A nice surprise

A profile of yours truly is in the latest edition of our library newsletter. Unable to resist being at least a little tongue-in-cheek, I completed the sentence "Ask me about..." with the words "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Well, the newsletter is now hot off the photocopier.

I had a thought that patrons might come to the desk to ask me about the novels rather than the television series, which would be a bad thing since I don't read the novels.

No-one has yet taken the bait, however.

One morning I walked up to my desk and there was a withdrawn Buffy novel on my chair. I asked one of the catalogers, since they are the ones who decided which books get withdrawn. Then I asked the woman who wrote up my profile. Finally I sent an email to the whole library to thank whoever it was who'd given me this present.

It was my manager. I think we'll keep him on for a while.

I'd rather be Casablanca

That's the movie which represents Make Tea Not War's love life. Why couldn't I have been that too, or at least a movie I've seen? I may have to rent this out now...

Your romance is more of a love that needs to bloom
within, just like Hedwig of Hedwig and the
Angry Inch. The film features an East German
transsexual who is seeking her "other
half" after constant betrayal. You must
love yourself before you can need another.
You're starting to realize this, along with the
fact that you don't need a significant other to
be a complete person. Your "other
half" has been inside you all along.


What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life?
brought to you by Quizilla

The agony is over -Type and Type Design for masochists

My presentation was the middle one of three. The first guy did his presentation on Stinky Cheese Man, and it turned out to be a fabulous choice. Much more experienced in the ways of children's fiction than I, he'd found a book to talk about which had a great variety of typefaces and layouts, heaps of funny lines and ingenious page designs. AND he knew who did the typography, what the typefaces were and what was the ancestor of each type. I was just relieved he didn't also have a charismatic speaking style.

I was pretty damn nervous when it was my turn. To make things worse, there was something wrong with Chatterbox so the slides couldn't be presented on-line. Too late, I had realised that I could've picked an easier topic to do my assignment on. Once, I talked for a good thirty seconds before realising I had taken my finger off the CTRL key, which meant that no-one could hear me.

The guy who presented after me cheated - he picked an artist's book by a typographer whose aim was to present a variety of interesting typefaces.

I have come to this conclusion - there are many types of geeks in this world, and book-geeks are the ones who measure book type to the nearest millimetre; they are the ones who can talk for a whole fifteen minutes on how to make vellum from the skin of a newborn calf without saying "Oooh, the poor little calf"; they are the ones who prefer to describe a book's physical appearance using code rather than just taking photos.

superstitions about sneezing

I found this, which still doesn't answer my question of why we couldn't have roast duck at my mum's birthday - but it's still kinda interesting. It's a list of superstitions surrounding sneezes, from cultures around the world. Fascinating.

A Chinese custom, but not for the faint-hearted.

We all went out for Yum Char today, and towards the end of the meal one of my aunts started getting all fidgety. Before I could see it coming, she scrambled out of her chair to retrieve that piece of paper that all the waitresses put marks on - the one which is used to calculate the bill.

It was obvious there was going to be a fight over who got to pay the bill - there always is when Chinese take their friends or rellies out for a meal.

My aunt held that bit of paper tightly in her fist, and whenever I tried to take it away, the surprisingly agile seventy-something woman flicked it just out of my reach. My brother had an idea though, and this was one of those times when we were glad not everyone at the table could speak good English...

Despite that fact that we'd all stopped eating and there were plenty of leftovers, my brother announced that he wanted to get another plate of spring rolls - for his son at home, he said. We had to wait a long time for them to arrive, and in the meantime I kept trying to get my mitts on that piece of paper - unsuccessfully.

Then, the spring rolls arrived. My brother whispered in the waitress's ear that my aunt had the paper for her to mark - could she please hand it to him when she got the chance? My aunt caught on pretty quickly, but she was powerless to counter the attack. She had no choice but to give the waitress the paper, and my brother almost ripped it out of her hand in his haste. In the ensuing hilarity, somehow my mother got the credit for the ruse.

the right article at the wrong time

The evening before one is scheduled to do a presentation (worth thirty percent of the total grade for this paper), is not the best time to receive notice of what could have been an extremely useful article on presentations for librarians.

