Archive for the 'People' Category

I met travel writer Navjot Singh a few weeks ago at the Creating Value through Web 2.0 presentation that I took part in. I’m always taken by people with fusion lives so as we were chatting, it was fascinating to me to learn that he is a British-Indian who is somewhat of an expert on China and the Far East. It also turned out that we had both been to Dulwich College - I had attended the all boys school for one term to do the Oxbridge exam - and he had recognised me from the Old Alleynians Facebook page!

Navjot emailed me the following blog post:

Hi, Yang May

Many thanks for contacting me. It is a pleasure to be asked to write for your blog. Firstly, a bit about myself, as I am sure most of your audience may not be aware of whom I am.

My name is Navjot Singh (Pronounced “Navjaut Sing”, although to be honest on my travels around the world, I have been known in a variety of different accents!). I am a writer and freelance journalist. I was born in North India in 1980 and came to the UK as a young boy (around 3 years old), however, I am actually classed as a 3rd generation British-Indian because my late Grandparents were one of the first batch of migrants welcomed to the UK from the commonwealth in 1953. I have been back to India twice, once in 1989 and then in 1999, and on both occasions for about a month. I would love to go back again one day as a travel writer or for work and rediscover my roots.

Since childhood, I have always had a passion for travelling, taking photographs and flying (I adore planes). In my younger years, it used to be more for a personal basis, however nowadays that hobby has somewhat turned into a second career!. So, as an example, anytime I used to go travelling, I always took down notes on a daily basis of things which I saw, experienced and people I met. I always used to (and still do!) take photographs of anything that may seem interesting or extraordinary. To me life is a picture in itself, and I always feel that if you do not take a photo of something which may seem interesting, then most likely you have lost that chance and you may never see it again. Its amazing, because in the future, say, 10 or 15 years time, you can proudly look back and say, “Ah, I remember writing about this or that, or taking that photo”, and so on.

I wrote such a diary on my first trip to China way back in 2002. China has really opened my eyes the way I think about the country and the people. I remember even as I was preparing myself to go to China in 2002, I did not have any idea of how much of an impact the country would have on me. I did not intend to go to China for a long term basis; it was merely a one week’s vacation. Also I feel fortunate to have made the decision to go to China in those days, because so much has happened since then. Now everyone wants to go to China, and I feel privileged to have lived and worked in all the major cities (including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen), and to have witnessed at first hand the immense growth that’s almost ubiquitous.

Usually travel guides are written by a collection of different writers scattered all around the country or place which they want to write about, and it is not easy to write a travel guide. For me the great challenge was that I had no one to assist me, and in many ways I wanted to write it all by myself. In that way you have more control and freedom over timelines and research.

Sitting down and writing the travel guide is not that time consuming as is the research carried out for the chapters. I have had to speak with hotels, airlines, physically try out food at particular restaurants so I can write about it from my own experience, speak to various Chamber’s of Commerces and Embassies. More importantly I have tried to make my first guide book different by including personal stories about certain events that I have encountered. Writing a business travel guide as opposed to a travel guide for tourists is different because you have to pick things carefully, such as places of interest, hotels and restaurants, because business people don’t have much time for leisure and (usually) have more money to spend on corporate meals and hotels than tourists do.

If there are any would-be travel writers reading this article, my best advice to you would be to start with a short personal diary and note all the things that come across in your mind the first time you see them because its always your first impressions, your feelings and your experiences that will make your article different to other writers because every one has their own way of observing the world.

Always bear the reader in mind and put yourself in the shoes of a reader. When you feel you have compiled a full manuscript, then approach publishers with your idea. If they like it then you have done the hard work. Good luck!

With all good wishes

Navjot

Navjot is the author of “Newcomer’s Handbook Country Guide: China: Including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen” (First Books), and has also written “China: Business Travelers Handbook (Stacey-International)

Check out Navjot’s blog at http://navjot-singh.blogspot.com/

Photo: thanks to Navjot (with permission)

I met writer Miranda Gray at a Society of Authors do awhile back. She is also a coach, healer and a Company Director of a multimedia production company. She told me about her new book, The Optimized Woman, which encourages women to embrace the power of their menstrual cycle rather than viewing it at “The Curse”. I was instantly intrigued and invited her to tell me more by way of a blog post for Fusion View, especially in the context of women and writing!

