Category: Notes and Confessions
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Somewhat Less than Normal: Notes on actually coming home
After 25 or so years of living in vast, sprawling cities, far, far away- as far away as my impulses to dive into the unknown and unexpected could take me– I have landed with a thud…
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Tell Me All About Your Bookshelves (Past and Present)
Ten years ago, approximately, I left Istanbul, and along with a city that I loved/loathed, I also left behind a lot of books. By this, I want to absolutely emphasize that this was a heartbreakingly vast quantity of books that had slowly but steadily grown in number over my six years in Turkey, and…
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Damn, That Shit’s Elusive: The Happiness Project Revisited (Plus Books! I have books!)
About a year ago, probably longer, I announced that I would be revisiting the 100 Happy Days challenge. You know the one- you post every day for 100 days something that made you feel happy, no matter how small, how fleeting. I totally failed. And I am not exaggerating: this post was last saved on…
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I Like My SUVs Dipped in Gold and My Skies Tinted Milky Grey: Let’s Talk About New Money and Bad Air in New Asia
This is not a rant. This is an open question/discussion prompt. A week or two ago, one of my former students (now grown up, married and somehow happily living in Saskatoon, Canada) from my previous existence teaching high school English in the middle of Turkey drew me into a rather intriguing and thoughtful conversation…
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Insert Coherent, Concise, Astute Title Here: Notes on Starting the New Year with a Question Mark
One of the downsides to writing every three or six or eight months is that all of the half baked ideas that might have made up a dozen different posts all burble to the surface and battle it out to be the opening line. Hey, I’m still living in repetitive suburbia in Koreatown in…
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Are We Better Yet? Notes on Writing About Normal
When I decided to reopen the cobwebbed vaults of my semi-abandoned online hiding space, I first looked into the drafts folder to see if there were any false starts in there worth revisiting and finishing. Here are a few of the titles from the past year or so, which never saw the light of day.…
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Greetings From my New Expat Bubble
Hi. You might remember me from such posts as that one six months ago, back when we were still living in Hanoi, in a long, narrow railroad flat perched five floors above the reeking, oil-slick, sewage-milky, belly-up fish filled Truc Bach lake. Like many things in Hanoi, it looked lovely and atmospheric and serene from…
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How to be Happy in Denmark (and Vietnam): Notes on Getting it All Wrong Again
I’ve been sick for the past two or three (maybe four?) weeks. One of those fun, persistent malingering malaises that morphs from one form to another, then back again, sometimes overlapping in comical yet debilitating ways. I currently have twin ear infections that have swollen my already dainty canals into mere pinpricks, whilst at the…
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John McCain Crashed His Plane Just Outside Our New Flat
It was a few years ago (1967), but still- he ejected just over there- you can see it from our living room window. About two weeks ago, we moved house. Again. I may have mentioned the reluctant need to uproot, yet again. The construction work, the noise, the dust, the madness. Remember? Yeah, that.…
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and Living) in Ridiculously Humid Climes
A month or two ago, my third external hard drive in three years decided to just stop being a functioning external hard drive. It was only a year and a half old when it died and took all of my laptop’s back ups with it. As a neurotically careful archivist of my own clutter,…
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Just Like Starting Over: Hanoi 2.0
Can I tell you about our early days in Hanoi? Back in October? So many months ago. The weeks when we lived in a stuffy, cramped hotel room in a curious neighborhood that would have been more curious if it hadn’t been hemmed in on so many sides by major roads that were…
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Dear Fellow Travellers and Expats: You are NOT More Special or Better or Smarter Than Your Average Bear
I’ll admit that I’ve been up since 4am almost every morning this week, woken by a wide-eyed toddler towering over me in the early morning half light, adamantly making the ASL sign for water, food, ball, whatever in my face, and am coping with so much strong Vietnamese coffee that my brain is twitching.…