Tag: Armchair travel
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Time Travelling Postcards From: Christmas in New York, 2002
It’s damp season here in Hanoi. The moldy months are in full swing and I’m feeling super protective of my electronics and my reams of ephemeral life data. Hanoi, like Shanghai before it, kills electronics. I’m quietly doing multiple back ups, fully aware of the three external hard drives and two laptops that Shanghai’s humidity…
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Big Dumplings in Little China
It’s hard to write about your homeland. I’ve spent decades honing my skills at describing places from the perspective of an outsider looking in. It helps to not fully understand what’s going on, or if I actually do know what’s going on, to be just observing from the sidelines and playing dumb. It allows…
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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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A Totally Impractical Guide to 6 Underachieving Nights in Hong Kong and Macau
This is one of those times when I have, in theory, at least 4 blog posts worth of things to write about but haven’t the wherewithal to even try to shove it all into one, much less 4. Bear with me then, as I attempt to guide you through a fabulously exciting week in Hong…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to Morocco: Casablanca!
I’m not just here to give you completely useless information about China, no. Every so often, I do get out and go to other countries. Today, I’m in Morocco. Yes, just like that. I’m sneaky that way. Ladies and gents, I give you the most useless guide to Casablanca, ever. (NOTE: Wanna see my etchings?…
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Making You Jealous in Meknès, Morocco
So, we are now in Meknès, about 3.5 hours by train from Casablanca and ever so much more likeable. This is the Meknès medina where we are staying. And after we arrived yesterday noonish, with the sun blazing down with peculiar ferocity, we retreated into the cool, sheltered laneways of Meknès to find lunch. We ended…
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Making you jealous in Casablanca
I was going to write a long, thoughtful post about arriving in Morocco and getting terribly, terribly lost in Casablanca today. I was going to make joyful noises about the realization that my French is still very much there, somewhere under the surface of the usable parts of my brain, so much so that every…
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And You May Ask Yourself, ‘How Did I Get Here?’ (Let’s Talk About Privilege, Shall We?)
About five years ago, a friend of mine in Istanbul sent me a questionnaire about privilege, which I dutifully filled out and posted on my Livejournal. I was, I discovered, fantastically privileged. This was something I had suspected for a long time but had never fully articulated or itemized before. My particular brand of privilege…
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Kandy Esala Perahera: What the World Needs Now is More Dancing Elephants Lit Up Like Christmas Trees. Really.
So we are back in rainy Kandy, smack dab in the middle of the Esala Perahera festival. I don’t have my guide book with me to remind me what exactly it’s about. You can Google it then lambaste me for being a lazy traveler. I’m tired. The nightly procession starts at the Temple of…
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Not a Top 10 List: My 7 Favourite Posts
It’s a funny thing about going home again after a relatively long absence (a year and a half this time), even if it’s only for three weeks: Everything is just so normal and calm and sane and utterly non-extraordinary that I really don’t have much to say about it. It’s just home, you know?…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #10: Marie Szamborski of Shantiwallah
Welcome to the esteemed tenth expat interview in my series of a bazillion. After a brief hiatus from interviews with human expats last week (hello Hector Lakemonster!) I’d like to introduce you to someone who has been with me (and this blog) since it was born a year ago today. Marie Szamborski is better known…
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Notes on the First Anniversary of my 7th Blog
Origins I started this blog near the end of last April, impulsively, after I read the words ‘ephemera and detritus’ in a comment on a blog I’ve long since lost track of. Possibly from Salon’s now defunct Broadsheet. Rather than just noting it down and having a chortle over the awesomeness of the imagery as…