Posted on 31 December 2009 @ 12:09 in My Faith
Early this morning, God showed me He’s still Lord of my life.
My handphone alarm woke me at six this morning. Half an hour later, I decided might as well get up, since I want to go and see my rheumatologist later in the morning (no appointment, just walk in). I’m normally not up so early. As I was washing, I noticed the water flow from the tap getting smaller and smaller. I managed to finish washing. After I dressed, I went to the kitchen and turned on the tap in the sink. It was DRY.
Now, for many people, this may just be a coincidence that I got up early before the water stopped flowing. Nice coincidence. Except, for me and my fellow Christians, coincidence is God’s middle name.
He woke me early this morning. He prompted me to “might as well get up”. Not a coincidence.
I did find myself asking if there was a water cut and there was a notice on the community bulletin board on the group floor of my apartment block that I’d missed. On my way out, I meant to stop on the ground floor to check. But the lift was full and I overheard two occupants saying something about a burst pipe.
After my doctor’s appointment, I called the building management office to ask if there was a water cut for my block. I was told no water cut but there was a burst pipe on the top floor. How long would it take to repair? Two hours, I was told. I went for a late breakfast, popped by my sister’s, then drove home with two plans in mind.
Plan A – water’s back, and all’s well.
Plan B – water’s not back, I pick up “H” (my netbook) and power cord and head out the door again.
I arrived on my floor to the sound of chopping. Someone must be chopping and preparing food in one of the other units. Chopping means there must be water, right? I got into my apartment, headed straight for the kitchen, turned on the tap in the sink, and water flowed out. Muddy water, so I left the tap running, went to the master bathroom and did likewise to the tap there. After a while, the muddiness cleared and I have clear running water in my apartment again.
Coincidence? That’s just God’s middle name.
When I walked into my doctor’s room, she wished me happy new year. I returned the greeting, adding “and new decade, too.” It stopped her and she looked at me. There followed a very short discussion whether 2010 is the start of a new decade, or the end of the old one. I think there are two schools of thought about this – some say a decade is 1 – 10, others 0 – 9. But remember, the new millennium began on 1 January 2000, so 1 January 2010 must be the start of a new decade.
For me, the past 10 years have been AMAZING. They were all in black and white for me. Early 2000 was when I discovered giant pandas – Hua Mei and her mother on the San Diego Zoo’s panda webcam, Wolong through an Animal Planet documentary, and Dr Pan Wenshi and his work among wild giant pandas through a National Geographic documentary. I made a decision to learn all I can about giant pandas in the following 12 months. Those 12 months have turned into 10 years, not because I’m a slow learner, but because there’s so much to learn about giant pandas! God willing, I will have many more years to learn about them.
I think February 2000 was when I embarked on my one-year black and white project. So February 2010 would mark 10 black and white years for me. I’d planned to write something to commemorate those 10 years, but kept putting it off. Finally, just before November, I realised the only way to get it written would be as a NaNoWriMo project. By the end of November 2009, I had written 50,829 words about my 10 years among giant pandas.
What am I going to do with those 50,829 words? Who would want to read so many words when it really should be a picture book? So I embarked on a giant panda photo book. Deadline is end January 2010. God willing, by then I will have a printed photobook about my 10 black and white years, 2000 – 2009.
God willing, there will be many more years, but it’s not up to me. It’s up to Him. He reminded me this morning He’s still Lord of my life. On this last day of the year, I reaffirm that I want Him as Lord of my life.
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Posted on 20 December 2009 @ 11:28 in Pictures, Stress Busters, Writing
20 pictures. 20 stories.
These 20 pictures grace the back of my Moo MiniCards. After I chose them and sent off the order, I realised each of the picture has a story behind it. What a great store of panda stories to tell!
These are actually version 2 of a set I ordered almost a year. I never gave out version 1 but recently brought some along to a book launch. Good thing I did – or maybe I had a feeling I would need them that evening – as I did have to exchange cards with a potential client. And when I told some friends later, they asked for my cards so I gave away a few more.
Never gave them out until recently … so why did I order a version 2 pack?
