Hi, this is Jean Snow, and welcome to this second edition of my M31 newsletter -- which I'm creatively titling "October 2025." I'll be sharing the latest on all my activities, like I did last time -- and I think there's plenty new to share. In recent weeks I enjoyed visits to both Tokyo and my hometown of Moncton, New Brunswick in Canada, which both helped re-energize me.

What's M31? It's a name I used close to two decades ago as my sort of publishing imprint/company label for the activities I was doing while I lived in Tokyo, and I've decided to revive it. It's simply inspired by my birthday of May 31. The logo you see above was designed by Ian Lynam, and is part of a set of 31 logos he created for me back in the late 2000s, which I've decided to start re-using for this newsletter.

All the activities I organize in Shanghai have dedicated groups in WeChat, where you'll get the latest updates, and so please contact me to be added to any of them.

PauseTalk

Following a very enjoyable Vol. 98 at the end of August -- which for the first time (I think) was attended solely by women (pictured above left) -- I'm now readying the upcoming Vol. 99, which will take place on Thursday, October 23 at Bananafish Books. Based on the color scheme for the promo image, I'll refer to it as the "Halloween" edition (let's hope someone brings some treats -- although tricks are welcome as well).

Also, as I mentioned in the previous newsletter, Vol. 100 is also just around the corner, likely to happen in December, and at the last event I talked a bit about what I'd like to do to commemorate the milestone. I want to make a zine, something that I will actually print out copies of, to be handed out to attendees. As for the content of the zine, I'd like to invite anyone who has attended a PauseTalk in the past to contribute a page -- and this page can be made up of anything, whether imagery, photography, graphics, texts, etc. I'll start working on this in the coming weeks, and will share more updates on the PauseTalk website (and on my blog).

You'll find archives of past events on the PauseTalk website, which includes recaps for each session.

PechaKucha Night

We had a very busy September, with two PechaKucha Night events taking place, a first for the series in Shanghai. First, our Vol. 46 was held on Thursday, September 11 at Skyline Tower. I was unable to attend -- and do my regular hosting duties -- as it took place during my visit back home to Canada, but from all the feedback I got after the event, it was another terrific night of creative sharing. Then, we followed that up with our Vol. 47 (pictured above) on Tuesday, September 23 at the Shanghai West Bund Art Centre, as part of the S-Tron conference. This is the second year we are invited by S-Tron to organize a PechaKucha Night during their event, and it's nice in that it allows us to offer free entry to the event.

What's next? Our Vol. 48 is set for November 13, and we then have two big milestones for the series coming up. Our Vol. 49 (likely to be held in December) will be the 20th event George Lobo (my co-organizer) and I have produced since relaunching the series in 2023 (with Vol. 30), and then of course it will be our Vol. 50, which will happen in early 2026.

You can always check our Shanghai page on the official PechaKucha website to see the listings for the latest events.

FOTO5

Since the last edition of this newsletter, I launched the following themes: CHAOS, OUT OF PLACE, PATHS, PAINT, and TAPE (all links are to the posts I share on Bluesky). Pictured above, my contributions for the theme PAINT, which we did the week of September 22-28. For the OUT OF PLACE and PATHS sets, I shot them in Canada during my recent visit back home.

If you're interested in participating in the FOTO5 photo club, contact me so I can add you to the group on WeChat.

Shanghai Design Pins 📍

Here are some of the latest Shanghai Design Pins📍 that were shared in the group.

Shanghai Design Pins 📍 is a group on WeChat where we share design-related spots (and events) in Shanghai -- contact me to be added.

One More Thing

Most Friday nights we organize a casual "happy hour" at the studio (I work at Ubisoft's Shanghai studio), and that occasionally then expands to other spots in the city. Two weeks ago, after the studio drinks, some of us ended up hitting two spots in the Jing'an area: Bar Blanc, a cocktail bar I'd been curious about, and we then wandered to a nearby bar (also with a nice cocktail selection) called Zaishu Zaiye.

Pictured below from top left and then clockwise: the traditional "happy hour" spot at the studio, the scene at Bar Blanc, our cocktails at Zaishu Zaiye, the entrance to Zaishu Zaiye.

And that's it for this month. I was initially planning on sending these out at the start of every month, but since the start of October is China's "Golden Week" holiday, I decided to hold off a week. For more on me, you can alway have a look at my personal website (where I shared last month's newsletter, in case you missed it) -- I've been blogging since 1998 -- or for lighter stuff (and lots of movie reviews) you can follow me on Bluesky.