Archive for July, 2009

  • 15 Jul

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    May I introduce….

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    So you already know about the family (hubby J, The Wast, and Little Dinosaur), in addition to myself. We also have a large assortment of fish that I won’t bother differentiating at this time and — to help keep our sanity — two cats.

    I like dogs, but I’m really a cat person. That’s because I have a very sensitive sense of smell and I really don’t like the smell of dog. I can pat a show-condition, short-haired dog and still come away with that doggie smell on my hands. Nobody else smells it, but I can, and I don’t like it.

    (No, it’s not psychological. I remember full-contact training with a partner at 8:30pm one night and, from the contact of his hand on my face, was able to tell him that he’d had chocolate cake (with frosting) earlier on that day. He had … for morning tea! That’s around 10:30am, in case anyone wasn’t sure. So, no, it’s not psychological.)

    So, even though my initial preference was really for dogs, I’ve come to appreciate cats for the silly and independent animals that they are. First off, is Fluff:

    Fluff, the Ragdoll

    A 5yo bluepoint Ragdoll, Fluff saved our sanity by distracting The Wast from his morning screaming fits when he was about four. We didn’t know why our son suddenly got into episodes of, literally, waking up each morning screaming. Maybe it was a bad dream, but every day? In desperation, we looked around for some distraction and managed to buy Fluff from a wonderful breeder who had the cats well socialised in her home.

    The screaming stopped immediately, and Fluff became The Wast’s pal for a couple of years, until he discovered the joy of bossing his little sister around. Fluff is now bad-tempered, grumpy, opinionated, fixated on J, and can bear grudges for weeks. If he doesn’t like something that’s happened, he’ll urinate on the furniture. The only thing that’s saving him from being a small skinned foot rug on my side of the bed is what he did for The Wast. That’s his eternal Get Out Of Trouble card.

    Almost four years ago, we decided to get a companion cat for Fluff. Boy, was that ever a bad idea! To say Fluff was unimpressed is an understatement. I still believe he hasn’t forgiven us to this day. The breed we chose for our new kitten was a Maine Coon, mainly because we like big cats. Squeak cost almost double what we paid for Fluff and the breeder wasn’t anywhere near as competent. She kept all her cats outside in the cold Victorian hinterland air in cages, only bringing in the dames when they were ready to have a litter. Squeak was a half-wild little bundle when we brought him home and it took him a good two years to settle down into the cuddle-bug he is now:

    Squeak, the Maine Coon

    He’s the complete opposite to Fluff. At 8kg, he’s a hefty one and looks mean (or so the locals think), but is the sweetest gentle giant you can meet. You can yell at him and flick his backside with a tea towel when he’s done something wrong, and he’ll be back five minutes later, looking for rubs and tickles. Try that with Fluff and you’ll be lucky to get down to just a muted growl after a week.

    Being the top cat, Fluff moves decisively to bar certain territory from Squeak (essentially almost all of the upstairs, which covers the bedrooms and our office), so we have to listen to the piteous (loud) meows of Squeak every day as he asks for our permission to bypass Fluff and come upstairs.

    Neither of our cats has put so much as a paw outside our house and we feed them both mostly on a BARF (Bones And Raw Food / Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) diet. Because of this, they are flea-free, healthy and happy. (Well, as happy as Fluff can get, under the circumstances.) When we went house-hunting in Malaysia, one major consideration was protected space for our cats and we managed to find this in our current home, which has a low-walled rear courtyard that’s about four metres from the ground. (It’s hard to explain, but the back of our house is built on stilts.) With nesting sparrows abounding, both Fluff and Squeak have the ability to imagine their hunting skills, even if they don’t have the wherewithall to actually execute their fantasies. Still, if those sparrows keep taunting our cats (as they do), there’s no telling what might happen one of these days. And the koi in the courtyard pond are quite safe too, now they’ve discovered that a quick splash of water is all that’s needed to keep little furry hunters at bay.

    So that’s a belated welcome to two well-loved members of the family. May we have them for many, many more years to come.

  • 13 Jul

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    It’s like Joseph Stalin versus Adolph Hitler

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    So, Google’s scalable cloud suffered a 6-hour outage the week before last. The Reg had a great article on this, outlining the contrast in strategies between Google (Teh New Ebil) and Amazon (Teh Well-Established Ebil). It’s a bit like trying to figure out which you hate less — swallowing broken glass or trying to do trampoline acts on it.

    In any case, what with all this Web 2.0 hoo-ha, every company is trying to get their foot in the door, charging for cloud apps. The problem with cloud apps, though, is that once you tell your clients that the software on their desktops is redunant then — and there’s no telling how unreasonable human beings can get — people expect the software in their clouds to actually be, er, available.

    Now, Amazon had a significant outage with its cloud apps last year as well. And it lasted two hours longer than Google’s. But the way it was handled was completely different.

    Amazon provided specific details on what bugs led to the crash. Google said:

    There was a serious issue in one of the App Engine’s datacenters.

    No, really? Amazon highlighted shortcomings in their own code. Google, um, didn’t. Sumfin’ didn’t werk, seems to be about the gist of what they disclosed. As for ensuring similar mistakes don’t happen again, they said the following:

    The team has been actively working on a solution in the medium-term that would allow us to switchover data centers immediately without consistency problems.

    Can I tell ya something? I don’t even feed that level of bullshit to my customers! And what the hell is “medium-term” supposed to mean anyway? Tomorrow? Next year?

    Ted Dziuba says that “the App Engine main product page has a prominent link to the terms of service at the top, and no link or contact information for support.” So I went there to check it out and Ted’s right. In Linux world, choosing “Community” means going to a customer forum where your questions can be answered. In Google world, it means joining the developer community. And while there is a “System Status” link, all it shows is that everything is peachy (or not). Not even a Live Chat link to a bored AI, much less a support email or phone number.

    What is the world coming to, I ask, when Amazon — despised, “overpriced for overseas customers”, “gobble everything in its path” Amazon — actually handles a situation better than “don’t ask us about our algorithms”, “oh everything is opt-out didncha know?” “do no evil? yeah right” Google? What hope is there for humankind? We’re doomed! Doomed, I tell you. If you want me, I’ll be under that off-grid rock over there.

    PS The Book Depository is making its move into North America, fronting Amazon on its own turf. I love the Book Depository (they don’t charge shipping anywhere in the world!) and wish them all the best.

  • 10 Jul

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    Read about international SF&F at SF Signal

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    SF Signal has a wonderful series on what’s happening in International SF&F. We’re up to Part 3 already, and it’s been a wonderful round-up so far. I started a bit of a delightful tussle in the first part and have already posted a comment for the third, so please go along, have a read, and contribute your own comments.

    And if SF Signal isn’t on your blog feed, why not?

  • 10 Jul

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    Cabinet steals Malaysia’s future

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    Lest you, gentle reader, think that I only reserve my vitriol for Western countries, a recent decision by the Malaysian Cabinet ensures that this is not the case. But, a brief rundown ….

    Back when Malaysia was a British colony, the medium of instruction in all schools was English. I presume that, a little later, the ethnic schools began, with Indian schools teaching in Tamil, and Chinese schools teaching in Mandarin. (Now I could be wrong about the timeline, but the general gist is there.) Now, I can’t readily find information on exactly when the decision was made to switch to teaching all subjects in Malay, but it happened. And Malaysia, already behind Singapore in development, lagged even further behind.

    In 2003, in an effort to stem this perceived lack of progress, English became the medium of instruction in Science and Mathematics. This week, the Cabinet decided to reverse that decision and go back to Malay for these topics instead. As someone who’s Malaysian-born and Western-educated, this is how I see it:

    1) The decision was based mainly on the results from rural schools where, it seems, test results in those subjects were woeful. And we all know that the majority of the population in rural schools are Malay. So now, suddenly, to prop up the rural population, Science & Maths are going to be taught in Malay. Hmmmm, no racial agenda there. Kids are not doing so well? Don’t bother pushing upskilling for the teachers, just change the whole damn language of instruction.

