Such A Convenient Way To Die

"Tall buildings are so available...”

(AI generated photo)

When you get an overseas assignment as a journalist, you have to develop a new way of looking at things.

Let me explain. Normally, news reporters scour their beats for stories that would interest their own local community - stuff that would inform or entertain their next-door neighbors.

But as a foreign correspondent, you must look past your own neighborhood and aim your stories at a far-flung, worldwide audience, eager to learn what life is like in that place where you just landed.

That was me, in Hong Kong, 1987. Reuters had sent me to Asia to edit other reporters’ stories, but I was damn well going to do some writing of my own, as well. It was my dream to do stories from datelines like Rangoon and Ulan Batar and Panmunjom, and that dream wasn’t going to come true all by itself.