>:-{

At this stage all I have time to do is talk myself through the Power Point slides until I can speak without using so many "um"s and nervous pauses.

Chinese Superstitions

In an effort to find out why exactly it is not a good thing to eat duck at an eightieth birthday (or any birthday?), I'm looking into Google for answers. (If you know of a good book which has the answer let me know.)

This site didn't have the answer, but it did have this interesting thing to say:

"Beating a person with a broom will rain bad luck upon that person for years." Well, it'll certainly seem like bad luck on the poor person getting beaten up won't it?

Joyce Jue reckons that you have to serve noodles as the last dish of a birthday banquet - we didn't. I wonder if it doesn't apply to octogenarians?

Here are some I know Mum believes in:
- Don't talk about people after they are dead
- Don't give candles as a birthday present - candles are a symbol of mortality or something
- If your palms are itchy, you're coming into money
- If a stray dog wanders into your home, feed it - it's good luck
- If you sneeze a few times and you don't have a cold or hayfever or something up your nose, expect to receive mail from someone you haven't heard from in a long time
- Don't have duck on your eightieth birthday (but chicken is okay and roast pork with crackling and fish are must-haves)

I'm sure there are more than that which I've forgotten.

Fri-day and Fri-night

Field Trip
Our team had a field trip today, to another city library two hours' drive away. The van ride over was pretty bumpy, frustrating any attempts to catch up on sleep after a restless, wild-weathered night and an unfeasibly early wake-up time (6.30am).

The library building was quite impressive - it looks quite like the Wellington Central Library but bigger. The day's tour also included a rundown of their Summer Reading Programme; a walk through their impressive archives rooms and computer room; and visits to their mobile library (it has a couch at the back!) and a branch library. It was obvious that they had more money to play with than we did, even taking into account that the population of the city is more than twice that of the city our library is in.

By about 3pm, the affects of sleep deprivation started to really affect me - my eyes were just begging to be allowed to close and stay that way. I was also worrying about getting away in time so that I wouldn't be late for my mother's birthday bash. I will always be grateful that no-one tried to persuade me to do my share of the drive back - grateful for as long as I remember, anyway.


The Eightieth Birthday
It was actually a lot more fun than I'd expected. We had a booking at a small northern Chinese restaurant known to be frequented by the likes of Peter Jackson and the Chinese Ambassador - we ordered heaps of food and everyone seemed to approve of the quality of it. My little nephew made a game out of "tunneling" under everyone's chairs around the table, popping his head up to greet whoever's knees were in front of him and disappearing as soon as a digital camera came out of an aunt's bag.

It was the first time any of the aunts and uncles had met my boy, and I was pleased that they seemed to like him despite his lack of Chinese ancestry. One aunt told me he was hot stuff (though not in those words) and that our future children would be very attractive; my uncle, a smoker like the boy, bonded with him outside over a couple of cylinders of the toxic weed. My wee niece was everyone's plaything; they were all falling over themselves to give her hugs and kisses and make silly faces at her.

It was all quite cool, really.

The other big reunion

Too busy
This afternoon on the bus was a bit hairy - most of the good folks at the first old-folks home were on a Christmas outing, leaving some clueless skeleton crew (clueless in the sense that they didn't know to bring back the returned books and some afternoon tea things on a trolley). Not only did I not get tea and biscuits, but I had to haul a large crate full of hardback large-print books to the Home and bring the equivalent back again.

Then, at the second old-folks home, I had about ten elderly patrons both on and off the bus, to select and issue romances and family sagas to - all at the same time. I sure could've done with some back up. Then when it was time to pack up for the day, it took a good fifteen minutes for the laptop to log off.

And the boy is home again...
The boy arrived back in the country at noon today. No sign of the Levis or Clinique foundation I'd asked for, but I did receive two great souvenir t-shirts (one says NYPD on the chest and the other is a Yankees t-shirt, made in Taiwan).

