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I would love to join your dinner party
When my mate wants to hang out with me and asks if I wanna come over on Thursday for a pizza, I might either say “sure!”, or “no, I gotta floss my cat”. And no offence would be taken. After all, when I invite my mate for something, he might…
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A true friend every day
This post needs a big disclaimer: Like so many of my other posts, this is just my very subjective and biased personal interpretation of the various conversations and experiences I have had in China, as well as with my wife and extended family. I’m not attempting to be objective or…
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Awakening to the sound of waves
Beijing in winter sucks. As beautiful as spring, summer and autumn are, as it approaches the Chinese New Year (typically in January), it gets so cold in Beijing that I don’t want to leave the house any more. I am not the only one with this opinion. Lots of Chinese…
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Music in my ears
For a teenage boy in Germany (and I guess many other parts in the world), there are really just two possible dream careers: football player and rock star. I was firmly in the latter camp. Then like today, and really like all my life, I’ve had an unreasonable aversion to…
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Don’t forget the toilet paper
We were on our babymoon. The last time we went on a holiday to a beautiful sunny place to have a good time as couple without a baby sucking up all the attention. We had gone to the beautiful Chinese island of Hainan, where we stayed in the middle of…
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I, they, everyone
I’m sure there is an alternative universe in which my wife is an artist. A fashion designer, or a painter, or at the very least an architect instead of a civil engineer. But her parents “suggested” her to study something that would get her a “proper” job. More specifically, they…
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What’s worse than pineapple?
My company has a fantastic perk: twice a year the company rents a big villa in Sommer nice place, in summer somewhere warm and sunny, in somewhere you can ski. Everyone in the whole company can then go there for a week to “work” remotely, although “team building” at the…
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What to do on a Sunday morning
I grew up a Christian. From early on I went to Sunday school and to all sorts of kids activities organised by our church. Our church was very friendly, lively and social, so by the time I was a teenager, most of my friends were from church, and most of…
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When Little Orange meets Little Bread Roll
Names come and go like fashion. Baby names that are really popular and modern today will sound like typical mommy and daddy names in 25 years from now. In 60 years they will sound like granny names. Today’s Noahs and Olivias will be tomorrow’s Michaels and Jessicas and will be…
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Lost in translation
“The best way to learn a language is to find a girlfriend (or boyfriend)“. I’ve have heard this statement so many times that it makes me tired. I do see where the people saying this are coming from: learning a foreign language is hard, and most people in the English-speaking…
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The irony of German humour
I poured my three-year-old a glass of orange juice and put it in front of him. He: Can I drink that? Me: Yes, it’s for you! He took a sip, then took another bite of it ham sandwich, and then asked again: He: Daddy, can I drink that? Me: Yes,…
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Chopsticks and forks
I was so ignorant. Whenever I went to a Chinese restaurant, the waiter would politely ask if we wanted to have some chopsticks. Everyone, would smile in a slightly bemused we and politely decline. Then we’d each eat our sweet-and-sour crispy duck with fork and knife, like everyone in the…
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Common sense vs communist sense
You develop a new common sense when living in China long enough. I call it communist sense. I came to China as a researcher and got promoted to professor in 2019 (“Assistant Professor” as my wife keeps pointing out, not to be confused with a “Professor’s assistant” though!). I left…
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Raising a trilingual child
When we were expecting our first child, I read, like many parents-to-be, lots of books on how to raise kids. Most of them largely agreed with what I thought was common sense, but one book that I particularly liked was Raising A Bilingual Child by Barbara Zurer Pearson. It explained…
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The writing on the wall
This post is gonna be dark. Germany, 1933 On 30th January 1933, the NSDAP – the Nazis – rose to power in Germany. The NSDAP was known to be an antisemitic fascist party – but the speed at which they implemented their deadly ideology must have been unbelievable. In March,…
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The moment you realise they’re serious
I moved together with my wonderful wife to China in 2017. The first weeks we stayed in a hotel in the university district of Beijing until we sorted out our accommodation. In the neighbourhood there was a small shopping mall with lots of little noodle and snack shops that was…
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Say it in German
I recently bought my son a new book. It’s a book about a wolf and a sheep. The wolf invites the sheep for dinner – but the sheep is the dinner. Of course, it’s a children’s book for 3-year-olds, so the wolf soon realises that he actually likes the sheep…
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Traveller’s curse
You get born in Commoncity in Averageland. You grow up in Commoncity, you meet a girl (or boy) in and from Commoncity, get married and get children. Your children grow up in Commoncity, get married and get children in Commoncity. You die in Commoncity. Common, average life can be so…
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Get off your high horse
I moved to China with my wife just after we got married in 2017. Until then, I had always taken great pride in the fact that I learnt the local language in all the places I had been living in before. German I’m fluent in German. That’s easy, because I…
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This blog is not for you
This blog is not for you. It is not for anyone. This blog is just for myself. It is an opportunity for myself to reflect on a life that was defined by a seemingly never-ending odyssey of moves around the world, immersing myself in other cultures, and experiencing the good…
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Grammar and Tones 