Tag: Street Photos
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Further Adventures in Chinese Baking: Chocolate Coconut Cookies
I think the Plum Rains have started. This has been the driest year so far since we arrived in Shanghai in early 2009, though the low lying grimness hasn’t eased up. When I first moved here, I lived in a 4-story lane house out in the wilds of Pudong. My laundry line was a…
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Baking in China (and other improvisational activities)
A few weeks ago, we came across a hand-me-down counter top oven on www.unclutterer.com and decided to test it. Not a toaster oven. Not a microwave oven. An oven oven. The kind that can, like, bake stuff and roast stuff and grill stuff. But I knew I was better off grilling in one of those…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #12: Mohana Rajakumar of A Day in Doha
Welcome to the twelfth edition of my expat interview series. I’m delighted to see how well it has been chugging along, picking up speed and steam and passengers along the way. This instalment brings us to the tiny finger-tip nation of Qatar. I passed through there a few times when I commuted between Dubai and…
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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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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #6: Fiona Reilly of Life on Nanchang Lu
Welcome to the sixth interview in my infinite series of one sided conversations with expats (and ex-expats) all over the world. I started this series partly out of curiosity and partly out of a need for me to know I wasn’t alone in having mixed feelings about the path I had chosen. Now, with half…
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Blue Skies, Fake Britain and Imaginary Friends: It Gets Better (For Now)
Four days ago, I was quite dissatisfied with Shanghai and with living abroad in general. I wanted to go home to Canada, to go live in the forest and bake bread and raise goats and make really awesome goat cheese and to say, quite pleasantly, fuck it to this whole expat/travel lifestyle. I was fried.…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #4: Michelle Lara of I Heart Mondegreens
Welcome to part 4 in my as yet infinite series on the varied and multi faceted expat experience. Today I bring you Michelle Lara of I Heart Mondegreens. Michelle is in Spain for now, working and studying for a Masters degree in translation. She’s married to a Spaniard. She grew up speaking Spanish and continues…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #3: Andrew Couch of Grounded Traveler
Welcome to the third in my series of interviews with, ostensibly, expats. And by expats, I mean people who have been broadly defined as such by the fact that they are living somewhere else. It’s not as simple as that though. A bazillion people over time have ended up living far from their homelands for…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #1: Nancy Lewis of Wandering Solo
Welcome to the first interview in a series that has not yet had its parameters defined. I’ve loosely determined that I want to talk to as many people as possible (or at least until I start annoying people and cease-and-desist comments begin to outnumber spam) about a topic that has been banging around quite…
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After thoughts: Notes on having settled whilst still unsettled
I was wrong. Last week, I declared with false confidence that I was settled and ready to stay in Shanghai for a few more years. Or maybe the better word would be ‘bracing myself’ or ‘girding my loins’ or ‘grudgingly acquiescing’ to staying put for a while and enjoying my job and my slow cooker…
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Travelling Yourself Into a Corner: On Impulse Control and Unplanned Stability
It looks like we’re going to be here in Shanghai for a while. Doug has just signed a three year contract with his school; I have another year left on my two-year contract. We own a slow cooker, a full set of cutlery and several potted plants (which are somehow still alive), including one…
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Notes on Genocidal Tourism in Cambodia
One of the emotionally complicating factors of constantly living in and travelling through countries with troubled pasts is that you will inevitably end up having many conversations with and interacting with people who had lived through that troubled past. And given that troubled pasts often involved death, betrayal, torture, imprisonment and whatnot, it’s a disconcerting…