Coming straight home to greet my long-lost love meant missing the only gym session that I could fit in this whole week, but there's no sense in being totally anal about stuff like that is there? Damn, but it's good to have him back, and not a day too soon because tonight's the night to put the rubbish out.

If only humans were always as nice to animals...

Dolphins protect a group of swimmers from a great white shark. I hope these creatures never end up in a tuna net.

Emily Strange

I came across this site and realised it was what a classmate was talking about, when she first saw my Bad Kitty t-shirt.

Initially it sounds a bit teenage, yet it reminds me of that character in the Ghost World movie - the girl who's really sarcastic and cynical and too intelligent for her own good.

I found it at Well dressed Librarian
Actually, I don't see myself as being anywhere near this fluffy. But the last two lines came true for me :-)

You Are a Lace Bra! Dreamy, romantic, and ultra-feminine You're a womanly woman who makes guys feel like men Your perfect guy is strong, determined, and handsome With a softer side that only you can draw out What Kind of Bra Are You? Take This Quiz :-)

Measure your chances of dying from a horrible disease, here

Well, your chances of succumbing to diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis and stroke anyway.

Created by the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, and sent to me by our resident archivist.

I did the diabetes test and scored above average on the likelihood of getting adult-onset diabetes - but I already knew that anyway. I didn't need any more bad news, so I haven't yet done the tests on the other conditions.

It's quite simple to do and easy to understand. Perhaps it's even over-simplistic, but hey, life is probably a lot simpler than we humans try to make it...

The Big Reunion

Tonight was the first big dinner with the whole family - my mother, the aunts and uncle who'd come over from Hong Kong and Auckland, my brother, his partner and their two kiddies. I know I did a bit of a rant and rave earlier about feeling pressured into spending more of my precious non-work time with them than I wanted - but it was genuinely nice to see them. It's actually been approximately nineteen years since I last saw the "rellies".

They all looked older of course; they're in their seventies by now. They told me I looked fatter, but I'm pretty sure that was meant as a compliment.

There was a huge spread of food - soy chicken and roast pork with crackling (Cantonese style of course), little won ton-like dumplings and stir-fried capsicum with bits of chicken. I surprised myself with the relative ease with which I joked with them. I thought I'd be much more awkward; unlike my brother, I never felt that close to them. It's a bit like socialising with one's old school headmaster - you can be friendly but you can't really relax.

The atmosphere changed once my brother and his lot left to put the kids to bed. The conversation turned to my mother's difficulties with getting around and with housekeeping. I was told that in Hong Kong, it's quite acceptable for the offspring to hire a housekeeper or cleaner for their aging parents.

They had a point. Mum is getting that way and there's always a chance that Mum wouldn't want to go live with my brother. It's certainly well worth looking into.

The Other Big Reunion
The boy rang up last night, sounding a little unhappy. The ex-wife is getting him down, and he can't find another place to stay because it's coming up to Thanksgiving. So the result is that he's coming home two days early. Being purely selfish about it, I'll be bloody glad to see him.

A clever-clogs book for clever-clogs people

I've just managed to finish The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. Perhaps I should have started with the first in the series, because it took me a while to warm to the characters. Anyway, my overwhelming impression of this book is that it's very, very clever.

Fforde has incorporated tons of humorous literary references into this imaginative story of Thursday Next, literary detective, and her adventures in Book World. I can imagine that readers who are already familiar with the works of Austen, Dickens, D.H. Lawrence and so on would find it a huge chuckle. I got a chuckle here and there, but I'm certain that I missed a large number of in-jokes. My saving grace was perhaps knowing enough about computers to enjoy the software upgrade references to Book World's upcoming Book Operationg System. Despite my handicap though, I enjoyed it enough to finish the book and check out the previous one, Lost in a Good Book.

Oops

I must apologise to my boy, for accusing him of stealing my nail clippers. I looked everywhere except where they're supposed to be. I hope he forgives me. Meanwhile I must've trimmed off enough of the keratin stuff to do some scratchy damage to any unsuspecting epileptic who might have a fit on my living room rug...

