Chet’s Chatter

Special Date

Posted on 29 February 2008 @ 23:48 in General

Happens only once every four years. (Picture of the corkboard on my desktop computer.)

And tomorrow’s a brand new day, bringing with it the promise of a new beginning. Have a good one, everyone.

Fragments of myself

Posted on 27 February 2008 @ 14:46 in Personal

I just finished archiving 17 years of electronic journal entries. 1990 – 2007. For some reason, 1991 is missing, but it’s probably somewhere in some floppy disk, maybe never to be retrieved.

In addition to these 17 years, I also have about 16 years of paper diaries. That’s 33 years’ worth of my life in those entries.

I cringed as I caught fragments of my writing when I opened up each file to re-save in a cross-platform format that can be opened in a wider variety of word processors than the proprietary ones. (I will probably never read each entry in detail, but it’s nice to know they’re there, if only as a record of my often wasted years. But I digress … )

Over the years, I have kept my electronic journal in a variety of word processors, including WordPerfect, a bit of WordStar, Lotus WordPro and Microsoft Word. Now, all the entries have been saved to Rich Text Format.

I also used a couple of fancy journal software – Yeah Write, which allowed colour backgrounds and fancy fonts to give the journal a more personal “hand-written” look, and The Journal, with a calendar to select a specific date and go quickly to a specific entry. But both are proprietary, and I worried that I might not be able to access the entries one day. Good thing both have an export feature that allowed me to extract the entries.

As I went through each year’s entries, I noticed that I started writing less from 2005. That was the year my father passed away, and I thought that was the reason. Then I remembered I’d started keeping an online journal, aka blog, around that time.

So, in addition to my off-line journal, I also have my blog (three of them in fact, but only one is active, while the other two are older blogs no longer updated). At some point, I will have to look at archiving my blog offline. It’s kind of self-indulgent (narcissistic?), it’s not like my writing’s any good, but it is my writing, it is an extension of me, how I felt at a certain point in my life, an attempt to articulate my thoughts and maybe even provide a commentary about the state of things at that point.

It’s occurred to me that where before I used to write mostly in one place (paper diaries between 1973 and 1989, and electronic journal from 1990 onwards), I am now writing in at least two places – my offline electronic journal and my online blog. In addition, there are the notes I jot in my various paper notebooks. All of which have contributed to a rather fragmented me, which may explain why I’m not altogether here a lot of times.

Excuse me while I go and try to stitch myself together.

A timely reminder ahead of International Women’s Day

Posted on 23 February 2008 @ 12:56 in Women, Writing

No one had questioned Nana-Asante’s authority, and within a few hours she had restored order to the village. She began by effecting reconciliation between the Bantu population and the Pygmies and reminding them of the importance of cooperation. The Bantus needed the meat the hunters provided, and the little people couldn’t live without the products they obtained in Ngoubé. That would force the Bantus to respect their former slaves and be reason for the Pygmies to forgive the mistreatment they had suffered.

“How will you teach them to live in peace?” Kate asked Nana-Asante.

“I will begin with the women,” the queen replied. “They have more goodness within them.”

Forest of the Pygmies, Isabel Allende

“If women ruled the world, it would be a good thing.”
(Joan Armatrading)

Hear, hear!

In the midst of reading Forest of the Pygmies by Isabel Allende, I discovered that it’s the third and last book of a trilogy that includes City of the Beasts and Kingdom of the Dragon. Of course, now I have to go and get those two books.

It’s not the first time I’ve read Allende’s books in chronological dis-order. I’d read Daughter of Fortune before The House of The Spirits, and when reading the ending in Portrait in Sepia (sequel to Daughter of Fortune), learned that all three books are actually related and I’d read them in the wrong order. Anyway, Allende had not written and published the three books in the right order!

Allende is a wonderful writer (among other things), and she’s coming to Ubud later this year, and now I’m thinking I should be there, too.

She’s a witty speaker, too:
Inspiration from Allende

The Year of Mickey Mouse, Part 2

Posted on 21 February 2008 @ 22:09 in General

Here is a picture of one of the colourful buntings I mentioned in an earlier post:

Yeah, Donald’s in on the festivities, too, bringing up the rear of a familiar CNY festivity, the lion dance. Or “was”, since today is the 15th and last day of Chinese New Year celebrations.

Today’s also the Chinese Valentine’s Day, when single people (especially women) are supposed to throw oranges into a nearby river and wish for their life partner to show up during the year. I suppose it’s a good way of getting rid of uneaten, and almost rotting, oranges.

Yes, I am cynical.

Who says ang pow designs have to be boring?

Posted on 11 February 2008 @ 11:35 in Family, Fun Stuff

Ang pow actually means “red packets” in the Hokkien dialect. The Cantonese version, lai see, means “lucky money” and is most often given during Chinese New Year from married people to single people, with some money inside, as a form of well-wishes for the coming year.

The most common type of ang pow design is a plain red envelope. Over the years, banks have printed fancy ang pow designs to be given to their customers to use during Chinese New Year. Of course, the bank’s name and logo are printed somewhere, usually at the back, of the ang pow. It’s a form of publicity for the bank. So far, I don’t think there’s been any award for the best ang pow design. Maybe there should be one.

When it comes to cute designs, the banks have nothing on the commercially available ones (commercially as in you have to buy them instead of getting them free, like the ones from the banks). My sister, who has the weakest spot for anything cute, is one of those who favours buying such cute ang pow designs. This is the one I got from her for this year: