The somewhat disconnected ramblings of author KS Augustin

I’m only using this blog for the occasional note to myself and maybe some reviews. If you want to catch up with the latest, join me on Twitter!

Cookie was getting spayed today and, while The Wast and I were waiting at the vet’s for the operation to finish, two Chinese men walked in. One of the men wanted some medicine for his dog. The receptionist told them to wait while she got a vet. Here is a bit of their ensuing conversation:

Dog Owner: I was having some work done on my house and one of the workers was Vietnamese. My dog was so scared of him! Wouldn’t go near him.

Friend: (laughing) Really? Why, ah? Had he been to your house before? Did he kick your dog?

Dog Owner: No, he’s Vietnamese. He’d been eating dog meat and my dog could tell.

Friend: How? Looking at him, how can you tell if someone’s eaten dog meat?

Dog Owner: It must be the smell of the dog meat. Once you eat it, somehow the dogs can smell it on you and they won’t go near you. They’re terrified of you.

Friend: Vietnamese, ah? But I thought it was the Koreans who ate dog?

Dog Owner: Vietnamese, Korean. Even Indonesians eat dog.

Friend: Wah, really?

Dog Owner: There’s a tribe called the … (now it could be Datak or Patak or something like that. I don’t know Indonesia and I’m working from memory here so apologies if I got this wrong). They eat dog at special ceremonies. Actually, they eat cat too! Cat at the beginning of the year, dog near the end.

Friend: So, both dogs and cats run away from them?

Dog Owner: (laughing) Yeah, lah!

And all this time I was thinking, hey I thought it was you guys who ate dog! (Bruce Lee munches on one (spit-roasted and looking a bit tough, to be honest) in the park scene of “Fists of Fury”. And there’s also a mention of it in the Jean-Claude van Damme flick, “Bloodsport”.)

As you know, stalwart reader, I went on hiatus at the beginning of the month. And I’ve been doing a bit of thinking since that time. And I’ve decided to give up regular blogging.

The reasons are many.

One, I’m homeschooling now and sticking to a schedule of three posts a week, in between teaching, running a house and writing, is too much. (We don’t have servants, remember.)

Two, each post takes hours to cross-reference and write, which is time I can spend more productively on, y’know, writing!

Three, it’s all a bit … static.

So, I’m trying a new experiment. I may save this blog for things like reviews and notes for myself, but you’ll now find me regularly on Twitter. (And maybe Tumblr. I’m still thinking about that one.)

I see this as a natural progression of things. I tried podcasting and this blogging thing. Let’s move on and see what else tech can do for me. I’ll still keep my food blog up (updated every Wednesday, starting next week. I promise) and you can catch me at Novel Spaces on the 8th and 24th of each month. And I might even turn up at SFR Brigade a bit more often, now that the pressure’s off. But this blog is moving into snail-on-ganja mode from today onwards.

Catch you on the ‘tubes!

Yes, I know it’s a bit sudden but, as they say, my get-up-and-go just got up and left. I have some serious editing work to get through this month and I would rather not post at all than do it sporadically. I’ll be back later in the month. Maybe.

So, stalwart reader, you know by now that we have a new member of the family. Cookie. And you’ve probably gathered that the resident cats, Fluff and Squeak, are none too happy with this state of affairs.

While Squeak is content to merely voice his disapproval, shifty grumpy Fluff is much more nefarious. Quite simply, he figured out who was actually responsible for the introduction of the interloper and promptly relieved himself (Numbers One and Two) on my new fabric beanbag. Then, just to be sure I got the message, he did it again on my black suede handbag.

While the handbag could be rescued (it was a lot drier, and I’ll just leave that up to your imagination, if you don’t mind), the beanbag — a more thorough assault — could not.

My problem? Emptying the beanbag of all beans and junking it. But where to put the beans?

Actually, I think I’ll leave it at that. What to do with the beans? I’ll tell you on Monday what I did with them but, in the meantime, if you can think of anything, put it in a comment. And have a good weekend.

In my last post, I mentioned several reviews that the Cougars & Cubs anthology had racked up. And Barbara Ann Wright (whose blog I now follow religiously after a recommendation from Maria Zannini) had this to ask:

When you were first published, did you wait for reviews with bated breath?

