Flights for the Bumbling Bee

The check in line is still really long, so I can rant a bit on this wonderful country of mine being a truky crummy place to fly out of.

When I was working in Jakarta, I had to fly SQ through Singapore to get the Jakarta from Manila and vice versa. No direct flights. I flew to Kuala Lumpur in 05 and had to do the same thing, take a connecting through Sing. This adds and extra couple of hours to the trip.

Even when the airlines fly direct, the flight selection is abysmal. To get to Bkk, I'm taking a 1420 flight. I hate flying in the afternoons. Always too many people, and you arrive late afternoon to early evening. Too late to do much. Too dark to see much. There are no other flights. Sigh.

What the heck's in Bangkok?

I'm standing in line to check into flight TG621 bound for Bangkok. This is the longest line I've ever stood in, despite arriving 150 minutes before departure. And I thought that line for the Narita flight was long. Yeesh. This is guaranteed to be a full flight. I hope the travel agent got me my usual aisle seat.

This makes me appreciate SQ all the more, and I haven't gotten on the damned plane yet.

That. Sucked.

Your first pass on the second play of the game goes for a 66 yard gain. Then you're taken down at the knee by someone twice your weight after you let the ball go. Torn ACL. Instantly, your team reverts to being The Bungles with blown coverage, shanked punt and fumble. So long Cinderella season.

More like a Feast OF Crow. Who likes the taste of Crow?

We waited five years for this?

Fine, George makes all sorts of apologies and excuses for the lateness of the book. He might have just said that he was afflicted with Jordanitis - a condition affecting writers where they have no idea of how to get to where they want to go (assuming they do know where they want to go) and where they get caught up in enjoying the "sound" of their own "voice" to the detriment of their readers (and their story).

First, go listen to this episode of Michael & Evo's Cover to Cover where you can get the whole story from the horse's (George's) mouth.

On with my take on A Feast for Crows.

Half of this volume, which is Volume 4 Part I (the second half, supposedly titled "A Dance with Dragons" if you listened to the above podcast, is due this year) is wholly unnecessary. There is a huge amount of exposition and backstory and description on secondary, far less interesting characters. Brienne of Tarth getting about a fifth of the book? You have to be kidding me. I skipped most of her chapters because ther were putting me to sleep and NOTHING WAS HAPPENING. Samwell Tarly on a boat? WHO CARES? You could have lopped out everything until he got to Braavos, and even those segments could have been edited down. The deal with the squids could have been abbreviated. Breinne of Tarth? What the HELL! She got more ink than the remaining Starks combined! WHY? Only the Jaime and Cersei parts were tight and paced decently, and formed the only part of A Feast for Crows worth a reader's time.

George, George, George. Why did you foist this glorified doorstop on us? You left two of the most important characters out - Tyrion and Dany. A third, Jon Snow, gets almost no coverage. Everyone in this book is left TALKING about Tyrion, and there's no hide nor hair of him. Dany is the driver of the whole arc, the timepiece if you will. She's nowhere to be seen. Snow is the Lord Commander, fine. So what?

Nothing. Happens.

Sorry George. You almost lost me here. A Dance with Dragons had better pick up the pace and move the story arc along at a decent clip, or I'm going to start calling you Robert Jordan II and this series as A Wheel of Ice, Fire and Time. This was about the spot in WoT (after The Dragon Reborn, which was the high point of WoT - everything after that went sharply downhill) that Jordan took leave of his senses and put the whole story on hold while his characters talked and travelled and preened. Don't make the same mistake.

Borrow this book, read the Cersei, Jaime and Arya chapters, then return it. Nothing else in A Feast for Crows matters.

Resolutions

I find the way people keep time... amusing. We like chronological landmarks. The first of the year. The end of the year. The first of the month. The first day of spring. Midnight.

How about now?

Yes, "now."

Saying "this will be done beginning _____" when you can do it now is just an excuse to procrastinate. If you fail at something, there is no need to wait until the next chronological marker to begin again. Get back on the horse after falling off. Don't wait until the horse is dead or irrelevant.

Happy new year. May your life's work be more fruitful from this day forward, or from any day that you need for something to begin anew.

