Category: I’ll See Myself Out
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How to Pack for the Person You’d Like to Become
We moved out of our little terrace house last weekend. Our dining room full of boxes is now stacked neatly in the third floor spare room of a sprawling Victorian house in the groovier bit of Leicester. We have a surprising amount of stuff for having just moved here last November with a 30kg…
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Stock Taking (Again): Notes on Preparing to Leave (Again)
How many Ikea POÄNG chairs have I bought (and then sold or left behind) in my decades of careless geographic instability? How many sets of kitchen odds and ends, how many cups and bowls and sets of cutlery? How many bookshelves (and their contents), kitchen tables, armoires (and their sartorial contents) and beds? All of them,…
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I’ll Be Lucky to Escape With My Waistline Intact: My Last Month of Eating Everything in Shanghai
This is going to be a major food porn post. I just realized that after over four years in this city, I’ve really never delved into all things foodie on this blog. Mops, cats, pollution, water monsters, bad maps– sure. Food, not so much. Or if I did write about it, it was…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on That Time I Square Danced to Chinese Punk Music in the Park
Back in the early 1990s, back when I was an untravelled granola crunchy uni student living on an island off the west coast of Canada, I wrote a rather long and rambling term paper on the history of Chinese rock music. At that time, it spanned the vast period between 1985 when Wham! played…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on Stuff, Self, Place and Ridiculously Sudden Life Transitions
I moved most unexpectedly a few months ago, just after my life imploded in Bali. It’s taken me over two months to get all of my things from the old flat. Bit by bit, bag by bag, by taxi and by metro, I’ve hauled my life from the cozy, familiar inner sanctum of the…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on Being a Tired Hermit With Possibly Unrealistic Expectations
I’ve got approximately two months left in Shanghai. After over four years in this city, most of which were spent trying to feel like it was home and trying to convince myself that I was in the right place, doing the right thing, I’m now suddenly feeling small and unexpected pangs of pre-emptive…
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I’ll See Myself Out: Attempting Shanghai Nightlife (for Burnt Out Recluses)
So I’m leaving Shanghai. Sometime in June, I’ll be handing in my Foreign Expert’s Certificate (actually a booklet, just to muddle matters) and sorting through my accumulated detritus to ship things home or to redistribute them amongst the neighbourhood rag-and-bone dudes. [Random note: Modern day tricycle-riding rag-n-bone pickers in Shanghai mainly seem to deal in…