Before I continue, I’m reminded of a cat that ate cheese and waited at the mousehole with baited breath. Ha ha. That’s one of my favourite (clean) jokes.

Anyway, moving right along. When I read Barbara’s comment, I realised that a lot of people tell you how to receive reviews (with grace, always with grace, even if you think the reviewer has the wit and common sense of a goldfish suffering from severe concussion because, y’know, even The Stupid talk to other people), but not about getting them.

The path to receiving reviews goes something like this:

Stage 1. Wow, I have a book out next month. There should be heaps of advance reviews around. Let’s see if I can add more review sites to my reader. I can’t wait! I’m sure everyone will love it!

Stage 2. Well, my book is out next week. And I haven’t received any reviews yet. But I suppose there are HEAPS of books being released, so I shouldn’t be too impatient. Mary told me about some more review sites! There are so many of them! I’ll add them to my reader. I’m sure one of them will review my book.

Stage 3. Release Day! Wouldn’t it be great if I had a review right now? A great review to match up with my release? I’d blog about it, a really long one, just so people know that my book’s great. I can just feel the success surging through my arteries.

* Arteries if you write SF/murder mysteries because you’re a geek and know blood is more likely to surge through arteries. Arterial pressure is greater than venous pressure. Veins if you don’t write SF/murder mysteries because that’s the prevailing wisdom.

Stage 4. Okay, it’s a week after Release Day. Pity nobody reviewed my book on Release Day. That would’ve been awesome. But a week after is good too. Think I might just go check those sites again. I know I set up Google Alerts for any mention of my book, but how often does Google update its alerts, right? All those web spiders must get tired every now and then. I think I’ll go check the sites, one by one. You never know.

Stage 5. A month!!! A whole month!!! And still no reviews????? I mean, what’s up with these people????

Stage 6. After all, aren’t they, y’know, REVIEW SITES??? And shouldn’t review sites, y’know, REVIEW BOOKS???? And it’s been two months already and STILL not one single review! What, did all the reviewers suddenly catch ebola and die en masse or something? Jesus frickin’ Christ!!!

Stage 7. Okay, I thought I was a really patient person. Really. I mean, at the game final last year, I waited in line for one of Joe’s famous hot dogs for frickin’ two hours! In the frickin’ sun! For a frickin’ hot dog! If that doesn’t say I’m a patient person, I don’t know what does. (And the hot dog wasn’t all that good.) So it’s not as though I’m an impatient bitch! But it’s been THREE MONTHS and I STILL don’t have a review. I mean, WTF???!!!

Stage 8. The universe hates me. That’s what it is. It isn’t my book, it isn’t the review sites, it’s me. I’ve got “bad karma” stamped all over my body and somehow every reviewer in the universe can see it, and they hate it, and they hate me, and so they’re not reviewing my book. Now, nobody is going to find out how great my book is.

Stage 9. Or maybe it isn’t great, which is why nobody will review it! In fact, maybe it’s soooooo bad, people would rather poke their eyes out with blackened bamboo skewers than review my book. Oh God, I’m trash!

Stage 10. What’s this in my Inbox? A Google Alert? A….review? Do I even want to click the link? Oh God, why am I even alive?

Here’s the thing. You know how the best way to handle queries is just to send them out, forget about them and work on your next novel? Well, it works the same way with reviews. Just write the book, publish it and work on the next one. Forget about the reviews. You’ll get them soon enough. The book isn’t yours any more once it’s published. It belongs to the readers. And they’ll let you know one way or another what they think. Maybe keep your toes crossed as you write, in remembrance of The One Currently Published. And best of luck.

I’m a writer so it’s par for the course that I get reviews. But, as you know, I tend to keep that a little low-key. I mean, you’re already here, stalwart reader, so I figure you’ve already visited my website and/or downloaded my Sampler, and run your eyes past the kind of writing that I do.

However, when there’s a slow news day, it’s time to do a Review round-up and here is the first one (I think) for the year.

Earlier this year, the Cougars & Cubs anthology was released by Total-E-Bound. As I told you a gazillion times, this was the first romance anthology I’ve been in and it was a lot of fun. So far, we’ve notched up four very solid reviews.

