Archive for November, 2008

Phoneblogging without internet connection - using Pocket PC mobile phone without much success but an iPhone saves the day.

Gabcast! Yang-May Ooi’s Phoneblog #2

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It always amuses me when I see writers portrayed in films. Our hero — and it is invariably always a man — who is a moody and sensitive sort, arrives in the big metropolis with his typewriter, a packet of cigarettes and a whiskey bottle. We see him sitting at a desk facing window, tapping away at his typewriter and occasionally dragging on his cigarette. If he is swept away with creativity he types feverishly through the day and night. However, if he is stuck, he pulls out sheet after sheet from the typewriter roll, flinging them into the bin in exasperation and working his way through the bottles of whiskey. Occasionally, he stares broodily out of the window. Eventually, he finishes his manuscript and ties up in brown paper to post off to the publisher.

The next thing you know, he has received a letter from the publisher and is waving it around in his local bar, buying drinks for his friends to celebrate the publication of his book. In the next scene, he is swanning around at a swanky launch party, the toast of the town and on his way to becoming A Famous Writer.

All this happens within five minutes of film time!

The movie version of writers came to mind recently because I have been preparing the draft of my third book to send to the publishers. This is the book on New Trends in International Communications which I am co-authoring with Silvia Cambie and although it is not a novel like my last two books, the process of manuscript preparation is exactly the same. You have to keep drafting and redraft thing until you are absolutely happy with what you’ve written, checking and rechecking for typos, grammatical mistakes and errors in context and sense. You then had to make sure that the formatting is consistent e.g. that each paragraph is justified and consistently spaced, that key terms that recur are consistently spelt or capitalised alright italicised and that your page numbering is seamless from chapter to chapter. You need to check the word count of each chapter and add them all up together to see whether your total word count falls within the required thresholds. You need to make sure that the header and footer has the correct references to the book title, your author name and the relevant chapter. It is tedious, tedious, tedious…

We are due to deliver the manuscript at the end of November and Silvia and I have been having regular meetings to make sure that the sections that we are respectively writing work together. She is putting the finishing touches to her chapters and we then need to collaborate on the Foreword before the final bundle is ready to go. And the last thing we will need to do is to collate the hard copy into the correct order, prepare 2 copies to send to the publisher and further copies to retain ourselves. These days of course we also had to prepare the electronic version to send out at the same time.

Once it is with Kogan Page, our editor will no doubt come back with notes and there’ll be another period where we will have to do some further rewriting and re-crafting before the final version will be ready to go to print. The publication date has been set for July 2009, which is around nine months away to give us and Kogan Page sufficient time for the editorial process, the copyediting process, the print preparation process and also to fit in with their overall 2009 catalogue.

A lot longer than five minutes, wouldn’t you say?

I remember that as a teenager, one of the reasons I was inspired to be a writer was the way that the lives of writers are portrayed on screen. In the movies, it all seems so glamorous and intense — and easy. Well, now that I’ve actually become a writer, I have to laugh at my youthful innocence!

Photo: thanks to (waltzing) matilda from flickr.com (CCL)

There is a scene in a Woody Allen movie where he has taken his date to a Chinese restaurant. He is trying to impress her by showing of how much he knows about Chinese food and Chinese dining so he gives her a demonstration of how to eat with a bowl and chopsticks the “proper” Chinese way. He picks up the ball in one hand, bringing it to his mouth and starts to shovel rice and meet into his mouth while she is speaking and describing to her this skill that he is displaying. Of course, this being Woody Allen, he ends up with rice falling out of his mouth and grease all over his lips and chin, while his monologue is punctuated with slurping and sucking noises as he hoovers - or tries to hoover — the food into his mouth. Needless to say, his date is completely repulsed!

Dining Etiquette - Gender

Chinese Dining Etiquette

The English Dinner Party

Photo: thanks to ladybugbkt from flickr.com (CCL)

We have one winner drawn at random from the Fusion View email subscription list. Margot* has won a copy of Hilary: An Unquiet Spirit.

Congratulations, Margot! I have emailed her direct to arrange posting the book to her.

And thank you to everyone who has subscribed to receive Fusion View by email/ Twitter or Skype.

*I have obscured the full name for privacy reasons.

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This clip from Al-Jazeera English on YouTube reminds me how much I enjoy the acrobatics in Chinese Opera - but how I have difficulty appreciating the music, acclimatized as I am to the Western harmonic scale. It’s also great fun that the female roles are played by men - which was of course poignantly dramatized in Farewell My Concubine.

If anyone is still sceptical about the power of social media, all you have to do is take a look at its role in the making of America’s first African American president. Of all the candidates, Barack Obama has probably been the most socially connected online throughout the Democratic nomination race and also in the last year going head to head with John MCain. So, what platforms was he using and what effect did they have on the outcome of the election?

Back in the summer of 2007, I spotted that Obama had signed up for a Twitter account so that his fans and followers could keep up to date with his every movement. As of this week, you can see the “tweets” alerting his followers of the last frenetic activity on his campaign trail as he tried to squeeze as much face time with the public as possible.

