So I missed blogging again yesterday. To be fair, I had an excellent reason. My Monday is the US’ late Sunday, so I was on board at the Carina Press blog, and also monitoring Facebook and Twitter in case anyone popped in to ask a question or make a comment about my new book. It was hectic and a lot of fun, although quite draining, especially as I hadn’t caught very much sleep the night before.
(The one thing that surprised me was the wonderful reaction to my Carina blog posts. (The first dealt with the similarities between historical and s-f romance, and the second was more straight intel about my book.) I have to admit, I was a bit anxious about my posts. IN ENEMY HANDS is not a zippy, fun read. It’s about terrorism, torture, injustice…and romance. It’s set in a universe that’s not a nice place. Yet the comments on both posts were thoughtful and encouraging and I’m blown away by the support I was given. Thank you to all who commented.)
After North America slowly snoozed its way into Sunday night, it was still Monday here, and a public holiday for a lot of those working in Singapore. Labour Day! With the kids at school, J and I spent a rare morning together. We deliberately didn’t read any of the news to do with demonstrations around the world, went to our favourite Indian Muslim makan (food) place, Habib’s, and stuffed ourselves with thosai (a flat pancake made from ground rice and black lentils … masala for J, kosong (empty) for me), fried chicken and fish cutlets, washed down with Habib’s iced lemon tea, which is the best I’ve ever tasted. I filled myself with so much food I couldn’t face anything else till 8:30pm last night, and then only had a snack!
Now it’s my Tuesday, which feels like a Monday, and I’m wondering if it’s really that necessary to continue to have 5-day working weeks? Surely if one segment of the population moved to 4-day working weeks, and we harvested the unemployed pool so that other people could work 3-day working weeks, wouldn’t we be able to have, for example, banks and government departments open seven days a week? You wouldn’t have to rush to renew your licence or register a business or post a letter. You could do it during “your” weekend at your leisure. With other people working the other three days, there also wouldn’t be so much pressure at the supermarket. It would even out the traffic a bit as well, wouldn’t it? Budding writers could take a 3-day job, which would leave them with some steady money coming in and four days when they can concentrate on their writing AND devote some time to their family. Someone should do a study.
But, before that quasi-capitalist utopia comes into existence, we’re still at the 5-day working week, the beginning of May and a busy busy time ahead. Next week sees the release of the “Cougars & Cubs” anthology from Total-E-Bound, but more of that on Friday. And I’ll be appearing at so many places around the blogosphere that you’ll be sick of my very name.
Tomorrow, a news round-up from my part of the world.
