August 2007 Archives

I've been thinking of printing a personal business card (is that an oxymoron?) for a while now, then I came across Danny Foo's post, Should bloggers have business cards? and decided to go for it.

I thought my biggest problem would be finding a design I liked, because as a blogger I don't have a logo. If you don't have a logo on your business card, your card risks looking empty and plain... and since I don't have corporate colours also, I didn't even have a starting point for the design.

Little did I realise that the job description would pose an even bigger problem. I wanted wordsmith; Alexandra Wong, writer extraodinaire, said it sounds pompous and pretentious. Eek!

Writer sounded too bare, raw, unembellished; besides, there are so many types of writers. Yet creative writer doesn't sit well, conjuring images of copywriting -- which I assuredly suck at, because I can't sell without sounding like I'm selling. (Trust me, I've tried.) Professional writer is simply trying too hard, whilst freelance writer sounds cheap, according to another friend, who justified his opinion with the fact that many college students tend to freelance on the side. (Wha--??)

The two people who were in favour of wordsmith felt that those who mattered would know what it meant, and it would act as a conversation starter with the unaware. An ice-breaker, if you will. I like it because it's different, it stands out, and it has a certain ring to it...

Of course, there's always ink slinger, as suggested by Thesaurus.com. Now wouldn't that be the ultimate ice-breaker?

Was tickled pink by this birthday gift from Lynnee... a bookshelf! What could be more appropriate for someone like me? *grin*

I thought I'd get my bro to help me assemble it, but my sister-in-law was the one who did all the work whilst my bro lounged on the living room floor, nose buried in a book. *raises eyebrow*  Sis-in-law said she enjoys tinkering around and tackling such 'handyman' tasks. Apparently I still subconsciously subscribe to traditional gender roles and stereotypes! Oops.

And yes, the love of reading does run in the family. The difference being, my bro reads them but doesn't buy them; I, on the other hand, simply itch to own them!

All together now... ;)

Week 7 of my second semester; it hardly seems possible. Especially when one semester only consists of 14 weeks of class. I'm halfway through the semester... and I still don't know what's going on in one of my classes!

This class was supposed to be interesting: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Whazzat? Best explanation I can give -- it's about analysing spoken or written text to discover the ideologies that are hidden in the text, ideologies the writer is consciously or unconsciously trying to perpetuate. I think. (I did say I'm not sure what's going on in the class, didn't I?)

I was really looking forward to this subject because I'm always interested in anything to do with writing. Alas, to my dismay all the lectures have been clothed in fog. For one thing, my lecturer chose to start off with various philosophies and ideologies and it was so abstract, our eyes glazed over at all the jargon and unfamiliar-sounding names like Althusser and Foucault. The only name I recognised was Derrida, and that only because one of my friends has mentioned him in conversation. Don't ask me what Derrida is all about!

Unfortunately (and that's the other thing), my lecturer doesn't seem to be blessed with the ability to weave the abstract into more concrete forms. He tries very hard to explain, but we just don't seem to get it. There's only one person in class who knows what the lecturer is talking about, and we know this person gets it coz he's forever asking questions that likewise sail right over our heads.

This is quite a bummer coz I was planning to structure my research project around CDA. I chose to take 10 subjects and conduct a research project instead of taking 6 subjects and writing a dissertation. With no background in linguistics, I decided I would be crazy to attempt a dissertation -- I'm not familiar with the various branches in the field, and I wouldn't have a clue where to start.

It's a good thing I have another 5 subjects to go before I need to decide on the topic of my research project. The way this class is going, I have serious doubts about my ability to use CDA for anything that serious.

It's not always the writer's fault.

Where print media is concerned, readers only see the finished product and the author's name, and the author gets blamed for everything. Bad writing, poor grammar, incorrect spelling, misleading title/headline, obscure picture captions, misquoting sources, taking quotes out of context -- you name it, the writer's been accused of it. Sometimes it is our fault; at other times it's not.

