Archive for the 'Highlights from Previous Posts' Category

My co-author Silvia Cambie and I are very excited that our big day has arrived. The launch of our book International Communications Strategy is taking place tonight, hosted by Chicago Booth University and The International Alliance for Women.

Due to restrictions on numbers, this is an invitation only event but Mark Smith, CEO at Ipadio.com, is kindly running a live phoneblog from the event where he will hopefully be able to live stream some of the speeches and also interview some of our guests during the party so that those who have not been able to come along will be able to get a flavour of the event through the audio feed.

I’ll also be calling in at various times during today to let you know how the preparations are going.

You can listen to the audio blog via the player below. When the tab “Live: On Air” shows up, you will be able to listen to the live audio feed (subject to a 5 second delay). Otherwise, you can listen to already-recorded audio sessions by clicking on the Previous tab (and move about the various sessions by clicking Next and Latest as required).

The event starts at 6.30pm UK time (GMT +1hour). The live audio feed will be running intermittently whenever Mark calls in on his mobile phone.

I hope you enjoy the audio version of the event.

I’ll be phoning in after the event, too, to share my impressions and de-brief of the event so do come back in the next few days as well!

The Futurists were artists who burst onto the 20th century in 1909, led by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti, obsessed with speed, electricity and the new machine age. I went to the exhibition at the Tate Modern the other day and found it fascinating and repellent at the same time. The exhbition shows the sculptures, paintings and written manifestos of the key figures and sets them within the context of Cubism, Vorticism and the Great War. It was repellent to me because the ideology of the movement is repellent. The Futurist Manifesto of Marinetti and his gang seem like the rantings of fascists:

“9. We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.”

Perhaps, it was easy before the First World War to glorify war and machines. But in a world that has known the horror of that war, the Holocaust and other genocides, the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Sept 11, here at the dawn of the 21st century, we are not so certain about glorious war and beautiful ideas that kill. And, of course, as a modern woman who has the right to vote and work and live pretty much as an equal with men in the Western world, the misogyny of the movement raises my hackles.

But the exhibition is also fascinating for giving an insight into what it must have been like to first experience speed and electricity. We take these for granted now, at the dawn of our new century, but in the early years of the last one, cars and electric lights were only just starting to become commonly available.

Night time became full of possibilities with electric lights - cabarets and other entertainments, decorative lights in the street and around buildings made the dark exciting and alluring. The Futurists write about how electric light transforms the human face at night into a myriad of different colours and complexions.

Speed also changed how people experienced the world - streaking past familiar scenes which were previously static, watching the world blur out of the windows of trains and automobiles. The possibilities of technology and machines excited the Futurists. One of them writes about driving his new car, feeling like a modern centaur, part man, part machine.

They tried to convey these experiences on canvas - creating streaks and lines of colour, a blur of light and shade, kaleidoscopes and fragments of dancing and movement. Their sculpture shaped half monstous, half human figures and machine-like objects swirling in motion.

Their most iconic piece, to me, is the sinister cyborg like creature inspired by a drill bit - see first photo. It has inspired a lot of our modern vision - or perhaps nightmare - of androids and cyborgs: machines that were originally created to help humanity but then turning against their creators and becoming efficient killing machines. In particular, see the second photo of a cylon soldier from the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica.

While the Futurists glorified machines and technology without question, we are much more ambivalent. Perhaps because we know now the horror of the First World War - the first war that used machines and technology (tanks, nerve gas, grenades, bombs dropped from planes, machine guns) for mass destruction - which they were still to live through. Yet, even as we carry the burden of our anxiety about technology, it continues to evolve and permeate every part of our lives.

Some philosophers have written that we are all cyborgs already, especially those of us in the so-called First World - we do not wait for the full integration of the human biological with machines to become part human, part machine: we are already there. Think about it. Most areas of our lives are mediated by machines and technology in some way. In order to go anywhere beyond our narrow neighbourhood, we use cars, buses, trains, planes. Our communications with each other are mediated through phones, email, webcams, SMS, instant messaging. Our music lives in electronic form. Our books, newspapers and knowledge are produced via digital technology. Much of business and enterprise rely on computers and the internet. The logistics of moving goods around the world and of our economy depend on computers. Without electricity, we would be lost in a dark, still and silent world.