Here is Miranda’s blog post:

We’ve all been there. Sitting at the blank computer screen, fingers poised above the keyboard ready to start… and nothing happens! Then, after a few attempts, the panic steps in: ‘Why can’t I write, what’s wrong with me?’, ‘What if I can’t meet the deadline?’, and ‘Am I really any good at this, should I get a proper job?’!

Women’s creativity has a unique element to it; it is cyclic. When we begin to understand this and work practically within this cyclic nature we find that writer’s block is simply trying to do the wrong thing at the wrong time! The cyclic aspect to women’s creativity lies in their menstrual cycle. Many women don’t realise that the menstrual cycle affects the way we think, our abilities and skillsets, how we communicate, and how we perceive the world and ourselves. And for women in the creative industry, the menstrual cycle can be either a huge challenge or a resource of powerful tools they can actively use to excel.

The menstrual cycle can be divided into four phases; pre-ovulation, ovulation, pre-menstruation and menstruation. In each phase we can experience days of heightened abilities and skillsets called Optimum Times. For example, the pre-ovulation phase is the Optimum Time for logical thinking and reasoning skills, the ovulation phase has heightened feeling-orientated perception, the pre-menstrual phase offers us inspiration and problem identification, and the menstrual phase is the Optimum Time for touching base with core values and issues.

So how does this relate to women writers and solving writer’s block?

A ‘block’ appears when we expect consistency of thinking and ability, and we expect to be able to do something not in line with our cyclic abilities. This is not to say we can’t do any task outside of out Optimum Time, simply that it can take longer, be more difficult and may be of poorer quality.

To get ahead, we need to apply to our writing the tools that our cycles give us.

We can use the pre-ovulation phase to build the structure of our work or book, to plan our plots and our work schedule, to break down the chapters into sublevels, to organise our files on characters or to categorise piles of research, and to give ourselves the basis on which to write creatively later in the month. It’s also the Optimum Time for analytical and structured writing, for editing and research, and for checking the small print on the publisher’s contract!

With the change to the ovulation phase comes heightened communication, listening and empathy skills, making it an Optimum Time to write dialogue, to interview people for their stories, to write from the heart and from our passion, to ask for people’s views and critiques, to empathise with our characters or our audience. It is the Optimum Time to network, contact publishers, market our books and proposals, and do talks and signings.

The pre-menstrual phase is often the most challenging for many women, but it offers us some powerful tools for writing. It can be an intensely inspirational and creative phase if we allocate time to day-dream and ponder, often providing ‘Eureka’ moments as ideas lock into place. The Optimum Time for creative writing and to explore ideas, it often takes only one small seed idea to start an avalanche of writing. The pre-menstrual phase is also the time to identify problems and create solutions. It is the time to analyse whether the plot really works, to explore why we are not happy with the structure, to cut away superfluous words and sections, and to brain-storm what would work, how we could approach things differently and how to re-write that awkward paragraph.

As we move into the menstrual phase our physical energies are often low, and mental abilities such as concentration and memory can also decline. If we have planned well in the pre-ovulation phase we are on track with our deadline and can afford to drive ourselves a little less for a few days. When we take the opportunity to rest in this phase two things happen; firstly, we come out of this phase into the next refreshed and full of renewed energy, and secondly we have the opportunity to connect to our deepest insight. This phase is the Optimum Time for touching base with who we are and what we are doing, not only in our life but also in what we are writing. Does the book feel ‘right’? Are we writing in a style, genre, method that feels ‘comfortable’ to us? Can we commit to the direction the book is taking, or do we need to go back to the core values of the book or of the publisher? Have we gone off track? Are we writing what we were asked to write? Is the deadline feasible? In this phase we can ask ourselves these potentially challenging questions without the emotional rollercoaster and needs experienced in other phases.

When the next pre-ovulation phase comes round again we are renewed in our energies, mental abilities and commitment to get started. We can plan our work schedule for the month ahead using our Optimum Time skills to their best possible advantage and knowing that just because we can’t write in a particular way right now, give it a couple of weeks and there’ll be no stopping us!