Unintelligent Designs

It's unfortunate when one of my favorite hobby sites is hit with something like this:

Jon Power's "Happy Newtonmas!" List

However, this being the intarweb, I suppose it's unavoidable. On many other sites, it would be deleted for yet another intarweb phenomenon, trolling.

What I believe is irrelevant. That list is simply a nice study in human nature. You might want to say Geek Nature to be specific, but the existence of a higher power is a very human argument. It's also a pretty worthless argument, since no one ever convinces anyone of anything different from what they believed going into the argument.

Each individual is a summation of his personal reality. His belief system is colored by his experiences. Thus, his belief in a higher power, or lack thereof, can be traced to his unique human makeup - natural intellect, upbringing, education, media influence, the stuff he eats for breakfast, and what brand of soap he uses (if any).

I've been on both sides of the fence in my thirty-odd years, though never quite as extreme to either end (assuming you condsider the two sides as opposites in terms of belief, which many do, but I'm not convinced that they are). I think I've found a happy medium, couched in human nature as I understand it. Some people find comfort in knowing that there is a higher power, something to look forward to after death, someone to turn to when there is no hope left. Others draw strength from certainty that this existence is all that there is, and there is little (if anything) that cannot be understood and/or influenced by humans (ie, themselves).

Both ways are fine, because people need different things.

The truth, if there is one, is irrelevant.

Merry Christmas Morning

I find it interesting that weblogging has become such as part of peoples' lives that making entries on significant days, like today, has become second nature. Yes, it's just an evolution of the diary, especially for weblogs such as this one which have no audience, but it's still interesting. Hopefully, the electrons will stay in place and these words will be preserved forever.

Merry Christmas, 2005. See you at the turn of the year.

Ballad Of The Times

Somehow I've run out of podcasts to listen to, so I've been able to get back to listening to music in the car for a spell. After playing the new CDs a few times, I'm running through my collection.

Eveything But the Girl has made a lot of great music over the years. I prefer their earlier acoustic, Tracey Thorn vocals-driven work compared to their later electronica-infested catalog. My favorite cut is a lesser-known tune called "Ballad of the Times". It's a track off their second album, the 1985 disc "Love not Money". (That's not my favorite album though - that honor goes to 1988's "Idlewild".)

Two Kinds of Writing

It's a curse.

I can write on a lot of things. 2,000 words on music? Easy. 3,000 words on a movie or book? Child's play. 4,000 words on a board, card or roleplaying game? No problem.

A 2,000 word contract for work? Stuck. Two weeks and counting. I start reading and editing and I zone out. I try to work it from a template and the words blur. I even tried to do it from scratch from an outline and my writing brain blanks. Holy shit, what's the deal? It's just a bit of legalese; I did this shit for 18 months in my last job and it didn't bother me, what the fuck is wrong now?

Sigh.

This writing thing is so fickle, which is why I always have serious doubts when I consider attempting writing for a living. My writing gene is unreliable. My writing soul is picky.

Tomorrow, there is no work. I will attempt the writing for work from a Starbucks with a steaming hot Peppermint Cafe Mocha on my left, and a nice ham and cheese croissant on my right. If that doesn't work... crap.

The Devil is in the Dust

I didn't really consider Bruce's last effort, The Rising, as a typical "Bruce album". It was full of 9/11 imagery and it was powerful and parts of it rocked hard, but it was off the beaten track for The Boss.

This is more like it.

Devils and Dust is back to the storytelling Bruce, the dark, quiet version that spawned the haunting Nebraska and the desolate The Ghost of Tom Joad. Devils isn't quite as sparse as the previous two CDs I mention, the former a renowned Boss classic, the latter a forgotten, underrated brilliant work. Its tunes are a bit more upbeat, its instrumentation a bit more robust, but the stories told are, if possible, even more depressing and desparate. Hookers, illegal immigrants, criminals - they're on Bruce's mind again, and they contribute to making this the best album he's made in a good long while.

In my part of the world we get two separate discs - the CD and the DVD with the 5.1 and videos aren't in the very strange "Dualdisc" format that seems to be de rigeur in North America. So, my wife can play the DVD at home while I play the CD in the car. Works for me. I haven't had the chance to take a look at the DVD contents. When I do, I'll post an update.

