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29 Oct 09
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Playing For Change: One Love My mom sends me LOTS of e-mail forwards. Some are hilarious, some are retarded, and some are just super fantastic. This is the latter.
Here’s the song that kicked it all off:
Be sure to check out Playing For Change’s Web site. They’ve... |
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27 Oct 09
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Friends Baby Together Our good friends, Ric and Gin, are proud owners of a brand-new 2009 model Laowai Baby, and having just returned from meeting her for the first time, I wanted to take a moment and reflect.
The benefit of having two close friends go through everything... |
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09 Oct 09
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A baozi in the steamer I may be a lot of things, but someone who can keep their mouth shut is not one of them. This blog is a testament to the fact that I am completely under-skilled in respecting the sanctity of privacy in my personal life. For years now I’ve blogged the... |
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30 Sep 09
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What I’ve been up to It’s been brought to my attention that I’m not updating enough, so much so that friends have begun to worry that something has happened to me (sorry Zak!).
Something has happened to me, and more on that later, but that is not the reason for my... |
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30 Sep 09
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Dalian vs. Suzhou Despite the combative title, it’s rather tough to A-B the two places I’ve spent the most time with in China. They are both supported and mired by a number of attributes that make them both rather unique places to live.
Last week Maggie and I... |
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09 Sep 09
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Button sexes it up post de-sexing I don’t buy into those little doggie jackets that every anthropomorphizing pet owner drools over. In fact, I’d say I’m outright hostile to the idea of breeding a dog to look like a toy and then playing dress-up with it.
That said, I... |
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02 Sep 09
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Chinese cities with beautiful women, I seem to know how to pick ‘em Before moving to Dalian in 2005 I spent a good amount of time on the Internet researching the place to see if it was the type of city I’d like to live in. Looking back on what I read, it was the typical “Dalian is a beautiful sea-side... |
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12 Aug 09
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Suzhou info page finally fleshed + Suzhou district map In any given week I usually get 2-3 e-mails from people just arrived or arriving in Suzhou. As one of the longest running blogs with a focus on living in Suzhou, Google gives me some love and I in turn do my best to pass it along. In an effort to provide... |
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09 Aug 09
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Olive (Delhi Palace) – Some great Indian food in Suzhou Yesterday afternoon Maggie came home with the latest edition of MORE magazine, one of Suzhou’s handful of expat-geared mags, and a glowing review of a new Indian food place caught her attention. As a yoga instructor, she tends to be a bit of an... |
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09 Aug 09
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Creating wallpaper I’ve created a new Flickr set for a little hobby of mine – creating desktop/Web site backgrounds or wallpapers. They are admittedly quite amateurish to the amazing stuff already out there, but I get a kick out of it.
So much of my day is spent... |
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02 Aug 09
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Trippin on HDR Well, I’ve been back from travelling for nearly a week now, and am only just getting organized. I plan to post a full summary of my and my friend Cory’s summer travels around China’s tourist triangle, just as soon as I get all my photos... |
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20 Jul 09
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Holiday Fu’s Suzhou City Guide Iain Manley, editor of City Weekend’s relatively new Holiday Fu, has just put together an excellent city guide for Suzhou. Most all the large travel portals give Suzhou a mention, but Iain’s writeup is full of a wit and insight that makes it a... |
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16 Jul 09
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16 Candles x 2 = Some Serious Wax So, it’s my birthday — and shaping up to be one of the best ones I’ve had in years. As mentioned in the previous post, my best friend Cory arrives from Canada today for his first visit to China.
I leave in a couple hours to grab the... |
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13 Jul 09
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Summertime and the livin’s easy So summer’s definitely here – I know this because when I’m outside for more than a few minutes everything gets blurry and my skin starts to melt. I’m Canadian — +40°C weather is something for fairytales of where the old folk... |
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01 Jul 09
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Proud to be a Canadian (expat) I love Canada, I truly do.
For all the grief that myself and my fellow compatriots give the country, it really is top shelf as countries go. Sure, it’s a bit vanilla when it comes to foreign affairs and global influence; a bit archaic when it comes... |
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02 Jun 09
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Blog redesign, take 5-ish As will be apparent to everyone reading this, sans feed readers, the blog is undergoing a bit of reconstructive surgery. Please bear with me as I juggle the redesign of the site with “real” work.