COFFEE TIME ROMANCE gave us 4 cups. Delane the reviewer said:

The stories in the Cougars and Cubs anthology tastefully but erotically answer the age old question of can an older woman love a younger man every bit as much as a younger woman can love an older man. I thoroughly enjoyed each story, and the combination of them all is awe inspiring and on the top of every readers list.

DARK DIVA REVIEWS gave us 5 divas and a Recommended Read! Thank you to Deb, who had this to say:

These red hot sexy Authors show us that love can happen anytime and anyplace with the right partner. This book has been on my “To Be Re-Read” List and I’m finally glad that I did because it’s just too much fun to not read it again. Come see what these wickedly, passionate she devils are up to. These stories are delightfully funny and Red Hot Sexy! Come along and purr with us!

I only wished I could rate this higher, it was that good. *VBG*

TWO LIPS REVIEWS also reviewed the book, and Tina concluded that:

Cougars and Cubs Anthology  has some very good cougar stories. I loved the chemistry, love and daring of the characters. When you want some really hot lovers and their fearless view on life you want to read this book.

And the latest has come from NIGHT OWL REVIEWS, who gave us four stars. Diana tells readers:

I have to say that I just loved this anthology! Quite a few of these authors are new to me, but after reading their work I’m a fan now! Each one brought their own unique writing style to this book and penned creative storylines and characters that kept me engrossed from beginning to end. Usually with anthologies there’s always one or two that just don’t make the grade compared to the other stories, but I can honestly say that with this compilation of six stories that is not the case. I thoroughly enjoyed each story and would highly recommend it to other readers. Definitely add this one to your buying list!

I speak for the other five authors as well when I say we’re chuffed by such a response. Thank you ladies.

There’s a lot of history that doesn’t get told. In my part of the world, it’s a given. We’re all brown or yellow people here so who cares, right? But it’s also blackly funny whenever it happens to white folk too.

Take the largest medieval battle in history. But first, some reminders:

• The Battle of Hastings took place on 14 October 1066 and involved a total of around 14,000 to 18,000 soldiers.
• The defeat of the Spanish Armada by weather in August 1588 involved a total of 32,000 soldiers.
• The Siege of Jerusalem in 1099 involved about 27,000.

Stalwart reader, there is a medieval battle that knocks all of these into a cocked hat but you never hear about it because … well, let’s describe it first.

• It was fought on 15 July 1410.
• The entire population of Europe at that time was probably in the range of one million people. We can rant and rave and carry on about how accurate this figure is, but I don’t think I’m off by much, having read several papers on medieval demographics and noting the particular virulence of illness and devastation that swept across Europe at that time.
• The population of soldiers involved in This Particular Battle was not a piddly 8,000 or even (ho hum) 20,000. This Particular Battle involved 60,000 soldiers.

I am, of course, talking about Grunwald.

The reason you haven’t heard about this battle may be as simple as saying that Grunwald was where the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth went up against the Crusaders (the Teutonic Knights in this case) and, as in all things right and proper, thrashed them.

Lest we think that the greedy Crusaders were only around to plunder the Middle East (sound familiar?), forcing the Muslims into a counter-attack that would, in the end, destroy the precious flower of their own far advanced civilisation in a pyrrhic victory, the time of the Crusades was also used to forcibly convert those deemed to be “pagan” still swanning around in Europe as well.

This campaign of forcible conversion (as an excuse to grab as many foreign riches as possible, natch!) is what the Crusaders were trying to do when they went up against the Poles and Lithuanians at Grunwald and this is where one of the best heavy cavalry in Europe (at that time) got decisively creamed.

This is not to say that the Poles were fast friends with the Muslims. There are records of battles between the Poles and Turks as well and, if you watch Polish historical dramas, you’ll notice that the Poles adopted some items of dress and weaponry from their Ottoman enemies. The most famous clash between the parties was probably during the Siege of Vienna (1683) where the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its allies (totalling over 84,000 soldiers) went up against the 150,000-strong Ottoman Empire. The Poles were triumphant. They broke the two-month old siege of the city and it marked the end of Ottoman attempts to dominate Europe, although it then left the way clear for the Hapsburgs. Oops.

