Category: Sensory Overload

  • Welcome to Tropical Shanghai. Today’s temperature will be -2 degrees.

    Welcome to Tropical Shanghai. Today’s temperature will be -2 degrees.

    According to official Chinese government regulations, if a city is located south of the Yangtze River it is considered tropical and therefore does not need to be heated in winter. Shanghai is located about one millimeter south of the Yangtze River, as can be seen from this map, stolen from the Wikipedia page on it.…

  • A Series of Unrelated Photos (Part 3)

    Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. It’s a beautiful day today. Sun is shining, skies are blue. Scarves are too hot, a coat is nearly too much. Sunglasses are needed. Birds are singing, crowds thronging, babies squatting with split trousers, dogs in summer booties, veggie vendors out in multitudes. December? Nay, I…

  • A Series of Unrelated Photos (Part 2)

    For Part 1, go here This blog was left negligently unattended for much of November whilst I diverted myself and my energies with that blasted novella about goats and monsters and such. However, that doesn’t mean I neglected to use the camera on my phone. No, I’m still compulsively intruding on people’s privacy and documenting…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • (101 Things About Shanghai) The Fabric Market

    (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…

  • 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…

  • Boxha Cafe in the rain

    In the interest of creating mental escape routes for the rainy season, I’m starting a new category exclusively for cafes in Shanghai to duck into out of the rain. Since I’m off til mid-September (mostly- I do have exams and papers to mark this week) and don’t want to become completely house-bound, bed-ridden and 500…

  • The Hordes of Yangshuo

    The Hordes of Yangshuo

      The hills are so famous that they are on the 20rmb note.  Looking closely at a 20rmb note, I failed to see the armies of uniformed tour groups and the clusters of hotels and the endless checkpoints of touts and vendors surrounding the hills. They are there. I know they are.  We walked amongst…