I cringe when I hear people complain that reporters often get their facts wrong and take quotes out of context. When I was a journalist, I tried my utmost to get all my facts straight and my quotes correct. After all, I (and the paper) could be sued for misquoting someone. Aieeeee! I no money to hire lawyer to defend me, how???

Of course, there was that time I wrote that Ireland was part of the UK... *ducks to avoid rotten tomatoes*  My reasoning went like this: the IRA are fighting for Irish independence, right? So how can Ireland NOT be a part of the UK??

Unfortunately, this error occurred in the opening paragraph of the article (*cringes*) and, worse still, it was an article about the IMPAC Young Writers Award -- the winner gets to go to Dublin to attend the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (which was why I was talking about Ireland in the first place).

Needless to say, the Irish Ambassador was not pleased. *wince*

But... but! It wasn't always my fault. I remember the time my editor wanted me to approach a topic from a particular angle, which cast a rather negative light on the people involved. Imagine if you were to write about children (juveniles) who steal, and how they have no conscience about doing so and are even proud all the ways they have come up with to dodge detection and get away with it. Imagine if you were to write about this without touching on the fact that some have no choice but to steal food in order to survive, because their parents are drug addicts and cannot provide for them. That wouldn't be fair, right?

Not that this was my topic, but it's a good enough example. Well, my editor didn't want any of the mitigating factors, and cut out almost all the positive points I had managed to gather, leaving a very one-sided piece behind. The article went to print and you can imagine I had lots of very offended interviewees on my hands. They had been made to look bad, when I knew that they were not all bad. They had trusted me and I had let them down.

You know, the interesting thing about writers is -- we can't defend ourselves. Once the work is published, it's cast adrift on the seas of fortune, and we don't get the chance to explain why we chose to deal with the subject that way, why we took put that in or left that out, why we spoke with the people we spoke to, or didn't speak with others.

Of course, there are always author interviews, and letters to the newspaper editor, but by and large, you don't get a chance to justify your work. It has to sink or swim on its own merits. For good or ill... it's on its own now. And the reading public will judge you by it, errors and all.

I think the most important thing is for a writer to be able to he can live with himself, knowing that he gave his best, and be willing to learn from his mistakes. If it's not his fault, he has to be contented with the awareness that he, at least, knows it's not his fault. Never mind if the whole world is throwing brickbats at him; he knows the truth, and he can't let the criticisms get him down. All he can do is to faithfully go on writing.

 
**Suck it up: Slang. To cope with hardship or unpleasantness without complaining.
Definition from UrbanDictionary.com.

Always a sucker for frivolous quizzes and personality tests, as well as an utterly hopeless romantic, how could I not take this test?

Who is your ideal literary lover?



Your closest match is Daniel Deronda

Who says that nice guys finish last? After all, you like your blokes to be caring and gentle – perhaps because you know those brooding, temperamental types are more trouble than they’re worth! So stuff the Darcys and Heathcliffs and settle down with sweet, sensitive Daniel Deronda, the eponymous hero of George Eliot’s last novel. Now here’s a man who’ll never forget your anniversary!

Who is your ideal literary hero?

Would you believe I had no idea who this Daniel Deronda is? I had to run a Google search on him. That's like discovering you're married and you don't know the first thing about your husband. "Who? This fellow? Oh, we just happen to live in the same house!" How mortifying.

George Elliot I know, of course -- she's famous for Middlemarch and Silas Marner, among other works (not that I've ever read any. Really, I do have serious gaps in my literary education). But I had never heard of Daniel Deronda.

Apparently he and I have at least one thing in common: legal training. He was a law student. Heh.

Wikipedia says he "has a tendency to help others at a cost to himself" and British broadasting station PBS describes him as "sensitive, caring, and highly intelligent, but haunted by doubts about his own identity". (PBS produced an adaptation of the novel in a 2002 television series of the same name.) Oooooh.

Darn, now I want to read the book. After all, I can't allow my own literary lover to remain a stranger, can I? Luckily the book can be downloaded for free at Project Gutenberg! Yay!

