For the most part, I’m pretty calm about living in China, but every once in a while I remember how completely bizarre the whole thing is - for example, it’s just odd that successfully using western union was an occasion for confidence boosting and a genuine sense of accomplishment.
After six months, doing things like that […]
Ok, if you’re teaching ESL and you’ve just finished exams and have two hours to burn with a class just before a holiday, I had better luck showing E.T. than I’ve ever had with a film in class before (note to any coworkers reading: I obtained appropriate permission to show a movie, complete with an […]
Ok. I was down with the blood head, the pictures of dead people, and the actual dead people, but this “starving dog displayed as art” thing goes too far for me.
Guillermo ‘Habacuc’ Vargas purportedly captured a stray dog off the streets and used it in an art installation thusly:
Vargas tethered the animal without food and […]
Ok, the Philippines have some of the best monsters I’ve come across in a while, with the coolest monster names ever. Here are my favorites (this is all from skimming wikipedia which is thankfully unblocked at the moment).
First up, and perhaps most famous, the aswang. “Aswang” is a bit of a catch-all name that refers […]
God almighty. Next week is finals week, and I’m limping toward the finish line. I’m tired, my students are tired, we’re all sick of each other, and I’m really ready to have a break. Today my IELTS class did a unit on water conservation, and somehow the discussion drifted from ways to conserve water to […]
Ok, this got brought up in casual conversation and it perplexed me almost as badly as turtle sex used to: how do bats poop? They’re hanging upside down, so how do they do their business without getting it all over their adorable fuzzy little persons?
Here is the answer, and here is the source:
Roosting upside down […]
This Friday I dropped my digital camera in a toilet. And not just any toilet - a nasty, used squatter toilet. And not just any squatter - it was the Castle Bar squatter. This is Castle Bar:
Say what you want about me - I can be a gutless wimp about a lot of things, but […]