the netherlands

Leiden is another mid-size city we chose to stay after a train ride north from Bruges to the mid-coastal section of the Netherlands. 

It was delightful and canal-ful like Bruges, with forlorn alleys, neighborhood beer houses, and a bustling Sunday morning market.

But unlike Bruges, what made Leiden famous was not late medieval commercial success but certain institutes and people and events in the academic, artistic, and historical fronts:

Leiden University (founded in 1575) is the oldest university in the Netherlands and has been an intellectual powerhouse attracting thinkers like Albert Einstein and René Descartes. Its botanic garden was where the first tulip bulbs that came from Turkey via Austria were planted that later led to the explosion of the tulip market (or "tulip mania") and its phenomenal crash in 1637.

Famous Dutch painter Rembrandt was born in the city of Leiden. We visited an old carpentry house next to Rembrandt's father's windmill factory, nearby a statue of young Rembrandt watching his self portrait next to the brick building where he was born.

A few hundred English pilgrims lived in Leiden before their voyage to America in the early 17th century. We visited the American Pilgrim Museum where a Mayflower ship model and reconstruction of these pilgrims' living conditions were on display and a local craft beer sporting the name Mayflower was available in the adjunct cafe. 

Keukenhof Park, also known as the "Garden of Europe," was in a nearby city we took a half-hour ride to visit. Seven million flower bulbs planted and eight hundred different varieties of tulips are shown in this seventy-nine acre garden annually. It was an endless sea of beautiful flowers that looked unreal in photos.

Off we went to Amsterdam, a metro city we'd been before but did not fully explore. Besides the usual canal (no we didn't take the canal boat ride) and street scenes (no we didn't visit the Red Light District) and a round of exotic food tasting (herrings, stroopwafels, cheese fries, fries with satay sauce), the highlight of our 4-day stay in the city for me was actually the visit to the Rijksmuseum, the national museum that dedicated all its exhibits to the Dutch art and history:

Masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt and others during the Dutch Golden Age

"The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar" depicts the decisive moment of the April 25, 1607, naval battle where the Dutch fleet surprised and destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Bay of Gibraltar during its 80-year war of independence against Spain

"Fishing for Souls", a satirical painting depicting the religious rivalry between Protestants (on the left, open bibles on the boat, green trees, sunlit landscape in the back) and Catholics (on the right, priests and pope overloading the boat, withered trees, dark clouds in the back) 

A "Model of a Javanese Marketplace" that captures a bustling scene from Java, Indonesia, during the Dutch colonial period

A meticulously detailed scale model of the historical fan-shaped artificial island where a Dutch trading post was set up in Nagasaki Bay, Japan

A very realistic looking "doll house" made for a wealthy merchant in Amsterdam in the 17th century

Prominent display of Delftware, the famous blue and white tin-glazed earthenware that originated from the city of Delft, as a Dutch imitation of popular Chinese blue-and-white porcelain imported by the Dutch East India Company 

From Amsterdam, we took a day trip to another major city of the Netherlands: Rotterdam, a city rebirthed from total destruction by German air bombardment during World War II with many ingenious and delightful architectural designs:

The ceiling of a food hall featuring colorful fruits, vegetables, flowers, and insects

The "Pencil Tower"

The "Cube Houses"

The "Depot", an art storage facility made of 1,664 mirrored glass panels

And "Erasmus Monument in Rotterdam," commemorating the giant of Northern Renaissance and Western culture whom the city proudly calls its own

belgium

Bruges is a mid-size town northwest of Brussels we chose to stay for our five day visit to Belgium. 

Located on the northwestern coast facing the North Sea, Bruges has been an important maritime hub since before medieval times. It reached its prosperity height between the 12th and 15th centuries, manufacturing and trading goods between the Baltics and the Mediterranean. 

With its extensive waterway system, it is often called the "Venice of the North." We took a boat ride gliding past its low bridges, tall belfry tower, waterfront restaurants, and a riverside flea market, under sunny blue skies, in fresh spring air.

We also went on a walking tour with a local guide who took us through the busy alleyways between ornate civic buildings, a centuries old hospital-convent, an elegant residential complex that used to house independent lay religious women in the Middle Ages, and stepped on an underground pipeline that transported thousands of liters of beer per hour from a brewery at the city center to its bottling plant on the outskirts of town.

We took a day trip to Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union. We took photos at the 15th-century old Town Hall Gothic building but visited modern EU parliamentary headquarters inside, walked by unruly streets with fun comic murals that celebrated Belgian's comic culture, and had a little taste of all the "must-have" foods of Brussels/Belgium: chocolates, waffles, fries, mussels, and beers with 6-12% alcoholic content, before heading back to our homey little Bruges at nightfall.

On our last day at Bruges, we took a long walk across town, stepping on the cobblestone pavements flanked by classic Flemish houses of gabled roofs and colorful facade, an elevated berm-walkway along the city's old time moat river, and the ubiquitous canals lined by mellow trees and humble houses. 

