As You (and I) Like It: free summer events in New York
Yesterday I managed to snag the New York equivalent to Charlie Bucket’s golden ticket. Rather than gaining me admission to a weird and wonderful Chocolate Factory, the pair of tickets I obtained...
View ArticleNew York vs London: did the best city win the Olympic bid?
In July 2005, as Prime Minister Tony Blair and Lord Sebastian Coe were patting each other on the back having secured the 2012 Olympic Games for London, Mayor Bloomberg licked his wounds and tried to...
View ArticleShould the summer of shootings put expats off America?
This has, tragically, been a summer of shootings in America. The news that a gunman was at large around the Empire State Building last Friday morning rocked the international press, and commentators...
View ArticleBeat the heat of New York City’s streets
New York is a sweltering urban jungle in the midsummer heat. Tarmac streets shimmer in the midday sun, and warm garbage smells permeate the air. Anyone who is anyone flees from Manhattan melt in June,...
View ArticleWhy impoverished Spanish children made a meal of it this summer
While Spain celebrated welcoming a record 7.9 million cheery tourists to the country this July, an increase of 2.9 per cent on the previous year, the summer season wasn’t quite so idyllic for those...
View ArticleExpats come home to roost after long summer holiday
This is always a curious time of the year. As shoals of holidaymakers leave the island to resume their busy lives elsewhere, we expats offer up a sigh of relief because for us too it heralds the...
View ArticleToronto is the best city to watch the World Cup
Moving away from England, often arrogantly referred to as the ‘home of football’ despite it also being the hovel of international underachievement, I was concerned that I would be alienated from my...
View ArticleFive signs that winter is coming to Qatar
I measure Qatar’s changing seasons by the temperature of our bath water. Specifically, I know that when the water coming out of the cold tap is cool enough to bath a baby (rather than hot enough to...
View ArticleDear Britain: if you can’t fry prawns on a manhole cover, it’s not a heatwave
Image c/o shanghaiist.com To be a true Asian expat, you must allow two meteorological realities to co-exist at the same time. One that characterises UK weather as habitually dramatic, climatically...
View ArticleWhy expats in China never shop in China
Wanted: Occupant for new travel cot Right now, my parents’ home in England has the look of an newly opened and suddenly abandoned creche. A pristine and empty cot sits in my old bedroom. There’s a baby...
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