Doug said this morning that he really wouldn’t put it past me if I started raising chickens in the flat. I wondered if the neighbours would notice or care if I beheaded said chickens out in the shared hallway, between the lifts and the parked …
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 also a very good friend of mine- one who happened to leave Shanghai and move …
When I was about five years old I had a dream. It was one of the very few I ever remembered after waking up and is probably the only one I still remember vividly 30 or so years after it was dreamt. I’ll spare you …
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 Fuzhou. Given this, I should be writing a top ten list of places to visit, …
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 the very last minute, as I did, and need to know where you can get …
[UPDATE: Spring 2015- Since writing this a few years ago, at the beginning of my writing career, I’ve since been commissioned to do a feature 2000 word article for a Dutch print travel magazine, 3 GPS smart phone walking tours of Shanghai for Pocket Guides, …
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, well, I lied. Kind of. I am unemployed, by the day-job definition of employment. At …
About five years ago, a friend of mine in Istanbul sent me a questionnaire about privilege, which I dutifully filled out and posted on my Livejournal. I was, I discovered, fantastically privileged. This was something I had suspected for a long time but had never …
Yesterday’s goat milk paneer recipe may have ended on a cliff-hanger. That final photo of the cheese cloth wrapped bundle of freshly drained cheese was only the beginning of the story. Paneer is a beautiful thing, and goat paneer has surprised me by being even …
I’ve been back home for just over a week. The skies have been all sparkly and bright blue and the sun shines so brightly that, well, I have to wear sunglasses a lot more often than I’ve ever had to in Shanghai. Have I …
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 of stairs I had to climb 8 or so times a day between classroom and …
Somewhere out there, Alanis Morrisette’s lawyer is counting the number of times today I have muttered something along the lines of, isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? Somewhat akin to rain on your wedding day, or maybe finding a dozen forks when all you need …