‘Writer’s block’ no longer exists - we simply do the right task at the right time.

~~~

Miranda’s website is http://www.optimizedwoman.com/
She blogs at http://optimizedwoman.blog.co.uk/

This post first appeared on Miranda’s blog.

Photo: from Miranda’s website, with permission

A South African writer, Lois Nicholls, contacted me via a mutual friend in Spain to tell me about her new book, ‘Aussie, Actually’, and also offer this touching “fusion story” about a South African’s return home from Australia.

She writes:

Alive! The word pops into my head as we enter Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport. Ironic really, isn’t it, for a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world? Yet I feel it. Sense it. Am reminded of a friend who says he comes alive every time he returns – feels boring, bland and
disconnected for weeks in his new country, Australia every time he goes back.

“An electricity in the air” is how another friend describes it. People seem to laugh more, live more. These thoughts resonate as my daughter and I arrive jaded yet expectant. We collect cling-wrapped suitcases and plastic piping containing an art canvas paintstakingly painted by my mother in law for my niece’s wedding gift and embark on our flight to Durban.

On arrival in Durban, we load luggage onto trolley, relieved and mildly surprised everything is still intact. We meet my precious parents who are so, so happy to see us. It seems like yesterday yet it is years since our last visit. My friend’s Italian in-laws are there too – collecting gifts and a watch needing repair from the bowels of my cling-wrapped suitcase. In the commotion of unwrapping suitcase, embracing parents and searching for
gifts, I leave the plastic piping carrying painting in the middle of Arrivals. I remember my concentration lapse halfway to my parent’s home.

The joy of arriving is tainted by the concern that I will never see the painting again. Surprise! Euphoria! They have found the painting. Early the next morning, my dad and I brave the hour’s journey back to the airport to claim my well-traveled artwork. I acknowledge the piping looks like a bazooka and marvel no-one called the bomb squad. We repeat the hair-raising journey back home to my parent’s picturesque little retirement village lined with neat homes and colourful gardens. The views are sensational. I marvel at how green and lush everything looks. Plants grow fast. There is broccoli in the garden, a prolific crop of bright red pepperdews (which my dad later bottles for me), green peppers are ready for picking and a profusion of pink dahlias bloom in the front garden. My mother carelessly tosses seeds into a flowerbed of rich, dark soil and they sprout within days. I learn the bright orange flowers that joyfully spill over a trellis in the back yard are Black-eyed Susans. I wonder if they’ll grow in my dry shale garden back home.

I photograph old oak trees and magnificent liquid amber’s dressed in their bright red autumn wardrobe. We take a walk within an extensive boundary of electric fencing and encounter impala, blesbok and zebra. The grass smells sweet. I am reminded of my youngest son who when asked what he loved most about South Africa, thought for a moment and then said: “The smell.” At the time a more cynical me wondered what he meant. I now understand.

A warm, friendly neighbour delivers freshly baked carrot muffins and says she’ll leave cheese puffs at the front door early on Sunday morning. Random acts of kindness are a hallmark of this little village. Green rolling mountains. The Howick Falls – gaily decorated with colourful, newly washed blankets at its summit. Where else in the world?

Everywhere are political posters marking April’s elections. Zuma is pasted on the town’s pillars and posts – his beaming face even covers an entire electricity box like Zuma wallpaper. My daughter is amused by a ‘Vote for the Tiger’ poster and takes a photograph to show her brothers back home. “He looks far too friendly to be a tiger,” she says of a grinning Rajbanzi.

We travel deep into KwaZulu-Natal (more…)

One thing I love about London is the chance connections you can make with fascinating and dynamic people living in or passing through this huge metropolis. Anisa Telwar is an Atlanta-based entrepreneur with a global business specialising in cosmetic brushes, providing innovative product design and sourcing from Asia. Beginning as a manufacturer’s representative and then in 2003 capitalizing on her brush design expertise, this she opened her own brush factory in northern China, Anisa Cosmetic Applicators (Tianjin) to offer a fully integrated operation for her international business. I met Anisa at a friend’s birthday party and I loved her dynamic energy and lively sense of fun - and, given her cross-cultural background, I had to invite her to write for Fusion View, of course!

Anisa writes:

“Where are you from?” has probably been the most frequently asked question for me from the time I can remember.

I was raised in Nashville TN. My father was from Afghanistan and my mother’s decent is Russian yet she was raised in Turkey. So we were a mixed lot when it came to noting our nationality. When I was growing up in Nashville, no-one had a clue to what I was - usually they guessed by whatever country was in the news that week. When I was younger it was more of the Middle Eastern fare yet now I get Spanish, Italian, Greek, Asian.

I have so many people come up to me in airports asking me for help in their native tongue and all I can say is ‘no Espanola’.

No one really knows what I am from my features or skin tone or accent. It used to be a big cause of contention for me and yet now I love it.
I am a Global citizen. I feel I literally belong anywhere now.

Yet, I was born in New York, raised in the south and now reside in Atlanta GA. This is where my office is, my home, my dogs, my friends.

And yet now my boyfriend lives in London.

(Fun Fact: I made my first International trip to Turkey when I was 17. I am a million miler under Delta airlines and I am only 42. 1% of this airline’s clientele travels this much. And I feel I still have so more many places to still go)

When I met Yang–May, I felt comfortable with her immediately. Her energy was also of someone who understands diversity and multicultural aspects and it was not weird to her that I was American at a British birthday party for someone I did not know, with my British boyfriend.

I told her about my business in USA that I am growing more intentionally in Europe ( mainly due to the boyfriend status : ) ) Also, I told her about my ties to Asia. I built my own factory in 2003 and have been traveling since 93’ to Korea, China, Hong Kong. And that I was about to embark to my first adventure in Malaysia this year.

It is so normal to me to be going somewhere or to be in a place that is considered foreign. It is the way I have learned to grow and challenge myself and expand my life and mind.

I feel I am constantly creating by this use of travel.

Creating and being creative to me is all about the energy in my world. I have been very creative when it has come to creating money and abundance in my life. Travel to me is new energy and that energy is the same as that creates a painting, music or a meal. Travel assists me in creating new pathways in my mind. It opens it all up to see things newly and openly and to be flexible. This flexibility I feel is what has created my happiness. I am able to be adaptable and willing to bend more than if I stayed put.

The results that are created assist with a vision, imagination and desire. I have used my business to work on myself by trusting and growing those around me so that I can have this life I currently lead and to find out what is next for me.

~~~

More info:

Video: http://www.atlantawomanmag.com/video/ and click on “Anisa Telwar”

Website: www.anisa.com

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)

Susan Macaulay is a dynamic Canadian living in Dubai, whom I met while in Barcelona for the IABC EuroComm Conference earlier this year. Susan is a public speaking coach and also the founder of the social network for amazing women, aptly called Amazing Women Rock. I invited Susan to share her cross-cultural experiences for Fusion View.

Susan writes:

I got to the United Arab Emirates by accident. Like the castaways in the 1960s American sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” my then-husband Bob and I set out on what was meant to be a little adventure in 1993, only to end up marooned on a desert island for the next 12 years. It was all terribly unplanned, but then I guess most adventures are.

Our collective travel experiences had been rather limited until then. I had wandered around New Zealand and Australia for a year and half in my early twenties. He had been to Hawaii and Mexico I think, and we had holidayed together in Europe for six weeks in 1990. But that was the extent of it.

Our move to the Middle East (from Canada), was driven mostly by boredom (his, with a routine job in Calgary), and thirst (mine, for adventures in exotic foreign lands). When a friend who worked for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company called to say there was an opening for a technical instructor, Bob jumped at the opportunity and I prayed he would ace the interview.

He went on a 10-day reccie to Abu Dhabi just before Christmas 1992, and was offered the job. We gave the move some thought over the yuletide holidays, got married on January 9, 1993 (after seven years of co-habitation), and he hopped on a plane a few days later – leaving me to hold the fort for six months in case things didn’t work out.

Fifteen years later, Bob and I are divorced, he’s based in eastern Canada (working 28-day shifts at a refinery in the Algerian desert), and I’m in Dubai making the most of one of the few places in the world where the economy is booming, and people are arriving in droves to stake their claim in a 21st-century Middle-Eastern version of the Klondike gold rush , which, by some accounts was started by a woman in 1896.

Unlike their 19th century counterparts, however, many of these latter-day prospectors are panning for property, instead of the nuggets of old. Scores of speculators who have bought into the Dubai real estate dream are banking on ‘happily ever after’ not turning into disaster, as it seems to have done the world over in the last year or so.

Whether the whole thing will implode (or explode), leaving investors holding the proverbial bag remains to be seen. Time, as they say, will tell.

Back in 1993, expatriates couldn’t own property in the UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai weren’t global household names, the Dubai World Trade Center (at 34 floors), was the tallest building in the country, and I couldn’t find work in my profession, because public relations was still unknown in the Emirates.

So I wrote. A lot. Mostly to friends and family “back home.” Mainly about my experiences as a successful career woman suddenly having to cope with being an expat wife.

