Category: Canada
-
Big Dumplings in Little China
It’s hard to write about your homeland. I’ve spent decades honing my skills at describing places from the perspective of an outsider looking in. It helps to not fully understand what’s going on, or if I actually do know what’s going on, to be just observing from the sidelines and playing dumb. It allows…
-
Killing Time in Familiar Places: Notes on Learning to Enjoy Enforced Stasis
It’s been raining for about three days now. The kind of rain that comes with leaden dark white skies, streams of water everywhere, and cacophony on metal roofs. Yesterday, near hurricane winds led to all ferries to and from the mainland being cancelled. A wheelbarrow in our yard blew over and crashed through a…
-
Seriously, I Have No Idea What I’m Doing: Notes on Being Knocked Up Whilst in Transit
Back when we first found out I was pregnant, about a million years ago in Shanghai, we thought it utterly rational to carry on with our plan to pack up and leave our jobs, our flat, and China, embarking on a road trip down to Mexico where we would while away the autumn months…
-
A Totally Impractical Guide to Roughing it in the Wilds of Vancouver Island
For those of you used to my usual summer missives replete with food porn photos and freshly gleaned insights and wild tales from exotic locales such as Morocco or Sri Lanka or Myanmar or Indonesia, I fear I am letting you down. And for those of you who rely on me (desperately, I hope) for…
-
Things You’re Not Allowed to do in Canada: A Photo Essay
A few years back, I read an article about an expat who lived in Greece until he became so fluent in Greek that he understood everything that was going on around him, everything that was being said. Then he had to leave. What he had liked about Greece (until fluency hit) was the ability to…
-
Oh, hey, Canada! Notes on National Holidays for the Globally-Wired Brain
As some of you may have gleaned through recent subtext in my posts, I am secretly Canadian. Secretly in the sense that unless my status as a Canadian actually comes up directly in conversation, I don’t tend to talk about it or write about it or even think about it really. It’s not in any…
-
On Identity and Decontextualization: Notes on Going Home (again)
I’m home again. As a travelling sage once said, if it’s Tuesday, I must be in Belgium. Or in my case, if it’s somewhere near the end of June, I must be in Canada. Vancouver Island, to be precise. I’m in a much better mood coming home this year. I feel more grounded, more…
-
What Does it Take For a Girl to Get a Passport Around Here? Adventures in Being Canadian Abroad
I’m still Canadian. I say this with a certain degree of relief because, well, until yesterday my passport had been in the hands of the Canadian Consulate in Shanghai and I was getting a very strong impression that they were on the verge of revoking my citizenship because… because… well, do they even need a…
-
Final Notes on Having Gone Home- Aw, Dang it, Canada!
It’s a funny thing writing about Canada from an internet cafe in Kandy, waterlogged and slightly dizzy from the monsoons, with bejajs sputtering past and Sinhalese pop music blaring. I’ve had a follow-up post fomenting in my head since, well, since about a week into my three week trip back home. I even took…
-
Not a Top 10 List: My 7 Favourite Posts
It’s a funny thing about going home again after a relatively long absence (a year and a half this time), even if it’s only for three weeks: Everything is just so normal and calm and sane and utterly non-extraordinary that I really don’t have much to say about it. It’s just home, you know?…
-
How To Make Goat Milk Paneer (and a few meditations on place and purpose)
I’ve been back home for just over a week. The skies have been all sparkly and bright blue and the sun shines so brightly that, well, I have to wear sunglasses a lot more often than I’ve ever had to in Shanghai. Have I ever mentioned how grim Shanghai can be? Maybe once or…
-
9 Notes on Re-Entering Canada After Quite a Long Time Away
I have evaded jet lag! I have traveled four hundred bazillion light years from Shanghai to Vancouver to Vancouver Island, crossed the International Date Line, stayed up for 34 hours continuously during my journey and initial arrival, and seem to have righted my circadian rhythms unceremoniously and efficiently. I was in Vancouver over the weekend…