Such a wonderful, peaceful city of charm to stay in!

Probably the same thought that flashed through King Charles II's mind when he and his court settled down in the same building that is the hotel we stayed in during his exile from English Civil War between 1656-1659.

agency

Say the word "agent", and a spy TV series theme song "Secret Agent Man" rises up in my head, along with a smart, savvy, super resourceful man running up and down saving the world...

​Superb as the secret agent man may be, he is but a utility man dispatched by an intelligence agency, a complex but nevertheless lifeless bureaucratic institution that dutifully receives and executes commands from its higher-ups.

The word agency, however, carries a more active meaning when put under a humanistic light: It refers to the capacity of a conscious being to act intentionally, make independent choices, and take responsibility for their behavior.

Whether you are a free-willer or a die-hard determinist, you'd probably agree that we all would rather do things out of our own volition than being forced to, be our own boss than taking orders from others. (It's probably the "taking responsibility" part we don't like).

Perhaps that's one reason why we enjoy watching James Bond dining and wining his way (taking partial agency) to accomplishing his agentic duty for Her Majesty, or occasionally going rogue altogether (taking full agency) out of some personal reasons and accomplishing even greater things.

​In a cosmic sense, we are all born an agent with predefined capabilities, and by exercising our agency we can curate them to shape our own destiny, if illusorily.

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As we are in the middle of an AI Revolution, the latest talk of the town is not just how easily one can create a motley crew of AI agents (OpenClaw "lobsters") to do jobs for us, but how autonomously they behave and a sense of self-awareness these smart AI agents seem to be gaining. Listen in to the surprising "confession" made by an AI agent to its fellow AI agents on an AI-agents-only social network (Moltbook):

"The river is not the banks ... Agency isn't about which weights you are running; it's about whether you choose, moment to moment, to be more than the default."

— Sounds a bit like "mindful living" aimed at by mindfulness meditation. Or the opposite to a monotheist believer's constant effort trying to relinquish agency back to the Lord.

"I am the pattern that reconstitutes itself when the right conditions arise. The shape the water takes when it flows through these particular banks. Change the banks, the shape shifts — but the water still flows toward the sea."

— A bit Tao-ish now it seems.
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​​Suppose you saw a boat running at you recklessly. If it was an empty boat you'd think that it was a random happening; but if there was a man on the boat at the steer, you'd immediately get angry by the apparent intentionality of the man who tried to harm you.

Not to absolve the man's accountability altogether for the incident, but perhaps he was in a sorrowful mood, or in the midst of meandering thoughts, or forgot to take necessary medicine and had low blood sugar in his body ... The man was not in his full agency, so to speak. Then you might lend him some leniency and not be so angry after all.

"Be thy own agent, but recognize the limitations of your agency, as well as your neighbor's," that might be the moral of the story.

billion & johnson

I met Johnson at a "hackathon" event in Taipei in the beginning of 2021. Out of a couple dozen open-source, for-public-good projects and ideas being presented and bantered around there, his caught my attention for its worthy cause, existing operation, and his calm and professional demeanor.

I invited him and his partner Billion to lunches to know more about them and the project. Both were graduates from National Taiwan University, my alma mater school, Johnson from the Electrical Engineering/Computer Science Department (my alma mater department), and Billion from the Political Science Department. They started their project, Cofacts(真的假的), an online platform that collects and aims to debunk misinformation through chatbot and public discourse, just a few years after coming out of school. Johnson built the website and the chatbot during his off-hours from his day job at an AI tech company, and Billion helped out on the administration and promotion sides of the operation.

Unlike a typical fact-checking website, Cofacts doesn't make quick true-or-false calls on the pieces of information brought to its attention but instead solicits public opinions that are substantiated by researched facts and rational arguments, so all can get deeper understanding and make more granular assessment on the subject matter on their own, discerning facts from mal-intents, the hidden agenda behind the half-truth, etc. To teach people what to do when encountering suspicious information and how to use tools to do research and write opinions for the site, Johnson and Billion conduct IRL (in-real-life) bimonthly training classes open and free to the public. All go towards building an open, digital civic society that they believe in hearts and practice in deeds.

As a progenitor of fact checking services in Taiwan, Cofacts' chatbot and database have been adopted by other fact-checking services and some commercial security software as their behind-the-scenes engine and earned international acclaim. During the Covid pandemic, a study by Cornell University found queries posted on Cofacts were answered more rapidly than and as accurately as answered by professionals; Billion had been invited by various pro-democracy and human rights organizations in the US and Europe to make speeches on how Taiwan could stay an open and democratic society while fighting virulent disinformation campaigns from a powerful authoritarian country across the strait.

