Posts
Colleen McCullough died
The author of Tim, The Thorn Birds, Masters of Rome and a host of other books. Her writing enriched my life.
Her obituary in The Australian makes me angry.
The lead paragraph, which does mention she was a best-selling author, then discusses her looks, weight and man-pulling ability. And I thought of my female friends and how they might be reduced to such idiocy - MEK, a gorgeous redhead who also scaled mountains, oh, and advised powerful men; Stephanie, a pretty blond who knew people in power; Susanne . . . you know, why do we have to justify our specialness?
I'm kinda pissed, but from pissed comes ideas
Ladies, lady friends, let's celebrate who we are and what we have done. (Stephanie started this but I'm taking it a step further.)
We're not going to be around for the obits but I'm asking - what are you most proud of? What do YOU want to be remembered for? What do YOU think is important in your life thus far (I expect much more)?
Let's make a book to inspire
Friday, January 30, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Smelling the roses . . .
Sometimes it's the unplanned days that give the most pleasure . . .
Life has been busy of late. Work has entailed changes that, as changes do, need time to learn and master. I'm back at the gym and making that a priority on my free time schedule while also fitting in errands and shopping that take time, particularly when you use a cycle and are so fussy you have to go all over the city to get your weekly groceries (not a chore by any means - I love exploring the city but it does take time).
Today's schedule was to take a friend to a framer another friend and I found last week, and have watercolors I bought back from Paris mounted and framed. I then planned to spend all afternoon at the gym and pool before dinner with other friends.
I'm glad I was flexible.
We had coffee and lunch after visiting the framer then went for a walk, which took us to Beihai Park near Beijing's Forbidden City. I had been there before and told my friend about it, including a dancing group I'd seen there, and she asked if I would mind if we went in for a short while.
I'm so glad we did and that I didn't hold myself to my gym commitment.
Instead, we walked, laughed, watched locals ice-skating, playing in ice-bumper cars, boats and all manner of contraptions, watched the dancers and climbed the hill to see the view from the park's White Pagoda.
Watched the dancers,
nd enjoyed an unplanned, unmapped, unfettered day of pure fun.
There was also a gorgeous cat that allowed me to stroke its ears and a busker who looked (a little) like Jackie Chan on the subway (which I NEVER take but am glad I did today).
Next comes dinner . . .
Life has been busy of late. Work has entailed changes that, as changes do, need time to learn and master. I'm back at the gym and making that a priority on my free time schedule while also fitting in errands and shopping that take time, particularly when you use a cycle and are so fussy you have to go all over the city to get your weekly groceries (not a chore by any means - I love exploring the city but it does take time).
Today's schedule was to take a friend to a framer another friend and I found last week, and have watercolors I bought back from Paris mounted and framed. I then planned to spend all afternoon at the gym and pool before dinner with other friends.
I'm glad I was flexible.
We had coffee and lunch after visiting the framer then went for a walk, which took us to Beihai Park near Beijing's Forbidden City. I had been there before and told my friend about it, including a dancing group I'd seen there, and she asked if I would mind if we went in for a short while.
I'm so glad we did and that I didn't hold myself to my gym commitment.
Instead, we walked, laughed, watched locals ice-skating, playing in ice-bumper cars, boats and all manner of contraptions, watched the dancers and climbed the hill to see the view from the park's White Pagoda.
Watched the dancers,
nd enjoyed an unplanned, unmapped, unfettered day of pure fun.
There was also a gorgeous cat that allowed me to stroke its ears and a busker who looked (a little) like Jackie Chan on the subway (which I NEVER take but am glad I did today).
Next comes dinner . . .
 |
| perhaps this is what Jaycee Chan is reduced to after his drug bust??? |
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
'tis the season . . .
Unexpectedly, the recent Thanksgiving holiday and this month's Christmas are very much front and center here in China. Thanksgiving seemed to slip by the average Chinese almost unnoticed but not so the large and vibrant expat community. For at least a month before, English-language publications and websites were talking up the US holiday, dispensing tips on where to go to get provisions for a celebration at home and which hotels and restaurants were serving Thanksgiving dinners. Markets started selling Butterball turkeys and pie bases (cans of cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie filling are always available at the expat markets) and Sanlitun - an area that contains many embassies and high-end international brand stores - lit up the trees along its streets.
Nobody who has a facebook account could fail to notice the holiday, whether one's friends were taking the date as an opportunity to be thankful for all they have or simply posting turkey and pilgrim jokes that ranged from humorous through obscene (and often both). Social media may well be as instrumental in globalizing celebrations as the Web was in cementing English as the world's lingua franca and as television has been in disseminating the "American dream."
In what has become a China Daily foreign expert tradition of its own, a colleague organized a trip to an amazing restaurant/eco-resort that sits in the shadow of the Great Wall for Thanksgiving dinner. Because of work schedules, we attended the "reprise" on the Saturday evening rather than the Thursday event. I've attended the last two years, with an out-of-town US guest last year - the organizer-in-chief has been for the past four or five years. Despite losing our way (the site moved from the restaurant to the eco-resort), rain, motion-sickness (not I) and horrific smog, the evening was fabulous. As were the fellow guests (including a table of Australians I made a point of harassing, because that's what we Antipodeans do), the food, the wines, liqueurs and live jazz.
As was our host, Jim Spear, who is fully deserving of his own post.
Reader, as Bronte might have writ, the post becomes a little darker here but I promise a spark of light throughout.
In one of life's bad jokes, Thanksgiving this year fell around the time of the anniversary of my mother's suicide (sorry family, but I'm incapable of calling it anything other than what it is). It's a sad anniversary I share with a treasured friend whose baby girl died that day before we even met. I was surprised I wasn't as upset this year as on previous years, but perhaps we are getting to the point where we have grown accustomed to the loss and the pain and the date itself is irrelevant. The space they occupied will always be empty, no matter what day it is.
Having breezed through some other country's holiday with no ill effects, I find myself coming up on Christmas, which has always been a sensitive time, Mother-memories wise. And the melancholy snuck up on me unexpectedly. Which is okay, because I felt a little guilty about not being overly sad on the designated day.
But it is tempered more than it has been in the past. I've been less tolerant than usual and gotten mad at an acquaintance over something I would normally laugh off, but I'm coping, with a little help from my friends.
Two of those friends took me to a Christmas bazaar last weekend, which not only restored my faith in human nature but gave me plenty of ideas of how I may be able to contribute to my new home, outside of work and friendships. Many of the stalls belonged to nongovernmental organizations and i was surprised and heartened by the range.
One organization teaches marketable skills to women lured to the country's capital with the promise of legitimate jobs that are anything but, another houses and educates visually impaired orphans. We shared our lunch table with a woman whose friend started a group that teaches skills such as baking to people with mental challenges.
Since leaving Korea, one of the things that has been missing from my life is the opportunity to volunteer - to help others who weren't born with the accident of place, race, health or potential that I was.
I now have an overabundance of choices and am researching the options.
I'm very tempted by crazy bake - helping the mentally ill cook will remind me of my family (typed with love). Or, for 300 kwai a month, about the cost of a good bottle of wine here, I could sponsor a visually impaired child. The latter offers the opportunity to visit the home and farm but I'm not quite sure how viable that would be for a non-Chinese speaker.
There are other options to peruse also, and a little time to go until Christmas.
But I'm thinking that my Christmas gift to myself (if we ignore the necklace I bought at the bazaar) will be to give something back.
Nobody who has a facebook account could fail to notice the holiday, whether one's friends were taking the date as an opportunity to be thankful for all they have or simply posting turkey and pilgrim jokes that ranged from humorous through obscene (and often both). Social media may well be as instrumental in globalizing celebrations as the Web was in cementing English as the world's lingua franca and as television has been in disseminating the "American dream."
In what has become a China Daily foreign expert tradition of its own, a colleague organized a trip to an amazing restaurant/eco-resort that sits in the shadow of the Great Wall for Thanksgiving dinner. Because of work schedules, we attended the "reprise" on the Saturday evening rather than the Thursday event. I've attended the last two years, with an out-of-town US guest last year - the organizer-in-chief has been for the past four or five years. Despite losing our way (the site moved from the restaurant to the eco-resort), rain, motion-sickness (not I) and horrific smog, the evening was fabulous. As were the fellow guests (including a table of Australians I made a point of harassing, because that's what we Antipodeans do), the food, the wines, liqueurs and live jazz.