    2) Malay is not a language for the precise and succinct communication of technical ideas. You want to say “square” in Malay? It’s “segi empat sama” (four sides the same). You want to say “right-angled triange”? It’s “segi tiga bersudut tegak” (three sides with an upright angle). And the Malay words for “trapezium” and “rhombus” are … “trapezium” and “rombus”. Probably because some Malay translator tried for a term but gave up when it ran to an entire sentence! (“It has four sides, but two of them are parallel, and the other two aren’t, lah. They, like, converge in one direction and diverge in the other, and can be different lengths. You know what I mean? Like that.”) When we get down to the very technical terms in the sciences, Malay has adopted most of its vocabulary from English and then put the Malay phonetic spin on it. So what’s the use of changing the entire language of instruction, again?

    3) Translation of technical books are way behind. We’ve walked through large local Malay bookstores and had a look at the titles on display. If you want to still learn about Microsoft ME or an obsolete version of Visual Basic, then those bookstores are for you! But, if you want to learn the latest on Ruby on Rails, or get a book on Python hacks, then it’s English all the way, baby.

    Singapore often accuses Malaysia of having the foresight of a brain-addled old man suffering from cataracts. In this particular case, they’re right. What’s interesting here is that the majority Malaysian population actually want instruction in English (including that lovable recalcitrant, Dr. Mahathir), but the Cabinet has decided to discriminate in favour of the Malays yet again. (Well, as they always do. Non-Malay Malaysians, as a whole, are both long-suffering and optimistic. It’s a terrible combination.)

    Interesting, the Star article on this issue notes that the driving force to go back to Malay “has seen a rare alliance between Malay and Chinese educationists”. :: headpalm :: In this respect, you can always count on the Chinese to put actual quantity of marks above quality of education. It’s the same in Singapore, where Chinese will complain that the Chinese language exam papers in Senior year at high school are sooooo much more difficult than the Malay or Tamil language papers. Why is this a problem? Because it means that, all other things being equal, a (*gasp*) Malay or Indian student may actually get a higher final aggregate score than a Chinese student. And we can’t let that happen, can we?

    The Chinese schools in Malaysia are fiercely competitive — and openly boastful — about the difficulty of their teaching regimes. They are the best, they have always been the best, (well, they’ve certainly been the toughest) and requiring students to learn Science & Maths in English since 2003 has negatively affected their aggregate scores. So they want a return to the good ole days when it was just down to Mandarin and Malay, when they could laud it over everybody else, never mind that most people really wanted their children to learn English anyway. If the kiasu fits ….

    Okay, who haven’t I insulted yet? :) Let’s go Singapore. The results from the Malaysian Cabinet’s decision has been loud and vehement, with Dr. Mahathir now trying to start a popular movement to reverse the decision. Back to The Star. Amid the usual horror from parents and students (all understandable) is this gem:

    In Johor, some parents are even considering sending their children to Singapore where they can learn in English.

    Dr Santhi Sivalingam Moorthy, 41, said she would seriously consider transferring her three children, aged between five and 10, to Singapore schools now.

    And that’s okay in theory, but isn’t the boon everyone thinks it is in practice. I won’t mention the fact that it means your child has to wake up at 4am in the morning to catch a Malaysia-Singapore bus. I know other parents do it. We don’t.

    No, the real problem here is this: Singapore English isn’t that good. Having lived in Singapore, I can tell you that the level of the “you pain me, I no friend you” schoolyard taunt barely gets better as the person ages. I’ve sat in high-level meetings where the English of everyone, including those from Hong Kong and, yes, Malaysia, was immaculate … except for the Japanese (of course; they’re their own little universe), mainland Chinese (understandable) and the Singaporeans (not understandable). The Wast started to pick up that alarming, broken way of speaking while enrolled at the otherwise excellent local school in the Boon Lay district. Now that he’s in a Malaysian school (albeit private and English-medium, but still with a majority Chinese student population), his conversation is back to containing actual, legitimate verbs and proper clauses.

