We are a few days away from our exciting adventure to the Orient.  One stop will be Taiwan.  However, Japan-China relations just deteriorated. Japan's first female Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 31October2025.  All went well. But on November 7, Takaichi veered from Japan's policy of " strategic ambiguity " about Taiwan, suggesting that an attack on Taiwan could amount to a "survival-threatening situation" that would permit Japan to exercise collective self-defense. This drew the ire of China, which has maintained that Taiwan is part of China, and that they will someday, by force, if necessary, regain total control,  as was done with Hong Kong.  We also will visit that city, twice on this trip. Takaichi refused to retract her remarks. Usually, most of what happens is just tense talk, but this time, China urged their citizens to hold off on any trip to Japan this year. If the Chinese take this seriously, Japan will be si...

Just when you thought the USA had abandoned Ukraine,  President Donald Trump today indicated that he will resume aid, both military and intelligence, to Ukraine .  What did President Volodmyr Zelenskyy have to do?  He showed openness to a 30-day ceasefire.  However, in talks that began in Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that Ukraine had to give up land won by Russia in this war.  What a way to start discussions.  Note that  Ukraine was not invited to this meeting . It was exactly five years, on 11March2020, that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was announced by the World Health Organization ( WHO ) to be a pandemic.   Before that day, this disease was called coronavirus, novel coronavirus, Wuhan coronavirus or Wuhan pneumonia.   WHO officially named it 2019-nCoV in January 2020, and shortened it to COVID-19 on 11February2020, with CO from COronavirus, VI from VIrus and D from Disease, while 19 came from the year it was fi...

A coronavirus outbreak began in Wuhan, China in December 2019.   We were on the Diamond Princess  in the Orient that month .  Came back to Hawaii.   However this same ship on 20January2020 boarded an 80-year old passenger from Hong Kong with a respiratory ailment, and started the international spread.   The Diamond Princess on 3February2020 returned to Yokohama, but had to anchor at sea, for a strange new disease seemed to be spreading. Unknowingly,  we flew from Honolulu to Bangkok, Thailand on 11February2020 . That day the World Health Organization announced the official name for this virus would be COVID-19, CO for corona, VI for virus, D for diseases and 19, the year (2019) it was first discovered. Ultimately, with 2,666 passengers and a crew of 1,045, 712 became infected, with 14 deaths.  Interestingly enough, 20% of the people on the ship were infected, and of those, 2% died.  So far, in the world, there have been 704,753,890 ...