My Dad left this past Saturday. Since he’s flown back, I’ve just regained my sense of a routine (if being trapped in bed for two straight days hopped up on all the DayQuil that he had brought from the U.S. could count…
The 30-day Countdown: One year later
In June 2014, a few days after coming back from Russia and just a month before departing for Shanghai, I wrote a blog post about counting down the days in the last month, but I decided against publishing it. I’m not…
Redefining 'my' Shanghai
I’ve been feeling slightly out of place the past week. More than before, I’ve been on edge, and people around must be starting to pick up on it. My mind is all sorts of scatterbrained and I can’t help but feel disconnected to the…
Cooking Chinese Food is all about the oil
My (very basic) understanding of Chinese Cooking goes like this: Always make sure the wok is already smoking before you add oil. When you think you’ve added enough oil, add two more teaspoons. Or heck, a ladleful while you’re at it….
Massachusetts-Shanghai: An Interview
Look ma! I’m Internet-famous! Ok, so not really, and this isn’t quite the piece I talked about earlier (that’ll get published in April), but I’ve been lucky enough to get interviewed by BlogExpat about my time in Shanghai. Check out…
Twilight bike rides and countless other reasons to go to Guilin
I’ve never seen a place quite as picturesque as Guilin before in my life. I don’t say things like that often, because, let’s face it, those ugly deciduous forests that I pass while going into a new city are pretty much the same whether…
How to drink coffee in China
Like many things in China, the Shanghainese coffee culture is a little.. off. Drinking coffee in China is a rather bizarre experience, and I’m not quite sure whether it lags behind or somehow surpasses its US equivalent (probably the former). Below are some of…
Making things up as I go along
I gotta be honest, sometimes living abroad gets pretty miserable. The good days do absolutely outweigh the bad. For one, China is overwhelmingly convenient. The cabs are ridiculously cheap. There is an unending supply of Korean BBQ. Eating chuanr no longer makes me violently…
Understanding China
At times, I wonder about my ‘legacy’ in China. Now okay, that sounds a bit ridiculous. The last seven (almost eight) months that I’ve spent in Shanghai, my Chinese speaking abilities have rapidly improved (not as significantly as I would have liked them to, but…
Chinese New Year, and other reasons to not get out of bed
Yesterday, I came the closest I’ve come to facing my own mortality since coming to China. Strapped to the back of a scooter cab, clutching the overcoat of the 5’2″ shifu with one hand and my glittery cell-phone case with the other…
What it's like to write
All writers are liars. We exaggerate, spinning lies out of words in order to create a stronger, more compelling narrative. We disregard facts to make what we write feel more ‘real’ (which is kind of counterintuitive, isn’t it?). In my…
How I fell in love
I have never fallen for a place as rapidly or as irrevocably as I have fallen for Hong Kong. This past weekend was electrifying, rapid, exhilarating. And it terrifies me just how much I want to uproot the life I have created in China and move to…