A few weeks ago, I began republishing those Letters from Abu Dhabi (LADs as I called them then), on www.amazingwomenrock.com , a website I conceptualized, created, and finally launched in July, after three frustrating years of development.

It’s interesting, and a little ironic, to be posting those long-ago LADs on this internet creation of mine, which is as much my passion and joy today, as the LADs were a decade and a half ago. I could hardly have conceived of a website then. In fact, it would be years before we could even access the internet in the UAE.

(To steal the words from a 1970s cigarette ad targeted at women, I’ve “come a long way, baby.” So has the UAE. We’ve transformed ourselves in tandem, and at light speed, my adopted country and I.)

Even more interesting is that, alongside my LADs of the mid-1990s, I’m publishing a series of recollections by Gertrude Dyck, a Canadian nurse and missionary, who went to the UAE in 1962 (almost a decade before it was even a country), and who lived there for more than 40 years.

We are collaborating: two expat women of different ages, from different eras. The result is two sets of impressions about the same initially-foreign-to-both-of-us country, seen through totally different lenses, 30 years apart, and yet presented side-by-side (years after they were originally written), on the internet.

As I tap out this blog entry (sitting in an airport in Germany), for UK-based Yang-May (whom I met at a conference in Spain in February), Gertrude is reviewing the next installment of her story from a retirement home in western Canada. I wonder where you will be if and when you read the fruits of our joint labour?

All of this suggests something about culture change, I think, about how small our big world has become. Here we all are – you, me, Yang-May, Gertrude and who knows who else – continents apart, or perhaps unknowingly sitting next to each other in a café somewhere, paradoxically separated, and yet interconnected (by choice), through time, space, and experiences – some shared, some uniquely ours.

But I digress. Let me see. Where was I? Oh yeah, Abu Dhabi, 1993…

Veteran explorer John Blashford-Snell has been an inspiring and controversial figure leading some of the most extraordinary expeditions in modern times. Fusion View’s occasional guestblogger Alan Lane talked to Britain’s own Indiana Jones about his life and the continuing passions: scientific research, the future of the planet and solving inner city problems.

John Blashford-Snell will be giving an illustrated talk about ‘Stanley and Livingstone’ at the Royal Geographical Society, London on 1st October 2008 at 7pm. Further information from Anne Gilby: Tel: +44 01747 853353

The Royal Geographical Society on London’s Kensington Gore is a place where you don’t easily forget the past. In the Map Room, a portrait of explorer Henry Morton Stanley stares solemnly down on the crowded room. In a glass case just outside, is a copper bolt used by mutineers from the British Navy ship HMS Bounty in 1789 to split wood. Next to it are Stanley’s boots, repaired with canvas from his tent during the 1887-89 Emin Pasha Relief expedition.

By the door, relatively unnoticed in a sober business suit stands who I had come to track down: Colonel John Blashford-Snell; Royal Military College Sandhurst, Royal Engineers, Order of the British Empire (OBE), Doctor of Science, Doctor of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Within the hour, in the great lecture hall he is recounting tales from 40 years of expeditionary life to help raise funds for the International Trust for Nature Conservation.

Blashford-Snell is difficult to tie down. We were to meet next at a London gathering of the Scientific Exploration Society (SES), which he helped to found in 1969.

Now, some years on after our first meeting, I am at the Society’s headquarters deep in the English countryside, ready to pick up our conversation. It is an historical moment for him. A month ago, he stepped down as Chairman of the SES after almost 40 years to follow the many other passions on his agenda.

The telephone rings incessantly, bearing messages of progress from the latest expedition or inner city project as I begin to unravel an extraordinary life.

HIS REPUTATION AMONG modern-day explorers has inspired admiration, controversy and a feeling that he is perhaps Britain’s answer to Indiana Jones. He led the first descent of the Blue Nile and forced the first vehicular passage through the jungles of the entire Darien Gap between North and South America. He navigated 2,700 miles of the Zaire River. In the wake of these expeditions, he set up Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh to give young people exposure to expeditions and responsibility.

More recently, he has tackled aid and conservation projects in the Mongolian Gobi Desert and discovered giant elephants, lost cities and unknown tribes. Headlines have been made by other equally exotic projects: lengthy voyages on reed boats along South American rivers, delivering a grand piano from the UK to the music-loving Wai Wai people of Guyana, and discovering a two-nosed dog in Bolivia.

Now 71, Blashford-Snell is very much a product of the British Army: just over six feet of durability, quiet authority, and a clipped, no-nonsense delivery.

