11 Comments
Jun 9, 2021Liked by Emily Ding

Friend here HAHA

Doing the same old: straddling the life of a professional working in finance while pursuing my craft in music and songwriting.

It's been a 13 year journey thus far and something has got to give, I'm just not sure what. I don't know if I'll ever be sure!

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Sep 10, 2020Liked by Emily Ding

Hi Emily :)

I have been a bit of a nomad the past three years, and the pandemic caught me in an odd situation. I was attempting to live in Italy, but hadn't yet obtained residence, so I was spending 90 days outside the country. Rather than returning home to the USA, I decided to stay in Georgia for 3 months with my partner. While there, all the borders closed, and we received ominous warnings from our respective State departments (she's German) that we should return home immediately, or risk being stranded with no international support.

We took their advice, and I returned to the US and she to Europe. We've been separated 6.5 months now. I'm living with my family here, helping to take care of my mother, and working on some small contract based online gigs to keep a bit of income. My main passion however, is my Road to Rome project (roadtorome.org) That has, of course, been on hold with the pandemic, but we've had some small amounts of progress even so. Our bed frames have arrived, my partner has gotten her Italian residence, and some of the paperwork we needed for our apartment there has been completed. As soon as I'm able to return to Italy, we'll be ordering the mattresses for the bunks and opening the doors for guests in compliance with the Covid restrictions on such establishments.

Thanks so much for sharing your own stories and writings with us, and for giving us this space to communicate.

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Aug 31, 2020Liked by Emily Ding

Hey Emily!

It's Jamie (from Mongoose days, but now in England). I've loved your writing since our mag days, and have been really enjoying your newsletters :) Lockdown has been weird - I really love being at home and on my own, so isolation mostly hasn't been too much of a problem for me (and I know I'm coming from a great deal of privilege to be able to say that). It's only just starting to get to me now, about 6 months on, mainly because I don't think I'll be able to go back to M'sia this year to see family and friends.

I've been doing loads of baking and knitting during the lockdown. And trying to maintain a regular yoga practice again (until I stupidly managed to somehow injure myself and am not out of action for a bit). I'm also trying to lose 10 lbs (hah) but all the baking - and subsequent eating - has been making that harder than usual haha! And... writing, working, editing on revisions for my PhD - though in truth, that usually means more teeth gnashing and hair pulling than actual writing!

Hope you're all keeping well and safe! xox

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Aug 30, 2020Liked by Emily Ding

Hey Emily,

Greetings from Tamil Nadu. I'm a video Journalist and I have put on hold all the short documentary projects that were lined up. But the pause also helps me in finishing all the pending books I was to read. Currently reading 'India's War- The making of Modern South Asia' by Srinath Raghavan.

I'm also trying to translate a Tamil novel into English. Hope that materialises soon.

A lil bit of painting, origami, gardening basically anything that can distract me from pandemic blues.

I live your writing, and your insta feed. Your newsletters are lovely and it's like a foreign window that's a refreshing change from what usually comes my way. Keep em coming! 💜

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Aug 29, 2020Liked by Emily Ding

Howdy Emily and greetings from Alabama.

Before the pandemic, I was helping to run a Thailand tour company (thailandetcetera.com). By the first week of March, every client had canceled and we knew it was going to be a hard year; assuming we could even survive it.

Since then, I've been at my family's farm in rural Alabama where I began building a web development company (webniyom.com). My career until the tour company had been in tech and I wasn't sure what else to do.

Since I wasn't able to travel, I went looking around the internet for good travel stories. (I was introduced to you by Flory Leow (furochan.substack.com).) I read a few articles on your website and tried to add you to my RSS reader. Since you don't have an RSS feed, I figured your newsletter would be the next best thing. I haven't been disappointed.

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