The tweets link to live video on his very own social network my.barackobama.com, developed with the input of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Obama also has a Facebook page with over a million “friends” and a Facebook application as well as a presence on MySpace. TechPresident.com gives a good analysis of these three social networks in “You’ve Got a Friend in Barack Obama”.

There is an official Obama Blog on his website, run by staffers and with a range of multimedia content, including live video such as his victory speech streamed via social networking video site Ustream, as well as YouTube videos.

Beyond this handful of tools, you can see on his blog links to “Obama Everywhere” - other platforms where he has an online presence, including interactive opportunities via mobile phone.

But a bunch of social media tools in themselves are not going to make a president all by themselves. The key is how they were used by the Obama campaign. Supporters, fans and followers were encouraged to take an action to show their support for the campaign - whether by organising local events or giving a donation, however small or large, or raising funds. According to the BBC, Obama’s online campaign “attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (£403m) - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined.” With an overflowing war chest, he could out-do McCain by buying more airtime in the traditional broadcast media and also extend his own on-the-ground real world contact through more local outreach offices than the Republican campaign.

The BBC also reports that “Mr Obama had an unprecedented level of support among young people and new voters in the 2008 election. He won the votes of those under 30 by an impressive 66% to 31%, much higher than in any previous election. He also has a huge majority of those who voted for the first time, who supported him by 68% to 31%.” The Washington Post comments that the Millenials (those under 30) “are migrating toward each other, regardless of race or ethnicity. … (They) may have found their first president — one who engages them in their own space.”

Obama’s success was not entirely due to social media but he used it smartly in conjunction with other communication tools. Broadcast media is still hugely influencial and there’s nothing that will replace face to face human contact whether it’s through speeches at rallies or simply walking amont the people and kissing babies. But social media broadened his reach to those people he might not have otherwise been able to connect with and it also enabled ordinary people to do small things which came together as a whole to contibute to an enormous win.

Picture: screenshot of the official Obama website

Tony Burns is a lawyer by day, whom I know through my day job in the City. In the evenings, he has translated a children’s book from French into English, which is a daunting challenge for anyone at the best of times. I wanted to know what prompted him to take on this task and what the process of translation is like - so naturally, I invited him to write about his experience on this blog.

Tony writes:

A family connection

Les 3N et le Bouton d’argent (The 3N and the Silver Button) was written by my great aunt, Roberte Armand, as part of a series of children’s adventure stories which she wrote and which were published by Hachette in France between 1970 and 1978. Roberte Armand was my grandmother’s sister, the youngest of three daughters, all of whom were given boys names by my great grandfather who wanted a boy but never had one! She is now 91 and is still in fine fettle, living in the French Alps. An extremely active person all her life, with an amazing imagination, Roberte Armand grew up in Grenoble, France. An acclaimed science teacher (her father was himself a well known professor at Grenoble University) , she had four children, three sons followed by a daughter, upon whom the characters in her books are based. The beautiful countryside in which she grew up forms the setting for the stories, which are aimed at 9-12 year olds.

The Three N stands for Nathalie, Nick and Noel. Nathalie, at 9 the youngest of the trio, but nonetheless very perceptive represents her real life daughter. Nick, her brother is the aggressive one who teases his sister endlessly, and Noel, the cousin (Hachette insisted he be the cousin and not brother), who is the reasonable one, and kind to Nathalie, represents an amalgamation of her two eldest sons. Knowing the family, although those children are my mother’s generation, I can honestly see how the characters in the book represent real life people. I think that is really important because it makes the characters seem more real.

The 3N series

In total, 14 books in this series were published in the 1970s by Hachette, France, in the “Bilbliotheque Rose”. They have never been translated into English. When the 15th manuscript was submitted, a new person at Hachette decided he did not like the books any more, commenting that there were not enough “savoureux gouters” - “delicious teas”, as could be found in Enid Blyton books! No more were published, although there are 16 unpublished manuscripts, not to mention the most recent addition to the series, written last winter, some 30 years after last downing pens. The latest story is called Les 3N et L’Extra - Terrestre, and focusses topically on the problems of global warming.

A book at bedtime

I started on this project after reading a couple of the books to my eldest son. He was 8 at the time and although I was having to translate as I went along, he was fascinated by the stories. After reading the second one to him, I thought the story was so good that I decided more children should know about them and began the long and daunting process of translating. As a busy lawyer with 2 young boys , time is at a premium, but after 9 months the draft was finished! I was lucky enough to live in France for a few years as a child, and with a French grandmother and having spent alot of time among French people, I have a good grasp of the language. My A level and degree level French skills came into their own. Translating is an art because there is not always a perfect translation possible, particularly where you have a play on words or a pun which simply does not work in English. The French have an obsession with food, which comes through, but then Enid Blyton was also very keen on her lashings of ginger beer etc!

The translation process

I was fortunate to have the author on the other end of the phone if clarification was required but luckily this was not needed too often. There was one passage which involved the children visiting a mink farm which I advised might not be politically correct nowadays. Two weeks later I received through the post a revised extract from my great aunt where she had re - typed one entire page of the book (probably with her original 1970s typewriter!), changing the reference from mink to exotic fish, with associated changes in the dialogue! She did admit to being stumped by this request but came up with the idea after several trips to her local library in France!

As the work continued I got more and more into the characters, and began to understand how they themselves thought, picturing the real life characters when they were themselves children. It was a very rewarding experience.

I am also delighted that the whole process has rejuvenated my great aunt. To go away and write another book at 91 is proof of that! She has been so excited about the renewed interest in her stories and it would mean so much to her if they were to be published again. Her children are also thrilled that her mother has reacted in this way.

My boys are now 9 and 7 and into Enid Blyton in a big way, as I was, Secret Seven, Famous 5 etc. Those stories are still selling very well even though they were written in the 1950s. Well here is something to match them, but with subtle differences (only one of the stories has a secret passage!). I think children just love a good story, from whatever era, and this is what these books provide. Being a mathemetician/ scientist, the author leaves no unanswered questions and all the plots end neatly with all loose ends tied up, just how children like it.

The feedback I have had from children who have read my translation has been 100% positive. These are mainly children in my son’s class at school and that of my goddaughter. Adults too have enjoyed it. “When’s the next one coming out?” they say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony is looking for an agent/ publisher in the UK to take on The 3N and The Silver Button so that more children can have the pleasure of reading the adventures of Nathalie, Nick and Noel. So if anyone can help with suggestions or recommendations as to what he can do next to bring Tante Bob’s book to a wider English-speaking audience, please do get in touch by leaving a comment and emailing me via the Contact Form and I’ll pass on your email to Tony.

You can read the first chapter in English by downloading the pdf from the box below, or via this link to The 3N and The Silver Button

Photo: of Tony and Tante Bob (with permission)

My post last week on Chinese Dining Etiquette inspired a number of very interesting comments about how people deal with the expectations and obligations around paying for a meal when going out with Chinese friends and family. A couple of them got me thinking more about the social and cultural dilemma around paying for meals in the context of the gender divide. Do women feel the same social pressure to offer to pay for a meal as men do, whether they are from an eastern culture or a western one?

Back in the old days, before women’s lib, it was the expectation and duty that the man paid, if a man and a woman went out to a meal together. (I am thinking here of Western culture from around the 1930s through to the 1960s, which would be my parents and grandparents generation. I am not clear as to what would have happened in East — whether it would have been acceptable for a single woman to go out for a meal with a single man during that period in Asian culture. If anyone can share their experience of that from an Asian perspective, that would be great!) My parents completed their higher education in the UK in the 1950s, which is where they met and dated, so the Western tradition played its part in their courtship. Growing up in that context in the 1960s, that was certainly the etiquette that I absorbed.

However, I came of age in the 1980s, when the women’s lib of the lates 60s and 70s had evolved into out-and-out feminism and young women now fully expected to have careers of their own. That was the era of women’s power suits and I remember an ad for Charlie perfume that featured a beautiful woman striding into a stuffy gentlemen’s club dressed in a sleek three-piece trousersuit with a tie. At university, I had long discussions with my girl friends about the etiquette of paying for a meal. Should we offer to pay for our half of a meal when we went out with a young man? Should we pay for the whole meal? Or should we play the demure young lady and let the man pay, just like in the old days?

It was generally agreed that if we paid for the whole meal, it would threaten the manhood of our date, framing us as a scary/ ballsy feminist types who would emasculate him and so frighten him away forever. But if we let him pay the whole tab, we agonised, would that mean that we would be seen as weak little women who would feel obliged to sleep with him - because the implication was that we would have surrendered all our power to him by surrendering to his greater masculine wallet?

So “going Dutch” would seem to be the most sensible option but there were still worries about what message this signalled: would we be saying that we were “just friends” and lose any opportunity of the relationship developing into something more intimate in the future? For some of my girlfriends, sharing the tab with a man still felt too forcefully as if they were asserting equal rights with men and therefore pushing our “feminist values “on him. And no one wanted to be seen as a feminist — because feminists were all men-hating, shorthaired, hairy-legged, angry, unreasonable lunatics, weren’t they? And so these tricky questions occupied us late into our student nights.

These days, 20 years on, I don’t think about the issue very much at all. Sometimes I pay for the whole meal, sometimes I share the bill and at other times, I gracefully accept a meal paid for by someone else. This is partly because the whole dating issue is no longer on the table, so to speak, so that particular aspect doesn’t come into play. Amongst my friends and close family, there is no game-playing or status-flexing needed, so if someone pays this time, someone else offers to pay next time and it all comes out in the wash. And gender no longer seems relevant in any of it.

I wonder, however, whether the dilemmas we had back in the 80s arose because we were all young and uncertain at that time of our lives or whether we were living through a transition time for women. Did young men at that time really feel threatened if a woman paid for part or all of the bill, as we girls worried so much about? Did they really expect to get into bed with us more easily if they paid the bill or was that just an anxiety on our part? Similarly, do I feel more relaxed about these things now because I am older or because I don’t have to date anymore or because women have reached greater economic parity with men in our modern times? I am not sure. Maybe it’s a combination of all the above?

What are your thoughts? I hope you will add a comment…

Photo: thanks to goonjrulz from flickr.com (CCL)