Category: Nebulous Items
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #12: Mohana Rajakumar of A Day in Doha
Welcome to the twelfth edition of my expat interview series. I’m delighted to see how well it has been chugging along, picking up speed and steam and passengers along the way. This instalment brings us to the tiny finger-tip nation of Qatar. I passed through there a few times when I commuted between Dubai and…
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14 Notes on teaching English in a Chinese university, in the middle of a quiet burnout and impending unemployment
1. Two weeks ago I renewed my gym membership, which I had let lapse about six months ago. Sometime last Autumn, I had figured that the five flights of stairs I had to climb 8 or so times a day between classroom and office were enough to keep me going through winter, combined with…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #11: Liv From I Eat My Pigeon
Welcome to the eleventh instalment in my infinite expat interview series. I really hadn’t expected it to last this long (I didn’t think anyone would respond, to be honest) but it seems to have taken on a life of its own, slowly taking over this blog, my email inbox and a significant part of my thought…
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Breaking Free: The Karmic Irony Edition
Somewhere out there, Alanis Morrisette’s lawyer is counting the number of times today I have muttered something along the lines of, isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? Somewhat akin to rain on your wedding day, or maybe finding a dozen forks when all you need is a knife, on the eve of being filmed for…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #10: Marie Szamborski of Shantiwallah
Welcome to the esteemed tenth expat interview in my series of a bazillion. After a brief hiatus from interviews with human expats last week (hello Hector Lakemonster!) I’d like to introduce you to someone who has been with me (and this blog) since it was born a year ago today. Marie Szamborski is better known…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #9: Hector Lakemonster
Welcome to the 9th interview in the series. It’s been an interesting ride so far, and a good excuse for me to step back and let others take over for a while. My thought processes had been cloudy and dark for quite a while, stupidly mirroring Shanghai’s grey skies. Winter is passing though, and we’ve…
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Notes on the First Anniversary of my 7th Blog
Origins I started this blog near the end of last April, impulsively, after I read the words ‘ephemera and detritus’ in a comment on a blog I’ve long since lost track of. Possibly from Salon’s now defunct Broadsheet. Rather than just noting it down and having a chortle over the awesomeness of the imagery as…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #8: Heather of 2Summers
Welcome to the 8th instalment in my expat interview series. Today you will meet the lovely and interesting Heather, who is in Jo’burg, South Africa. It has been an interesting ride so far, both for myself and for the interviewees and casual bystanders, it seems. I’ve received a lot of feedback for this little impromptu…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #7: Philip Johnson of The Philiad
Welcome to episode 7 in my infinite series of expat interviews. Today I bring you the eloquent and witty Phil of the brilliant Philiad (pa-dum!). Phil lives in Guadalajara, Mexico for now, and rumor has it he’ll be heading of to NYU come September to do his MA in International Education. That, I must say,…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #6: Fiona Reilly of Life on Nanchang Lu
Welcome to the sixth interview in my infinite series of one sided conversations with expats (and ex-expats) all over the world. I started this series partly out of curiosity and partly out of a need for me to know I wasn’t alone in having mixed feelings about the path I had chosen. Now, with half…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #5: Pam Mandel of Nerds Eye View
Welcome to the fifth interview in my infinite series of indirect conversations with expats, repats, half pats and other as yet unnamed pats. This time I bring you one of my personal small-h heroes, the ukelele-toting, penguin-friending, apt-word-writing Pam Mandel of Nerds Eye View. I started this interview series during a week when Shanghai was…
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3 Short Scenes from the Chinese Classroom: Why I Probably Can Never Go Home Again
Scene 1. ‘Happy April Fish Day, teacher!’ My students are knee deep in plastic snack-sized dried fish wrappers. It’s April 1st. There’s a huge grocery bag three quarters full of unopened dried fish packets under one of the rows of desks. It was a gift from a friend of a friend in Fujian province.…