Archive for the 'Comments Round-Up' Category

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

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

Say Lee shares his personal story, prompted by my post on Eldest Daughters for International Women’s Day. He is grateful to have had the chance to interact with his wife’s grandmother even if he never knew his own grandparents. He also says that he is the youngest boy of 13 children and his wife is the eldest of 10 children - wow, family reunions must need a huge banqueting hall! Pey joins the discussion again, picking up on his comment about the stubbornness of eldest daughters, being one herself and having an eldest daughter to deal with as a mum, too. Say Lee responds diplomatically saying that as the youngest boy, he was pampered and is grateful to his wife to help him learn better ways! Pey, by the way, is also going to try and find some pics of her mum and my mum in cheong sams - they were best pals back then (and still are) so I can’t wait to see the pics, if she can find them. And I agree with Pey that back then, there seemed to be a higher standard of dress and style than these days when we just slouch around in any old thing!

My post on the joys of malt loaf continues to be a popular one with cyclist Ronny commenting about butterless malt loaf.

Another reader, emigre, is going to enter a short story to Italian e-zine Buran. If her story and that of Jules is published in Italian over at that site, perhaps they will let me upload their English versions over here at Fusion View so we non-Italian speakers can appreciate their writing, too. What do you say, emigre and Jules?

Kenny Mah shares a shocking story - his blogging identity was stolen by a spammer who posted comments on Kenny’s site pretending to be Kenny and claiming he was a transgendered female-to-male. Kenny’s readers rallied to his defence and Kenny himself was able to take a step back and not over-react, though I am sure it was hugely upsetting. There will always be malicious people out on the web - as there are in the real world. But often, what comes out more strongly to shame such people is the humanity and warm-heartedness of others who come to the defence of the person attacked and also the inner strength of the person attacked. (I am deliberately avoiding the word “victim” which, I think, gives power to the malicious person.) I would also add that personally, I have huge sympathy and respect for people who are transgendered and the malicious claim about Kenny’s gender tells us a lot more about the lack of humanity of the person making that comment than about either Kenny or transgendered people.

The power of the web continues to fascinate. Silvia had a very personal response to the video of LonelyGirl15 - she instintively talked back to the video , a lone voice in her study reaching out to the lone girl alone in her study on the screen. Not to worry, Silvia, I talk back at my TV all the time whenever I watch a film that engages me in a visceral, emotive way - that’s why I find it hard to go to the movies in the public place!

Flash fiction writer Guy Hogan had a look at my invitation to write mini flashes or digital haiku on Twitter and sees it as a challenge. I hope he will rise to it as it would be great to see what a specialist flash fiction writer going even more micro might come up with!

Photo: thanks to bossladyranch.com

I do read all the comments that are posted on Fusion View but instead of responding in the comments section, I have been writing a Comments Round-Up from time to time. This will give the notable comments and discussions more exposure and air-time on the main pages of Fusion View and allow more readers to enjoy them. There’s a new category called Comments Round-Up in the sidebar on the far right if you’d like to catch up on past comments. Enjoy!

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Commenting on my post on Hot-housing to retain creativity for writing, bibliobibuli notes that for some writers they can talk to much about their work whereas for others it seems to help them get it into shape for publication later. Kenny Mah draws an analogy with actors who do not want to over-rehearse so that they can keep their best acting for the actual take in the film - well, this is the first time I’ve been likened to Julianne Moore!

In response to my post about the content theft experienced by bestselling author Seth Godin, Tunku Halim agrees that it’s dangerous for writers to put their potentially saleable material on the web. Jennifer adds “how many people will actually take the time to sue?”. With my lawyers hat on, I would say that taking action in court is long, expensive and exhausting and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless it’s likely you will get a huge amount of compensation…. Darren clarifies an error in my post, saying “The Creative Commons licenses offer the option of NC (Non-Commercial), which prohibits others from making commercial use of your work. Seth Godin did not use the NC option, and therefore opened himself up to having his work sold by others.” - thanks for clarifying.

A number of commenters have enjoyed my phoneblogging experiment from Malaysia, including Pey, bibliobibuli and Tunku Halim Rj suggested using the wifi and internet facilities at cybercafes and Starbucks - in the end, I didn’t have time to do any internetting but I saw many people hanging out at various cafes at the malls with their laptops, drinking cappuccinos and surfing - so civilized! The Angry Medic was reminded of how much he missed Malaysian food - ah yes, all we ex-pat Malaysians know that craving in our bellies and it was certainly fantastic to enjoy a week’s worth of the delicious, spicy cooking of home.

Jules Yim seems excited by the call for submissions from Italian magazine Buran and may submit a story. Let me know how you get on, Jules, and I’ll add a link to your story if it’s accepted by Buran.

Marc has added a comment to the film I showed awhile back about the Stanford prison experiment - he refers us to the films on Abu Graib prison which includes “background research on human ability to inflict injury to others when told to by an authority figure”. The film is “quite disturbing”, he adds. I will certainly take a look but may have to steel myself for it….

My cousin Pey comments that the women in my family are always so stylish re my post on Eldest Daughters. Yes, my Mum and Grandma have always been stylish. As a tomboy, I always felt so scruffy and slouchy beside them! My poor Mum still tries to buy me make-up and pretty jewellry only to be greeted by a lukewarm grunt…

And my favourite piece of news is from Kenny Mah. I met him at the KL Book Events and told him that I had read his mini-short stories on his blog - go to his pdf document Broken Mornings on his blog - and I thought that he wrote well. I suggested that he work them up into longer short stories and he was sure to have a chance of getting something published. Kenny has added a comment saying that since we spoke in KL, he has taken my advice and shown his writing to an editor - and he is now working them up into longer pieces with a view to publication: go for it, Kenny!