Was very encouraged to come across this article on writing for the Web.* I may not be writing content for specific websites, but I write on (in?) blogs, and I certainly used to be pretty long-winded. Even though I mostly write shorter posts now, it's still a concern. No writer likes to be told that people aren't going to read his work!

When Web usability guru Dean Peters was in town two months ago, he reminded me that Internet users tend to scan webpages instead of reading them word for word. I immediately recalled my friends' complaints that my blogs have so much text. "All words only," they groaned. And then I remembered how my eyes sometimes glaze over when greeted by chunks of text on a webpage. Uh-oh.

But that was nothing compared to my chagrin when Dean pointed to Jakob Neilsen's article. What, they want me to write in bulleted lists? Highlighting keywords? With half the word count of "conventional writing"?

The problem with this idea is that Neilsen, Dean, and other Web usability experts are talking about the best way to get your points across. But as a writer, I don't necessarily want to make any points; sometimes I just want to tell a story. In fact, that's what I do on my personal blog -- I tell the story of my life. (Makes it sound so grand and interesting, doesn't it?)

So I liked what Amber Simmons has to say: if the writing is good, nobody will care that it is long.

Content, on the other hand, fills a real need: it establishes emotional connections between people. The writing has heart and spirit; it has something to say and the wherewithal to stand up and say it. Content is the stuff readers want to read, even if they have to print it to do so. (And readers will print a long piece; just because something is published online doesn’t mean it must be read online). Content is thoughtful, personable, and faithfully written. It hooks the reader and draws him in, encouraging him to click this link or that, to venture further into a website. It delivers what it promises and delights the attentive reader.

She adds that the site design must complement the content: pages must be designed in such a way that they encourage the reader to stay and read. For example, colour schemes that don't make your text hard to see against the background, font sizes that aren't too small, and typefaces that are easy on the eyes (I personally think Times New Roman is the worst font for reading on screen). This is just common sense. I don't even read books that are printed in too-small type; why would I read websites with the same?

 
* Hat tip to Karen.

I walked into Popular Bookstore today and lo and behold, this book sat there staring me in the face. I picked it up, flipped to a random page and began reading. Uh-oh... not a smart thing to do.

Of course I ended up wanting the book. Gaaah!

I peered at the back cover to see how much poorer it would make me. RM38.

Wait a minute, I have an RM26 voucher from MPH. I might as well buy the book there, right?

A call to MPH revealed that they have a copy of this book in their Mid Valley Megamall branch. I hotfooted it over there.

...only to discover that theirs is the hardcover edition, which is going for RM55. Gaaah!

"Just buy a trashy romance novel lah," advised the Icy Queen Goddess.

"But it's a voucher! I don't want to waste it on a trashy romance novel!" I wailed.

(Not that it makes much difference, since I regularly buy trashy romance novels anyway. But this is an example of convoluted thinking strongly influenced by psychological factors.)

Today was really not my day.

1. I didn't manage to get the book -- the hardcover version wasn't worth it, even if I did have a discount voucher.
2. I went to Laksa Shack for lunch only to discover that they have taken laksam Kelantan off the menu, which was the only thing I wanted to eat there.
3. I went to Carrefour and they didn't have any Ambi Pur refills, which I need for my car air freshener.
4. I went out for supper with the Icy Queen Goddess, and another friend stood us up after we had waited outside his apartment for 15 minutes.

Gaaah!

I know tomorrow's a Monday... but surely it has to be better than this!

So I got a little slip in the mail today from MPH Bookstores. They inform me that I voluntarily handed over RM532.90 in cash to them over the period of January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2007.

And what did they give me in return for all that effort and generosity? A measly RM26 rebate voucher!

I don't feel very rewarded.

Actually, Times The Bookshop's loyalty system is better, because they give you a 10% discount -- or was that 5%? -- right off the bat when you make payment. It works out to the same amount (if you do your calculations, you'll realise that MPH's rebate voucher accounts for 5% of my total spending over a 6-month period) but you feel as if you're getting more. That's psychology for you, folks.

