Archive for April, 2007

My posting on toilets has got Pey, Kenny and yeeton debating the merits of Asian toilets versus the ones in Europe. So far, it looks like the West is losing!

I’ve had some a new commenter, digital nomad commenting on my recent tech posts the slowness of Twitter and the disconnectedness of being connected.

We had a visit from Sara who is involved in Beaut Blokes to say that they are just trying to keep rural communities alive so us city folk have milk for their lattes!

There seem to be a lot of people trying to make malt loaf as another comment - this time from alwena - on my post about malt loaf testifies. Yeeton kindly posted up a recipe for malt loaf so check out that post again for that useful piece of information. Personally, I’m too lazy and just nip down to the shops to buy my malty supplies!

Yeeton also adds some good comments to my English Dinner Party post - he says very wisely that the best wines are not necessarily the most expensive so don’t worry about bringing the most expensive wine if you’re invited to a dinner party. His other piece of advice is that an author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children - that worries me a bit as I’m often asked about my books at dinner parties and find myself talking about them. Note to self: make sure I don’t talk too long and boringly about them next time! Kenny says rather ruefully that perhaps he needs to get out more and find some people to have dinner with - good idea, Kenny: too much time in front of LonelyGirl15 is not good for you….

I’m glad to see, however, that Kenny has not taken to Justin.tv in the same way so he will be going out a bit more - his poses the question of whether Justin.tv is voyeurism gone too far.

Meanwhile, my post on Nuns on the Run reminded digitalnomad of Knights Templars and banking cartels and jennifer picturing 80-year olds running from the law. On a darker note, does anyone remember the sinister image of God’s Banker hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in the ’80s? I think we will occasionally be amused and sometimes disturbed by stories of the Church and dark doings - but always be fascinated.

Fred Dervin, a Finnish professor in cross-cultural studies at the University of Turku in Finland has included my podcast Two Voices in a paper on Dissociation and Complex Interculturality - You can dowload* the pdf here and go to page 7. Silvia has added a comment to share her experience of being multi-lingual and confusing people who can’t place her accent - I was having coffee with her once and she took three phone calls in a row, each one in a different language, switching easily back to English in between. It was amazing to hear!

*You will need Adobe Acrobat to view the pdf file. Click “Back” on your toolbar to return to this page

Kickboxing Geishas. Wow, what a fab title for a book!

I found this book (by Veronica Chambers) via a review on Japundit called “How does change happen in Japan?”. It is a non-fiction book about modern Japanese women and how they are “breaking the bonds of tradition and dramatically transforming their culture”. This is a theme that is close to my heart - my two novels were about modern Malaysian women in business settings being intelligent, feisty and high-powered in contrast to the usual portrait of Chinese women as bound feet. long suffering wretches. It’s high time we had more portraits of modern kick-ass Asian women - from Madame Butterfly a century ago, pining for the love of a white man, and Memoirs of a Geisha (by a white man, incidentally) waiting to be rescued by a philandering, adulterous businessman portrayed as hero, it must be a relief for feisty Japanese women to see themselves portrayed in their real personas for a change.

This is a great network for writers and readers of crime fiction. Crimespace on Ning.com is a “place for readers and writers of crime fiction to schmooze, booze and draw up plans for the heist to end all heists. Find new authors to delve into and discuss the latest in crime fiction. Share photos, videos and make some friends. Pull up a chair at the bar and share your poison.”

Ning.com is a site where you can create your own social network for free - or join any of the social networks already there. You can chat with other members, post to a free blog space, discuss issues in the forum. The forum has discussion like “Which fictional character would you invite to the pub?” and blog posts about what it’s like to as a writer to reach those famous last words: “The End” . In answer to the first question, I think for me it will have to be Katherine from CSI Vegas and in respect of the latter: a sense of disbelief that I’d finally got there!

Crimespace was started by Sydney based crime fiction writer Daniel Hatadi, who also blogs at http://danielhatadi.blogspot.com/. He writes of Crimespace: “Member include authors like Val McDermid, Stuart MacBride, Ken Bruen, Anthony Neil Smith, Sara Gran, John Rickards, Cornelia Read, Harry Hunsicker, J. D. Rhoades, Ray Banks, Sandra Ruttan, Anne Frasier, Sandra Scoppettone, Duane Swierczynski, Sean Chercover, and the list goes on, growing every day. The hope is to fill Crimespace with established authors and up-and-comers, occasional readers and committed fans of the genre, the idea being to connect us all.”