A hundred years after the Futurists, machines and technology may not be welded to our bodies but we are so dependent on them, they may as well be.

Photo: of cylon figure from slashfilm.com

Well, there’s nothing like writing it down and putting it out there to make something happen. I recently blogged about taking up running again, using Podrunner Intervals, a podcast that plays music at alternating slow and fast beats to help you with interval training. Within a day of my posting that up, my friend and blogging massage therapist, Melanie, dropped me a comment inviting me to join her for her second London Marathon in April 2010. My response was: Are you crazy!? But, still, I was chuffed to have her encouragement for my baby steps in running — especially as she is a superfit athlete.

A few days later, another friend, Sue, also learned about my new found fitness addiction from my blog and invited me to join her for a 5K fun run at the end of April. Sue is a homoeopath who lives round the corner from me and we are very close to Dulwich Park, where the fun run will be taking place. Since I go for my baby runs in that park every week, I had no any excuse not to sign up for the fun run. But the clincher was that Sue and I agreed to reward ourselves after the event by going for a slap up meal — how could I refuse that incentive! I have now sent off my cheque and application form…

Part of the thrill of starting a new hobby is to go shopping. I headed to London City Runner in my lunch hour and got myself a new pair of running shoes (Saucony) with stability support for my flat feet and weak ankles. I’ve also got some running shorts and a running T-shirt, both made of what they call “performance material” — silky, smooth to the touch: presumably to reduce the wind drag on my speedy pace of a mile in 20 minutes (yes, that’s called “walking pace”)… so while I huff and puff round the Park, regardless of my feeble performance, I look REALLY GOOD!

I have to confess that this new hobby has been inspired in the most part by my love of social media. While surfing the net the other week, I came across a number of podcasts and blogs about running and triathlons. Specifically, I typed in the word “Zen” into iTunes, thinking that I might like to listen to some podcasts about meditation and relaxation. One of the shows that came up was Zen and the Art of the Triathlon, a fantastic podcast by a triathlete called Brett living in Texas. It’s a really free-form show with him talking about training, cycling, swimming, testing out different kinds a gear. He has a very laid-back manner and a lovely energy that for some reason I find very inspiring. After listening to a couple of shows, I just wanted to get out there and run! (I would also love to swim and cycle but organising that in London is a bit more tricky than popping on my running shoes and trundling down to the park. But we’ll see… ) In addition to Brett, there is a huge community of running/ triathlete podcasters and bloggers out there and I’ve been getting a lot of tips and inspiration from many of them — if you want to check them out, just type in “running” or “triathlon” in iTunes or Google Blog Search.

What is interesting is that I have tried running off and on over the past few years but it has never really bitten and gotten hold of me in the same way as it has recently. I put that down definitely to finding the online community of runners/ triathletes. I’d always thought of myself as a non-sporty, literary type — not at all like those sporty, super athletes that think nothing of running across the desert or swimming the Channel. But listening to their podcasts about the pain that they experience in their training or the exhaustion that they have to fight through or about times when they just have to give up - as well as their enjoyment of the landscape that they are cycling or running through - has let me see them as ordinary people who have built up their stamina and skills over time and experience. It all seems less intimidating and more like something that even I could do!

So no sitting meditation or relaxation. Instead, I’m finding Zen in physical activity. Who knows where this will lead me. Watch this space…

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

I am chuffed that highly-respected UK editor turned writing coach, Kathy Gale, has written a guest piece for Fusion View - a personal account of her experience of working with writers while an editor at the top London publishing companies and as an independent writing mentor.