Back in the Saddle

The sad part about running three separate blogs compared to a single one with tags is that one or two might get neglected for a while. Sucks, but what can you do?

I've been meaning to post some thoughts on other media here (I'm not going into them deep enough to call them "reviews"), so I hope to eventually get there:

Kathleen Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince"
Neil Gaiman's "Anansi Boys"
Alan Moore's graphic novel "V for Vendetta"
Bruce Springsteen's new CD "Devils and Dust"
Robbie Williams's new CD "Intensive Care"
Madonna's new CD "Confessions on a Dance Floor"

I'm still reading George Martin's "A Feast for Crows" and Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel."

Unentertaining and unimpressive

In vivid contrast to the NBA, is there anything less exciting in the world of sports (okay - calling car racing a "sport" is a stretch) than NASCAR? I can understand F1, where the tracks make a difference, and cars have their individual strengths. But NASCAR? Racing in ovals? Zzzzzz...

Hoops Returns

The MLB World Series was interesting, but the personalities involved weren't all that compelling to me. Sure, it would have been nice to see Clemens get a hometown title, and the Killer B's finally win a title, but the White Sox? Bo-ring. It didn't help that we all knew the Astros were offensively inept. I called the White Sox in 5.

I enjoy watching the NFL games, but this is the time when the injuries build up (and there have been a LOT of them this year). There are no compelling NFL stories to date other than my forlorn Cincy Bungles growing up and becoming a decent team with young Carson Palmer at the helm. They won't win the Super Bowl, but it looks like they'll finally make the playoffs

I was pretty happy when pro hockey came back, depite never having laced on a pair of skates in my life, much less swung a hockey stick at someone's head. My fantasy hockey team is doing quite well, Keith Tkachunky's dead weight riding my bench notwithstanding.

But now the real entertainment is on hand.



The NBA starts up next week. My fantasy hoops draft with my buddies is tonight. Everything is right in the world.

Who goes first? Garnett, reduced to being the best player on a pretty crappy team? The boy wonder LBJ, with his newly-beefed up Cavaliers? The Dirk, he of German engineering?

Outside of fantasy, the league itself has a lot of intriguing subplots. Will the Spurs kill everyone en route to a third title? Will The Phil be able to take his pretty crappy LAL team to the playoffs? Will Yao finally become the best center in the NBA, never mind the best player on his own team? Will Shaq finally get that ring to validate his contention that Buss was stupid to trade him and not Bryant? Will Baron stay healthy enough to get the Warriors back to the playoffs? Will LBJ really make us forget about Jordan?

I like all four major leagues, but basketball is my first love, and will always being the most fun.

F**k You Canon. (Warning: Foul Language)

Before I buy stuff, I usually do research online. This applies to books, boardgames and especially pricey stuff like home appliances, electronics, and cars.

I remember spending a couple of weeks researching digital cameras before settling on the Canon A70. It had excellent reviews, great usability for a point-and-shoot, a fine lens, and used conventional AA batteries. So I plunked down my $300 and was happy.

A week ago, I turned it on and was greeted by a blank screen. No matter how I fiddled with the thing, the screen stayed blank and anything it shot was a black screen. Of course, that pointed to a CCD problem. Sheesh. I was hoping that it might be something else so I hit the web.

Lo and behold: it's a manufacturing defect.

Manufacturer's defect on the CCD for a whole range of Canon's products over the past two years. Holy shit. They're offering free repairs, so I call the local office. The lady says you have to bring the camera in for diagnostics, during working hours on a weekday. So that means I have to take a vacation day, which costs more than a new 3.2 megapixel camera at today's prices. Not only that, but it will take a minimum of two weeks to fix the camera, assuming they have the part in stock.

Knowing the range of products affected, and how many of these fucking things Canon has sold, the camera could fucking take months to repair. In the meantime, I'm fucking stuck without a camera, which is fucking annoying. Fuck you Canon. Fuck you and your crappy quality control, and your fucking customer service. Fuck you for making me look fucking stupid. I fucking research for two fucking weeks and get your fucking piece of shit camera and it turns out the fucking most important part of the fucking steaming pile of shit is fucked. Fuck you.

