Tag: Smoke and Mirrors

I Like My SUVs Dipped in Gold and My Skies Tinted Milky Grey: Let’s Talk About New Money and Bad Air in New Asia
March 2, 2017

I Like My SUVs Dipped in Gold and My Skies Tinted Milky Grey: Let’s Talk About New Money and Bad Air in New Asia

  This is not a rant. This is an open question/discussion prompt. A week or two ago, one of my former students (now grown up, married and somehow happily living in Saskatoon, Canada) from my previous existence teaching high school English in the middle of …

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Welcome to Sapa: Notes From the Hub of the Curiously Dystopian Hill Tribe Folk Villages
April 28, 2015

Welcome to Sapa: Notes From the Hub of the Curiously Dystopian Hill Tribe Folk Villages

  Last week, we took an overnight train to Sapa, the hill tribe tourist hub in the northern reaches of Vietnam. It’s way up there near China, so far up that it’s shrouded in mist and fog, with palpably moist cloud tendrils snaking down steep, …

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Strangled Gasps of Creativity (or Why I’ll Probably Never Be a Published Author)
November 5, 2012

Strangled Gasps of Creativity (or Why I’ll Probably Never Be a Published Author)

  When I was 10, I was already the proud author of approximately a dozen unpublished novels. By unpublished, I mean, read only by myself- or perhaps by anyone who managed to sneak into my bedroom, haul the stacks of notebooks out from their not …

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What’s my Age Again? 11 Notes on Age and Decontextualization of Travel and Expattery
September 3, 2012

What’s my Age Again? 11 Notes on Age and Decontextualization of Travel and Expattery

In a few weeks, I’ll be on the wrong side of my mid-30s. You know, the over the hill and halfway down the other side end. The one with the great big pile of Sisyphean boulders stacked carelessly at the bottom. The unfashionable end.  The …

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Mapping the Amorphous City: I Attempt to Plot a Walking Tour of Shanghai
April 16, 2012

Mapping the Amorphous City: I Attempt to Plot a Walking Tour of Shanghai

  One thing I have learned from two years of writing here (and from approximately 30 years of writing in general) is that I can be factual, accurate and interesting- but never all three at the same time. Most of my university career was spent …

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Absolutely Nothing to do with Shanghai and Everything About Writing
November 11, 2010

Absolutely Nothing to do with Shanghai and Everything About Writing

So I am knee deep in Nanowrimo, or perhaps only shin deep, as I am not sure 15,059 words out of 50,000 can count as a knee. I’m also still sicketty sick sick, which has made me a barking machine. This means I’m not posting …

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Huh? Efendim? Ting Bu Dong: Opening Your Door to People You Can’t Understand
September 6, 2010

Huh? Efendim? Ting Bu Dong: Opening Your Door to People You Can’t Understand

In Istanbul, at the last flat I lived in before we left Turkey in 2008, my upstairs neighbour- a middle-aged woman in a house dress and slippers- used to ring my doorbell repeatedly at all hours. If I was in the shower, she’d keep ringing …

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On travelling and on staying put
July 24, 2010

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. …

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Living and Travelling in Politically Awkward Places
June 3, 2010

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 …

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(101 Things About Shanghai) I Know You Can See Me
May 24, 2010

(101 Things About Shanghai) I Know You Can See Me

  I have no intention of singling out this city for its very thorough surveillance set up: In fact, I’d say London was worse in the privacy-violation category. However, this is definitely an aspect of Shanghai that is there, that isn’t always obvious, and that …

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