    The fact of the matter is, though, that we’re in a privileged position. We can make choices that the local parents can’t and I know they’re going to round on me and say that any education in English is better than nothing, so stop being so bloody superior about it. They’re right, of course. They are caught in a cleft stick, while we can freely float away if we wish. However, it would be remiss of me not to add that the current English education in Malaysia is, to my mind, superior to the current English education in Singapore, as the conversational skills of The Wast, and our own conversations with the locals, attest. Where the level of fluency is the same, the Malaysian speaker beats the pants off the Singaporean speaker, in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. I know I’m in the minority stating this but, as a foreigner, having thrust my children and ourselves into both systems, I swear this is true. And thus it would be a double-shame to reverse such promising progress. (We’ve only had English-language instruction for 6 years and already you’re reversing this? C’mon Cabinet, stop acting like putzes!)

    There is one ray of hope. Unlike Anglo Western countries, where you can hold as many demonstrations against government decisions as you damn well please and nothing happens, if there’s a popular groundswell here, there may — just may — be some kind of partial reversal. An extended “consultation phase” to be introduced. Or an “enhanced rural programme”. It’s happened before. I just hope, for the sake of the future of Malaysia, that it happens this time too.

    PS Dr Mahathir has a poll running on his blog on this very issue. At the time of writing this post, popular opinion runs 77% (14,746 votes) against the Cabinet decision.

    PPS In this post I take umbrage at the divisive positive discrimination loaded towards Malays, but that’s not to say that all Malays support this policy decision. Considering they are the majority population, the fact that the majority of Malaysians don’t support the decision proves that forward-thinking Malays are with those wanting to retain English for Science & Maths. Unfortunately, though, while the inherent discrimination of the New Economic Policy (more on that in a future post) continues, all Malays will continue to be tarred with the same brush of paranoid insularity. Don’t like it? Then, as part of the exalted bumiputra (sons of the earth) class, get rid of it. The rest of us will respect you a lot more for it.

  • 08 Jul

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    Der Spiegel does snide & patronising

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    We’re all supposed to believe that Capitalism is the best economic system evah. That the dark foes of Socialism and Communism, unable to offer anything meaningful to people, were vanquished in the epic, global battle of Good vs. Evil.

    Yet, with the exceptions of those who choose to believe in fairy tales, the reality is murkier and quite different. Not that that has stopped Der Spiegel from penning a blatantly biased piece about how the “Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism“, under an overarching headline of, “Homesick for a Dictatorship“. Hmmm, no vested interests there, then.

    While I disagree with some of what the East German interviewees had to say about the GDR (German Democratic Republic aka East Germany aka (in case you missed the subtle Spiegel spin) The Dictatorship :: cue menacing thunder and flashes of lightning :: ), there were still a few valid points that the paper (and its so-called journalist, Julia Bonstein) seemed determined to miss.

    The GDR, of course, was the home of the dreaded Stasi, that intelligence service that was so heinous, so corrupting, that it comes second only to the Department of Homeland Security in its reach and ambitions. (And I’m being only half-facetious here.) The pall of that communist state had the general effect of exalting the peasant over all, punishing any intelligentsia, stifling every skerrick of dissent, and generally killing off any architects with a sense of style.

    If I then go on to say, But apart from that it wasn’t all bad …, you’d think I was launching into a bad joke. There are truths to the communist state, though, that do bear some reflection:

    * No starving or homeless people. We stopped visiting San Francisco because J became visibly upset by the number of beggars and homeless people on the streets. They even cropped up in Silicon Valley, that most expensive, entrepreneurial, richest, innovative, and forward-thinking of Californian regions. It got us thinking. If people can’t even afford to live and prosper in the so-called richest and most egalitarian place on Earth, what does it say about the rural, de-industrialised areas?

