February 2012
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not an ending

I’m going home!

This last week in Hong Kong went by in a flash. Packing, mailing, and e-mailing things amounted to a whirlwind of things that kept me from being able to write a few more posts that I wanted to tack up here, but hopefully I can get to it later after I return [...]

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in-between, this is how we do

On my last day in Shenzhen, I woke up early and sorted through my things. I cleared my desk of the things I had made ready for the single day and ran a final check through my suitcases. Even though I was leaving them here for a few days, I wanted all to [...]

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malaysian honeymoon

(Hopefully, I’ll have pictures inserted throughout this long-ish post soon.)

The first stage of cultural exchange is commonly called the “honeymoon” period, the time when baby expats get moonstruck by being in a brand spankin’ new place. But when I first got to China, I didn’t feel particularly excited. It could have been a [...]

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finding family in fujian, or, breaking out of history

Our genealogy is a little more convoluted than it needs to be, and our last name probably can claim partial credit for that. “What, your last name is Dutch?” people repeat after I tell them. “Are you Dutch, then?” I say no and watch them flail in further confusion. It can [...]

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printshop

The English office doesn’t have a printer. I’m not really sure how an entire school functions without ever printing anything out, but I’ve gotten used to it. I keep all my lesson plans and notes in digital files, or I scribble them out into a notebook. Saves trees and ink, I guess.

But [...]

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interstitial time

I always liked the word “interstitial.” It used to pop up occasionally in my critical theory books in reference to abstract in-betweens that post-structuralist theorists liked to expand on so very much (evidently the world’s demand for abstract concepts is beginning to outstrip supply). I always thought it had surgical-Tim-Burton-esque connotations too. [...]

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family clanning

Why hasn’t anybody else thought of that pun before?

My parents returned to the States on Saturday, which is good because I think they were getting tired of traveling and also because their Internet visits generate the majority of this blog’s traffic volume. I was getting kind of sad seeing a flat line of single [...]

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bog

NaNoWriMo is slow trudging. I keep finding that I have more and more ideas for what I want to write, but I feel limited by where I am in the story right now. Actually, I feel constrained by the concept of plot entirely – as if what I want to write isn’t what [...]

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highlights from hong kong

For the first time, in picture format!

….Except this still isn’t the way I wanted them…Ryan, can you tell me sometime how you embed your Flickr photo albums into your blog posts?

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return!

Just walked back into the door from Hong Kong. A lot of impressions, but I think I’ll save them for family conversation and my book. Later I’ll post pictures, though.

Baby Aidan is very cute!

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