Anyway, the reason I mention all this is that last week was the 600th anniversary of Grunwald and there was a giant recreation (there’s a recreation every year but this being the six HUNDREDTH anniversary and all, the event was extra-special) and all sorts of fun. Here’s a teaser (let’s see if I can embed videos):

Am I biased? Of course! I married a Pole and I love the ferocity, passion and, yes, sometimes even the bull-headed honour of the Polish people. It also helps that I think Polish men are very cute.

Anyway, the takeaway point from this post is: Grunwald. One of the biggest battles in European medieval history. Now you know about it.

Site for the 600th anniversary of the battle of Grunwald
Video montage: stills from battle paintings with this year’s reconstruction (in, er, heavy metal hymnal)
Video: a bit from last year’s efforts

* Actually, if you want to see just how messy, chaotic and ultimately pointless all wars are, go through a few of the videos. I think that the only people who believe war is glorious are those who’ve never had to fight for anything.

UPDATE: If the topic interests you beyond the video, the State University of New York has a great essay on the most famous painting of the battle. While Matejko’s painting shows what people did before television (i.e. paint shatteringly intricate scenes), my heart is with the simplicity of Wyspianski’s interpretation. I’m looking for a poster of Wyspianski’s version now. And J tells me that the “heavy metal hymnal” I mentioned earlier could be even more heavy metal. I told him I was expecting the word “Kahless” to be sung somewhere during the video, as I’m convinced the Poles are part-Klingon.

You remember Gwen, the IT Project Manager who was having difficulty recruiting experienced software developers? I caught up with her on the weekend and am happy to report that she has found herself some developers. In fact, she found one group of ace engineers who had worked together before and were on the lookout for more work. She was excited, she said. An opportunity like that, with an established team who have experience, knowledge and a proven record of working well together is a PM’s dream come true. She recommended them for hiring. And got turned down.

Since the last time I met up with Gwen, her situation has changed significantly in one regard. She has a new boss. Let’s call him…Phil. And she doesn’t like Phil very much. You see, Phil’s a liar.

When he was interviewing for the position of Gwen’s boss, Phil told the team that he had worked for a number of high-profile companies. Equivalent examples would be Google and IBM. The problem was, his CV never mentioned such work, only one stint with a largish player more than five years previously. A far cry from the sharp and far-sighted IT strategist he was trying to pitch to Gwen’s company. After he left the interview, Gwen checked up on him via the intertubes. He had also said that he was currently on contract with a particular local company to help the team meet some deadlines. But, on his public profile, he claimed to be a “Senior Director” at the company, not a contractor. And, the next morning, his title had changed…to Chief Technology Officer for that company. I know this is true because I saw the print-outs Gwen had made of his profile, one in the afternoon and another one the following morning. Looking at the timestamps on the printed pages, I could see that Contractor Phil had magically morphed to Senior Director and then CTO in less than 24 hours!

Because the Hiring Manager, now Gwen’s boss’s boss, thought Phil was fantastic, he was hired. And swiftly started doing things that proved to Gwen that, instead of being a high-level strategist, he was nothing more than a smooth-talking two-bit coder.

Gwen is a Project Manager, right? Below her, she has several Team Leads. Below the Team Leads are Senior Software Developers. The Seniors guide the regular Software Developers. And there are even two Junior Software Developers. It’s a standard structure for IT projects.

Phil was hired for his connections. (At that level, that’s really all anyone is hired for, which explains the dismal state of IT in the world today. That and the huge influx of badly-educated Indian software engineers. (*) And yes, I’ve managed them, and a whole lot of friends have also managed them, so I know of what I speak.)

It was Phil’s stated job to set up meetings with several very influential government/business leaders in Singapore in a bid to drum up more business. Makes sense, right? So what does Phil do?

He terminates the agreement with the company’s first ever customer. He didn’t want to talk to them, never met them, and sent emails instead to all the parties saying that he “didn’t believe a continuing relationship” offered any “benefits” to anyone any more. So what happened to all of Gwen’s developers, who were busy working on extending said customer’s functionality? She tells me she’s got them investigating some esoteric problems on database interrogation techniques and real-time processing while she waits for the work to roll in.

But, the work isn’t going to roll in. Because Phil isn’t interested in meeting any important business leaders. Instead, he spends his time asking developers for their code and then questioning them as to why they are solving a problem in a particular way.

