Author Archives: Meg
Essential Chinese: Get Online
Most people in the bars and coffeeshops of Yangzhou have been able to understand combinations of internet, password, and various question-words and point me to the wifi password. (Special thanks to the lady at Sir Coffee who understood my extra-awful Wang lu zai nar?, and … Continue reading
Ma La Tong
Went out last night for a leaving party, one of our students is going to university and one of the teachers is finishing his contract and leaving for a new job. I’d forgotten how much of expat life is leaving parties … Continue reading
A Retrospective of My Chinese Bathrooms
Remember my Yantai bathroom with no hot water? Remember my Beijing bathroom with the electrical outlet in the shower? Yeah, I haven’t exactly had the greatest luck with Chinese bathrooms. Two nights ago, I had a little trouble sleeping and … Continue reading
“Call The Midwife” Memoir Trilogy Offers More Poplar Details For TV Fans
I wrote some more about how great Call The Midwife is, specifically about the memoir this time. The popular BBC show Call The Midwife tells the story of a young nurse, Jenny Lee, and her fellow midwives at Nonnatus House. If … Continue reading
And Another Reason Your Drinking Game Is Statistically Flawed
Went out for beers with my coworkers tonight. I like the guys I’m working with, and we went to a lovely bar by the river, where I ruined everyone’s enjoyment of bu shi (the Chinese drinking game where you guess the … Continue reading
Book Tour: The Zombie Truth
In The Zombie Truth, by Vincent St. Vincent, students in Florida start to notice that some kind of evil is spreading, whether it’s random violence on the news, or a strangely aggressive ex-boyfriend. The Zombie Truth was a rare book where … Continue reading
Yeah, But Just Wait ‘Til We Raise Our Legions
We got a new guy at work today and we were in the office chatting about what we did before coming to Yangzhou. I’d forgotten this part about expat life, how it’s already time to say goodbye to one person … Continue reading
The Lost Concerto
After the suspicious drowning death of her husband and the unsolved murder of her best friend, Sofia, Maggie O’Shea doesn’t seem like the luckiest action heroine around. She kind of wants to stay home, drink too much wine, and play her … Continue reading
Shepherd
The other day, I had a new student called Shepherd. I always ask my kids how they chose their English names, for every mumbled explanation that it was assigned in primary school English class, there’s a great story about identity and personality. Shepherd … Continue reading
Everybody Rise
Everybody Rise is a lifestyle-porn New York adventure with a likeable protagonist, a middle-class girl pretending to the world of deb balls and multimillion-dollar getaway cottages. I love lifestyle and manners novels, with a blatant escapist love for the gorgeous, the exclusive and … Continue reading
