Happy Lunar New Year of the Dragon

Happy Lunar New Year of the Dragon!

It’s unusually quiet here in Taipei with so many people having left the city to see family in the south of Taiwan or flown to warmer climes for a vacation. A perfect time to stay at home in other words!

My wife’s parents live very close to us, so we just had to negotiate a five- minute walk rather than a five-hour traffic jam for the traditional Lunar New Year Eve festivities, including making offerings to the ancestral shrine and eating a hearty dinner. With my brother and his wife visiting Taiwan for the first time, it was the perfect occasion to introduce them to Chinese culture and show them why I enjoy life here so much.

As the most powerful and auspicious of the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac related to the lunar calendar, the Dragon embodies prosperity, success, and vitality. It is a year for making bold moves such as starting a new project, getting married, or establishing a new company.

I am not sure that I would describe my goals for the year as particularly bold, but I do plan to finish my translation and commentaries on the Daodejing and publish them in book form. Talk about famous last words!

I also intend to increase my coverage of technology news and trends as well. It does not take a soothsayer or astrologist to predict that the Year of the Dragon is going to be huge for the semiconductor space as the great AI chip race enters a hypercompetitive new phase with AMD, Qualcomm, and Intel fighting to catch up with Nvidia.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how that goes.