Category: Notes and Confessions
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How much would YOU pay to be bit by a rabid monkey: More good times in Phnom Penh
Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe monkeys? In India, on an island just off Mumbai, a monkey once mugged me with a snarl for my bottled water; in Ubud, in Bali, a monkey lunged at me and dug his claws into my leg and wouldn’t let go. I wasn’t even teasing him with…
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Shouldn’t it be…harder?: On Travelling in Comfort
Let me introduce you to a few key examples of how I have traveled in the past. Let’s start at the beginning, when I was barely 20 years old. In 1994, I spent two months sleeping on my friend’s sofa in a small flat above a pagan shop in Galway, Ireland. I lived on packets…
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Good Times: Getting Your Wisdom Teeth Yanked Out Away From Home
I have evil, appalling wisdom teeth, the kind that come in at all the wrong angles. I have a dentist who would help me with this, as this is where I go in Lafayette for every dental issue. But this time, I could not. Or rather, I had evil, appalling wisdom teeth. Over the past…
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It’s MAO’s Annual Self Criticism Time, Shanghai Style
I missed the new year deadline for resolutions by a few days but I was too busy drinking litres of tea in bed and eating Doug’s Christmas gift of German chocolate covered gingerbread and posting endless photo spam of frozen mops and singing students. Sometimes one just has to tread lightly upon the blog before dropping…
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Ain’t I a Bear? Gerald the Bear Tackles Authenticity and Place
When I was first introduced to my co-blogger, Mary Anne, who is also the owner of this blog, she looked at me dubiously and said, “You’re not a panda”. We were in a tea house in North Shanghai, surrounded by hundreds of Chinese students and teachers and wait staff. On the ceiling were red lanterns…
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Nihilism in Shanghai: Everything Dies. Everything.
I’m a very optimistic person in spite of all my references to key words like ‘bleak’, ‘grim’, ‘awful’, ‘miserable’ and such. My character leans toward the melancholy but not in a depressing kind of way. I actually like rain. I like solitude. I like somber. I find them very calming. But can I tell…
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I’m a foreign woman and I bought shoes in Shanghai
Just so you know, I’m a tall girl with size 9 feet. That’s about a 7 in the Uk, 39 in Europe and apparently 40 in China. Most shoes for women stop at size 38 here. Just so you know. From a tiny boutique in Tianzifang, the artsy alleyway complex off Taikang Lu, I present…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…