Kathy Gale has been Senior Editor of Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton; Editorial Director at Pan Macmillan; Marketing Director of Simon & Schuster; and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. She currently heads her own writing consultancy, KG Publishing Services.

~~~~~~~

Kathy writes:

Flair

As an editor and publisher for over twenty years, I’ve worked with many writers and I’ve always shared the common publishing view that you’ve either got writing talent or you haven’t. If the flair’s there, it’s worth honing, nurturing and developing. If it isn’t, don’t encourage the writer.

I held this view steadfastly during my time as Senior Editor at Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton, and when I became Editorial Director of Pan Macmillan and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. But in 2005, I decided to go it alone and set up my own business as a publishing consultant and writing coach.

Breaking down the barriers

I began working with writers who were just starting out - reading their work, meeting them, talking to them on the telephone, helping them to understand the bewildering world of publishing and what publishers and agents actually want. When I started, I thought I would mostly be telling writers, gently and clearly, that they hadn’t got what it takes. And then I noticed a remarkable thing. As I worked with authors, and as I talked to them about the difficulties they were experiencing, the challenges they faced, the reasons their work wasn’t having enough of an emotional impact on the reader, often something was unlocked. Often, draft two or draft three was suddenly remarkably different. At that point, I began to change my mind about the whole talent question. Perhaps, in reality, we all have talent, but there are barriers – lack of knowledge of the publishing world, fear of exposure or failure, the ability to create the time and space to write – that hold us back.

It’s a tough world out there

This isn’t to say that I’m not realistic. I still give writers clear and honest feedback about their potential to be published and that’s often not the feedback the writer wants to hear. And I alert writers to the realities of the publishing world – it is extremely and increasingly tough to get a publishing deal. But I have been surprised by the amount of talent that is out there, just needing some encouragement and support to flourish.

Our beloved babies

For some of my writers, publication is the aim and nothing else will do. Others want to write the best book they can possibly write for the satisfaction that gives them. That changes the advice I give and the way I work. Some writers will come to me for initial feedback on their work and then go away for months as they rewrite. Others come regularly for detailed editing and support throughout the writing process. All of them come to accept that writing a good book takes months, often years, of sustained, hard, committed work. But most find it a highly satisfying and rewarding process. Alice Walker once said that having a child was like letting your heart walk around outside your body – a graphic picture of the vulnerability motherhood creates. And I think writing is a little like that – something internal and personal is being put out in the world for other people to look at and comment on. This can be a delicate, painful process. But most mothers would say that they wouldn’t be without their children. And I bet most writers wouldn’t be without their books.

~~~~~~~~~

To contact Kathy Gale about her work as a writing coach:
Kathy.gale@kgpublishingservices.co.uk
www.kgpublishingservices.co.uk

Photo: thanks to bookseller.com

The following series of three posts is taken from an essay I wrote for a collection of essays by various Malaysian-connected writers coming out in Malaysia sometime soon to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Malaysian Independence from British rule.

Part 1 - The meal that made me cry

I stared down at my plate. There was one soggy piece of toast on it, drowned in a pool of orangey-brown baked beans. I looked around me at the crowded dining hall. The girls were all taller and bigger and heavier and stronger than me, all tucking in to their lunch of baked beans on toast, all laughing and chatting. There were a few black faces but otherwise, they were all Caucasian, pale skinned and robust. I was the only South East Asian, skinny and small and caramel-toned. It was my first day at boarding school in the UK. It was 1975 and I was twelve.

The morning had been a tumble of classes and new friends as I trailed behind my new classmates to change rooms for each new lesson. In Malaysia, we had the same teacher for most subjects and any specialist teacher who taught us came to our classroom while we stayed put. This new pattern of packing up my pencils and books after each class and fighting my way through the chaotic corridors to find the next lesson confused me. Several times, I got lost, like a new recruit left behind by her platoon, and stood bewildered as girls hurried past me.

By lunchtime, I was exhausted and disorientated. My legs felt cold in the navy school kilt and my arms felt tightly constrained in a long-sleeved sweater. My knee-high socks prickled my shins. Lunch would help me feel better, I thought. I always liked break-time at school in Kuala Lumpur. My friends and I bought curry laksa at the canteen, the spicy soup ladled out of huge steaming vats into a bowl of noodles, beansprouts, soya and chicken. Sometimes, I brought in fried rice and would eat it lukewarm from the tupperware. Friends would bring in soy sauce noodles and vegetables. But here in this rowdy English place, lunch had not turned out how I had expected. I stared down at the baked beans and toast on my plate.

I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was just after 1pm. I looked at the strange, noisy, pale girls around me. It struck me that I had five years here. Five long years of baked beans on toast. Five years without curry laksa. Or stir-fried vegetables. Or soy sauce chicken or grilled satay or beef rendang or nasi lemak. Or anything that I knew as food. Real food. I burst into tears. The girls sitting at my table fell silent, staring at me uncomfortably. A sixth-former said, “She’s just homesick. She’ll be all right.” And they left me alone to sob despairingly over my baked beans.