    * Lots of opportunities for artists. Oh, this one hits home. Writers, artists and musicians were able to make a living wage under communism. (Stanislaw Lem drove a Mercedes.) When Reunification occurred, for example, I remember the sobs in a conductor’s voice when he said — via interview — that three orchestras in East Berlin alone were going to be dismantled, and he wondered what would happen to the players. Many theatre companies were also closed down. It’s ironic that there seemed to be a much more active arts life under communism than there is under capitalism, which largely depends on the largesse of wealthy patrons. And, of course, there’s censorship in both venues, even if one is more hidden than the other.

    * Sense of accomplishment. This is a hard one to describe, and something J considers to be very important. As a socialist boy growing up in Poland, he told me, things weren’t easy to get. You had to “arrange” for stuff you wanted, like a new fridge or a car. It wasn’t a matter of walking into the showroom, ordering, paying and having it delivered. In a way, it was a less frivolous take on the old Phil Silvers Show, with dozens of “Bilkos” everywhere, hustling for something they wanted. And, when they got it, there was such a sense of accomplishment that it was cause for celebration. That feeling is missing, he said. There’s no real sense of accomplishment and it has been replaced, instead, by widespread fears of downsizing, of your family starving because you’re out of a job, of hoping no illness or accident strikes because you’re on a tight budget. You can’t say these fears only affect lower-paid workers (a patronising attitude in itself) because both J and I are in IT, and job security for us is out on that rotten timber precipice, ready to fall into the wide blue sea below at the slightest breath of ill wind.

    * A totalitarianism that is obvious. Nobody ever believed what was being broadcast in communist regimes, because everybody knew the ruling party was corrupt. They knew they were being lied to. Unlike, say, the United States, where the majority of people believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, or that single-payer healthcare is a disaster waiting to happen, or that living standards and wages have improved over the last ten years and everybody can afford to buy their own home. It makes you wonder who exactly is being hoodwinked? The person who knows they’re being lied to, or the person who doesn’t? Modern Western so-called democracies have such a sophisticated network of complicit media channels and agencies that Goebbels would have had multiple orgasms just thinking about it.

    Here is the real brainwashing — not that Communism represses (which it can), but that Capitalism cares. It doesn’t. We talk about the “hand” of the market, but never its eyes. That’s because it’s blind. And if you get in the way, you get smacked out of it. No hard feelings and so what if you’re thrown out on the street.

    You can read the Der Spiegel article here, and I do urge you to come to your own conclusions. Personally, I find it instructive that the article’s main concern is taking sledgehammer sideswipes against former East Germans (all emphasis is mine):

    By “here,” he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons …
    As an apologist for the former East German dictatorship …
    People are whitewashing the dictatorship …
    … those who prefer to live in the past …
    Schön’s reasoning is less about cool logic than it is about settling scores …
    Downplaying the dictatorship is seen as the price people pay to preserve their self-respect …

    Such bromides are preferable to drilling down into the actual root causes, and examining important social issues, such as how the West Germans treated the East Germans in the years after Reunification. (Mostly as lazy, shiftless, criminally-minded opportunists who couldn’t rub two neurons together, much less appreciate Wagner.) The comments from the former East Germans who try to grope for something deeper are ignored:

    “Most East German citizens had a nice life,” he says. “I certainly don’t think that it’s better here.” By “here,” he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons. “In the past there was the Stasi, and today (German Interior Minister Wolfgang) Schäuble — or the GEZ (the fee collection center of Germany’s public broadcasting institutions) — are collecting information about us.” In Birger’s opinion, there is no fundamental difference between dictatorship and freedom. “The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel.”

