Former 1970s BJ State Desk reporter Cathy Robinson Strong has taught journalism in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate for three years.

When she’s not a journalism lecturer at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand, where she’s lived for about three decades, Cathy flies to America regularly to visit family and friends, including her sister, Janet Mullins, in Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Cathy has given journalism lectures in Japan and Taiwan, water-skiied and kayaked and flown to Washington, D.C. to accept first prize in the Great Ideas For Teachers competition at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in 2013. 

She flew to Boston to jump in a hot tub with friend Pam McCarthy, retired North Canton Hoover High teacher that she hadn’t seen in 35 years. 

So it seems logical that Cathy is in Saigon at a cooking class for Vietnamese cuisine. She learned how to whip up Dragon-fried egg cake, cabbage parcel soup and other delicacies.

At least Cathy will escape the earthquakes that hit New Zealand about 15,000 times a year! Except for 100 to 150 quakes you can feel, you need a seimograph to record them.

Obviously, most aren’t at the level of the San Francisco earthquake. But Paula and I did see a lot of damage in Christchurch when we visited New Zealand.