J. Maarten Troost disguises as a travel writer, but underneath that thin veneer of well-composed sentence structures and impressively large vocabulary hides a pessimist, racist, and otherwise deplorable person. It doesn’t take long before Troost remarks about smog, noise, phlegm, and pee — observations that are repeated every chapter. And then the SARS and eating-dog […]
So much negativity on the internet, and even Reddit has it’s subreddits that mock negativity, like awfuleverything, wewantplates, antiMLM, facepalm, menwritingwomen, idiotsincars and insanepeoplefacebook. Even interesting subs like relationships or stepparents are full of stories of how ungodly life is. It’s momentarily fun to browse these, but they do eat your brain, until negativity is […]
Even though I initially thought of it as a gimmick, I’ve come to really love the Oriental Pearl Tower. Built on the corner of the Huangpu River, it’s visible from many places in the city — sometimes as a surprise, like accidental eye contact. And every time you see it, it whispers you: “You are […]
If I ever have children, I hope they’ll read Albertalli’s books. There’s the story of the not-so-openly gay Simon, the overweight Molly, and her lesbian parents, and her sister who’s dating a pan-sexual girl. And these books show everyone’s struggles and thoughts and considerations. “The Upside of Unrequited”, like “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda“, […]
“Here, the curve of the earth did not hide it, it revealed it.” Rendezvous with Rama describes the weird world of inside Rama, and it’s a real trip through the eyes and minds of its explorers. In this sense it reminds me of the video game Myst; a world that comes without explanation, without purpose […]
Construction workers sleep with six per room in bunk beds in modified shipping containers, and often live hundreds of kilometers away from family, and perhaps see their wife and children once a year. I guess life’s stripped down to the mere basics. Work, eat, sleep, accompanied by conversations. And the harder the work, the deeper […]
Without exception, the demographics of my twenty-eight marketing students are: Aged 18-22 year old Female Lives in Songjiang, Shanghai Studies at an art academy You’d think that these four points precisely describe a group of people, but we did an exercise in the class today and it turns out they mostly disagree on life topics, […]
Janet, 1970s Janet teaches about foreign-invested joint ventures in China at Fudan University. At the start of her lecture, she introduces herself starting from present to past. She now travels around the world advising big multinationals — but her roots lie in 70s rural China. Janet tells us how she’d perceive an apple to be […]
Today’s the first day of the new semester today at Shanghai Institute of Visual Art. I’m glad we’re back to offline teaching (despite overcoming challenges to teach online), because the quality is just higher and we — students and me — can handle more content together. We started Marketing Strategy with a class about writing, […]
I’ve driven a NIO ES6 for a few thousand kilometers in between Shanghai & Suzhou, across highways, parking garages, and little alleys. I’m not an expert car reviewer, but I’ve driven (not owned) other full-electric and hybrid cars. Last updated, September 17th 2020 Pros of the NIO ES6: The NIO ES6 is big. Especially the […]