Fight the Power
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Mostly laser cats and Chinese food.
Impractical Shanghai
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Here Be Dragons: Laser Cat Goes to Pudong to Renew Her Visa (Comic Book Edition)
14 June 2013 2:26 PM | No Comments -
I’ll Be Lucky to Escape With My Waistline Intact: My Last Month of Eating Everything in Shanghai
12 June 2013 5:46 PM | 5 Comments -
I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on That Time I Square Danced to Chinese Punk Music in the Park
09 May 2013 3:07 PM | 5 Comments -
I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on Stuff, Self, Place and Ridiculously Sudden Life Transitions
25 April 2013 11:56 AM | 13 Comments -
I’ll See Myself Out: Notes on Being a Tired Hermit With Possibly Unrealistic Expectations
15 April 2013 12:27 PM | 17 Comments -
I’ll See Myself Out: Attempting Shanghai Nightlife (for Burnt Out Recluses)
19 March 2013 1:36 PM | 18 Comments -
It’s Beginning to Look Not Even Remotely Like Christmas: Faking Festiveness in Shanghai
25 December 2012 4:41 PM | 13 Comments -
Notes on Not Running Away Again: Dealing Sensibly With a Shanghai Winter
30 November 2012 2:25 PM | 18 Comments -
You look very terrible, Miss Mary: Unsolicited Advice for the Laowai
19 November 2012 4:44 PM | 15 Comments -
Managing Your Plague in China: Brief Notes on my Stupid Cold
15 November 2012 1:09 PM | 8 Comments
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Teaching Archive
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What The Hell Am I Doing Here: Notes on End of Year Work Festivities in Shanghai
It’s Saturday and I’m at work. I’ve been here since, oh, 8 o’clock this morning and at the rate things are piling up, I doubt I’ll ever leave. Teaching…
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Who Needs A Comfort Zone Anyway? Building Character Abroad: The Employment Edition
Back when I lived and worked in Canada, employers generally expected me to be qualified for my job. They wanted the certification from year-long+ accredited courses, plus, say five years…
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Notes on working in China (the bossing-teachers-around edition)
As you may have heard, I have changed jobs. By this, I mean I am no longer unemployed. Or at least, unemployed in the technical sense. I have a day…
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Saying Goodbye AGAIN: The annoying heartbreak of being a teacher that nobody warns you about*
*I was going to title this post Apostrophe to the End of Term (or, Isn’t it Byronic, don’t you think?) but decided it would be way too obscure and nerdy and not…
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I May Have Just A Wee Bit Too Much on My Plate
It’s just after 7:30am on an inexplicably cool morning. Shanghai is invisible under the fog. It’s just as well as I’m still in bed, under several layers of duvet, strong,…
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Amber Roshay Moved Back to the US and Wrote About it (And Also Wrote a Book That We’re Giving Away Here)
Some of you might remember the lovely Amber Roshay from her interview last year. She was the one whose students had prepared an awesome and very emotional surprise party for her. She’s…
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Hey Zhou: A Totally Impractical Guide to Hangzhou and Fuzhou
I’ve been on a bit of a ‘zhou bender in the past month, flitting around the Eastern seaboard of China with two 4-day stints in Hangzhou and one down in…
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Hello, Dalian! A Totally Impractical Guide to That City up by Korea
And by impractical, I really mean it this time. I have absolutely no information that might be of use to you here, unless you get sent up for work at…
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Notes on my Supposed Unemployment: The September Edition
Remember how I’ve been going on and on for months about being unemployed? How it felt weird to be so suddenly unstructured and aimless after decades of chronic employment? Yeah,…
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14 Notes on teaching English in a Chinese university, in the middle of a quiet burnout and impending unemployment
1. Two weeks ago I renewed my gym membership, which I had let lapse about six months ago. Sometime last Autumn, I had figured that the five flights…
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3 Short Scenes from the Chinese Classroom: Why I Probably Can Never Go Home Again
Scene 1. ‘Happy April Fish Day, teacher!’ My students are knee deep in plastic snack-sized dried fish wrappers. It’s April 1st. There’s a huge grocery bag three quarters full…
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School’s out for…um, Spring Festival (insert Alice Cooper tune here)
Classes finished nearly two weeks ago but the final exam for my course was scheduled only for the very last possible time slot. This means I’d spent the first week…
