Posted on 29 March 2009 @ 08:35 in Books, Memories
Actually, he wasn’t just a cool guy. He was a cool guy who was the CEO of the multinational conglomerate I joined in 1993. He bought books for the library that the company had at the head office for its employees. For a time, the library was one of my job responsibilities, as I oversaw its running and worked with the librarian (yes, we actually employed a full-time librarian just to run the library).
It was one of my responsibilities to look through book catalogs and make recommendations on books to buy. But I wasn’t the only one doing it. Occasionally, we would get a call from the CEO’s office to go and collect a package the CEO had brought back for the library from his recent overseas travels. After the first time it happened, I was soon looking forward to such calls as I knew it meant new additions to the company library.
He didn’t buy just books, and definitely not corporate books. He bought FICTION. The most memorable package he gave us happened just after Toni Morrison was announced winner of the 1993 Nobel Literature Prize. He gave us the entire Toni Morrison collection up to the time of the Prize – The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, and Beloved – all of them hardcovers. Through his influence, we later added Jazz to the library when it was published. No, wait, his gift might have included Jazz, since that book was published the year Morrison won. In fact, I remember it was listed in her bibliography at the time of the Prize. But I digress.
The company library held a motley collection of books, both fiction and non-fiction. It was an initiative started by the employees’ sports club, and initially included book donations from its members, and later embraced by the company.
The fiction included a good selection of good writers, including Margaret Atwood and John Steinbeck. I remember Atwood especially – it was from the library that I borrowed Cat’s Eye (a book that still haunts me even to today) and The Robber Bride.
But perhaps the most unusual writer to feature in the company library was Jeanette Winterson. I remember borrowing Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. There was even a Winterson book purchased during my tenure as executive-in-charge of the library that I even wrote a review for the staff newsletter. I think it was Written on the Body, which was published in 1992. Well, in any case, it was the one which had this author’s photo.
Unfortunately, a few years later, the company decided to close the library (the reason, I think, was lack of space). All the while, the library had been managed by the department I was in, but because of the impending closure, the head of another department (the one related to employees) decided it came under his department, and gave permission for employees to choose books from the library for themselves. His staff had first dips. I managed to get Atwood’s Surfacing. I hope the ones who took the other Atwood, as well as Morrison, Steinbeck and Winterson, books are cherishing them.
The employees with children had the best picks – the library had a very good children’s section. At one point, we even had a monthly children’s story-telling Saturday and brought in a kindergarten teacher to read to the employees’ children invited for the occasion.
I have fond memories of the company library, especially of the cool guy who added books to it. I hope, through his generosity, some of the employees got to read more than just the pulp fiction they were usually used to.
Thank you, sir.
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Posted on 23 March 2009 @ 12:15 in Stress Busters
My mum used to say I worked for the taxi driver. Well, not really; I just used to take the taxi to work a lot when I first started working. It was a lot more than taking the bus and that was cuz I used to wake up too late to get to work on time if I took the bus.
These days, I don’t have to take a taxi or bus, or even drive, to work. That’s cuz I work from home. But that’s not the point of this post.
These days, I work for the pandas. Put another way, I work so I have money to go and volunteer at Bifengxia in China, and be among my beloved animals at least once a year.
If I were still in a 9-to-5 job, I would not have such luxury; I would have to apply for “leave” and depend on someone else to say whether I can or not. The last time I ever did that, the “leave” wasn’t approved, or rather, there was no word as to whether it was approved or denied, and that got me kind of angry, and became a minor consideration when I decided to quit. I think when you’re in a 9-to-5 job, your life is not your own but the company’s, or to be more exact, your department head’s.
To be honest, I may not be earning as much as when I was in a 9-to-5 job, but at least, my life is my own. Plus, my health thanks me, too.
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Posted on 14 March 2009 @ 22:07 in Health
My dear friend Val has posted some pictures from our lunch back in November 2008. The pictures included 2 of me holding her nephew, Remy. Looking at the second of the two pictures, I realised how much my left forearm had cleared since the minor lupus flare back in May 2007.
Left forearm in November 2008
Same forearm back in May 2007
Trully, if a picture paints a thousand words, then the first picture shows the good health I’m enjoying now that I’m no longer in a 9-to-5 job but working on my own with the luxury of choosing my own projects.
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Posted on 11 March 2009 @ 12:46 in Family, Memories
In my mind, I hold this image from my childhood. In it, a young girl sleeps on the floor of a bedroom, her knees bruised and bright red. At the doorway of the bedroom, an elderly woman sits, feasting on the bright yellow fruit of a spikey, thorny fruit in front of her.
Wait. There’s an earlier image to this. The young girl and elderly woman are at a fruit stall piled high with that spikey, thorny fruit. The woman is choosing the fruit that she will be feasting on in a while. The girl is all excited and eager to help. Suddenly, the girl trips and falls onto the pile of fruits. The woman and the stall-owner help her up. Her knees are badly bruised and slightly bleeding from the contact with the spikes on the fruits. A little red lotion is applied to soothe and disinfect the bruises.
That incident did happen, and that young girl was me. That elderly woman was my nanny, and she did spend many afternoons enjoying a durian (the spikey, thorny fruit) that she would buy from the fruit stall that was located just in front of the family’s second Chinese medicine shop at 464, Batu Road, Kuala Lumpur.
The first scene is the one I remember the most, while the earlier scene would come to mind shortly after.
I see both scenes in my mind like I am just an on-looker, when in fact, I was the young girl in both scenes. How is that possible? I was telling this story to See Ming last night, and asked her the same question. Her reply – out-of-body experience.
For years, I would recount the incident as the reason why I went off liking durian. Durian is a fruit you not only like or dislike, but do so with an intense passion. Usually, it’s foreigners who dislike it, put off by its smell which stops them from venturing further to discover the taste that is the exact opposite of the smell.
I grew up loving durian. I am, after all, Malaysian. But I actually went off my love for durians much later than the bruised knees incident. I think one day, I just woke up and didn’t love it anymore. It had nothing to do with the bruised knees. But linking the two incidents together just made for a great story (not that I’m a great, or even good, story teller), so over time, they became related – I went off durians because I fell on a pile of them as a child. Over time, I might’ve come to believe this, too, except I have an elephant’s memory that would not let me forget. And so this is my confession – falling on a pile of durians as a child did not make me stop eating them.
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Posted on 8 March 2009 @ 12:34 in Books, Tech Stuff
I first found PeanutPress in 1998 while looking for sites that offered ebooks. Over the years, Peanut Press has been through various owners, including Palm, Inc, which renamed the ereading software PalmReader. Then PalmReader was sold (again) and became known as eReader. It’s still known as eReader today, but is once again under new ownership – Fictionwise, itself another ebook retail site, which wisely kept the two sites separate.
Fictionwise was recently purchased by Barnes & Noble, a major book retailer in the States.
All the above is my roundabout way to say there is now another major player in the ebook market.
For me, there have always been two major players – amazon.com and Barnes & Nobles – maybe because I’ve purchased from them before, despite being located halfway around the world from them. There is a major difference between them – amazon.com is a virtual bookstore, whereas Barnes & Noble is a traditional bookstore with a physical address and outlets around the States.
When I read the news, I thought for a while and realised that, as far as I know, the Barnes & Noble site does not sell ebooks. Well, according to an article in The New York Times’ Gadgetwise section, it used to, but stopped in 2003. The same article also said
The move positions Barnes & Noble to enter the e-book market and compete with Amazon.com as a distributor of digital content.
Aha …
Smart move.
Instead of starting from scratch, B&N has re-entered the ebook market through two established ebookstores.
According to another article in Trading Markets, “Barnes & Noble said it plans to use Fictionwise as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year.”
When I first read of the purchase, I thought one of the things that would happen would be an update of the B&N site to include links to both Fictionwise and eReader. Instead, there will be an e-Bookstore … wait a minute, I wonder if that means Fictionwise and eReader will be merged into the store? Can only wait for further announcements.
The good news gets better. The Gadgetwise article ends with a mention of the news about Fictionwise being “named as a content provider for the company, based in Mountain View, Calif., which plans to release its own e-reader later this year.”
Ooo …
A hop over to the Plastic Logic site for more information got me very excited. The Plastic Logic e-reader hardware will support a wide range of document types, including PDF, DOC(X), XLS(X), PPT(X), TEXT, RTF, HTML, JPEG, PNG, BMP, ePub, and eReader Format.
eReader format – that’s the format of my ebook collection. I’ve been waiting for this ever since Amazon announced the Kindle.
Up to now, I’ve stayed away from any thoughts of replacing the eReader software in my Palm TX. One reason is because the Palm TX is still working very well. The other reason is because none of the ereading hardware so far (Kindle and Sony Reader) support the eReader format. Now, one is coming that will support it.
Hooray … except for one possible hardware flaw.
Plastic Logic has listed its ereader hardware’s specs as Thin (<7mm), lightweight (<16 oz), form factor of 8.5″ x 11”.
8.5″ x 11″?
That’s the size of a sheet of paper.
Too big, even tho’ thin and lightweight.
Hopefully, Plastic Logic will see the logic in making its ereader hardware smaller, or even offering two sizes – the 8.5″ x 11″ and half that.
Meanwhile, I’m still enjoying my growing ebook collection in my Palm TX.
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