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Joburgers absolutely love a shopping mall. There are hundreds of them across the city and range from the mega-sized malls like Sandton City and Mall of Africa to smaller retail clusters serving locals in individual neighbourhoods. Malls seem to be the default setting for daily life: where you meet, eat, run errands, and sometimes simply exist. Mall life hasn't always been the way in Joburg. As the city’s economic centre of gravity shifted northwards over the past few decades,

There's something about being locked outside your own apartment building in the pissing rain because the security guard has gone AWOL that makes you question all of your life choices. Constantly having to rely on other people just to let you in and out of your own home is a uniquely Joburg problem and one of the many reasons why living in this city is far from effortless. I'm in a venting kind of mood and want to give a realistic and balanced view of what my life is like here

I’ve been living in Joburg for 6 weeks now and I realise that I haven’t taken many photos of the city. As someone who likes to capture and share the most insignificant details of my life on social media, this probably feels almost suspicious to my small Instagram following. But the reason is simple: Joburg is not photogenic. Yes, there are some exceptions - the tree-lined streets that explode with green and the carefully curated cool of 44 Stanley where we can briefly cosplay

I've spent the majority of the past week in Johannesburg in bed with a tooth infection and a low mood. Trying to workout whether I'm depressed or just decompressing. I realised that in London, feeling like your deteriorating from some kind of Victorian wasting disease often came with severe bouts of FOMO. Here, there is nowhere to rush to - the city continues to hum outside while I'm horizontal and unsure of whether I'm healing or in decline. The irony is that I've been sayin

Everyone seems to have an opinion about going out at night in Joburg, and they all involve a warning. Don't do this, don't go there, don't stay too late. I'm usually a stickler for the rules but let me tell you emigrating is not for faint hearted and I needed to blow off some steam. As I'm writing this, its Monday evening and I've just about recovered from a weekend that was that can only be described as a two day bender. Before I arrived here, I assumed that I'd be obligated

And by that I mean - I assumed moving countries would come with more sense of momentum. New routines, immediate stories, a bit of a narrative reshape. Instead it's been quiet mornings, daily rituals of going to familiar coffee shops and supermarkets and a lot of time that doesn't seem to be rushing anywhere. Not a bad time, just uneventful and the kind of days that don't Instagram well. This is probably more noticeable because last week I was in the French Alps (I appreciate