Ephemera and Detritus

Tag: NaBloPoMo

  • 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…

  • Redemption and Delivery

    One of the things I really liked about Istanbul but never took advantage of due to sheer terror of using my (self-perceived) inferior Turkish skills was the culture of delivery. You could get everything delivered to your door. Mc Donalds delivered; the kebab guys delivered; your corner shop delivered. If you lived on the fifth…

  • Fast, But Not Exactly McDonalds

      Sometimes when I come home from work, I’m absurdly hungry- maybe I worked through my lunch break, maybe I covered ten kilometres  just pacing and monitoring in class.  It has been known to happen.  I carry a pedometer as a clock in the class so I know this is a possibility. Dinner takes a while…

  • People in the Mornings

    On Jiashan Lu in the morning there are streams of bicycles weaving down the road and its crowded sidewalk, pedalled by parents carrying their children to school. On our street, we have a middle school at one end and a primary school at the other.  The children are perched on the backs of the bikes,…

  • Moving Experiences in Shanghai

    I’m working on stolen wifi this evening, from the penultimate penthouse up on the 16th floor overlooking bloody well everything. Alas, we haven’t even got a phone line set up yet, much less adsl. I’m hoping our borrowed source doesn’t decide to turn off their modem when they go to bed. I’m tired from moving…

  • Ikea as a tourist attraction

    We are moving this weekend, hence this short post. We had popped out to Ikea this morning to get some paper lanterns and heavy light-blocking curtains for the sunny bedroom.  It was 10am on a Saturday and it was packed. Half the people weren’t shopping; they were posing for photos. Many strolled along the arrow’d…

  • (101 Things About Shanghai) Perspectives on Groceries

    I’m pretty wussy when it comes to meat- I lean heavily towards vegetarian and would label myself a lacto-ovo-bacon vegetarian if it were an option. In Istanbul I was able to veer into shallow omnivore waters because butchers would happily do all the cutting and de-boning and trimming for you. We had a lot of…

  • Living and Travelling in Politically Awkward Places

    Tomorrow will be the somethingth anniversary of an event that may or may not have taken place in a way that may or may not have been reported. This event is one of the three forbidden T-words that foreign teachers have been warned not to bring up in class. One involves a large square where…

  • I can see Alaska from my flat

    We got the keys today. The new flat up on the 16th floor of the only tall building on our block is now ours for a year, if not longer.  It’s a marvellous feeling stepping into an impeccable- though dusty– empty flat and flinging open all the windows (oh, so many windows) and just looking…

  • How to Rent a Flat in Shanghai and Maintain Your Sanity

    In the past year and a half since I moved to Shanghai, I have had to move twice. And both the times I’ve moved, I’ve warranted my house from housemethod.com so in case of any adversity, I’ve been fully covered. The first time was two and a half months into my first lease, when my…

  • This Week’s Mop (and a meditation on getting my writing ass in gear)

    Actual thoughtful writing should resume soon- we had a big, tiring weekend away in Nanjing for work and didn’t see daylight for two days. I tried writing a few things on my iPod on the train ride home but the touch screen is small and annoying and I resumed playing Boggle with Doug on his.…

  • (101 Things About Shanghai) Very Thorough Haircuts

    I’ve learned not to schedule a haircut for days when I have anything else that needs doing.  The cutting itself usually doesn’t take much longer than it does for hair removal miami.  My standard haircut is nothing unnecessarily complicated- it’s a chin-length bob with bangs.  However, as noted, it isn’t the cutting that takes up…