Apprentice Ethnographer

2010 – the year I began to challenge expectations

I am sitting here in a friend’s conservatory at 11am on the first day of 2020 listening to the rain fall on the plastic roof. As I gaze out through the windows I can’t escape this strange sense of dissociation. The light has this yellow glow I am not used to and the sky is a grey haze which I understand is smoke from the ongoing Australian bushfires. I don’t want these climate changes to be our…

Writing Bootcamp Day 4

I bet all of you were thinking “is she ever actually going to write anything?”. Well today I actually did write something and weirdly enough it came in the middle of an unproductive day. I’d had a terrible night’s sleep and so didn’t actually make it into the office until around 10am. At 11am I was convinced to ditch my attempts to get stuck into work for a coffee with a friend and colleague.…

Writing Bootcamp Day 2

Okay so not a lot of writing has been done today. Call me the queen of procrastination… No seriously I expect to hear Your Majesty at least once today! In all seriousness though, While I might have been procrastinating, this is something that your average ADHDer really struggles with. Everyone neurotypical does too, but ADHD seems to just add to the marble collection. I have somewhat perfected…

Come Drink With Me (King Hu, 1966): Chinese Opera in a transition

Discuss the role that traditional Chinese culture (focus on one specific aspect) plays in martial arts films. You should rely on a close analysis of one scene from any of the films we watched in class (e.g., Jing wumen, Come Drink with me, Huang Feihong, A Chinese Ghost Story).

In this paper I shall endeavour to explore the way in which traditional Chinese culture functions as the foundation on…

It has been interesting following the sudden influx of academics into Myanmar, both for research and teaching purposes.  I know that they have been lurking about the fringes since far before I began to dip my toes into the waters here but it seems like this year there is a real boom.  Perhaps it is just that I arrived here during the wet season which is a time that a lot of ex-pats plan extended…

That which we call a rose…

Well those of you who know your Shakespeare will be able to guess at the topic of this blog post: the politics of naming. It has been floating about my brain on and off for the last 6 months or so, and even more infrequently prior to that. I felt like it was time to cough it all up however as just last week we had to write about our names and naming in my Writing & Thinking Workshop and today…

On the Veneration of Elders

I first planned to write the post weeks ago back when it was all so fresh in my mind and I was busy reading Khin Myo Chit’s book Buddhist Way of Life in Myanmar and Other Articles.  Of course as always I managed to get myself sidetracked onto other things and now I can’t quite remember the details I had planned to put here.  I’ve signed myself up for AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month) which is kind…

I should preface this with the following statement:  My name is Keziah and I am a control-freak.  It may not seem to be all that relevant, but trust me when it comes to the stresses of being in the field this is the main source of my problems.  At the moment there are so many things that feel as if they are going wrong, and the stress over my visa extension has led to many sleepless nights.  This…

I never really thought much about my gender growing up.  Sure I was a girl, but I was never “one of the girls”.  I spent most of my socialising with boys rather than girls.  The girls were all busy doing stupid boring stuff like playing with dolls or playing house.  This isn’t to say that I didn’t do these on occasion, but it usually involved me playing the husband/father role which only added to…

It was bound to happen sooner or later…

Well this is my first weekly summary, of course I am bound to forget a few things and jump about the place wildly as things come to be, but that’s my nature really.  I had planned to visit the Shwedagon Pagoda today seeing as I haven’t managed to visit it at all this year.  Unfortunately I woke up around 7am with a horribly upset stomach and ended up spending the day at home feeling sorry for…

Feeding Monday’s born

So I’ve decided that writing these epic 3,000 – 5,000 word posts is kind of defeating the purpose of putting these notes online.  They are ending up being too large too often for the casual reader to find time to read.  As much as I try, I struggle to write any less so I have made a decision to cut back on these posts.  I will still write my daily fieldnote entries of everything I have done for…

Well I haven’t been so good at posting these blog posts up here but I have been writing them have no fear.  My internet here is based on mobile 3G data which costs me 3c/MB.  That has been a big change for me, adapting to life without regular internet access.  Considering how much of my life in NZ I spend online this has been a big mental shift for me.  Of course there have been many other mental…

Well here we are, my last day in New Zealand for almost a year. In so many ways I am eager to get going, to just get on that flight and get there, but then at the same time I am also terrified. I’m not really going anywhere new, aside from Hong Kong, but the whole purpose is just such a huge departure from the norm. I always throw people when they ask where I’m going for a year (believe me that…

Here I sit, seat 21F on flight NZ674 from Dunedin to Auckland. After all that preparation and all that waiting I am finally heading off for my major fieldwork period. In many ways this will be kind of the pivotal part of my thesis. It is here that I will gather the data I need. If I fail to ask the right questions or record the right observations then all the analysis and quality writing in the…

And the Countdown begins…

Well this weekend has certainly been an interesting blend of ups and downs.  On Friday I finally had word that my fieldwork visa has been approved.  Although I am still waiting on the official correspondence, this was fantastic news.  Having given notice on my flat, sold all my furniture and moved out into CJ’s room while he is overseas I was beginning to panic.  What if the visa didn’t come…