I could listen forever when my lecturers start talking about language and everyday life. Today my lecturer brought up the fact that bank ATMs don't have instructions in Tamil. I sat up and blinked. That's true! How come I hadn't noticed it before?

She said the way a language is used and the way it's evolving tells you much about that particular community. The fact that a basic service like an ATM doesn't provide instructions in Tamil is shocking because as schoolchildren we were always taught that there are three main races in Malaysia: Malay, Chinese and Indians. Do we not expect Indians to use ATMs, or do we assume that they'll be able to make do by reading Malay or English? Is the Tamil language "dying out" or getting "sidelined"?

At the same time, I've observed that among the urban Chinese or the Chinese professionals, there's been a renewed interest in sending children to Mandarin-medium schools so that they will have a good grasp of Mandarin, even though they happen to speak English at home. As far as I can tell, this is motivated more by the fact that Mandarin is a valuable resource in business (especially now that China is opening its doors) than by a desire to hang on to the Chinese culture and identity.

Moreover, many of the younger generation urban Chinese are losing grasp of their mother tongue. In my case, my parents are from different dialect groups, and since they're both English-educated, their common language is English. So we spoke English at home, and I never learnt to speak my mother tongue. (Incidentally, why is it called "mother tongue" when the children are considered to be born into their father's 'clan' and, therefore, dialect group?)

The same goes among my cousins... all of us save five speak English as our first language. Those five cousins are the only ones among our generation who still speak the dialect. My poor ancestors must be turning over in their graves.

Of course, it doesn't help that we come from a smaller dialect group (Kutien, a variant of the Foochow / Hockchiew dialect). The most common dialects spoken by Malaysian Chinese happen to be Cantonese and Hokkien. I once asked my dad whether he regretted not teaching us Kutien, and he said no because it wasn't useful and there was no point learning it.

A bit sad, eh?

There's something about the Anne of Green Gables books that is so... so... good. Not good in a gripping story kind of way, but good as in wholesome. Reading them renews my sense of optimism. It's difficult to remain cynical in the face of such goodness.

Little Women is just the same. Both tales are built on the same kind of noble ideals. They're really very moral books, yet the two authors -- LM Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott -- succeeded in making their stories moral without being preachy. That's quite an achievement.

The 'little women' (Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy) and Anne all strive to be good, kind, and true... they want to be good, for good's own sake, because that is a worthy goal in itself. In today's world I think that's rather rare; personally, I often want to be good just so that I don't get into trouble, y'know? To escape punishment. Or if not, to look good in front of other people. I'm powerfully motivated by self-interest and so, I'd dare to say, is almost everyone else.

Reading these stories makes me want to be a better person. It makes me want to reach for noble ideals and dream great dreams. It gives me the feeling that I could change the world by being true to myself and living for something above my own wants and desires. It reminds me that every person is precious and special and unique. It causes me to view others with compassion and kindness.

Very, very wholesome. There's simply no other word for those books.

I've been amazingly restrained the whole of this year -- the part that has passed, anyhow. I haven't gone to any of the warehouse book sales, including the Pay Less Books sale that was on this weekend.

This doesn't mean I haven't been buying books, though. I haunt the 1Utama Shopping Centre Pay Less Books outlet incessantly, and yesterday I bought three books from there.

In fact, I'll confess I was weak and foolish and did something I'd never thought I'd do: I deliberately bought copies of books I already have.

The thing is, I did so want to reread them, but they're back in my hometown, and I have no idea when my next trip there will be. Ever since my parents moved to Sabah at the end of 2005, I haven't had much occasion to go home. Visiting the folks is a given, but everything -- my books, old mementos, photographs, letters from teenage pen-pals, high school essays -- all that is back in Sititawan, as far away from Sabah as you can imagine.

Anyway, I consoled myself with the fact that each book only cost RM8, and that I only purchased the first three books in the series, not the entire eight. Eight would have been rather too much, methinks. My conscience (not to mention my wallet) couldn't have stood it.