As we rewind his life and career, the pale blue eyes at times resemble gun sights which look through you, preoccupied with the next logistical challenge in some far-flung corner of the world.

The family history is, like his life, unusual. The Snells were common in the south-west of England. The Blashford came from a small hamlet in Hampshire to where the family had moved. Around the late 1700s they went to Jersey in the Channel Islands, which he regards as his roots. Grandfather Blashford-Snell was a sea captain who commanded a packet steamer between Jersey and the south coast. John Blashford-Snell’s aunt thought many of the ancestors were pirates; and she was probably right. He recalls with fondness, great uncle Albert, a beard to his navel, sitting in his great deck chair looking out to sea with a telescope to a bloodshot eye. Everyone thought he was looking at the ships but he wasn’t, he was watching the women on the beach.

A childhood he describes as “heaven”, was split between Jersey and Herefordshire, where his Army Chaplain father had a parish. The only child of adoring parents - “my father prayed for several hours when he saw me arrive” - he began life as a shy, sickly child with a slight disadvantage. This was a withered arm from a difficult birth. Mother was a determined woman who claimed an impressive assortment of forebears, including King Louis XV of France and Oliver Cromwell, leader of Parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars of 1642-51. Using her considerable skills with animals, she put the arm into a splint to stretch it and encouraged exercise.

Blashford-Snell’s early health problems persisted. Shortly after he was born in October 1936, a nurse at the hospital dropped him on his head and split his head open like an egg. “I’ve got the scars to this day,” he tells me, bending to (more…)

I met Kieron Smith at The Bookseller’s Digitise or Die conference a couple of weeks back when we were both on the Digital Spaces panel and intrigued by his online social networking bookstore BookRabbit, I asked him to tell me more about it.

# What is BookRabbit?

BookRabbit is an online bookshop that dynamically connects readers, authors and publishers through the books they own.

Using BookRabbit, readers can share their passion for books, make recommendations to other readers as well as creating their own personal bookcase (using pictures of their real owrld book collections) and catalogues online – anything from medieval falconry, through bestsellers, to educational publications for schools. BookRabbit has a simple aim – to claim back book selling and book buying, enabling readers to discover the right books for them.

# How did you come to be involved / start BookRabbit?

I’ve worked in bookselling for many years for companies including WHSmith, Ottakar’s and Waterstone’s - I have felt for a while that online people don’t get the interesting and engaging side of discovering a new book to read. Instead they get one where books are commoditised and just about price. Although there are millions of titles available through the big bookselling sites, more and more it feels like we actually have less to chose from.

I was approached by an entrepreneur in late 2007 who asked me what I would do about this given a blank sheet of paper, I told him and he said he’d back me to do the lot - something of an offer I couldn’t refuse!

# For booklovers who are already signed up to buy books from Amazon, why should they move over to BookRabbit?

On the e-commerce side we’ve hopefully made it as painless as possible! We don’t require registration unless you want to take part in discussions or set up a profile, so no new passwords to remember! We’re cheaper than Amazon on the top 100,000 titles and take PayPal (as well as the standard cards) and have free delivery on everything.

BUT

I’d like to think you should give BookRabbit a go because browsing other people’s bookshelves and getting title matches with your own collection means you’ll discover something new!

# Is BookRabbit for UK residents only?

No anyone can use the site, we only have UK shipping at present but hope to add International as soon as we can.

# For those who have already got their libraries displayed on LibraryThing, why should they also sign up to BookRabbit? (This is my dilemma too!)

I wanted to avoid the whole painful data input thing - so you can start making useful and interesting connections from just a few books tagged on a shelf - give it a go and see who you match with!

# What are the benefits for authors for signing up?

There is an element of vouyeristic pleasure for authors in that they get to see what other books are sitting next to their own on people’s bookshelves - and if they wish start to interact on discussions. They’re also able to directly amend their title details on screen, including synopsis, jacket, catagory and even add YouTube videos all of which go live immediately.

# What are the kinds of discussions on BookRabbit?

We have discussions on three ‘areas’ they are either books, bookcases or categories and there is a summary of most recent ones on the homepage. It’s early days and we didn’t want to assume we would know what the community would discuss, but it seemed sensible to anchor them against a particular part of the site, rather than have one sprawling forum - we could be wrong though!

