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Category Archives: Navel Gazing

A Tale of Two Weddings

Nothing sums up my experience of being an expat quite like the two weddings I’ve attended this year.
The first wedding, held in early May, took place in a tiny village in rural south Yunnan Province, not far from the Lao border. All of the food from the wedding came from rice and vegetables grown in [...]

Posted 13 August 2009 † matt_schiavenza § ‡ Comments (0) °

Metric System

I’ve spent five and a half years of my life living in countries that use the metric system, which isn’t such a remarkable accomplishment when you consider that the United States is the only country left in the world that doesn’t. I have a lot of strong opinions about why I find our continued use [...]

Posted 13 February 2009 † matt_schiavenza § Daily Life ‡ Comments (4) °

Out of the Music Loop

Every time I go back to the US, about once a year or so, I realize how much further I’m out of the loop. One way is in money; a lot of my old friends are doing well financially. About a year ago, I went to dinner with three friends from high school, two of [...]

Posted 09 January 2009 † matt_schiavenza § Music ‡ Comments (7) °

Blogging and Formal Writing

Since graduating from college in 2004, the vast majority of writing that I’ve done–excluding e-mails–has been in this and other blogs. Overall, I’ve probably written enough words to fill a couple of books, an amazing fact when considering that I’ve seldom spent more than a half-hour composing any individual entry.
In August of last year, I [...]

Posted 08 January 2009 † matt_schiavenza § ‡ Comments (1) °

2008 Retrospective

I remember a scene in the early 1990s film City Slickers in which Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby are horseback riding slowly through the desert. They were having a discussion about the best and worst days of their life, but couldn’t agree on how to measure it. Daniel Stern’s character said that you [...]

Posted 31 December 2008 † matt_schiavenza § Reminiscence ‡ Comments (0) °

Things That Bore Me

In homage to my friend Andrew, here are some things that bore me:
1. Hearing about Simpsons episodes
2. The board game “Risk”- This should be up my alley, but isn’t.
3. Any movie by Wes Anderson or Cameron Crowe- There are other directors I could include, but these two are atop the list.
4. Non-American sports
5. U2, and [...]

Posted 17 September 2008 † matt_schiavenza § ‡ Comments (2) °