So I spent the whole of today doing nothing but reading. That's the perfect way to spend a Sunday, if you ask me: curled up on the couch, making the reacquaintance of Anne of Green Gables. It was like being embraced by an old friend, one I had loved a great deal in my girlish youth.

I've been dying to finish this book so that I could write about it. Oh, I'm quite sure there's no law prohibiting me from writing about a book when I'm only half-way through it; but this is a collection of 10 short stories, and I wanted to be able to say that I'd read all of them before giving my comments. Especially since my housemate read the book first and told me, "All his stories are weird."

And yes, most of his stories leave the reader with what I call a WTF? feeling. Like, What was that all about? You start reading a story, you think, Aha, it's going somewhere! and then it seems to curl in on itself and end abruptly, and you have no idea what on earth just happened.

This book apparently got lots of rave reviews (three are printed on the back cover and two more on the first page), so maybe my housemate and I are just not literary-minded enough. I always claimed I couldn't be a good poet because all the best poets seem to be incomprehensible and I can't write incomprehensible poetry. Now I find I might have to apply that to short stories, too.

Nevertheless, there's a great deal of insight in the way Redhill describes his characters, the dilemmas they face, and the emotions they wrestle with. A certain element of dark humour constantly lurks behind his words.

She'd always believed that the ones you loved had a reflection that resided in yourself, and that this kept you safe from losing track of the way they would change. And yet she knew this was not true anymore with Andy; that mirror had bent away from a real reflection some time ago, and what she had of him was not who he was. Trying to love him with the information she had was like trying to grasp something underwater without correcting for the refraction. These days, her hand was closing on nothing.
--Long Division

It's almost as if Redhill paints a caricature of each main character; all of them seem a little neurotic, but always in a different way -- an exaggeration of our own tendency to magnify small things, let our imagination run away with us, persuade ourselves to see only what we want to see. He's pretty merciless in his portrayal of humanity, never giving his characters a chance to pretend that they are better than they are. For example, in the story Cold, Louis asks Paul, "Why did you come with me?" Paul says he came because Louis had asked him to come. Louis replies, "You came to help. I make you feel good about yourself, don't I? I'm your country bumpkin." It made me think -- yes, helping others does make me feel good about myself. Are my motives always as altruistic as I make them out to be? Are anybody's?

I suppose, as with any other book, the stories I prefer are those that resonate with me: Long Division, with Catherine struggling to understand her gifted son; Cold, with Janine struggling for romance and adventure in her life; The Victim, Who Cannot Be Named, with Peter struggling to come to terms with his daughter's choice; A Lark, with Bergman struggling with the knowledge of what he has done. Each story is written with heavy emphasis on one character's point of view, his thoughts, ideas, emotions, fears, and questions all laid out for the reader to see. Makes me wonder how the stories would look like if written from one of the other characters' perspective instead.

Most Malaysian bloggers, having experienced difficulties with the country's main ISP at one point or another, will identify with this piece. Inspired by Romeo and Juliet:

Shakespeare in Desperation

Oh Streamyx, Streamyx!
Wherefore art thou, Streamyx?
Deny thy TM Net and refuse thy moody connections;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my monthly payments,
And I'll no longer be taking so bloody long to upload my pictures

'Tis but thy non-connectivity that is my enemy; -
Thou art thyself though, not a bad broadband brand.
What's a brand? It is nor software, nor hardware,
Nor wires, nor bytes, nor any other part
Belonging to a telecommunications company.

O, be some other phone company!
What's in a phone company? That which we call a bandwidth.
By any other word would upload a post as well;
So Streamyx would, were it not Streamyx call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which it owes
Without that title: - Streamyx doff thy brand;
And for thy reliability, which is no part of thee,
Take all my future posts.

 
This is one of those works that gives you the Damn, I wish I had written that! feeling. Credit goes to my fellow Malaysian blogger, Cirnelle -- what a lovely romantic-sounding name!