Later, when I was older, I realised that this was probably not an uncommon experience for Malaysians going to study abroad - especially back in the ’70s and ’80s. These days, in the 21st century, even the remotest part of the UK will probably have a Malaysian restaurant or at least an eatery that can do a decent curry. Back then, England was still emerging uncomfortably from its post-war troubles and coming to grips with the loss of its empire. It had been used to exporting its culture and habits and food across the world and it would be some decades yet before a new generation would return from the hippy trail with bottles of fish sauce and chilli belacan and recipes for Thai green curry and satay. Back then, curry was a strange concoction involving a plain curry sauce, pineapple and raisins. To my horror, they also mixed curry powder with sweet salad cream to make a weird cold dish called Coronation Chicken.

For five years, I learnt to eat potatoes with everything. Roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, buttered potatoes, jacket potatoes, sauteed potatoes, chips, mash, potato salad. The were lots of interesting things you could do with potatoes. But none of them turned the spud into rice. Every now and then, though, we would have rice. Aaah, rice. Those were my favourite meals. Except that the rice would come with that pineapply-raisiny curry and I’d have to spend ages picking out the bits of fruit. Or with chicken fricassee, a mix of shredded chicken in what tasted like Campbell’s cream of chicken condensed soup - which was marginally better than pineapply curry in that I could pretend it was chicken a la king.

When I went to university, it was like a liberation after prison….

To be continued next Friday (06 July 2007)…

Photo: thanks to Johnnie Shannon on flickr.com

lffd

I have been posting occasional posts by my father about his Memories of Malaya. He celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this year and recently found time to write another piece for the family about our family traditions in the time of British rule over Malaya. He writes his memories as an email to our family, who are spread out all over the world, and I edit and share the ones which have a wider general interest here on Fusion View.

While my mother’s side of the family are staunch Methodist Christians, my father’s side of the family comes from a Buddhist tradition. I grew up going to Sunday School and reading Bible stories so it’s really interesting for me to learn more about the traditions from the other side of the family.

He writes:

British rule

I grew up in Malaysia and until I was in my late teens in 1957 the country was one of the many British colonial possessions. There were roughly two kinds of colonial possessions, one, a colony and the other a British protected possession. The first is ruled directly from Whitehall and the other is one where the local chieftain or sultan had entered into a treaty with the British Government where the former had asked for British protection usually against other local chieftains, sultans or neighbouring states. The British Government then sent a British Adviser to help in the administration of the local chieftain or sultan. He would also set up the administrative institutions and infrastructure not unlike those of a colony and for practical purpose the country was administered like that of a colony. Examples of a colony were Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Hong Kong etc. Malaya is an example of the second type. The empire had not only a vast mix of racial types who spoke their own languages practised their own customs and worshipped their own gods. In all these respects British colonial policy was benign. There was no compulsions of any kind: the natives and immigrants need not go to English language schools, worship the Christian god in the manner of the Anglicans nor eat with knife and forks nor dress in suites. They did interfere to do away with inhuman customs or practices like widow burning or slavery. The policy of generally not interfering with local family laws, customs and cultural practices prevailed. The British must have adopted these policies from the examples of the Romans in their dealings with their empire. There was therefore little serious social or political tension in the possessions they ruled.

Taoists

In our households like most Chinese household who were not Christians, we were actually Taoists although without very clear thinking we regarded and called ourselves Buddhists. We worshipped various gods and goddesses with an altar and little statuettes of each of them. I do not think we were even pure Taoist although to this day I do not know what Taoism is. A Buddhist generally means a person who follows Buddha’s teachings and there is no image or statuettes and no worship other then paying respect to a statuette or painting of Buddha in the usual eastern way of paying respect, by kneeling and the bowing to them. I will continue to refer to ourselves as Buddhists although by this it is really the kind of Taoism I have described above.

Daily rituals

There were certain daily rituals to be performed. In the morning after my Mother or the servant, Ah Hoe Chey (AHC) had done their morning toilet, they would place one joss stick for one deity into a bowl filled with a kind of grey powder which held the joss stick in upright position and would kneel with hands clasped bowed to each deity in turn.