# I like the function for uploading a photo of your own bookshelf. What’s on yours?

I’ve got many, many bookselves, one of which can be seen http://www.bookrabbit.com/bookshelf/detail/bookshelfid/113 I’ve quite an eclectice taste in titles. We’ve a special offer on at the moment that if you upload a bookcase photo and tag at least five books then we’ll handpick you a free book and send it to you. You can see how we’ve been getting on with our selections at http://www.bookrabbit.com/help/showfaq/topicid/77/page/1 full details of the offer at www.BookRabbit.com/free

Knucker Press published James W. Wood’s new collection of poems, “Inextinguishable” on 22 May. A collaboration with young illustrators from a diverse range of backgrounds, the collection is accompanied by an exhibition which ran in Edinburgh’s Owl and Lion Gallery from 23 May to 11 June. James writes for us about the experience of working with visual artists and what has happened since the publication of his first collection, “The Theory of Everything”, eighteen months ago.

James writes:

My first short collection, The Theory of Everything, ran to thirty-two pages and was selected by the editor of the HappenStance Press from a sixty-four-page manuscript. Encouraged by the reviews of The Theory of Everything, I continued to write through a difficult period in my life that included the death of my father, to whose memory my new book is dedicated.

Between my new work and the poems I had written earlier, I had accrued enough substance to consider a second short collection in just over a year. I have always wanted to work with visual artists, and so I was delighted to be offered the chance of publication with Knucker Press – especially since their Editor, Jane McKie, is a prize-winning poet as well as a publisher.

Knucker Press was founded in 2007 and aims to pair the work of visual artists and writers with a view to creating fresh relationships between words and images. I watched fascinated as the collection took shape with almost no involvement from my side. Barring one or two minor changes, Jane McKie felt that my poems were, as she put it, “fully formed”, and so proceeded to work directly with the students and lecturers at the Edinburgh College of Art to generate responses to the poems.

Weeks passed and I waited patiently. Then one night after dinner at Jane’s house I was presented with the proofs of the book in a near-finished format. Barring a few further changes, this was the book as it would be published. I can remember thrilling to the perspectives the artists had brought to my work as I turned the pages for the first time. In some of the work, artists had perfectly encapsulated in visual form what I had imagined when writing the poem; elsewhere, the artists had opened up completely new meanings, or illuminated corners of the poem I had considered peripheral to the meaning of the piece.

Overall, the interplay between the verbal and the visual in Inextinguishable has enabled me to return to the poems with a fresh eye – even after having spent weeks (in some cases) writing them. For me, the best examples of this are “After She Leaves”, “Afloat”, and, “The Craws”, where the poem and artwork meld into each other on the page, and the traditional relationship between illustration and text is broken down so that the poem becomes part of the canvas.

This experience represents the fulfilment of a long-held ambition for me, and I am pleased that Knucker Press are able to offer three copies of my new book to the readers of Fusion View.

Click here to find out how to win a copy of Inextinguishable

Mark Wu and I have been reading each others blogs for awhile now but we’ve never met. He blogs at OneInchPunch.net and is also very actively involved in the Chinese community here in the UK. When Mark invited me to be featured on his website VisibleChinese.com, I was very honoured. I’m delighted to to return the favour and introduce you to Mark here on Fusion View.

Mark writes:

Unofficially named “Mark Wu” (my Chinese name being my legal identifier), I’ve led a quite straight-forward life. My parents came to the UK when they were teenagers and met and married young. My brother, sister and I were subsequently born into the British Chinese culture which labels a generation of young Chinese people whose parents immigrated to the UK, and where the majority of families were involved in one way or another, in catering. With a talent for drawing, at an early age, I was “destined” for the arts and eventually found myself drawn to digital design.

In the last decade, I’ve spent most of my life focusing on working through my co-founded design company Kibook Interactive Design, which at its peak in the dot-com boom, grew to eight people plus freelancers. Aside from working quite alot, doing the company thing also meant meeting and working directly with a variety of clients and living a life that combined freedom (sort of) and choice with responsibility.

Some of our clients were British Chinese organisations such as Yellow Earth Theatre and The Pearl Foundation and that was great for me personally, to be able to tap into my own culture professionally. Working with them in the last five years or so, meant being involved with what I perceive to be an important time in the UK’s Chinese culture, with its growth and development being quite passive initially but which is now continually increasing in pace, encouraged by the Olympics in China this year.