I had nothing against the last design (despite... |
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27 May 09
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Living without trust This is really a topic I’ve been thinking about since back in December/January when our dog Addie died. I wasn’t sure how to put to words my feelings about it and so have shelved it until now. I don’t know that I’m any closer to... |
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10 May 09
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Murder in the Hood Polce and security guards talk to a journalist near the crime scene at Singha Plaza.
Murders in the news are as common as the weather report, and are rarely read with any greater attention. It is not often that they touch your life in some way, even if... |
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04 May 09
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My ChinaTravel.net Feature on Suzhou A while back I was approached by the fine folks at ChinaTravel.net, an English-language travel site about China that is “editorially independent” but strongly affiliated with Ctrip.com — one of China’s largest online travel booking... |
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02 May 09
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On seabugs, mother-in-laws and holidays Dongbei Seabug
As many of my friends pack up and head out to face the torrent of travel over the May Holiday, I’m just happy to finally have a moment to sit down and type randomness on here.
My mother-in-law arrived from Dalian Thursday evening and... |
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13 Apr 09
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Big-time Button Just got a message via Flickr that a photo I took a couple weeks back of Button made it to Purina’s Pet Charts - a collection of pet stories, pictures and videos. She’s currently ranked #2 - help me get her to No. #1! Vote for the photo... |
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07 Apr 09
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Disturbing Dubai Smoggy Dubai (c) tienshan
It’s rare that I hit on topics here that don’t involve myself, my adoptive country of China or my homeland of Canada. However, I just finished a long investigative report in The Independent about Dubai, and felt the... |
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06 Apr 09
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Pupdate: Some new photos Just a quickie to say that Button is doing great. I’ve started teaching her some basic commands, and she’s a quick study. She’s got sit, stay, come here, lie down, no and ok figured out. Today I’ll work on teaching her “roll... |
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31 Mar 09
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I am an atheist I’ve always considered myself a spiritual person. But I suppose if I’m going to write about this properly, I need to define that at least a little. I’ve always looked at myself and my life as a palette by which I can express my existence... |
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28 Mar 09
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Reminder to turn stuff off: Earth Hour tonight Just a quick reminder that Earth Hour is tonight from 8:30pm to 9:30pm (local time). One hour of lessened electrical usage might not suddenly spark a mass movement towards a cleaner greener world, but I hope you’ll all join me in turn your stuff off... |
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22 Mar 09
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Pupdate: Button the Brave Button
As mentioned, we recently got a new puppy named Button. Now having had a few days to get to know our newest family member, it’s neat to see her personality shining through.
Addie was the first time I ever raised a puppy, and so everything was... |
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20 Mar 09
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WTF, Suzhou 14th worst place in the world to work? Sissies! A recent article in BusinessWeek featured a slideshow displaying 20 of the World’s Worst Places to Work. Unsurprisingly some Chinese cities made the list - surprisingly Suzhou was among them.
The list, compiled by New York-based human resources... |
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19 Mar 09
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Starting again A Sleeping Button
It’s been two and a half months now since our dog Addie died, and though it’s rare a day goes by that we don’t think of her and miss her terribly, we’ve started to feel there just wasn’t enough dog hair all... |
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12 Mar 09
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ThruYou - so rad. As the site says, “What you’re about to see is a mix of unrelated YouTube videos/clips edited together to create ThruYou. In other words - what you see is what you hear.”
I’d like to add another “in other words”:... |
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02 Mar 09
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In Sanya - Final Thoughts Maggie @ Sanya Bay sunset
Alright, I could pretend like the week and a half since we returned from Sanya was used to properly reflect on the vacation before I post final thoughts about China’s only tropical destination. But that would… |
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15 Feb 09
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In Sanya - Da Dong Hai Sucks The Crowds at Da Dong Hai
As I mentioned in my previous post, Mags and I are down in Sanya for a vacation and to celebrate our 2nd anniversary.
Yesterday we finally managed to get off our asses and go further than… |
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12 Feb 09
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In Sanya - Holiday… celebrate… Sanya Bay - from our balconyThere’s something entirely appealing about blogging while looking out over a sunny palm-lined beach and the sea beyond. It has a quality I could definitely get used to.