Charles Kelly, a crime writer whose first novel Pay Here is due out soon with Point Blank Press told me, “I just joined, but I foresee several benefits. For one thing, it’s a friendly, very personal way to share my experiences as a writer and lover of crime fiction. It offers an opportunity for personal promotion of my soon-to-be-published novel, and it’s very user-friendly, technologically. It leads you through the steps of, essentially, creating your own blog. And it encourages the creation of a personal web page, which I haven’t done yet but will soon. All in all, it’s great fun!” Charles is veteran reporter for The Arizona Republic and have covered many crime stories in Arizona, including the murder of Republic reporter Don Bolles in 1976 - all excellent personal experience to infuse a crime novel with authenticiy. You can visit Charles’s Ning page at http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/pulpnoir

If you are inspired to join Crimespace or start you own writers network - or any other network, let me know and I’ll publicise it for you here on Fusion View.

Usability Points:

I found that Ning takes some getting used to and I think it’s usability could be improved or made a bit more intuitive. The key thing to remember is that Ning is devised around social networks rather than individuals. So from what I’ve experienced, if you want to find a friend on Ning, you need to find the network first and then look for the person/ friends you’re looking - rather than thinking about your friend and then actioning that thought by seeking your friend first.

Then, once you’re in your chosen network, to find a friend on that network, you have to go to “My Page” and click through from their picture on that page. Clicking on their picture in any other mode doesn’t seem to take you anywhere.

If someone leaves you a “Chatter” on your page, you will get an email notification that they’ve done that (if you’ve set it to enable email notifications in such circumstances). However, if you got to your Chatter page and reply to that chatter, your friend won’t be notified of your reply - you actually have to go to your friends page to reply to the Chatter they left on your page. That strikes me as rather clunky, especially after applications like Twitter where replies are automatically routed to you and you can easily follow a chain of tweets.

I’d be curious to hear from other Ning users who may have different views about its usability - or who might be able to give me some guidance about navigating around Ning.

I can’t work out if this is a real ostrich.

If it is, I can’t help but be amazed. But part of me wonders: is this cruelty to animals?

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In response to my post on getting fat in Malaysia, CW comments that Malaysians are obsessed with food and for him, everything revolves around food, planning the next meal before finishing the one they are eating.

Xeus, author of Malaysian-published Dark City, paid Fusion View a visit and assures me that the next collection of sinister short stories around the same theme will have more Malaysianness with contributors like Lydia Teh and Tunku Halim. She has also asked for a blurb from me for the next book - I’m suggesting to her that she uses my review of her first collection on Fusion View: “well-written and very readable.

Kenny is addicted to LonelyGirl15 even though he knows it’s a fiction. It’s like watching a soap opera, he explains. He asks how we can harness this magical power of the internet to create such an enticing story. As writers, I think that we can learn from LonelyGirl 15 - it’s about creating characters that the audience cares about and storylines that keep you wanting to find out what happens next. Whether it’s fiction, fact or “faction” doesn’t matter as much as having those two elements.

David gives us a quick history of why cats are considered evil - encompassing witchcraft and the plague, no less. Gruesome stuff. Tunku Halim isn’t fond of cats and Pey says she likes cats but not to live with. Personally, I’m not a great cat fan either - something to do with their silent movement and slinkiness and their jumping up to sit in your lap: a dumb slobbery dog seems more charmingly dopey.

As for the pic of the hunky Oz farmer in my post about Beaut Blokes, a friend said to me on the phone she couldn’t concentrate on anything if she had that page up on her PC! The post also attracted some laughter and appreciation. Pey adds that Graham Norton (a UK talk show) picked up on the milk-carton love-ads for farmers - a week or so after I featured them on Fusion View.

In response to the item on Indian students falling into depression due to too much technology, Kenny says that being alone offline can be depressing. So true. Personally, I like feeling connected (albeit electronically to a bunch of interesting people). A new visitor Mike D agrees with my remarks about how Twitter may be a cry against existential loneliness. Andrew adds to this view with his comment that Twitter doesn’t really connect us at all - it’s just a place where we fire off individual messages into the internet, never to return.

My malt loaf post keeps getting new fans. Vini posts very energetically about how malt loaf should be eaten with butter. And Janice shares that she’s just eaten a whole loaf, mistaking the calorie count - oh dear, I can feel for her on that! Janice - you may have to go running and cycling for weeks to make up for that mistake!

Photo of sheep round-up: thanks to ~Prescott on flickr.com

Being a great fan of Black Naricissus, The Nun’s Story and The Sound of Music, I’ve always has a soft spot for nun news.

I came across this story in Real Business Online about nuns on the run in Greece. They had a knitting factory and an icon making operation on the side. They apparently who forged bank loan documents and are also in debt to the tune of half a million euros.

I can’t get this image out of my mind: Mother Superior in a darkened room, seated like a mafia don. “Speak softly love” is playing. When she speaks, she sounds remarkably like Marlon Brando….