Photo of cattle round-up: thanks to aito.co.uk

There’ve been some terrific comments over the last few weeks. I don’t have space to highlight all of them but here are some that you might enjoy.

The podcast interview with James Wood drew a number of comments from poets and poetry fans, O’Shea Jackson, Rob and Calvin Broadus. James’s remark about Scottish poets lacking ambition prompted a quick retort from Rob. Calvin gently mocked James’s way of adding multi-textual references in his manner of speech but also cheered James on, saying that everyone MUST read James’s poems.

My post on the joys of malt loaf awhile back drew a recipe request from Kim Lewis. Yeeton has kindly responded and posted up a recipe for malt loaf in his comment – I hope Kim will come back and let us know how she gets on if she uses that recipe. Pedro defends the loaf as being healthy – especially if you are a runner or cyclist. I definitely agree that it’s great for an energy boost when you’re outdoors doing vigorous exercise.

Jennifer comments that she always checks out guys whom she sees knitting and she is clearly familiar with the film about guys knitting that I posted up. The pics of knitted cupcakes brought comments from émigré and Annegret, who marvelled at the skills of the creators. I laughed out loud at Wei’s response to the cupcakes: “like men… cute, but pointless.”

Rj gave me a link to a Singaporean online radion station in response to my post on listening to the wireless. Thanks for that!

Ted Mahsun, whom I mentioned in my post on where to submit your manuscript, has complemented that post with some advice on how to submit short stories to US magazines on his blog. Thanks for adding to the community of knowledge, Ted.

Vandana is a Daphne du Maurier fan and will be visiting the du Maurier festival in Cornwall this year. She asked me to recommend a place to stay and I emailed her to say that I Googled for a self-catering cottage and suggested she could Google for a B&B. I’ve asked her to write up a short report of her tour of the festival if she does go and to submit it to Fusion View – I hope she will as it would be great to have an “our reporter from Cornwall” piece on all things du Maurier on this site.

You may remember Nicky Harman, the translator whose first-person piece I featured awhile back. She was looking for an agent for her translations of a Chinese novel into English. Her article about the translation process posted on Fusion View was spotted by a publisher in China who contacted me, wanting to get in touch with Nicky. Nicky emailed me a few weeks ago to say that that publisher has now invited her to discuss a possible translation project and she is also in discussions with a literary agent in the UK who checked her out on Fusion View. Rock on, Nicky!

The discussion about how the Japanese occupation on Malaya is written continues with a comment from jack who tells how his Japanese friend in college did not know about the past of his own country.

Rosaline Ting adds a comment to tell Fusion View readers about her play Journeys at the Wimbledon Theatre in London. Let me know if you go to see it and would like to contribute a review to Fusion View.

Kenny Mah, a Malaysian writer, has created a cool banner for the sidebar of his blog displaying details of the LitBlogger event that I will be taking part in on Saturday 24 February in Kuala Lumpur - he shares the link to it in his comment that he posted here. Thanks, Kenny!

Tunku Halim makes a good point that people who use obscenities too much in their daily speech just makes them boring rather than shocking. He also queried where he can buy my books - Tunku, you can get them from www.amazon.co.uk, or click on the links in the sidebar of this blog. Or you can order them at a good bookshop in your area.

Peter added a thought-provoking comment on a previous comments roundup, highlighting the differences between different Chinese communities in the UK. His picture of the diversity within the Chinese overseas groups makes me think laughingly of the recent case when a Scottish judge let off a Chinese person from a driving offence because we all look alike and it couldn’t be ascertained without a doubt that the accused was the person driving the car in the traffic camera photo. We don’t look alike, really we don’t, your honour.

Finally, my post on maintaining an authentic image prompted some musings from yeeton on blogs and blogging and also some advice from Sandy Dumont encouraging me to try some light lipstick instead of throwing out make-up altogether!

Photo of cattle round up thanks to boss lady ranch.com

Today, I’d like to share some highlights from comments that were posted on Fusion View in the few weeks before Xmas.

First, thanks to jennifer for her Christmas wishes. Happy New Year to you, jennifer - and also to all Fusion View readers and visitors.

Thanks also to everyone who added comments and emailed me following the feature in StarMag about this blog, in particular to julie yee, say lee, senghooi, lmsell and bibliobibuli. Bibliobibuli discussed the question of reading habits in Malaysia, prompted by my Book Lovers Poll - the current results of the poll show that of 47 people who voted, the majority (46.8%) read more than 40 books a year. 23.4% read between 2 and 10 books a year. The remaining number of voters read between 10-40 books a year. The poll isn’t very scientific of course but I like to infer from it that Fusion View readers are generally pretty literate, genuine book lovers!

We also got a query from sonia , another British resident in France who is keen to make malt loaf and doesn’t know where to get malt extract. Can anyone help? Sonia, I wonder if you might have to get it by mail order eg from Fortnum & Mason or one of those stores that deliver overseas.

Returning to the literary theme, pey and burhanuddin have added some more background information on Yiyun Li, the award-winning short story writer from mainland China. Silvia shares her experiences of writing in numerous languages and how German helps her hide her emotions and how she finds herself expressing her thoughts naturally in three different languages!

On mind and body matters, frank fernandis picked up on my post on painful feet awhile back and notes the lack of support for women with bound feet while andrew and tera ponder on how we can learn from water, in response to the film of a bursting water ballon.

And there is always the subject of food on Fusion View - yeeton advises us to to boycott bad restaurants in response to my post on the concept of “heong”.