The gods and goddesses were placed in a row on a long altar table and going from left to right they were the following:

1. the “Heavenly Emperor”: there is no image of Him. I think he rules the heaven;
2. the Warrior God (Kuan Kong): He was not a god to help people to fight wars like the Roman god, Mars. In his life on earth he was a warrior in the classical period of Chinese history; after his death, a cult arose in paying respect to him and sometimes people who did so also asked for favours and they were granted and he became deified like some Roman emperors although there is no record of a dead emperor granting any favours. There was a painting of him in his warrior robes famously with tucked up eye brows with a red face with two lieutenants standing beside him.
3. the Goddess of Mercy (Koong Yum): She was a human at one time who did a lot of good deeds and was known for her filial piety. Her life was portrayed in a film version with a famous Chinese star playing her part and there was a scene where she was shown to pluck out her own eyes to use them to cure her mother. Again she was deified after her death because she still performed good deeds in her answers to prayers. There was a small statuette of her made of white porcelain looking serene and benign, like a caring and loving mother.
4. next to her there was the Monkey God. There was a little statuette of him dressed in a yellow robe in the style of the classical Chinese time but with the face of a monkey. I do not know what his position is in the pantheon. I think it arose as follows: there is a Chinese legend that a Chinese monk traveled to India to receive the Buddhist scriptures and his traveling companions included two persons one with feature of a pig and the other a monkey and the legend is full of stories of their adventures in their journey to India. He must be the one with the features of a monkey. Because of this god in our house we would not use the ordinary word of monkey “ma lau” but a more polite word.

There was a small altar at the foot of the altar table. I do not know what god is represented there. There is the god of the kitchen who had a small altar over the kitchen stoves. He reports to the Heavenly Emperor at the end of each Chinese calendar year on the deeds of the household. On most mornings either Mother or AHC would chant prayers from a prayer book and this lasted about fifteen minutes.

First and fifteenth

On the first and fifteenth day of each Chinese calendar month the worship of these deities were a little more elaborate in that the appropriate temples must be visited and worship conducted there. The more religious minded, like Mother and AHC, would not eat meat for the two days. The temples would provide free vegetarian food for these two days for anyone who attended them whether they worshipped or not. In addition to joss sticks, joss papers were burnt.

Feast days

In addition to the daily prayers most Chinese also celebrate other feast days many of which were not religious but involved the cycles of the earth around the sun. The first major festival in the calendar is the Spring Festival or more usually known as Chinese New Year. Like all humanity it is a celebration of the beginning of new life - wearing of new clothes, cleaning house so that it looks new, wishing good fortune for the New Year. In our household we children wanted presents left near where we slept like on Christmas Eve. So we had Mother to give us presents in this manner. In one year Mother gave us a small magnifying glass to complement our stamp collection and packets of stamps and fountain pens. Father did not have relationship with his relatives except his elder brother. Mother was the only child. So we had no relatives to have to visit except Father’s elder brother and two ladies whom, like all Chinese, we call aunts although we were not related but were only Mother’s friends. We therefore received very few red packets and were impressed when some of school friends who related the amount they received. For the first day of the Chinese New Year even we children ate vegetarian and AHC made some delicious vegetarian food. When we grew up in secondary school Father would allow us to see any number of film shows for the two days of holidays. Normally we were allowed to see one film a week. So we packed as many as 3 shows into a day.

There was the mid-summer celebration which occurs on the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar. This is a harvest festival and the moon is supposed to be at its biggest and brightest. Children would stroll around the garden of their houses holding lighted lanterns.

There is the day the winter solstice is celebrated when everyone eats little dough balls cooked in sugared water with ginger. I personally did not like them but Mother did very much.

There is All Souls Day where families go to the graves of parents or grandparents to pay their respects and render filial piety by cutting grass and sweeping away rubbish around the graves. About 14 days are given for this duty. I feel very touched when I see photographs of cemeteries filled with the Chinese doing this. I know of several persons who have travelled from as far as Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to perform this duty and I have just heard a few days ago that a friend traveled from Hong Kong where he worked to do this duty.

