Category: Nebulous Items
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Ceci n’est pas un laptop
It was a few hours after we got the news that our flight to Chengdu was to be delayed from noon until night that I got the call from the techie at the apple store. We were already at the airport, trying to kill time by borrowing the piddly wifi and drinking 30kuai watery beers.…
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The Technological Graveyard: I Kill My MacBooks
So in one fell swoop, I killed both of my computers over the course of one weekend. The newer one, the MacBook Pro I got back in Canada while freelancing for some St. Louis IT Companies in February, is technically still in a coma at the Genius Bar in the new Pudong Apple Store. I…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) The ShiLiuPu Fabric Market Part 2
I got my stuff. Oh, god but it’s lovely. Everything here was made by Shirley in shop #216 in the fabric market at 168 DongMen Road in Shanghai. She’s awesome.
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(101 Things About Shanghai) The Fabric Market
One of the more precarious aspects about living abroad has been finding clothes to cover my body. In Turkey, I discovered that my arms, legs and torso were significantly longer than the average Turk of my hip-waist measurements so all my shirt cuffs ended about an inch shy of my wrists (mighty cold in…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) 2 Mops and a Mobile Florist
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Huh? Efendim? Ting Bu Dong: Opening Your Door to People You Can’t Understand
In Istanbul, at the last flat I lived in before we left Turkey in 2008, my upstairs neighbour- a middle-aged woman in a house dress and slippers- used to ring my doorbell repeatedly at all hours. If I was in the shower, she’d keep ringing it until I was out and dried and dressed. Sometimes…
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Do As I Say, Not As I Do: On Learning Chinese/ Teaching English
I’ve been told I’m a good teacher. I’ve been teaching English for nearly a decade now and know how to nurture a reluctant super-low beginner out of their speechless shell and into proud conversations in English. I’ve taught study skills using write synonym sheets and audio files, so many times that I could teach a…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Summer Nights
Shanghai summers are deeply unpleasant. Temperatures tend to hover in the mid 30s, with weather forecasts adding ‘feels like 45+’ just below the technically correct temperature. Humidity has been around 85% lately, which, really, honestly, is pretty freaking awful. We have the dehumidifier running nearly non stop in the living room because if we…
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On Language Burnout After a few too Many Countries
It’s a funny thing starting an expat/travel blog sixteen years after you started travelling/living elsewhere and failed to do anything else with your adult life except, well, travel and be an expat. For one, you’re not as freshly enthusiastic as those who are venturing out on their first big trip or landing in their first…
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The Queen of Unfortunate Search Engine Optimization
This particular blog has only been alive since late April this year- not even a toddler, really. When I did my writing course at Matador U back in WinterSpring, one of the things we focussed on was SEO- Search Engine Optimization, or, how to be found amongst the masses. The intarwebs are a mighty big…
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Awesome Things We Ate in Myanmar
Before we went to Myanmar, we really had no idea what to expect, food-wise. It wasn’t a cuisine that was well represented in the South East Asian culinary repetoire internationally. We knew it was just across the water from all things Indian and Bangladeshi, and surrounded on the other side by Thailand and China, with…
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Photos from Yangon
I’ve been experimenting with ways to get my photos up on here without having to go through Facebook links each time. Below is my attempt at uploading my Yangon album into a WordPress gallery. If you weren’t able to get past the Great Firewall to access the photos I posted yesterday, here is my first…