    and

    Today’s Germany is described as a “slave state” and a “dictatorship of capital,” and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic …
    “In the past, a campground was a place where people enjoyed their freedom together,” he says. What he misses most today is “that feeling of companionship and solidarity.” …
    His verdict on the GDR is clear: “As far as I’m concerned, what we had in those days was less of a dictatorship than what we have today.” He wants to see equal wages and equal pensions for residents of the former East Germany …
    “Those who worked hard were also able to do well for themselves in the GDR.” This, he says, is one of the truths that are persistently denied on talk shows, when western Germans act “as if eastern Germans were all a little stupid and should still be falling to their knees today in gratitude for reunification.” What exactly is there to celebrate, Schön asks himself? …
    Birger is adamant about contradicting the “victors’ writing of history.” “In the public’s perception, there are only victims and perpetrators. But the masses fall by the wayside.” …

    There are rich veins of debate here that — I thought — would have happily tickled the European intellect. What is the extent of control of a government over its polity? What does it mean to be a capitalist state and how does it affect one’s quality of life? Is there an overt bias against socialist/communist regimes in the modern press? How do we measure how we treat our own citizens and what are the generational consequences of discrimination? What is the role of history in the instruction of future generations and how do vested interests suborn this, and to what long-term effect?

    Rich, and critical, areas of discussion to be mined. And aren’t. Yet another opportunity wasted, Germany. Good going.

  • 06 Jul

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    Girls night in

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    We had one of our occasional (Girls’ Night In)s on the weekend. This little diversion originally began with just J and I but has now expanded to include The Wast and Little Dinosaur. At a minimum, the following is required:

    * a good movie

    * a bottle of wine

    * snacks

    * beauty products

    Since we’re war movie buffs, we decided on “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and a bottle of Italian Lambrusco. For snacks, we had a big container of jackfruit. And, for beauty products, we had orange-scented body lotion and a choice of cucumber or clay face masks. The kids took it in turn to lie down while I rubbed body lotion into their arms and legs, giving them a slight massage while I did it. Little Dinosaur declared it “very relaxing, Mama”, thus confirming that she’s going to be a spa junkie when she gets older. The Wast, being all boyish and stoic, only giggled slightly but couldn’t wait for his turn with the cucumber peel-off face mask.

    Then we sat back and watched Admiral Yamamoto ( Soh Yamamura) struggle with orders that conflicted with his own superior strategic sense. Twentieth Century Fox must have remastered the movie because the picture is crystal sharp. And I didn’t have to worry too much about the white subtitles appearing on the white uniforms of the Japanese Navy, as I have in the past. There were only two spots when the first word or so was washed out. Other than that, reading the subtitles — for once — was a pleasure. As I’ve always been a James Whitmore fan, I was delighted with his portrayal of Admiral Halsey. The screenplay (written separately by Larry Forrester for the US bits, and Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima for the Japanese bits) was quick, interesting and seamless. Although J disagrees, I thought Yamamoto’s final remark about wakening a sleeping giant (meaning the United States) was the perfect point to end the movie.

    Although it’s almost two and a half hours long, I felt the time just sped by and I remain more impressed with the movie now than when I did when I first saw it.

    The only problems I had with Tora! Tora! Tora! are purely of a personal nature. While I recognise the obvious intelligence of Yamamoto, the humanity of Fuchida and the brilliant quirkiness of “Ghandi” (one of the major stategists), I can’t help but think of the East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the fact that, to this day, Japan has never apologised for the blood it shed across China and south-east Asia.

    However, in all honesty, I have to say that if I was a Japanese strategist, I wouldn’t have attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour. So what if the Japanese rampaged up and down the east Asian coastline? Nobody would’ve cared. Not the British, the French, the Dutch or the Americans. If the Allies were willing to sell out their fellow pale-skinned European allies to Joseph Stalin, why should they have cared about millions of brown-skinned natives being beheaded by a superficially sophisticated and supposedly honour-bound race? In fact, considering history, I think the Allies would have preferred to deal with one strongman in the region, rather than have to reconcile the contrary bickering of several smaller nations.