Photo: thanks to allposters.com

I’ve been awarded a Thinking Blogger Award by one of my readers, Ryn Tales. It’s an award where bloggers can honour 5 blogs that make them think. The conditions are:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Ryn Tales herself was nominated for her blog about her warrior princess daughter who was born premature and who is growing up with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy, reflux, and seizures. It’s a joyful and moving and funny account of their little family’s daily life. I feel very honoured that Fusion View has been chosen as one of the five blogs that make her think.

This is what she wrote about Fusion View:

Fusion View. Yang-May Ooi is a writer, published author, lawyer and all round interesting person. Her blog is eclectic and always presents something new. She posts about writing and getting published, her travels and her technological discoveries related to blogging. I truly enjoy reading her blog as it gets me out of my own head and life and makes me remember to be creative.

Thank you, Ryn Tales, and congratulations to you, too for being a thinking blogger!

The idea of this award made me think (ha, ha). I subscribe to numerous blogs and enjoy reading them on a range of topics from writing, technology, current affairs to motivation, personal stories, marketing, new media and fusion interest. Most of them are informative, many are informative and a lot are great fun and good reading. But which ones make me think. It struck me that I tend to read blogs for light entertainment and news but turn to books for something to really engage deeply with, for ideas that challenge me or for discussion that is thought-provoking or writing that makes me look at something in a different way. Now the challenge for me is choose five blogs that have some or all of these qualities.

I like the idea behind this award because it will make us all review the blogs we follow as readers, asking “Which one makes me think?” As bloggers, it challenges us to perhaps delve a bit deeper the next time we write a post and to think a bit harder when we write so that we can give our readers some more food for thought. I also like the rule that the bloggers who are tagged for an award don’t just rest on their laurels but need to participate in the process of identifying what makes a blog a thinking blog for them, and also in sharing the honour by tagging five other bloggers.

It’s possible just to tag five of your friends, of course, and there may be those bloggers who do that without any further deep thought. But I like the idea of taking this as a serious challenge and am trying to finalise my list of five blogs that make me think. I don’t have them all yet so I propose to give my awards out one at a time over the next few weeks to give me time to consider which bloggers give me good, meaty food for thought.

My first award goes to Will Buckingham for thinkBuddha.org, wayward thoughts on the Buddhist Way. Followers of Fusion View may remember Will - he has recently published a novel Cargo Fever, which is set in Indonesia and draws from Indonesian mythology, He wrote a Guest Blogger post about his experience of being in Indonesia and the process that led him to write the novel. He writes beautifully in thinkBuddha about Buddhism and philosophy, relating it to day-to-day life in a real way. The more thoughtful pieces are interspersed with his personal stories eg about the recent publication of his book and the launch party. Though I am not a Buddhist, I find the ideas he discusses in his blog fascinating and thought-provoking and it’s always good to be reminded of the internal riches that cannot be bought or touched. So, there you go, Will, you’re tagged to find 5 more thinking bloggers!

Update: This post has just been reported on Global Voices Online.

In Big Brother and other reality TV shows, participants and put in a house or on a desert island by TV companies and made to do weird and wonderful things for the entertainment of a global audience. We’ve had the fictionalised movie versions of the extension of this idea in The Truman Show and Ed TV where someone’s life is played out in front of cameras all day and all night. We can now watch someone’s life unfold in the real world in real time for real.

Justin Kan started wearing a mobile webcam on his head two weeks ago and it streams everything he sees, hears and does. It’s becoming a huge cult streaming video thing that people are tuning into on the web. You can find out more at http://www.justin.tv/ or watch it below:

There’s some background info and tech industry commentary about Justin and also live mobile streaming at Techcrunch.com.

It’s not a terribly exciting footage and the streaming can be a bit slow at times. Still, 126 people logged on at one point to watch Justin sleep, according to Techcrunch. We are probably seeing the early days of the next level in blogging. At the moment, the technology allows us to post written posts very easily so everyone’s doing that. Podcasting is the next level up in terms of portability (you can download the MP3 and take it with you wherever you’re off to) and also in terms of getting that one step closer to real reality - hearing the content creator’s voice. Video blogging is the next natural step to getting as close as you can to the author. Soon anyone will be able to author or narrate their lives and live in their own movie. And everyone can be permanently watching everyone else’s lives.

Will those people with the cameras on their heads feel compelled to make their lives more interesting to their viewers, to increase their ratings?

If they act up or hype up what they are doing or feeling or living at that moment, will that be their real lives or will they just be pretending for the camera?

Will they create dramas, start arguments, cause accidents / fights/ havoc just to get the viewers in? Will their lives be an action movie, a noir, an indie movie, a French arthouse flick?

Will their lives be more real merely for being more watchable? If so, for whom - them? Their viewers?

And what of those who don’t video their lives? Will they exist at all?

I have updated Fusion View with a phone blogging post. Click here to listen to it or use the Flash player below: