Modern technology and manners

From time to time, I ponder the impact that new technology, particularly the massive increase in mobile phones, is having on our society. It seems to me that the ability we now have to be constantly contactable through mobiles, emails and so on is behind increased working hours and increased stress levels as people demand what they want there and then.

I see it quite a lot at work – people on mobiles as they shop, and particularly when they are at the checkout. Some manage to hang up – often with the words “I’m at the checkout, I’ll call you back in five” – for the entire process, some at the end for payment. The later are people that irritate me, cause they inevitably slow the whole line down.

However yesterday, two men managed to get my thoughts on this very clear, and I will now categorically state – it’s rude to be on your mobile phone while someone is trying to serve you.

Here’s what happened – they were buying six bottles of three litre milk. Transaction should have taken barely a minute. In fact, probably closer to thirty seconds if the customer is also on their game. Phone rings just as I’m finishing up with previous customer and getting ready to serve them. Man 1 answers and starts chatting away. Man 2 just looks at me.

“How are you?” I say happily (as I always do) and I start scanning. Both men stay where they are on the front side of the register, Man 1 talking, Man 2 looking at me.

I finish scanning (takes all of 15 seconds maybe) and say the transaction amount. Man 2 looks at me, then turns and puts his hand in Man 1’s pocket and pulls out plastic bags. Walks round to other side of register and starts putting milk into bags. Man 1 ambles along behind, still chatting.

I mention amount again. Man 2 keeps packing milk. Man 1 keeps talking.

Mention amount again. Man 1 finally hands me some money. Not enough. I say I need more.  He waves his hand at Man 2. Man 1 still on phone.

Man 2 gives me rest of money. I open till, put money away, close till. Four of the milk bottles have made their way into bags. Remaining two won’t fit. Man 1 still talking. Can feel the eyes of the rest of the customers boring into me.

Man 2 picks up bags, gestures to Man 1, then looks at rest of customers. It seems he has clicked that everyone is getting a little antsy. He picks up last two bottles of milk and puts them down on the ground next to the till. Man 1 stiiiiiill talking.

Man 1 finally bends down, picks up milk bottles and walks away, phone plastered to his ear. Next customer is finally able to move their trolley into place to start their transaction.

I think the entire thing took more than three minutes. To buy six bottles of milk. And all because some idiot decided that he couldn’t wait thirty seconds or so to answer the phone, and that talking to that person was more important than concluding the transaction with me.

So, I am decided and I send out a plea – please, please, please don’t answer your phone when you are at a checkout in a supermarket. It’s time-consuming, annoying and rude.

Nicole and the chicken

So, hubby’s away and that means it’s chicken time. However, as I started to defrost the chicken tenderloins last night, I realised I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to make. Something pastery? I couldn’t do the stuffed chicken breast that was tantalising my mind.

I looked at the 500 grams of tenderloins and decided now was as good a time as any to do some experimental cooking. I could make three small servings of different chicken dishes, and surely one of them would do okay? So I scrounged through the cupboard, and devised three recipes.

Recipe one was dukka-encrusted chicken. Easy peasy – dip the tenderloin in egg white, then in the dukka (I was using some from Bush Goddess Foods, an organic food company based out at Murrumbatemen), then bake in the oven, being careful not to overcook and dry out the chicken. Result – a tasty and interesting finger-food. This particular dukka (I admit to not being overly au fai with dukka) had a very strong taste, so it’s not something you can eat mountains of. Not sure if it requires a sauce with it – perhaps some yoghurt, to match the dukka. Will give that a try tonight. But this is definitely now on my to cook again list.

Recipe two was what I called tropical chicken. Place tenderloins, peach slices, pineapple juice, cloves and coconut cream in casserole dish and then cook for a couple of hours. The liquid didn’t reduce the way I thought it might, so I put a bit of cornflour in and that did the trick. Served it with rice. It had a very delicate flavour, and the sauce was very nice when mixed in with the rice. Yet another on the list. Sorry, no pic of that one.

The big winner, however, was recipe three – chicken and potato pie. I made it this time with puff pastry (cause I didn’t have anything else on me), but will try it next time with shortcrust. Anywhoo, cut the tenderloins up really small, and do the same with the potato and partially microwave the potato (just to soften it up so it will bake at the same speed as the chicken in the pie). Make up a white sauce, but when adding flour to melted butter also add some mustard. Once sauce is made, add a bit of cumin, and the chicken and partially-cooked potato. I blind baked some pastry in soufflé dishes, then filled with chicken mix, put a lid on it and baked for about half an hour. It was sublime – the filling was creamy and tasty, the potatoes beautiful and soft and the pastry yum. Not only is it going on the list, but after telling hubby about it last night, I’m now compelled to devise a beef edition. Perhaps with a thick gravy, rather than the white sauce.

So there you have it – Nicole’s cooking adventures. Not too shabby, if I say so myself, and something I should try a little more often, since I am obviously a culinary genius :)

Parallel importation restrictions petition

There is now an online petition available in support of Aussie Books.
To register your vote, go to:  http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/no-parallel-importation-of-books-into-australia.html

The online petition does NOT replace the paper petition. Paper petitions carry more weight (of influence) and are therefore still preferred. The paper petition can be downloaded from http://savingaussiebooks.wordpress.com/, or by clicking here:  Paper Petition. Paper petitions close 1 September 2009.

Background (Preamble):
The Australian Government is considering whether to abolish the Restrictions on Parallel Imports of Books into Australia. If it goes ahead this action will have drastic effects on Australian-authored fiction and non-fiction books - and causing the loss of many jobs in the publishing, printing and distribution industries. For further information go to http://savingaussiebooks.wordpress.com/.

Petition:
We, the undersigned, ask the Parliament to retain the current restrictions on the Parallel Importation of books for the following reasons:

1. There is no guarantee books will be cheaper, but removing the Restrictions will cause severe job losses in the publishing, book printing, packaging, and distribution industries.

2. The diversity of local and international book titles will diminish as publishers are forced to make smaller print runs, and take fewer risks with new authors.

3. Australian authors should not be forced to rely on unspecified extra taxpayer funded grants and subsidies, as suggested by the Productivity Commission, to compensate income lost under Parallel Importation.

4. Imported versions of Australian-authored books will be in direct competition with authentic editions. Foreign versions often change drastically to suit overseas markets – removing Australian idioms, references, humour and spelling. This is of particular concern for those Australian children who already struggle with spelling and literacy.

What keeps you going ?

There are inevitably times, as a writer, when the continuing round of rejections or inability to get the words down on the page the way you want them too leads you to days when you just don’t want to write. You might even go so far as to wondering why you bother at all, and maybe you should give up.

One of the things that keeps me going when I have days like that is to consider all the nice comments I’ve had about my work over the years. Not necessarily from reviewers or critiquers, but when someone that I consider an expert in the field, someone with gravitas, says they like my work. That’s probably not fair to the people who do like my work that don’t fit into that mould, but then I admit that I am, on occasion, incredibly shallow and this is one such occasion.

So when I’m wondering ‘why’, it’s to times such as when Piers Anthony said a story of mine had merit that I turn. This was actually one of the first two stories I ever had published – the editor of the anthology knew Piers and sent him a copy. After Mr Anthony lived up to his ‘cranky old man of sci fi’ title by saying quite bluntly that the stories were amateur and needed more work (and he was right), he then said that if he had to pick some stories that he kinda liked, it would be… and one of the two stories he named was one of mine. Vindication!

With Love in Control, it was having nice things said in the rejections – eg “this isn’t for us, but it’s one of the better submissions we’ve received “ or “doesn’t fit with us, and I tried some of our other imprints and it doesn’t fit there either” or “your writing is strong and the worldbuilding excellent but not for us” or “writing is good and storyline well done but not for us” – things that told me that while it wasn’t right for that publisher, it was still a well-written story. Experienced editors and people in publishing think I can write is the message I got from that.

So for me, while having friends believe in me, it’s also nice to get the feedback from the industry that I’m not being ridiculous in chasing this dream, and that if I keep working, and keep submitting, and keep learning, I can get there.

Interested to hear what keeps other people going.

Thoughts on happiness

I read a quote today on Twitter - Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh. That’s quite appropriate, cause one of the things I’ve been thinking about as I write Freedom to Be is the whole idea of happiness.

I think it’s fair to say that everyone wants to be happy. Where a lot of our conflict lies (both internally and externally) is in our choices of what we think will make us happy (something to remember as a writer). For example, if you as a person think owning lots of pretty things will make you happy, you’ll probably find a time when you’ve got all the pretty things you want and yet you’re still not happy, and be conflicted. If, as country,  you think owning that bit of land over there will make you happy and go over to take it from the country that already owns it, well Good Morning Conflict.

I’m going to put forward a hypothesis about happiness, and I’m interested in your thoughts. The hypothesis is this – happiness is not a destination, or an aim. Happiness is a choice.

I’m sure you all know people who have had, or do now have horrendous lives – dealing with illness, or abuse, or poverty, or discrimination. Yet these people are generally, on the whole, happy. And I’m sure you know people who have pretty good lives – they’ve got a roof over their heads, they know where their next meal is coming from, they don’t deal with daily threats to their lives or abuse – yet they are the most miserable sods to ever walk the earth.

For me, looking at them, it seems that happiness comes down to attitude, and attitude is a choice. You can choose how you feel about a situation, what you do about it. Even if you think you have no choice, can’t act, you can by choosing how you feel about it.

And that’s an empowering thing to know. We can all get caught in places in our lives where we can’t get immediately away from the thing that is disturbing or saddening us and that lack of control over our destiny or what happens to us can be depressing. But the thing no one can control is what you think of something and how you feel about it. So by choosing to be happy, even if your life is going to shit, you can regain a certain amount of control until the chance for escape comes.

And it’s amazing how thinking happy can be catching. Try this – laugh. Go on, just laugh, right now. Ha ha ha, hee hee hee. Feels fake, I know, but you know what – I bet you’re also feeling kinda lighter, happier. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the complexities of life that we forget that we’re basic biology, and we can trigger reactions within our body.

For some more thoughts on happiness, check out this video from TED - http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html

From a sore but accomplished writer

There’s a lot to be said for giving yourself a difficult challenge (one that can be accomplished in a day) and just going for it and not giving up and getting it done. Things like cleaning the house top to bottom, or organising the spare room, or finally getting your taxes under control, or doing the weeding you’ve been putting off for months. It’s hard not to feel good about yourself after you’ve overcome something you weren’t sure you could do.

Yesterday, my challenge was the City to Surf fun run, in Sydney. Note – I do not run. Never. Well hardly ever, I did run the last fifty metres or so to the finish line. So let’s call it the City to Surf fun walk. Except this one wasn’t that fun…

I was not at all in the frame of mind to do the race – the exercise program had fallen by the wayside over the past few weeks, overcome by circumstances that one day I will blog about. And I forgot to bring my iPod, so was facing a boring walk of 14 kilometres. And it took soooooooo long to start (so long, in fact, that we were told the winner had finished BEFORE we crossed the start line). And then, within a few kilometres, my feet and hips and back started to ache (I think I need new shoes…)

By the time I reached the first Gatorade station, I threw it down and got a bit of a kick of energy (not doubt totally mental, but aren’t most of these things about the mind?) With every kilometre, I told myself, one more, one more. And so I attacked Heartbreak  Hill – it’s more than a kilometre of just going up and up and up and is called Heartbreak Hill cause a lot of people don’t make it.

Well, I did. I powered up the sucker. And then paid for that the rest of the trip (my hips, my hips). But by reaching the top of that I was now more than half way to the finish, so decided I should keep going.

My final time was I believe (I hope, I’ll find out for sure tomorrow) less than three hours. Considering my lack of fitness, that’s not too bad. The only other time I did it, it was about 2 hours 25 minutes but I was pretty fit then. So I’m considering this year a time-setting exercise and now the aim is next year to be fit enough to smash the bastard.

Once the race was done, came another challenge – waiting for the bus. An hour and a half standing in line (my hips, my hips, my feet…) And then I got to Bondi Junction and immediately hopped a train to Tempe and as a result had nothing to eat until nearly 3, when I got some chips from the bar of the Concordia Club cause the kitchen had closed. Not happy, Jan.

I’m a little stiff and sore this morning, and no doubt will whinge a lot when I go to work later today, but at the same time – I did it. It was hard and I didn’t want to, but I persevered and I did it and once the exhaustion wears off, I’m sure I’ll be delighted in myself.

