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A collection of 14 posts

LES ARMOIRIES DE PARIS

LES ARMOIRIES DE PARIS

Place: de la République Paris has a byline. It has been in use since the 1300s, variously carved or tiled into buildings in characters now weathered and indistinct. From Latin, it means "tossed but not sunk” in the sense of a boat being slapped sideways in rough water. It had

Moai, Hanga Roa and Welcomes

Moai, Hanga Roa and Welcomes

Place: Hanga Roa Fat globs of rain slap against the multi-coloured fishing boats at rest in the tiny harbour. They don’t catch much fish here, it is either flown from Santiago, or frozen and shipped on the boat that arrives once a fortnight, the day the stores have stock

Thoughts on running

Thoughts on running

This morning I clocked a thirteen km run as part of my goal to see if I can run 150 km in a month. This is absurd to me. I'm not a runner, I've never been a runner and, prior to six months ago, the thought of running more than

Wandering Soles

Wandering Soles

I threw out my shoes today. This was not an easy decision, nor one rendered simple through the enforced time pressures that come with the intersection of an end of lease and the start of transcontinental wanderings. Skipped over in the flurry of labelling, stay, or, go, with red and

A World Expo

He will win the next hand. I know this because from where I stand, under the soft blue glow of four enormous Chinese characters, set in neon, I can see his cards, both of their cards. There are two others here, standing in this crisp Shanghai evening, and they are

La Camioneta

Outside, there is an apple orchard on a cracked hillock of sunburnt clay. The trees are loosely arranged, bent sideways from the salty winds that blow across the peninsula each afternoon. The fruit on these trees is small, and is distributed sparsely amidst the splintered branches. There is nothing on

When the Levee Breaks

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When the Levee Breaks

You notice the billboards first. They cluster around highway exits, illuminated in silver-grey floodlight, thrust hundreds of feet above this flat, wet country. The journey toward the Panhandle is marked by photographs of gleaming seniors, their full-service retirement villages and their for-profit hospitals, and by the slow transition as the

Adalbertstrasse

Adalbertstrasse

Early morning Kreuzberg, blowing with the late night detritus of winter weekend Berlin. The police huddle in a circle outside the chicken stand, nodding in unison to the background hum of sirens and the mutter of the radios in their belts, which spew a stream numbers and street names to

The White Light of Amman

The White Light of Amman

The taxi driver, Hassan, uses my garbled explanation of where I think I need to be to apply an educated guess. He drops me at the side of the road between a shop selling sewing machines and another yellowed manuscripts covered in barely decipherable characters. Some of these are not

Seishun Juu-hachi Kippu

Seishun Juu-hachi Kippu

The Seishun Juu-hachi Kippu (Youth 18 Ticket or 青春18きっぷ) is a little-known JR ticket that is a boon for the budget conscious traveler. It is especially great for those already living in Japan on Instructor or Student visas, who are unable to qualify for its bigger brother, the unlimited JR

Sarabat

‘Chee cheong fan, one please,’ I ask the lady who is stooped, scowling, behind the counter. ‘Pork. You can, ah?’ she retorts. ‘No problem’ ‘Chilli? Dai, ah. Dai dai.’ ‘Please, and a coffee. Kopi o. Siew dai, okay?’ ‘Can. You sit, ah. I bring’ and she smiles as she takes

Mobile Love

A stream of Daft Punk helmeted motorcyclists zip past, the single traffic light reflected as a jagged lipstick red smear in their mirrored visages. They lean hard to avoid the bus. Kick up dust. I give my window a half-hearted tug, but it is wedged open, and the tiny half

We Can Be Heroes

We Can Be Heroes

A thousand windows of a hundred hotels face me all at once, black, punctuated by a flickering pulse on identical ceilings, blue, in synchronised media fulfilment. All I can see are his legs, thin, with tight black jeans and simple white shoes. A bare wooden floor. The ornamental façade of

A handful of Pakora

A handful of Pakora

The station in Jalgaon is small in comparison to the Victorian grandeur of Chattrapati Shivaji in Mumbai. Three sleepy platforms, attendants sprawled head to toe against the dusty outbuildings while the pakora vendors heat oil for the first batch of the day. Even the flies seem slow and disinterested. The