Contractor oops! I mean CTO Phil is quite representative of a lot of managers in Singapore and, no doubt, Malaysia. They don’t have the skillz to fill the job they’ve been hired for, so the company ends up paying for an exceedingly expensive code reviewer (if they even know that much) who still gets shown up from time to time by the Senior Developers and, through his incompetence, manages to actively hamper the company’s business. Phil obviously knows he’s out of his depth, hence his reluctance to do anything that someone of his position should be doing, and is frightfully insecure as a result. While he spends his working day calculating the average wait time for each developer at the coffee machine on the floor (I’m not making this up; Gwen’s tone of voice was rather dry as she related this), hiring decisions and business meetings are left to dangle in the breeze. Gwen tells me he took one look at the CVs for the group of developers Gwen and her team had interviewed earlier, and flatly refused to approve their hiring.

“They’re too good,” she told me. “Better than him. I’ll never get them.”

You could make the argument that, as there’s no work coming in, maybe it’s just as well that team didn’t get hired, but that’s not really the point. Meanwhile Phil’s boss visits from overseas every month, they spend days snugly cloistered in the office, and then Grand Poobah jets out again. Gwen says she used to have some respect for Grand Poobah once, but now it’s all gone.

(*) Back when I was a developer, there was a tactic used by Sales and Marketing that us coders used to call the “Mongolian Horde Principle”. The reasoning went like this: “You say it will take three people two years to code this system. Well, in that case, if you hire three hundred people, it should only take you a little more than one week to complete it. (Oh, and I sold the system last month and you’re due to install it at the customer site in three weeks.)” To update this method for the modern era, and mindful of the huge number of Indian so-called IT engineers in the marketplace, I suggest changing the name from “Mongolian Horde Principle” (which infers something theoretical in nature) to “Bangalore Mob Method”, which is how it’s currently implemented at innumerable IT projects around the world. The exact same reasoning applies. But hey, they’re cheap and that’s all that matters, right? If nobody cares about quality, why should you?

While J and I were waiting at the vet’s for Cookie’s operation to finish, a man walked in with a puppy. Again, not on a leash and not in a cage. The man was a Buddhist monk and he answered all the receptionist’s questions very abruptly before walking outside with the puppy and setting it down. The puppy started scampering all around (there are automotive body shops next door, so it was obviously a safe environment to do that) while the monk lit up a cigarette.

Living in Malaysia again has hammered home a point about religion. Whatever you know, or think you know, about Buddhism gets knocked for a loop when you start living in Asia. Buddhism isn’t a religion here, it’s a business. And the sooner you realise that, the quicker you’ll not be shocked when monks start inviting themselves to your home because they want to see what’s inside, shaking down grieving families for as much money as they can get for necessary “rituals” for the dead, and expecting preferential treatment because of the type of clothes they wear.

As I mentioned before, belief in God is supposed to be one of founding principles of Malaysia. (Gardenia brand bread. Wrapper. Read it.) Yet I have never met a population that’s so dismissive of animal welfare, so selfish, so arrogant, and yet so ostentatiously religious. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist or Muslim, they’ll all rabbit on about God’s goodness, but they’ll let their pets starve, beat them at the slightest provocation, abrogate the slightest responsibility for their welfare and think themselves superior to atheists like myself.

And it’s not just pets. Where’s the morality in forcing your choices onto your children? Of expecting blind obedience based on nothing more than your age? Of dismissing or physically pushing children out of the way merely because they’re children? Where’s the morality in skimping on your child’s education due purely to the reason it’s a girl? Of lauding your wastrel sons to the heavens while disparaging your daughters?

The treatment of pets is only the last in a long line of purely selfish and misogynistic Asian behaviours. I cannot stand the Malay men who expect me to let them go first anywhere just because they’re men. They think they’re so damn superior? Well they can suck up some grace and damn well wait till I get through that door. For the same reasons, I refuse to give up my MRT seat to a Chinese man of my age. And I will sit next to an Indian man taking up more than one seat on public transport and push his leg over so he doesn’t have things his own way. And do you know what each of those men do in such cases? They don’t say a word. They may glare at me, as I glare at them, but they don’t dare open their mouths. Such is the manner of true bullies.

If this is how fellow humans are treated then, women and children, what chance do our silent fellow members of the animal kingdom have? Asian values? Give me a fucking break.