Some interesting manikins caught my eye in the clothing department of Emporium, tonight.  

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is an odd book which is kind of a stream of consciousness rant about the ways in which an artist struggles with what the author calls “Resistance.” That in itself is…

Happy New Year to all. I don’t usually make New Year resolutions but this year I do have one – a complex one but only one, nevertheless. This year, I resolve to work on not relating to the “Tales of Mere Existence – Project” video, embedded below.

I was a rebel for National Novel Writing Month, this year, albeit a tame one. Instead of starting a new novel, I used NaNo as an excuse/permission to put away a draft which was becoming a spaghetti bowl of potential plot threads and spend a month simply writing from the start again, knowing my characters…

When we first moved to Japan, I reunited with a high school flame: photography, albeit digital. I was brought up with a Pentax SLR, and was lucky enough to have both a teacher at Primary School and an Aunt who showed me the magic of images appearing on wet, blank paper, at an early age…

The very first day we arrived in Nagoya, on our house-hunt a month before we moved there, a building just down from the main JR Station junction caught my eye with it’s stunning spiral lines. I was told that it had only just been finished and that, among other things, it housed the local design…

The last few days, I’ve been playing with a little desktop photo processing toy which I discovered through one of the photography blogs I follow. It’s called Camera Bag and it’s a hoot! I believe it began as an iPhone app but it is now available for both Mac and PC desktops. Essentially, it applies…

Anyone who cooks even slightly, and probably many people who don’t, gives at least some thought to buying a knife or two when they come to Japan. It wouldn’t be stretching the metaphor too thin to equate a chef’s knives to a Samurai’s swords so it makes sense that many cooks dream of having knives…

After the flurry of posts the week before last, I spent last week in a similar flurry of busyness which kept me from blogging – every bit of it utterly enjoyable! Highlights were: A birthday/bon voyage night at Red Rock for my friend NZ. K who is going home for a few weeks for the…

Three nights a week Superman and I participate in the one of the most popular online Massively Multiplayer Online games (they say that they are the most popular but are outstripped on current subscriptions by almost 10million subs by LineageII – but the vast majority of those subscriptions are from asia and non-English speaking countries…

WARNING: This post is highly specific to those moving to Thailand/Bangkok and potentially goes into far more detail about power sockets and power boards than many could understand anyone wanting – until they are faced with the pre-pack-preparation helplessness of the expat-wife before “the locusts” come which can only be assuaged by copious browsing of…

When we were first in Japan and met other expats I took to asking them what they had brought in their air shipment, at first as a conversation starter but I soon realised that the answers could be quite revealing. Whether an expat was an ICT (Inter-Company Transfer) with an air shipment (which is usually…

  I haven’t written much for a few weeks, partly because I’ve been reading a lot (I’m really enjoying reading “The Shadow of the Wind” for the local book club,) but also because I’d been having terrible RSI, particularly during/after #storycraft, which can move at a blistering pace. I’ve had a curved keyboard for a…

Some interesting manikins caught my eye in the clothing department of Emporium, tonight.  

Happy New Year! Spending the New Year right in the heart of Bangkok was quite an experience. There are fireworks sites all over the city, one was the building we look at from our living room and my office (see photo left of smoke between salvos) another was (I assumed the roof) of a friend’s…

One of the most confronting things about moving to Thailand, at least for an Aussie (and probably a Kiwi, too*) is the level of service that is provided everywhere. All of this service will be accompanied by much smiling and nodding and a Wai (the folded hands and nod) at the end – always, it…

Happy New Year to all. I don’t usually make New Year resolutions but this year I do have one – a complex one but only one, nevertheless. This year, I resolve to work on not relating to the “Tales of Mere Existence – Project” video, embedded below.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is a beautifully detailed portrait of a young love and marriage, corrupted by both the selfishness of a man and his mistress but also by every person, including his wife, who felt that somehow his genius, his work meant that different…

I lifted my head from writing my novel, today, to find that Christopher Hitchens had died. There are few people in this world who hold themselves to the same standards as they hold others, even fewer who do it publicly in the genuine hope that they might help to better society, Christopher Hitchens was one…