After a week of not posting anything, not even links, I've started getting e-mails from people with subject lines like "are you ok?"

Yes, I am. For a while I wasn't though. I lost my voice, was diagnosed with "acute laryngitis," and was generally flattened for the better part of two weeks. I have never taken so long to recover from something like this. Nearly three weeks after I first started to get sick, I still wake up in the morning feeling weak and nauseous - and no, I'm not pregnant, that is absolutely, completely, impossible given my general lack of a personal life for the past year. I wonder if the excessively polluted air in Hong Kong lately has something to do with it.

It has been a pretty exhausting few months since I moved to Hong Kong, I must admit. I've been over-committed on pre-existing projects and writing commitments that I brought with me. My teaching load has been heavy. People say that the first semester teaching full-time is always a ton of work under the best of circumstances - let alone when you're the only person teaching anything related to "new media" to both undergraduates and graduates in a journalism program. Plus the pressure is already on to churn out academic research ASAP...

I feel bad because there are lots of people here in Hong Kong who I've been wanting to be in touch with, who I've failed to even contact since I arrived. I'm months behind on returning a lot of e-mails from people who I really need to respond to, and I've failed to spend quality time with visiting friends and colleagues. So if you're one of those people, please accept my apologies and don't take it personally.