Yet another Bond movie has come out, this time a remake of Casino Royale. Ian Fleming is long dead, but his creation, the debonair James Bond, Agent 007, keeps popping up in a new face. Bond's grip on the male psyche is tenacious. And why not? He zips to exotic locales and outwits vicious enemies [...]

The morning I flew into Dhaka after a 10-hour flight from London, rain drenched me as I dragged my bags outside the airport gates. Within hours, the rain would burst into a three-day storm, with wind howling through tree branches and sheets of water that I thought would never end. Though it would shut me [...]

Two cities, separated by 21 hours of driving and stops in Atlanta and Cincinnati. What comes to your mind when you think of New Orleans? Perhaps jazz and jambalaya. What could you remember of Detroit? Cars and the rhythms of Motown, maybe? Two majority black, chocolate cities. One's a place tourists used to flock to, [...]

The great North American road trip is officially over. I started in San Francisco on August 1 and finished in Cincinnati on September 7: thirty-eight days and 7132 miles, passing through some 20 American states and one Canadian province. Someone back in Oakland, listening to me describe my planned stops, had said, oh you're doing [...]

I've crossed the continent. I went down to the Gulfcoast and drove through the South, into the Midwest, into Canada, and then across the Adirondacks to New England. Right now, I'm resting in Natick, Mass. I've been working on a post about my visit to New Orleans, but until it's done, here are some more [...]

Here's photos from the trip, driving from Green River, Utah through Oklahoma south towards Texas. I went above 10,000 feet in Colorado down to the flat flat lands of eastern Colorado and Kansas.

Just east of Green River, Utah, I passed by these majestic cliffs that looked like heavily-fortified castles.

As I drove south through Oklahoma City, I saw the billboard again. On a stark black background, the message in white letters said "I love you" in English, Spanish, and Chinese. It was signed "God."         Last month when I'd also been passing through here during a family reunion, I'd seen the same billboard. And another [...]

I kept seeing the signs. On Overland Avenue in L.A. near where I stopped to visit my sister and nephew, as I walked each morning towards Venice Boulevard to get my morning coffee, I passed three small houses with signs. Psychic. Readings by Maria. Palm readings. Tarot cards. During earlier visits, I'd passed by those [...]

I drove today from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Green River, Utah. In Utah, especially on I-70 headed eastward towards Colorado, you see some of the most spectacular vistas: mountains in formations that look like human-built monoliths, ranges that change color from shades of red to gray and black, twisted trees, and rock arrangements that look [...]

"Vegas is king, baby. Woo hoo," my friend W. wrote back from New York after I'd dropped her a line saying I was in her favorite vacationland yesterday. She grew up in Hawaii. I remember her telling me the playground city in the Nevada desert is the destination of choice for many Hawaiians when they [...]