    And, for Japan, I think if they had even tried to live up to the rhetoric of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, we might all still be part of the Japanese Union now. But, of course, with Japan’s idiotic view of themselves of the Master Race — and the sadistic mindset that goes along with such craziness — the idea of a cooperative union spanning a huge fraction of the Asian continent was doomed to failure. I’m reminded of Pramoedya Toer’s slim volume, The Fugitive, in this regard. (You can read my 2008 review of the book here.) So, opportunities lost, and I can’t say I’m unhappy about that, but it still bears some reflection.

    Girls Night In: 10/10

    Tora! Tora! Tora!: 9/10

  • 03 Jul

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    Female travelling woes

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    I think I mentioned in a post a couple of years ago that the only people who think business travelling is glamorous are those that don’t have to do it. It palls very quickly and, for me, the only upside is nabbing a nice duty-free bottle of cognac, or single-malt, on the way back in. (Alcohol prices in Malaysia being somewhere north of stratospheric.)

    For a female business traveller flying about alone, however, there is an added complication. TWF. Travelling While Female. When I travel on my company’s dime, there isn’t so much of a difference in hotel accommodation. The company rate kicks in, the company set of rooms kick in and, although I was placed right next to the ground-floor elevator once in a small “boutique” hotel, it didn’t happen again, so I can write it off as a quirk. However, if you’re travelling on your own dime, without the name of some big company behind you, then that room next to the elevator, or the housekeeping cart depot, or some other place that seems to gather noise at 1:00am in the morning the way your belly button gathers lint? It’s yours. It’s a foregone conclusion. And, as if to guard my chastity, I’m always, but always, given a room with two single beds. In Perth, Australia, one time, I remember being given a cramped, sloping room next to a giant machinery installation with one single bed pushed up against the wall. Sigh.

    Things get no better when you’re eating. I remember reading once that a female business veteran used to light the corner of her menu and hold it aloft in order to get some attention. Well, since we’re not allowed to carry anything as dangerous as cuticle scissors on planes any more, that nixes that idea. However, I have held the menu above my head and waved it around a few times. And I’ve also been known to stand up and say in a loud voice (and I have a loud voice to begin with), “Excuse me. May I get some service here please?” If you didn’t know me from this blog, you’d think I was an awfully polite (but perennially irritated) person.

    Part of the eating non-experience is the seating arrangement. On my most recent trip last week, I was given a table right in front of the hotel’s restaurant entrance. This was a lovely spot where people both entering and exitting the restaurant could swarm on either side of me as they walked. When I asked (politely) for another table, not willing to let every stranger see what I was indulging in for breakfast, the maitre d‘s lips tightened before she led me to a lovely small table, away from the hubub, surrounded by eight (count ‘em … eight!) other small tables that also lay empty. As the male travellers trooped in, they were guided automatically to those tables. But I had to ask for it.

    You know what? I’m sick of it. Sick of getting tables right next to the public toilets, or adjacent to the kitchen doors, or in the place where you’d normally find a traffic light to manage the pedestrian ebbs and flows. I’m sick of getting ignored when all I want to do is just order some damn dinner and get back to my room to relax. I think the thing that really gets me about all this, however, is that I’m just as liable to get dissed by female hotel staff as by male. Being female themselves, you’d think that the staff would be a little sensitive to others of their gender type, but my observations last week led me to believe that — in fact — we are treated somewhat worse. I even had to call back the lady loaded with the hot coffee and tea flasks because she was making such a determined bee-line for the two men sitting at a table just beyond me that she forgot me. Twice. Walked straight past me as if I wasn’t there.

    I can complain. But this TWF phenomenon is such a pervasive habit — from the United States, to Singapore, to England, to Australia, to Malaysia, to Ireland — that writing some bad feedback just does nothing. I only have finite energy and have to pick my battles, and this isn’t going to be one of them. So I try to be polite to get better service — in the hope I don’t later find saliva in my dinner or something like that — but I don’t expect it, and so remain pleasantly surprised when I actually get treated with some modicum of respect. And you’d be surprised what I can sleep through nowadays.

