Category: culture
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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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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…
Grammar and Tones 