Of course I'll end up taking the camera in anyway, just because I want to be able to harangue them about it until they fucking get it fixed. But I also know that I'm never going to buy another fucking Canon product ever again.

There's a 3.2MP Kodak digital-for-dummies camera on sale. I just might go get one of those. But I have to do research first.

Fuck you Canon.

100 Good Books

A couple of critics from Time pick their 100 best English-language novels since 1923. There's a lot of good stuff on there, but the two big surprises for me were William Gibson's Neuromancer, and the Moore-penned graphic novel Watchmen. These two are mixed in with many of the usual suspects.

Neuromancer was influential and created a sub-genre of sci-fi, which many of us now call "cyberpunk." However, I would never hold it up as a bastion of well-constructed prose. I don't mind it being up there, but it's not really in the league of The Lord of the Rings, A Clockwork Orange and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Watchmen is the critics' validation of "the funnies" becoming serious literature, which many of my generation already acknowledge but the old stuffies try to ignore. Gaiman's Sandman probably trumps Watchmen in the quality of writing department, but I'm happy to accept the Moore opus as the representative of the genre.

Overall, if you only read 100 books in your lifetime and they were the ones on that list, I'd say that you did pretty well for yourself. I've read maybe a quarter of them, and these days I'm more interested in writing fiction rather than reading it, but it would be nice to get to every one of them before I depart this mortal coil.

Death by Technology

John August, screenwriter (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), is also a geek. As a geek, he embraces the cutting edge of tech. He also shares on eof my sentiments - as tech makes it easier for those of us with the necessary knowledge and skills to get more things done, there are inevitably more things we discover that we want to do. Hence, we get overloaded with the plethora of choices in which we can invest our time.

I've been discovering that recently in my forced choices in consuming media. Podcasts have replaced music in my car during my daily commute. I now miss listening to my favorite CDs, and wish that I could pop Andrea or Vladimir back into the CD player. But that would entail falling behind one or more podcasts, and that would be very difficult. So I do without the music. I know that won't last.

I've also fallen far behind on my reading. It's amazing that I've had Anansi Boys at my disposal for over a week now, and I haven't read a single word. I'm stuck in the first third of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is a book I beleived I could not put down. A combination of the web, playing boardgames and dealing with my fantasy sports teams have sucked all that time up. Even on the plane, I'm forced to choose between catching up with the Wall Street Journal (I'm only five weeks behind) and seeing films that I missed at the theater, even if it means watching them on a 6"x4" screen. (I chose to see The Fantastic Four and Batman Begins.)

It's not humanly possible to consume all that media, work, sleep, spend time with your loved ones and do it all competently.

Thanks for the capability, tech, but we're all still human, and the day still has no more than 24 hours.

I Should Be Writing

Mur Lafferty does sound like one of those self-help motivational speakers. However, her message isn't that much different from the main book that I've been using over the year to spark the stories in my head: Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" and its sequels.

It's simple - write. That's why I titled this weblog as "Everyday Insight" - these were to be my morning pages. The mind dump at the top of the day, if you will. No matter what, a half hour at the beginning of the day just to get the words flowing.

Of course, as Mur says, it's easy to slack off. Very easy, especially with a regular (ok, not so regular) job and other distractions. Just don't blame anyone else, because writing is something that's all on you.

I still have my notebooks from that wondrous streak of flowing words I had a couple of years ago. Woke up bright and early at five in the morning. Wrote for half an hour, longhand. My longhand is absolutely awful but I did it because it's what Julia recommended - an organic connection to your words in an age of electrons. I think I've decided that organic isn't me. This is easier. Anyway, after than, an hour in the gym, then breakfast, then a shower, then off to work. It was a good rhythm - I was writing, doing well at work AND I was fit for the first time in a long damned time.

It all came crashing down about my ears when I was laid off and repatriated. So I'm back to square one.

Temporary setback. So I have three weblogs that I write in semi-regularly. I'll begin the long journey back to getting on the wagon completely right here. If it doesn't work, I'll only have myself to blame, eh?