  • 02 Jul

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    Tips to Alice Hoffman

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    Apropos something completely different, I was reading The Register‘s instructions on how to write a “Flame of the Week”. And it occurred to me that Hoffman (who? go here and here for a good summation of the rumble) was probably looking for this exact kind of advice while she was imagining Roberta Silman roasting in the highly energetic flames of the underworld. How well did she do, considering she was, presumably, untutored in the Ways of The Flame?

    According to El Reg, there are a number of important, interconnected criteria to keep in mind when crafting a classic Flame:

    * Leave your reason at the door. I think Hoffman safely did that by accusing reviewer Silman of being a nobody and generally slagging off the Boston Globe and Boston itself. Tick.

    * Don’t make it too long. Well, Hoffman did twitter her angst, so that’s a tick, but she released 27 twitters, so I’m not sure how to judge it on the Longitudinal Twitter Brevity Scale. I’ll just be charitable and say, tick.

    * Pick a story to rant about but for God’s sake don’t read any more than one paragraph. Well, considering Silman’s review of Hoffman’s book contained spoilers (which Hoffman picked up on), it appears that Hoffman unfortunately read the entire review. Cross.

    * Tie in your hatreds/prejudices. Yes, I think the swipe at Boston was a particularly toothsome example of this. Tick.

    * For God’s sake, don’t start using correct grammar.     My cursory reading of Hoffman’s tweets didn’t turn up any significant grammar or punctuation errors. Mind you, those of us using UK English have different spellings and punctuation mores than those of you using US English, so it could be that I really did miss a major faux pas and didn’t know it. But, considering that Hoffman is also a well-established and successful writer (I can only dream of being slagged by the Boston Globe), I think I’ll give her a cross here.

    * Be deeply and personally abusive to the person you’re writing to.     Oh, I think she scored on that one, didn’t she people? Huge tick.

    * Don’t use too many swear words. Ah, that would be where I’d fall down if I were ever to craft a classic Flame. Hoffman resisted the temptation. Good for her! Tick.

    * Do not re-read your flame. I’ll err on the side of charity here and give Hoffman a tick.

    * Celebrate a successful flame by killing something. Now this is where I think The Register has gone completely off the deep end. How are we supposed to know whether Teh Flamer has extinguished the life of even a small biological specimen? We don’t. Suggest we nix this as a criterion for this exercise.

    Final score? 6/8. Good on you, Alice. And people say nobody learns anything in this modern world. For those of you not as naturally skilled as Alice Hoffman, please direct your browsers to the El Reg page that tells you how to construct a meaningful Flame, complete with explanatory notes. Marvellous stuff. The bar is set high, people. I’ll be a lot more judgemental from now on.

  • 01 Jul

    Posted by


    Category

    New group blog!

    0

    Novel Spaces is a new group blog that I’m proud to be a member of. The official launch is today! The authors are talented (ahem) and the range of genres diverse, from contemporary romance to paranormal to science fiction. My fellow Novel Spacers are:

    * Jewel Amethyst (St. Kitts)
    * Phyllis Bourne (Chicago)
    * KeVin Killiany (North Carolina)
    * Marissa Monteilh
    * Shauna S Roberts (Southern California)
    * Farrah Rochon (Texas)
    * Liane Spicer (Trinidad)
    * Terence Taylor (Brooklyn)
    * Karen White-Owens (Detroit)
    * Stefanie Worth

    And yours truly (Malaysia). You’ll also see a small photo of me in the sidebar. My first on the intertubes. So, if you’re curious…. Since today is Launch Day, you’ll also get to read snapshot bio’s of who we are and what we write.

    Please stop by at Novel Spaces often in your virtual travels. With such a diverse group, there’ll always be something of interest to read.

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