Cowherd and the weaver girl

There is one particularly romantic festival and it occurs on the seventh day of the seven month in the Chinese calendar. It is the festival of the “Cowherd and the weaver girl.” A long time ago there was a cowherd who tended the cows and a girl who weaved cloth. They were so enamoured and spent time mooning over each other that they neglected their chores. The gods became angry at this and separated them and permitted them only to meet for that one day in a year on the rainbow bridge and it is this that the earthlings now celebrate. I think this would make a splendid opera. Imagine the last scene where the young couple meets on a rainbow bridge singing duets of love and longing and below on earth the people dance and sing in celebration of the meeting. Opera composers have always included one scene where there is a lot of spirited music and vigorous dancing and this can be it and be a very fine one too.

There are other festivals but regrettably I cannot remember them.

Deity of little children

When we children celebrated our birthdays we had to worship a very old lady deity whose altar was at the end of our bed. She looks after little children. When I use the word “worship,” I mean that one would kneel put our palms together and bow three times to the altar and if Mother or Grandmother is standing beside us she will prompt us to say “make me a good and filial boy and help me to be successful in the examinations.” To celebrate I had a bowl of rice and as a treat I was given the thigh of a roasted duck all of it for myself. I remember eating it by myself holding it by the bone and it was a treat not to have to eat together as usual with the family. Even then the birthday was not celebrated every year - only when Mother, Grandmother or AHC remembered it.

Photo: thanks to limeydog on flickr.com

memmlya

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This piece of flash fiction was inspired by a browse through the Argos catalogue.

“Can you look at my ticket, dear?” The old lady said, leaning towards me. “I can’t see my number.”

I was sitting on a plastic seat, waiting for my ticket to be called. All I needed was a cheap toaster to replace the one that had smoked out my flat that morning. I had come into Argos just before work and it should have only taken a few minutes. Argos is a hybrid mail order / department store - their shop space is no more than a series of cash registers and a long counter. You choose what you want to buy from thick catalogues, pay and then wait for it to come up from storage. There were crowds of people waiting for their goods that morning and I was going to be late.

I looked at the ticket in the old lady’s claw-like hand. It was trembling. The electronic counter overhead said 45. “You’re number 71.”

“It’s busy today, isn’t it, dear?”

I grunted. “Mine is 79. I’m already late for work.”

I didn’t feel like talking. I hadn’t had any breakfast on account of my broken toaster and I hadn’t bargained for a long wait in this store.

The old lady said happily, “I’m very excited. I’ve been waiting for eight weeks to come here today.”

She folded her ticket neatly and put it into her purse. It was a slow process, her hands shaking all the while. She drew out a folded page, torn from a catalogue, and carefully opened it out. I looked at her for the first time. She was sunken and frail as if her body had given up on her. She might have been a beautiful woman once, or perhaps just a plain one. I could not tell through the mask of her age. Her voice too had that dry, paper-thin quality of the elderly. It is as if age sucks the life and uniqueness out of anyone of us and leaves only a generic husk - an old lady or an old man, no longer Daisy or Gina or Ned or Hassan.

“Look, this is what I’m waiting for.” She pointed at a photograph on the worn page. It was page 523 of the Argos catalogue. From its creases and softness, I sensed that it had been folded and unfolded and gazed upon many times. It was a picture of two porcelain pigs, both upright and chuckling. One played a fiddle and the other danced. They were bright pink with a black patch on their backs. With their round cheeks and laughing eyes, they looked like surreally giggling toddlers.

“I always love looking at the Argos catalogue. It comes through my door once a year and there is so much in it. You could have anything you ever need in your life from it. I like sitting in my chair with a nice cup of tea and reading through it sometimes, you know?” She looked up at me with tired eyes. “My little things used to look so pretty in the house. There was space for them then.

“I’ve got all different kinds of ornaments - china ones, glass ones and some lovely crystal pieces. My favourite are the animals, they all have such character. But after Len died, that house got to big for me, you see. I’m in a flat - it’s small, just right for one person but my little things don’t get the chance to shine, all cramped up like that. My daughter, she says, why do you need all these little knick-knacks, Mum? They only clutter up the place. Do you even know what you’ve got, Mum? she says.

” ‘Course I do, I say to her. I know each one of them and I know where they each sit. I wish you could see them. They’re so pretty. These little pigs here are pretty, aren’t they? I saw them a few months ago. I love their smiling faces and look, this one’s playing music and this one’s dancing a jig. You’re thinking I’m a silly old woman. But just looking at them puts a smile on my face. They’re so cheeky.

