My newest expat+HAREM collaboration is live: Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball turned violent in Prague when attendees were not allowed to dance.
Tag Archive: Culture
Whites Only?
A She Writes blog post by an African-American woman calling for “White Ambassadors To Help Me Cross Over” provokes a blog series, in which this piece is one of seven reactions.
Intertextuality and Irony in Lady Gaga’s PAPARAZZI
My submission for this week’s www.RedRoom.com themed blog competition on “What is your favorite pop song?”
On homosociality, American masculinties, and violence against women in DEADGIRL
Delving back into my much-loved world of cultural anthropology via the horror film “Deadgirl” and its social significance.
Why?
An explosive encounter with a racist Czech granny prompts me to once again consider why it is I continue to live in Prague.
Transitions Abroad Essay Competition Winner
Dear Readers, Just a quick note to let you know that the essay I wrote about life in Prague as an expat placed as a runner-up winner in the Transitions Abroad essay competition. The article, Living in Prague as an Expat: The Times They Are a-Changin’, will be on their website for the next year….
Woe Is Me
Exploring the various facets of women’s literature and where my first novel, AMERICAN MONSTERS, fits into the debate.
What’s In A Name?
The name on my birth certificate reads Sezin Piotruszewicz Menekshe Rajandran. I was named with the same initials as my grandfather on my father’s side, SPM Rajandran. He died just months before I was born, and in fact my mom was so upset at his funeral that her amniotic sack tore and she might have…
Inside Outsider: An expat+HAREM Guest Blog
My first ever guest blog has gone live at expat+HAREM, a neo-cultural hub for expats and voyagers. http://www.expatharem.com/2010/02/25/the-inside-outsider/
The Local Expat
When I was a single twenty-something living in Spain it upset me to no end how difficult it was to make and integrate with a group of Spanish locals. I couldn’t understand why locals wouldn’t want to make a foreign friend and learn about someone’s life outside of Spain, in the same way that I…
Rachel Tension
Regardless of whether or not a nation or people think they have racial tension within their borders or society, they do. Many nations (and people) will say that they don’t have problems of race, but rather problems of culture, or foreigners or socio-economic status. However this is far from true and racism exists on so…
Food of The Gods: The Ethiopan Experience
My introduction to Ethiopia and its cuisine was in a Rastafarianism, Reggae, and the African Diaspora course I took in university. What struck me the most was learning that Ethiopia had never been colonized, and is one of the few African nations never to have been. Not for lack of trying, mind you. The Italians…
Inside the Box
You know how in movie theatres they’ll assign you seats as a default on your ticket, and in most places in the world it means nothing? Well, not in Prague. Here, they assign you seats and you are expected to stick by them. Even if the theatre is totally empty. True story: if you happen…
Reality, Prague Style
Reality for sale! Come get your reality! 2 bedrooms, one kitchen! Reality for sale or rent! No joke: The biggest grammar error I’ve ever seen in my life is the fact that in Prague, all of the realty offices actually say “reality” instead. Maxima Reality, Prague Reality, European Reality Services, Atrium Reality, Albion Reality, and…
Nibble Nibble Here, Nibble Nibble There
A strange local phenomenon: Czech people eat in public all the time. Not just normal eat-on-the-go types of foods like gyros, ice cream or pizza. You see them at tram and metro stops nibbling on peices of bread. Not French bread, or croissants, or even decent healthy-looking bread. It’s always the cheap, nasty Czech bread…
Satanic Inspiration: The Devil's Bible
Here’s the link to my first ever published article: http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2007/09/12/satanic-inspiration.php
Lost and Found
As always, somewhat obsessed, I have a new fascination with the TV series Lost. I know, I know. It’s sorta cliche by now, having a thing for Lost. But my thing is this: I read an article about how Lost is really some version of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. You know, the Gunslinger chasing…
A New Woman
Most people after they move into a new flat and area will explore and wander around to get their bearings. What did I do? I went and got tattooed. Twice. It was a bit nervewracking, going to get inked on a public transportation system I have but a fragile grasp of. But I did it…
Adaptation
They say that adaptation is one of nature’s most painful of processes, and for the seasoned traveller, it is no different. After having not only travelled, but lived in many different places, one begins to realise that it is impossible to be the same person everywhere. Behaviours that are acceptable in America are not acceptable…
The Learning Curve
Duckie’s learning curve is not that great. She kept her distance from the doorways after I threw things at her to scare her away, but today she is boldly strutting right back into our house. This got me thinking about learning curves in general and yesterday’s massacre at Virginia Tech. It seems that something horrible…
300 Ways To Tell The Difference Between Coercion and Consent
After having watched 300 twice now in mixed company, I continue to be disturbed, perturbed and supremely irritated by the fact that men still don’t seem to understand the difference between coercion and consent when it comes to sexual intercourse. 300 has a very distressing scene where The Spartan Queen offers herself to a Councilman…
There's A Kind Of Hush
Yesterday I awoke to a crazy calm. The kind of Stephen King quiet that means a monstrous clown awaits its drain birth upon my entrance into the bathroom or the coming alive of my paintings to pull me into some strange world from which I will never re-emerge. A quiet. A crazy calm quiet. The…
300 Thumbs Up
Frank Miller, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love the ferocious warriors of your vivid dream portraits. I love their translations into film, the roaring soldiers of the past or future noir. I love your goddess women who float with violent beauty above the men with swords for hearts, loving…
Chicken Is Not Pork and Why Istanbul Is Like A Bad Boyfriend
I was beginning to think that this dismal city has sucked the life out of my cooking because nothing I spend a lot of time making comes out that good (whoa, sounds eerily like what I said about my short-lived newspaper experience…), or comes out just plain bad. Until I had a drunken epiphany very…
Turkish Lessons
They say you can’t know Turkey or understand anything about its people without having your job threatened by management or by getting fired. Today I just learned the latter Turkish lesson as I was fired today from my job at the Turkish Daily News. At first, it stung. That was pride fucking with my head,…
A Sinister Sunday
Sunday’s are no longer a day of quiet leisure and relaxing with my secret pleasures of ‘The OC’ and ‘One Tree Hill.’ In lieu of catching the only work shuttle to the Hurriyet Media Tower where I wile my days away trapped on the top floor like the princess I used to imagine I was,…
How Cell Phones Have Changed the World and Why This Is A Bad Thing
You are sitting on your lunch break, or someone’s lunch break, having a nice visit and out of nowhere, “Toodle doodle doooooo. Toodle doodle doooo.” Yes, the insistent ring of the cell phone which people seem loath to not answer. We are not far from Pavlov’s Dog these days, no siree. They answer the phone…
The New Life, a novel by Orhan Pamuk 1997
My experience with The New Life began with a hiss as I walked through the bookshop holding it in my hands. I’ve been hissed at for lots of things, but never for the mere act of a book in my hands, and the emotions that arose in me at that moment were not unlike the…
WolfWoman and the Four Bears go to the Visa Office
WolfWoman awoke in the loving arms of her Mate, but she was uneasy. There was a feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her the days to come would be strange, but she did not know why. Today was the day when she and her Mate would finally get started on the legal residence…
on how much 'hostel' sucked and they don't make scary movies like they used to
since my ear feels like an evil fairy with a blowtorch lives inside and wants to liquify my brain, i am trying to keep a low profile. an earache is just the worst. i have no appetite, no balance, and occasionally what feels like a nail driving through the side of my head. which leads…
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