I USED to be the head of school and professor of English at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia — the first Filipino appointed to head a school of English in a bastion of English studies. Part of my job was to travel overseas to attend conferences and introduce our nascent BA and MA Creative Writing programs to Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. I was also required to go to the United Kingdom every year to attend conferences at the home school in Nottingham, England.