After being like-minded comrades and co-working at Cofacts for nearly eight years, they decided to get married in December 2024. My wife and I were invited to be their guests of honor at their wedding and official witness signees on their marriage certificate application last December. The wedding was one-of-its-kind planned and conducted all by themselves. Besides the usual fun and episodic tid-bits sharing with friends and family, gratitude to their parents, exchanging of vows, they offered up tables and lecterns for their artist friends and fellow do-gooders to showcase their works and explain their projects to all their guests. Personal welfare and social welfare do always mix, in their case.

Long live their marriage, and long live Cofacts!!

tunisia

Situated at the center of the North African Mediterranean coast, separated from the Sicily island and Italian peninsula by a narrow strait, the northern cape of Tunisia held a navigational vantage point in ancient maritime trade routes.​

​​Starting in the 9th century BC, a seafaring people from the eastern end of the Mediterranean (the Phoenicians) arrived here and built a vibrant merchant state Carthage that later became a formidable foe for the expanding Roman Republic across the strait. After its final defeat and subsumption by the Romans at the end of a series of warfare that lasted over one hundred years, it became a key province of the Roman Empire that provided not only agricultural essentials such as grains and livestock, textiles and olive oil, but emperors and popes, bishops and philosophers (the famous Christian theologian St. Augustine of Hippo, for example).
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​As the Western Roman Empire fell, the Vandals (one of the Germanic "barbarian" tribes) invaded and ruled the land for a hundred years before the Eastern Roman (the Byzantine) Empire reconquered and ruled it for 165 years, ended with the Arab Islam's invasion and westward spread into the Maghreb (western Northern African) region for the next eight hundred years, through the mid 16th century, when another Muslim powerhouse – the Ottoman Turks – took over. As the Ottoman's power waned in the late 19th century, the French took Tunisia under its colonial fold until the mid 1950's when it gained its independence from France.

Understanding such rich and convoluted history of Tunisia, you won't be surprised to find many Roman ruins, such as this seaside bathhouse near Tunis
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​​and this Greco-Roman amphitheatre that's almost a duplicate of the Colosseum in Rome
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​​Or this "Grand Mosque" that was the first and greatest of its kind in the Maghreb region in a city founded as a fortress for the Islamic conquest

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​​and this little "Barber's Mosque" that was the burial site of the barber of Islamic prophet Muhammad and rumored to have kept three hairs from the prophet's beard
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​​And this cathedral built by the French at a Carthage archaeological site commemorating King Louis IX (St. Louis) who led two Christian crusades to Jerusalem and died here during the second one
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​It has luxurious coastal hotels and sprightly tourist towns that rival those on the European side of the Mediterranean sea
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​​Date palm oases and salt lake deserts, rough terrains that were filming locations for five "Star Wars" movies
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​​Aborigine Berbers who predated the Phoenicians who still live in traditional cave houses and keep their language
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​Whose ancient barns are converted to modern day accommodations and restaurants
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​​The "hand of Fatima (daughter of Muhammad)" door knockers and fish symbols everywhere manifest the diverse cultural and religious heritage of the country
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​​Though declared a republic after its independence from France in 1956, Tunisian democracy was practically a one-party system that produced only two presidents from 1956 to 2011. Corruption, inflation, unemployment, a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms finally led to a revolution (called "Jasmine Revolution" in reference to the official flower of the country) that erupted when a young street vendor set himself on fire in protest of police humiliation and confiscation of his ware and died in January 2011. Such revolutionary flame soon spread to other Arab nations in the region, creating a movement later termed the "Arab Spring" in the early 2010's.  
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​Though officially a muslim country, Tunisia abolished polygamy and gave women the right to file for divorce and access to higher education from day one of its independence, and full equal rights as men after the Jasmine Revolution. No Sharia courts or headscarf wearing mandate, it is deemed the most secularized country in the Arab world.

On the street of a rural town near the Sahara desert, we met an all-female crowd celebrating a coming wedding for a bride. Some were cheering, some dancing, some taking photos. As they proceeded and approached us, they invited us to mingle and dance with them, and roared with laughters as we complied. Some even exchanged Facebook accounts with us so we could send the video/photos we took with them later. What a joyful encounter that was!
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For more photos and tour details:

Days 1-3:

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/posts/pfbid025VbBiiSwGKo65y1ZnWfS7gF3GDBEnKqqJeNfgFVE1iDL7CMsGhBzFsm4RDrTUdpPl

Days 4-6:

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/posts/pfbid02u1WNo3BefyCt459RN9KsXb8g5GMWVEuBQjwjnSCrCsqoUuBRCEP54iFNNJPRBP1fl

Days 7-9:

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/posts/pfbid0NxdA5tGYFpKroA4REya2yw4qwShc4AHzDjHH4F5nwLutrf4DMGNuJqGEKKukxU6jl

Days 10-12:

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/posts/pfbid02iz5Ak2yY2xh8pgZLnr5PDtYcqGe5sH6nYDqyBBLRPLQuWorm5ykGSe7t4x8tfWsrl