Category: Notes and Confessions
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Why, Hello Leicestershire: Notes on Suddenly Moving to Middle England
People, I have moved to England. The seemingly interminable spouse visa application process suddenly terminated and within a week of getting our surprise approval we were safely ensconced in a ridiculously genteel, chocolate-box village just outside of Leicester. That’s the one pronounced Lester. The standard phonemic alphabet doesn’t necessarily apply here. There’s a…
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Let’s Just Leave the Country Again, Shall We?
Yesterday we went luggage shopping, for proper hard-shell wheelie bags, the kind that grown-ups buy. The kind that cost more than, say, free. It’s not that I don’t own any luggage. I do. I own all the bags and suitcases that people all over the world had already discarded and passed on to me in…
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The Gestation Will Not Be Televised: Notes on Not Writing About Being Pregnant
I have a pregnancy app on my phone. It tells me, week by week, which fruit my progeny most closely resembles (currently eggplant, in case you were wondering). It also blurts out daily tips on what I need to do (today I apparently need to buy a new bra). One of the daily nags…
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Killing Time in Familiar Places: Notes on Learning to Enjoy Enforced Stasis
It’s been raining for about three days now. The kind of rain that comes with leaden dark white skies, streams of water everywhere, and cacophony on metal roofs. Yesterday, near hurricane winds led to all ferries to and from the mainland being cancelled. A wheelbarrow in our yard blew over and crashed through a…
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Seriously, I Have No Idea What I’m Doing: Notes on Being Knocked Up Whilst in Transit
Back when we first found out I was pregnant, about a million years ago in Shanghai, we thought it utterly rational to carry on with our plan to pack up and leave our jobs, our flat, and China, embarking on a road trip down to Mexico where we would while away the autumn months…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to Roughing it in the Wilds of Vancouver Island
For those of you used to my usual summer missives replete with food porn photos and freshly gleaned insights and wild tales from exotic locales such as Morocco or Sri Lanka or Myanmar or Indonesia, I fear I am letting you down. And for those of you who rely on me (desperately, I hope) for…
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How to plan a wedding in just three weeks
Last Friday, I got married. Married! Moi! To a man! Not a cat, not a mop, not an ambitious travel plan, not an abstract idea! A real live man! For those of you who have known me at least somewhat over the years, this may come as a bit of a surprise. I know this…
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There has been a slight change of plans, folks
Sometimes one or two overly personal and private things can derail your ability to write at length about all the millions of notable and weird and interesting things going on concurrently. Sometimes you don’t want to talk about those things just yet, for any number of reasons, but if you don’t at least…
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We’re Not in the Middle Kingdom Anymore, Toto…
I have a feeling I may need to change the name of this blog, or at the very least acknowledge that its impracticality is about to soar to new heights of uselessness. I have, you see, buggered off. I’m actually in rainy, green rolling hilled rural Leicestershire right now, with my life in…
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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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These Were The People In My Neighbourhood: Notes on Istanbul, Tear Gas, Riot Police, Memory, Identity and Stuff
About four and a half years ago, I left Turkey. I had been living there for six years at that point, mostly in Istanbul. I was both very ready to leave and not at all ready. I spent the next several years feeling quietly sick with grief and regret, snarling irrationally at Shanghai and building…
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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…