As was our host, Jim Spear, who is fully deserving of his own post.
Reader, as Bronte might have writ, the post becomes a little darker here but I promise a spark of light throughout.
In one of life's bad jokes, Thanksgiving this year fell around the time of the anniversary of my mother's suicide (sorry family, but I'm incapable of calling it anything other than what it is). It's a sad anniversary I share with a treasured friend whose baby girl died that day before we even met. I was surprised I wasn't as upset this year as on previous years, but perhaps we are getting to the point where we have grown accustomed to the loss and the pain and the date itself is irrelevant. The space they occupied will always be empty, no matter what day it is.
Having breezed through some other country's holiday with no ill effects, I find myself coming up on Christmas, which has always been a sensitive time, Mother-memories wise. And the melancholy snuck up on me unexpectedly. Which is okay, because I felt a little guilty about not being overly sad on the designated day.
But it is tempered more than it has been in the past. I've been less tolerant than usual and gotten mad at an acquaintance over something I would normally laugh off, but I'm coping, with a little help from my friends.
Two of those friends took me to a Christmas bazaar last weekend, which not only restored my faith in human nature but gave me plenty of ideas of how I may be able to contribute to my new home, outside of work and friendships. Many of the stalls belonged to nongovernmental organizations and i was surprised and heartened by the range.
One organization teaches marketable skills to women lured to the country's capital with the promise of legitimate jobs that are anything but, another houses and educates visually impaired orphans. We shared our lunch table with a woman whose friend started a group that teaches skills such as baking to people with mental challenges.
Since leaving Korea, one of the things that has been missing from my life is the opportunity to volunteer - to help others who weren't born with the accident of place, race, health or potential that I was.
I now have an overabundance of choices and am researching the options.
I'm very tempted by crazy bake - helping the mentally ill cook will remind me of my family (typed with love). Or, for 300 kwai a month, about the cost of a good bottle of wine here, I could sponsor a visually impaired child. The latter offers the opportunity to visit the home and farm but I'm not quite sure how viable that would be for a non-Chinese speaker.
There are other options to peruse also, and a little time to go until Christmas.
But I'm thinking that my Christmas gift to myself (if we ignore the necklace I bought at the bazaar) will be to give something back.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Deadlines . . .
I need deadlines, a target, a goal, a commitment . . .
It doesn't mean I will make them. One of my favorite quotes from my of my favorite writers:
Mine don't whoosh so much, because I get to set them myself. To some degree. (I don't freelance because I would starve but I pitch stories to my employers, and then am expected to write them.)
When there is a space to fill that I might have a story for, I get reminded that a story is expected to fill a particular space.
Then, and unfortunately, only then, I draw in all the threads of the tale that have been roaming free in my mind, try to identify the strongest and track down it's supporting friends. I love it, I love writing, I love finding what it is about each story that might ("might") grab the reader's interest and hold them, but I'm really bad at doing it without a deadline.
So, tonight, I took a "rest" day from my gym, baked brownies, made curry and texted my subject with questions that the deadline made seem more important. I already have all the background - now it's about making it sexy (newspaper sexy, that isn't actually sexy).
I have a deadline.
I have to deliver.
It doesn't mean I will make them. One of my favorite quotes from my of my favorite writers:
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Mine don't whoosh so much, because I get to set them myself. To some degree. (I don't freelance because I would starve but I pitch stories to my employers, and then am expected to write them.)
When there is a space to fill that I might have a story for, I get reminded that a story is expected to fill a particular space.
Then, and unfortunately, only then, I draw in all the threads of the tale that have been roaming free in my mind, try to identify the strongest and track down it's supporting friends. I love it, I love writing, I love finding what it is about each story that might ("might") grab the reader's interest and hold them, but I'm really bad at doing it without a deadline.
So, tonight, I took a "rest" day from my gym, baked brownies, made curry and texted my subject with questions that the deadline made seem more important. I already have all the background - now it's about making it sexy (newspaper sexy, that isn't actually sexy).
I have a deadline.
I have to deliver.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