Must get fitter, must get fitter…

Wherein the author reveals herself to be an idiot

Just checked a planning note that I wrote myself, and the novel does have a title. So does book three. So I’m currently working on Freedom to Be. Thought you’d like to know. The title, that is, not that I’m an idiot :)

Progress on the as yet unnamed novel

Why am I so bad at titles? Honestly, I suck at it. Truly. I also sucked at headlines when I was a journalist, which made sub-editing a difficult process (not helped by the fact you had to fit the headlines into a certain space, and could only use a limited range of font size…)

Ah, but I am digressing. I think titles are important – they are part of the information that an author gives the reader about what is happening in the novel, and can even give clues as to genre and so on. I wonder if maybe I should put more effort into the title earlier in the process of the novel, so that it gives me a strong theme on which to think as I write. Battle for Odana came relatively early in the process of that novel (during draft one, in fact) and it really helped me with the re-write. On the other hand, I didn’t come up with Love in Control as a title for book one of Balance of Power until I was getting to the “this is getting ready to give to readers” stage. Both titles work equally well for the books.  But again, the title of the trilogy is there – Balance of Power – and it’s helping to guide the development of the series…

This book, the sequel to Love in Control, isn’t at the ‘getting ready to read stage’, so I’m not sure I know it well enough to title it, yet maybe I should come up with a title in order to direct my writing. I’ll keep musing on that – my muse has been good at eventually giving me the answer lately.

Otherwise, the novel is coming along well and I wish I had more time to work on it (damn you, life!). In the past three weeks, I’ve added 20,000 words to it and it’s getting to a very exciting, tension packed part of the book. I’m working hard to hide certain information from the readers, while giving them clues to try and work it out themselves. I’ve got the couple back together again, but there’s still things to be resolved before they can finally pledge their love and live happily ever after. And meanwhile, I’m slowly but surely planning the major climax, which is going to involve something so mega-cool, I can’t wait to write it!

And I’ve been enjoying the fact that my brain is turned onto this, and any time I’m facing a problem, it’s coming up with an answer within a day or so, so the momentum isn’t stopping. The subjectivity and objectivity I spoke of in an earlier post are really working hand-in-hand at the moment and it’s an intriguing and enjoyable process.

More on Parallel Importation Restrictions (PIR)

So far, from the four letters I mailed, I’ve received one response – a standard from Peter Garrett. But at least someone in his office is opening the letters and reading them enough at least to send the right standard response to the right person. As far as the emails to all the NSW senators, there are 11 and I’ve had responses from three – just “thanks” things. So I’m going to be sending more letters, and more emails this week, particularly to members of the Labor Party, who have set up a working party to look at it and to give a recommendation to the government.

The more I think about this, the more I read, the angrier I get. Okay, maybe we will get cheaper books (and that’s far from guaranteed), but they’ll be cheap American books that will (so I am told) fall apart after just a few reads, and that’s before we get started on the fact they’ll be Americanised. I want to buy quality, and right now that’s what I get. I want to buy Australian books, and right now I can. But under these recommendations, that will get harder.

And upon reading Kim Wilkins’ blog, another fear was set before me. The Productivity Commission has recommended that Government grants for Australian writers increase, because they KNOW this will impact on author’s income. And as Kim pointed out, that means Government will get to decide what is worthy of being supported, and as a genre writer, I know this means my work will be low on the list of “worthy” projects, even if readers would love it. So it’s going to be harder for me, and others writing “commercial” fiction, to get the supplement of income that will be lost from this.

Apart from reading, I’ve been spending time with the girls behind the Saving Aussie Books blog, and there you can get hold of a petition that you can print out, get signed and then send to the girls, and they will have the petition presented to parliament.

As for me, I’ve made the decision to boycott the members of the Coalition for Cheaper Books. Looking at their website, I love the phrase that one of their aims is to “lead to improved literacy in Australia” – how they think that will happen with all the overseas books with American spelling intrigues me. I’m sad in the case of Dymocks, because a) I know they are mostly franchisees and may not necessarily agree with the company and b) they are a good bookstore and some are very supportive of spec fic, but I can’t in all consciousness support the company or give them profits when they don’t want to support my choice of career. In the case of the others, well I’d already stopped shopping at Woolworths, and didn’t go to Coles much anyway, so no real biggie there and I’ve always preferred Target to Kmart, so when I go bra shopping later today, I’ll have to travel to do it but happy to do so.

So yes, the impact of this decision won’t have a huge effect on their bottom line. But I’ll be taking a stand, and I hope that other people will think of doing so as well.