“I’ve been saving up, you know. A pound a week, I put aside from my pension. A pound a week. For eight weeks. And now I’m here. Is it my number yet, dear?”

“No.”

“You don’t mind me chatting to you, dear? I don’t see many people. With my arthritis - and my eyes not so good now - I don’t get about as much as I used to. My daugher comes when she can but she’s up in Manchester and she’s got a family and a busy job, I can’t expect to see her all the time, you know? It’s very quiet at home. But I’ve got my litte family, as I call them, my little happy band. And these piglets will fit right in. I’ve got just the spot for them - on that table right by my chair. So I can see them all the time and pick them up and touch them. You can’t touch them on the page, can you? It’s not the same, just having that picture, and holding them in your hands.”

I let her talk on. I didn’t want to. I wanted to close my heart to her. It was easier if she were just another extra in this momentary scene in my life, a one-dimensional part of the general view. But there was the treasure of her heart, on a page torn out of a catalogue, and now I held it in my hands.

When her number was called, I held her seat as she hurried unsteadily up to the counter, fumbling with her stick and her handbag. She shuffled back with the plastic bag, her face beaming. “I want to look at it now. Check that it’s all right, not chipped or anything.”

I helped her with the packaging, her crumpled hands hovering impatiently beside mine. “Careful, now, dear. Yes, there, there we are.”

The porcelain pigs were round and shiny, smooth to the touch. There was little weight to them. The pink was even more luminous in my hands than in the picture. Their perky features were starkly set, from molds that rolled out a hundred thousand others an hour in a factory in China.

The old lady took first one, then the other in her hands, held them as if to warm them, followed their contours with her fingers. She did not speak, just smiled with pleasure at their beauty. She stroked their cheeks, their lips, touched their little ears.

After awhile, she took a breath and handed them back to me. “Thank you, dear.”

She watched me carefully as I wrapped them up and put them back in the box. As she stood up to leave, she took my hand. “Thank you for making an old lady happy.”

I felt embarrassed. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You sat with me and looked at my pigs.”

They called my number then. I scrambled up and headed for the counter. When I looked back, I saw her bowed figure struggling with the door, her woollen hat peaking up above her hunch. A man held the door open for her. She looked up and I could see her smile at him. I imagined she said, “Thank you, dear.”

He did not look at her as he let her pass and walked in through the doors.

Photo: thanks to humblehomestores.com

The durian is a South East Asian fruit that is so stinky it is banned from airplanes and smart hotels. The smell lingers like a bad fart combined with the ripest blue chees and crusty hard fetid socks that have been worn for weeks in hot humid weather without a change. Mmmmmm! I bet that’s made your mouth water.

But that’s what Asians - and in particular, Malaysians - love about the fruit. The smell is hideous. But as you eat the sticky, custardy, soft flesh, the taste is aromatic and sweet and creamy. And then you have to live with the most dreadful halitosis rotting sewer breath for hours on end.

So some smart guy has come up with a variety of durian that doesn’t smell. Thai scientist Songpol Somsri apparently spent 30 years of his life researching this project, according to the Seattle Times. The article goes on to say that in Malaysia, durian is prized as an aphrodisiac and a farmer is quoted as saying, “If the durian doesn’t have a strong smell the customer only pays one-third the price.”

I picked up this story from Seth Godin, the marketing guru, who uses it to make a great analogy for marketers who try to fix what they perceive as a problem - by focusing on the people who are not buying the product. So marketers aim to fix the problems in order to get the non-buyers to become buyers - in the meantime, destroying the key qualities that the enthusiastic existing buyers rave about and thereby turning away their core customers.

Personally I’m not a great fan and whenever my family have a great durian feast, I have to keep my distance from them all when we’re chatting afterwards! Still, it seems unnatural and sacriligeous to be tampering with the distinctive quality that makes a durian a durian. I’m not sure I’d eat more durian if I was offered the non-stinky variety - the taste and texture of the eating experience just doesn’t do it for me. I’m much more of a mango fan and I’d choose mango over any other fruit any day. So I guess I’m inclined to agree with Seth. What’s the point of a non-stinky durian if the core customers don’t want it - and neither do the ones who never wanted it in the first place?

Photo: thanks to the Seattle Times

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