Category: Nebulous Items
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Can I Show You a Bit of Myanmar?
And we’re back. And I’ve been floored with a tummy bug that whacked me over the head sometime last night, after we got back into Shanghai in a taxi that thought it had a jet engine. After 7 white-knuckle flights in a month (3 of them on Yangon Airways, whose motto is, unnervingly, “you’re safe…
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On travelling and on staying put
We’ve been in Myanmar about two weeks now, travelling close to the ground (usually about 6 inches from the pavement when facing backwards on a trishaw) and grinding our way from Yangon to Moulmein to Kyaiktiyo to Yangon to Mandalay to Hsipaw and I’m tired. For about two days I have been wanting to stay…
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On the road to Mandalay, eventually
You can actually fly to Mandalay from Yangon for about $75US, so the romance of the road is somewhat lessened. After bouncing around the Mon State south east of Yangon for the past week, I’ve come to value the brevity of flights. I’ve learned a few other things here, which I’ll note briefly. I’m saving…
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Notes on Yangon (which is also Rangoon)
1. Burmese script initially reminded me of the patterns woodbugs make when tunnelling into a two-by-four, then I decided it looked like binary code without the 1s, as seen through a wonky dot matrix printer, and now I’ve finally reconciled myself to the idea that it’s really just a series of counterfeiters’ adaptations of the…
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From Yangon, with sanity
Obviously no one briefed the censors that I was coming. This site is one of the only things out there that isn’t blocked. Thank you for your trust, Junta. Appreciated. We arrived yesterday morning after a long (and yet not long at all) journey from Shanghai: our flight out to Guangzhou sat on…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Fake Books
One of the things about living in faraway lands that can be frustrating for a nerd like me is the frequently limited access to English books. In Turkey, they were quite pricey but I bought them anyway. A girl has needs, you see. I had to leave 75% of them behind when I left (there…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Sidewalk? You want to walk on the sidewalk? Whoaaaa!
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Fast Food for Sino Taste Buds
One of the things I’ve noticed in my years of living elsewhere, is that multinational fast food places seem to try really hard to court their local markets by attempting to mould their products into something vaguely resembling the local tastes. I remember seeing a Mc Turco in Turkey, which was some sort of…
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Compare and Contrast
I’ve been stupidly busy this week, between finishing up my year’s marking (done!), trying to find brand new, unmarked, unfolded American dollars for our trip to Myanmar on Friday (the junta is fussy about money and they don’t have ATM machines or take credit cards anywhere), and trying to assemble a first aid kit in…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Plum Rains
Last night around 10, my immune system decided it felt like inviting a cold around for a visit. Just as I was readying myself for what ought to have been a full night’s sleep, my nose went awry and my eyeballs hummed. This alone would have been fine, except that when I finally dozed off…
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What I Do
I haven’t spoken much about my job here. I have another site for that; if you want to subject yourself to much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth you can go there for the finer details. On a much broader level, I thought I’d introduce you to what I do. There is a widely…
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I’m #8! I’m #8! I’m #8!
In China, anyway. Andrew at Go Overseas.com has just sent me a purty li’l badge for me to attach to the lapels of this site. If only I could figure out the code for lapels. If someone could tell me how to permalink this thing (somewhere other than just my writing page where I gave…