; a personal account</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
1:42 pm on June 15, 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20C took place a mere 90 kilometers (55 miles) northwest of Manila. When Mt Pinatubo blew her top, almost 800 people were killed and over 100,000 became homeless. The surroundings were inundated by pyroclastic flows, ash deposits, and later, lahars caused by [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://francisca-lordson.net/2007/08/03/a-week-of-life-after-mount-pinatubo-a-personal-account/</link>
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