Tag: vendors
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Nibblies, cookies and crepes, oh my!
Today I stocked up on my coping-stash at work. The weather has turned frightfully cold after the loveliness of the weekend and it was quite difficult to haul myself out of the warm flat and out into the streets to go to work. I knew I needed some sort of incentive to deal with sitting…
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A Series of Unrelated Photos (Part 3)
Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. It’s a beautiful day today. Sun is shining, skies are blue. Scarves are too hot, a coat is nearly too much. Sunglasses are needed. Birds are singing, crowds thronging, babies squatting with split trousers, dogs in summer booties, veggie vendors out in multitudes. December? Nay, I…
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Shanghai rules the copyright infringement universe: The Book Carts of Donghu Lu
Back in the days of yore when I lived in Turkey, books were a rare commodity. In my first two years, when I lived out in the wilds of Kayseri, I lived off the half dozen books I had brought with me from Canada, chosen for their thickness, small type and slow reading. Family sent…
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A Series of Unrelated Photos
I’ve stopped being absurdly ill and have now downgraded to being only marginally ill- possibly because I only worked three hours this week (not including marking or invigilating or meetings). However, due to general exhaustion, marathon novel writing, skinned knuckles, poor posture, bad shoes, stress and whatnot, I’m achy and cricky and have muscle knots…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Provisions
As I am gearing up for the improbably overambitious NaNoWriMo, I’ve had to scale back on actual thoughts about reality in Shanghai. This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped being horribly invasive with my mobile phone camera. I’m now up to 601 poorly focused pictures in my barely year-old phone. I intend to keep going until I…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) The Mrs Mu Home Shopping Network
For someone who has an incorrigible habit of packing up and moving every year or so (and sometimes even more often), I also have some terrible lingering pack-rat habits that have followed me from my much younger, more geographically stable days (like, pre-1993). I buy stuff. I buy really stupid, pointless stuff that I never…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) The Fabric Market
One of the more precarious aspects about living abroad has been finding clothes to cover my body. In Turkey, I discovered that my arms, legs and torso were significantly longer than the average Turk of my hip-waist measurements so all my shirt cuffs ended about an inch shy of my wrists (mighty cold in…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) 2 Mops and a Mobile Florist
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Awesome Things We Ate in Myanmar
Before we went to Myanmar, we really had no idea what to expect, food-wise. It wasn’t a cuisine that was well represented in the South East Asian culinary repetoire internationally. We knew it was just across the water from all things Indian and Bangladeshi, and surrounded on the other side by Thailand and China, with…
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On travelling and on staying put
We’ve been in Myanmar about two weeks now, travelling close to the ground (usually about 6 inches from the pavement when facing backwards on a trishaw) and grinding our way from Yangon to Moulmein to Kyaiktiyo to Yangon to Mandalay to Hsipaw and I’m tired. For about two days I have been wanting to stay…
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From Yangon, with sanity
Obviously no one briefed the censors that I was coming. This site is one of the only things out there that isn’t blocked. Thank you for your trust, Junta. Appreciated. We arrived yesterday morning after a long (and yet not long at all) journey from Shanghai: our flight out to Guangzhou sat on…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Fake Books
One of the things about living in faraway lands that can be frustrating for a nerd like me is the frequently limited access to English books. In Turkey, they were quite pricey but I bought them anyway. A girl has needs, you see. I had to leave 75% of them behind when I left (there…