Promoting Chinese culture in the UK is something I am passionate about and as a result, I am a Trustee of The Pearl Foundation, Interactive Associate of Yellow Earth Theatre and a core member of The British Chinese Project which is an organisation that works to help integrate more British Chinese people into politics.

Visible Chinese

Bringing together my passion for promoting British Chinese culture and design for the web, I also created another website which came about through a simple idea. The website is at VisibleChinese.com and it aims to become an Authoritative Independent Listing of Achievers within the UK’s Chinese Culture. Pretty much like a Who’s Who.

Visible Chinese is a site that is focused on profiling just individuals, as opposed to organisations, putting faces to names, as I insist on a photograph to accompany each profile. Profiles can be flexible in what they say, as long as they are biographical in some way. People can also outline what they do professionally and include links to their websites, so Visible Chinese serves as a great advertisement for their services and a useful tool for networking. I like to think of it as the sum of its parts being greater than the whole. Someone I met recently mentioned how it would be useful to see what people looked like in order to help recognise them at a future networking event.

The site doesn’t take long to maintain, and also doesn’t have the same pressure as a blog requiring constant (perhaps daily) updates, so all in all, the whole concept is a win-win situation for both the people featured, and for myself in gaining the satisfaction of creating something useful.

Not so silent minority

The Chinese community in London seems to be advancing and growing in voice and confidence, from the media labeled “silent minority” it began as. Traditionally, the visible aspects of Chinese culture seemed to consist of takeaways, large suburban supermarkets and the annual Chinese New Year event around the UK’s Chinatowns.

However, in recent years, there are signs that the next generation of young professionals are beginning to influence the community. Young professionals who have grown up in both Chinese and English cultures, and who are not just comfortable, but fluent in both.

As the British Chinese population increases, the diversity of talent also increases and is steadily gaining exposure. Take The Pearl Awards for instance. An annual event which will be in its fifth year in 2008. Each year saw the awards grow in profile and diversity with the fourth awards in 2007 set in the Royal Festival Hall, including HRH The Prince of Wales as one of its distinguished guests.

The British Chinese Project is also a significant initiative, founded by the prominent Chinese Solicitor, Christine Lee and which is supported by the UK Chinese Embassy, representatives from the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and a variety of different organisations and Chinese community groups. It aims to encourage more British Chinese to take an interest in politics, particularly the younger generations, but in itself, also counts a number of young professionals as members, the like of who are increasingly looking to play active roles in the community.

Go Croydon!

In the North-South London debate, I was a classic, born North Londoner who believes everything there is better, alas more expensive, than South London. A few years ago, I moved down to Croydon to my partner’s place and have been there ever since.

Croydon has a kind of stigma attached to it, but one which I think is over the years, being slowly eroded. It might be because of this, but everything in South London does seem to be cheaper than the North. Redevelopment in some areas is happening, and so I think the South is in someways, quite an exciting place to live. What I can’t fault is the convenience of being so close to shopping areas like North End, and the fast rail links into Central London - a bonus since I’ve been able to avoid getting on the claustrophobic tube to work.

Bruce Lee still inspires

I started my first blog One Inch Punch in December 2006 - during a quiet Christmas break, when I felt I really had no excuse not to. I had been working in the web industry for more than eight years and aside from a small portfolio site, had nothing of my own to show for it.

Building a blog was something that I wanted to do for awhile and it was also a good idea for several reasons. These included knowing the ins and outs of the process - which I could easily advise my clients on. “Walking the walk” as they say.

For almost a decade, I had been nurturing an idea for creating a large and complex East-Asian community website. Several visual designs came about, and the idea was refined, changed, amended and refined once more. I had never got beyond that, partly because of the time required and also due to lack of technical know-how required to get the idea made. However, in the last few years, blogging technology has improved massively - enough for me to fine tune my comprehensive ideas down to a simple (and practical!) East-Asian entertainment link site. Hence, OneInchPunch.net was born.

Comprehensive as the ideas were, keeping things simple inspired the name OneInchPunch. I basically wanted to aim for one post update a day, which would consist of a visual and a link. Something short but effective, which literally speaking, is basically what a One Inch Punch is. For those who don’t know, the “One Inch Punch” is a martial arts technique, made world famous by Bruce Lee, which unleashes explosive internal (as opposed to muscular) power² from a very short distance. So the name was not just dynamic-sounding, but also indirectly name checks probably the world’s most famous East-Asian.

Note: This article has also appeared on Dulwich OnView where I am the co-editor.