Anne McCaffrey

I listen to the "Wingin' It" podcast done by Michael R. Mennenga, Evo Terra and the Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas (I have to agree, that's a fun name) over at The Dragon Page. This is usually a really geeky, freewheeling show that's fun and has no real agenda other than aimless rants and a couple of nice segments (Mur Lafferty's essay and A Different Point of View).

Anyway, I was initially bummed that there would be no "real" Wingin' It last week as the hosts were recovering from Dragon*Con. Instead, Michael aired the session of Anne and Todd McCaffrey (ok, it was mostly Anne) at Dragon*Con.

I'm not really a Pern reader, so I was prepared to skip over that segment. I was driving to game night at the time, so I let the show run while I jostled for room in crowded traffic. For once, I was glad for the traffic.

Anne is a gifted vocal storyteller. Not all writers have the gift of being able to speak as well as they write. Anne's 80 years old, but her voice is strong and clear, and she spoke without the ahhhs and errrrs that mar a lot of people's public speaking.

My takeaway, something I know I've heard before but forget quite a bit, is to write how you feel. Write from the heart. Anne was talking about the death of her father, a military man, and the emotion she felt looking at his coffin with the American flag laid over it. That emotion led to "The Ship Who Sang." She relates that she was usually unable to get through the book at public readings, because the emotion would overcome her, and the Todd would have to pick it up when that happened. At one reading, she saw that there was a camera crew, and she tried to hold back the emotion. Until she saw that the crew was crying.

Great story, related in a perfect voice.

One of those times that you're content to listen to someone related parts of her life, and live vicariously.

License to Drive

Took a day off from work today to get my driver's license renewed. I expected it to take some time considering the poor government processes.

I arrived at the East Avenue office at around 8:30 am. It was my first time getting a license there since we had moved in the three years that my last license was valid, so I asked around for instructions. Apparently I had to cross the street to what supposedly was a medical lab to get a medical certificate and a drug test. Heh.

I exited the LTO and was immediately approached by a guy who said he's point the way to where I needed to go. Since there were hordes of people and it was broad daylight I followed his lead. We crossed the street (no crosswalk!) and entered an area of ramshackle stalls. Among the stalls was a little wooden "office" where I sat down and filled out a few forms. I pissed into a cup, and in five minutes I got my clean drug test. Cost: P250.

My guide then reappeared and pointed the way to the "medical lab." It was nothing more than a room with a lady who sat you down and made you read from a standard optometrist's wall chart. I read just fine with my corrected sight, so I got my "medical clearance" in under five minutes. Cost: P50. (Incidentally, the guy opposite me was only able to read row 4 of the chart. He was given "medical clearance" as well. I hope I never meet him on the street.)

Back to the LTO. Filled up a form, turned in the papers along with my old license. Wait ten minutes. Have digital photo taken, and sign digital signature capture thingy. Wait another 20 minutes. Pay the cashier. Cost: Just under P300. Wait another 20 minutes. Get license card and receipt and I'm done.

Hop in a cab and I'm home before 10am. That was relatively painless, I must say. All I have to do next time is drink a bit more before going to facilitate the peeing into the cup. See them in three years!

Time to Recommit, and Kuala Lumpur

I'm overthinking this. All I have to do is write a couple of lines a day. Not much more than that. It's not like I have an audience here right?

I just arrived from a business trip to Kuala Lumpur. The city isn't much different from any Asian city. It's greener than Manila, cleaner than Jakarta, but less shiny than Singapore. It's got its share of nice malls.

I got to hook up with an old high school buddy who work with Shell in Malaysia. We had dinner and a couple of beers and talked about how life turns out for each of us. Neither of us was on the "most likely to succeed" list in high school, but having lived expat lives and having advanced a bit up the corporate ladder, we're not doing too bad. He's getting married soon, and I wish him all the best.

The Petronas Twin Towers looked very nice lighted up at night, but hey, they're just a couple of phallic buildings. The two sites I wanted to visit, the National Museum of Malaysia and the Royal Selangor Pewter Plant, I had no time for this trip. I'm still not sure I missed much, and the 10-hour trip via Singapore is more than enough to make the trip less that attractive next time around.