Looking for love on the Trade & Exchange?

I'm going to tell you about a blind date I went on. It was years ago, well before my boy was even a newly-minted immigrant.

There was this friend-of-a-friend, quite a bit younger than me, who was keen to meet someone. I wasn't averse to meeting someone nice either, although putting an ad in the local buy'n'sell newspaper wasn't how I'd hoped to do that. She wore me down though, claiming she was far too shy to advertise alone - too shy, in fact, to even ring up and place an ad at all.

This was possibly one of those times when I could have said "No".

I agreed to put in an ad for both of us, in the Trade & Exchange. The request was for two attractive men aged between 25 and 35 to meet two attractive women in the same age group. There was other stuff of course, to suggest that we were also highly intelligent, interesting and more than slightly sexy.

My friend was hoping for replies from men in their twenties, and - despite the fact that I was about 34 - so was I (this preference comes from experience - men my age seemed to let themselves go and get boring). I was a little disappointed that all the younger men who rang to leave messages, asked for my young friend; the men who wanted to talk to me were in their forties.

Eventually I called someone back, only because he had a nice voice. I don't remember his name, so I'll call him Lonely of Featherston. I let it pass when he told me he was single because his wife of twelve years had run off with another bloke. Then a little alarm bell went off when he mentioned that he liked Celine Dion. I silently chided myself for being so shallow. We talked further - he made leather jeans for a hobby, which he sold to friends. A strange hobby, I thought, but once again I let it go.

My friend had already selected a candidate to meet with at the pub the following Friday, so I took a gamble and arranged to meet Lonely of Featherston at the same time and place. That's when he said he hoped I didn't mind all-over tattoos, and that I would be able to identify him by his shirt with the large red dragon logo on it. By this time I felt I couldn't really back out without seeming rude (now I'm older I realise it's okay to be rude if you really need to).

I met him at the pub on the Friday. He was a skinny white guy in his late thirties, wearing leather-covered jeans and a shiny shirt with the promised dragon design. I lasted five minutes before I made a really feeble excuse and left the table.

Now, if it had turned out that he looked like Samantha's boyfriend from Sex and the City, I probably would've stuck around - at least until he brought up Celine Dion again.

p.s. My friend's blind date ended up meeting and falling into unrequited love with our mutual friend.

Nine tenths of the law

The boy has taken to using my face moisturiser. I wasn't all that happy about it, because I was the one buying it and it was thirty bucks a bottle (admittedly less than half as costly as that nice but criminally expensive Lancome product). On one of his pre-New York shopping trips (the staff at the Calvin Klein counter really love him), he actually took a detour to the cosmetic counter and bought a bottle of moisturiser to take away with him. Well that was gratifying.

But he didn't buy his own manicure set to take away; he's surreptitiously packed mine. This wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm an occassional eczema-sufferer who must always have trim nails. Removing an eczema-sufferer's nail clippers is like distributing thumb-tacks on the floor of an un-medicated epileptic. If I'm all scratched up and blotchy when he gets back it's his own damn fault.

Still miss him though.

All work and no play is making my eyes go all funny

Panic set in towards the end of last week when it really hit me that I have only a week and a half of non-working/sleeping/gyming/family hostessing/mother's taxi-driving time, in which to research, write up and present my assignment. I've responded to this by checking out, oh, a dozen very large books on typefaces, typography and book printing so I can bulk up my work with details.

I've only been staring at those books for two hours and already my neck is cracking like - I dunno, those scenes in the movies where the hero cracks his neck a lot before beating someone up...

I don't know which is more appropriate - valium to calm myself down, or mega-caffeine pills to speed up on the speed-studying.

All those times when Buffy's pals spent all night at the books looking for demon-identification tips - you'd think their eyes would go all funny too. But they were always bright-eyed and ready for demon-hunting action in the morning. Not I.

Happy Anniversary to this blog

This blog had it's first birthday on Monday. I'm not throwing it a party, and won't be giving it any presents. But thanks for hanging out with me :-)