Mags and I are down in Sanya, Hainan,… |
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01 Feb 09
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One final toss for The Dooze An incredibly touching story by ESPN’s Bill Simmons about the death, and most wonderfully, the life of his dog “The Dooze”.
Impossible not to draw some similarities between Bill’s loss and our own.
h/t Beijing Boyce on Twitter. |
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30 Jan 09
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Hi, I’m China and I like to blow shit up As a foreigner, it’s impossible to live in China for any length of time and not develop some sort of Chinese New Year strategy.
Most, the rich and clever ones at least, leave the country. Getting the frack out well before… |
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25 Jan 09
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Happy Niu Year To All Well, once again it is Chinese New Year’s Eve (this’ll be my forth - and I’ve still yet to find a good pair of earplugs).
We should be celebrating tonight with some newcommers to China, and that’s always fun. Maggie’s... |
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23 Jan 09
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Mac’in it up with a fruity new computer I’ve officially joined the club. You know, that pretentious group that hangs out in cafes with their white Apple-logo lit, doing little other than subliminally pointing to the branding and winking.
Those that are quick to tell you how amazing... |
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22 Jan 09
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Optima Dog Food Saga: It’s Done Most often I feel time is moving much faster than I expect it to. This last month, however, is an exception. It’s hard to believe that it was just over four weeks ago that we got the news about our… |
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21 Jan 09
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A farewell to George W. Bush - Hilarious This was a little clip collection that The Hour, easily one of the best shows put out by CBC - and that most of the content is available online makes it super awesome for an expat like me: |
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20 Jan 09
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Chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord Today is a truly inspiring and amazing day. A great day for America and a great day for the world.
You spoke to us all Mr. President. We all listened, and now we all must act.
The Entire Text of Barack Obama’s… |
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17 Jan 09
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Optima Pet Food Saga: Media’s double-edged sword It’s been a crazy week - both with trying to catch up on work I let slip while caring for Addie over the holidays and also with trying to bring some perspective to this whole, ongoing, experience.
When all this began… |
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12 Jan 09
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Shanghai Daily-late and dollar short The Shanghai Daily finally got around to reporting on the emergency recall of dog food after pets poisoned and seem just as confused as the rest of the net on where the Optima dog food comes from and how it ended… |
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06 Jan 09
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Addie’s Ashes - cremating our dog in China It’s been a handful of days now, and both Maggie and I are coming to terms with Addie’s death. I still expect her to be there, wagging her tail, when we open the front door; and I still look for… |
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04 Jan 09
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From time to eternity Addie has died. I’ve sat here at my computer for a while now looking for the right words to start this post with and can’t come up with any. But as that first sentence is why I’m sitting here, it… |
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31 Dec 08
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Addie Update #2: The Youth in Asia Debate A couple of days ago I drew up a calendar on a whiteboard Maggie uses to keep track of her yoga clients. The calendar shows the dates from December 23 (the day before we found out Addie was suffering from… |
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28 Dec 08
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Addie Update Having been up until 4am the last two nights watching my dog suck endless bottles of medical juice into her veins, my head’s not really in the game - but I wanted to post a bit of an update on… |
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25 Dec 08
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US-made Optima dog food in China may have killed my dog In what’s poised to be the absolute worst Christmas ever, there is an excellent chance my dog - my awesome, beautiful, wonderful, fantastic dog - is going to die.
After posting the other day about the possibility of her having come into... |
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23 Dec 08
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Feeding your dog Optima in China? Stop. The last two days we’ve been dealing with a bit of a scare. We got a call from our pet shop asking us if we’d seen the news. Optima - the decent-quality, American-made dog food we’ve always fed our pup… |
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18 Dec 08
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America more communist than China? Aside from the proliferation of Chinese food other than Cantonese world-wide, the coolest part of the People’s Republic’s grand opening 30 years ago was that the country started down the long road of disassembling State-run industries. If... |
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15 Dec 08
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Addie’s First Birthday Alright, I never wanted to become one of those people that have a dog and they go on and on about their dog like it was their child. I never did.
But I also never expected that such a connection could… |
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04 Dec 08
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Why self-medicating is an essential China expat skill Maybe everyone should take an interest in what pills and pokes their doctor is giving them, despite how frowned upon it is by House. But in China, figuring out what’s really wrong with you, on your own - armed only with… |
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