Category: Nebulous Items
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Helpful Household Tips from Chinese University Students
Do you want to know one of the fastest ways to wrap your head around a new country and culture? Teach there. Let me show you some things I learned today whilst marking my students’ process essays. How to wash your hair First, you need to buy shampoo, wash basin and face cloth…
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After NaNoWriMo Passes, Inertia Sets In
First of all, I finished that novel(la): So yes, yes I did write that blasted thing. At work, my stack of writing to mark grew to unfathomable heights (sorry kids!) and my mornings and nights and weekends were spent trying to squeeze out just a few more words. I didn’t know I had…
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Shanghai rules the copyright infringement universe: The Book Carts of Donghu Lu
Back in the days of yore when I lived in Turkey, books were a rare commodity. In my first two years, when I lived out in the wilds of Kayseri, I lived off the half dozen books I had brought with me from Canada, chosen for their thickness, small type and slow reading. Family sent…
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The Fabric Market, Part Trois
I have been a very absent bloggist this month, which can be blamed partly on my faulty immune system combined with Shanghai’s post-Expo surge in atmospheric particles (record highs in smog, it seems!), and partly (mostly) on Nanowrimo, which has sucked up an average of 1667 of my creative words every day. I have been…
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A Series of Unrelated Photos
I’ve stopped being absurdly ill and have now downgraded to being only marginally ill- possibly because I only worked three hours this week (not including marking or invigilating or meetings). However, due to general exhaustion, marathon novel writing, skinned knuckles, poor posture, bad shoes, stress and whatnot, I’m achy and cricky and have muscle knots…
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Absolutely Nothing to do with Shanghai and Everything About Writing
So I am knee deep in Nanowrimo, or perhaps only shin deep, as I am not sure 15,059 words out of 50,000 can count as a knee. I’m also still sicketty sick sick, which has made me a barking machine. This means I’m not posting here. It isn’t that I have nothing to say, but…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Self-Medication
I’ve had a bad cold for about a month now. I blame my students entirely. They have been coming to class with such dedication that the absentee rate is nearly nil and the cough-cough-hoark-hoark-sneeze-snort rate is very high. The desks and floor are littered in crumpled tissues, eyes are watery, noses snuffly, brains foggy, heads falling to…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Provisions
As I am gearing up for the improbably overambitious NaNoWriMo, I’ve had to scale back on actual thoughts about reality in Shanghai. This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being horribly invasive with my mobile phone camera. I’m now up to 601 poorly focused pictures in my barely year-old phone. I intend to keep going until I…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) More Things I Don’t Need
Reflexology shower gel bath gloves and socklets for those days when you don’t have time to visit your friendly neighbourhood blind masseur. Sorry for the photo being a crappy mirror-image Photo Booth thing but I actually have to, like, go to work or something today and can’t spend all morning faffing about setting up a…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) The Mrs Mu Home Shopping Network
For someone who has an incorrigible habit of packing up and moving every year or so (and sometimes even more often), I also have some terrible lingering pack-rat habits that have followed me from my much younger, more geographically stable days (like, pre-1993). I buy stuff. I buy really stupid, pointless stuff that I never…
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(101 Things about Shanghai) Mops and Kibble Buffets
It’s Monday evening and I’m tired from a semi longish day trying to persuade my students to engage in the learning process so I’m offering another instalment of Mops of Shanghai. This first set of mops is from just at the entrance to our building. There are usually a few there, balanced atop one another,…
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I Hate Crowds: Travelling in China During National Holidays
I really do hate crowds. Crowds make me want to hit people or queue jump just to escape from the queue (because in China, some queues are so vast and switchbacky that to get out you have to go forward). I don’t like noise. I really like quiet, empty places. People en masse exhaust…