All I have are the 20 in the card holder; I have no idea where the other 80 cards are. I searched my apartment but just couldn’t find them. So I decided to order a second set – I figured if I find the first set, I would just have more cards to give out.
This second set is version 2 because I updated some of the pictures to include some recent ones.
Hopefully, I’ll learn to be not shy about giving out my MiniCards.
Meanwhile, I have 20 panda stories to write.
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Posted on 11 December 2009 @ 11:55 in Notebooks
At this time of year, we are all thinking about the new year, with the more organised thinking about staying organised in the new year, possibly with the help of a planner of some sort.
While most people have migrated to an electronic planner, there are some who still like a paper planner. I use both. For the electronic, I use two – on my computer, it’s an awesome software called Evernote, while away from the computer, there’s my Palm TX. I’ll be writing a post about Evernote, but for this post, I want to talk about my paper planner, particularly about preparing my 2010 paper planner.
Why do I need to prepare my 2010 planner? After all, there are lots of ready-made planners available. Well, I’ve yet to find a ready-made planner that meets my needs. If it’s the right size, the layout is wrong. If the layout is right, the size is not.
Last year, I received a Space 17 planner as part of the Quo Vadis offer in return for writing a review. There were various planners, in different sizes and featuring different layouts, and I chose Space 17 for its weekly + note page layout.
In the end, I didn’t use the Space 17 planner at all – it was a case of right layout but wrong size. The Space 17 is a weekly pocket planner, which is too small – almost tiny – for my large handwriting. As a result, I didn’t write a review as I was supposed to. Actually, as soon as I held the Space 17 in my hand, I knew I wouldn’t be using it, but I would write the review as promised. But I soon realised that I couldn’t write a review of something I don’t use. So I never wrote the Space 17 review, but have been given a second chance. Read on.
So, with no ready-made planner offering the right size and right layout, I have been making my own home-made planner for a few years now. Since 2006, I have been making them from Moleskine notebooks, but for 2010, I will be using a large Quo Vadis Habana, once again sent to me by Ms Karen Doherty, Vice President, Marketing, Exaclair, Inc (exclusive US distributor of Clairefontaine, Exacompta, Rhodia, Quo Vadis, G Lalo, Brause, J Herbin and Decopatch products), who sent me the Space 17 planner, and is giving me the second chance I wrote about earlier.
Quo Vadis Habana
When I received the Habana, I was so excited I took a picture of it, shrinkwrap and all.
Details:
* Lined
* Round corners
* Elastic closure
* Pocket insert
* 80 sheets
* 6″ x 9″
* Premium “Clairefontaine” 90g paper
The shrinkwrap has since come off, and I’ve fallen in love with the Clairefontaine paper. But I’ve also found three possible disadvantages to the Habana.
The non-slip cover is really non-slip. This means I can’t nudge the Habana to one side to make room for something on the desktop. Not at all. It’s 100% non-slip. That’s supposed to be good, as it won’t slip and slide away. I wish it were less non-slip. Maybe with regular use, the non-slip might wear off? I’ll report back on this later next year.
The space between the lines is big – 8mm compared to 6mm in the large Moleskine. This means only 25 lines per page against 30 lines in the large Moleskine. And the Habana is bigger, too, so there should be more lines to the page. It’s a disadvantage, and I wouln’t mind have more lines to the page, but it’s not a major disadvantage; I can live with it.
The Habana only has 80 sheets (160 pages), compared to 120 sheets (240 pages) in the large Moleskine. My usual home-made planner has 4 sections – quarterly (4 pages), monthly (13 pages – current year plus 1st month of following year), weekly (104 pages – 2 pages per week), and notes (balance of pages). There are also the various divider pages. On the 240-page large Moleskine, I have about 90 pages for notes. On the 160-page Habana, it would only be about 40 pages. This might put the Habana at a disadvantage, but precisely because it’s going to be a home-made planner, the layout is flexible, and I will be tweaking the past year’s layout to get as many notes pages as I can.
Planner Sections (Current)
Quarterly
Monthly
Weekly
2010 Planner Sections
There will be two changes in the layout for my 2010 planner.
There won’t be a quarterly section. This is the least used feature since I stopped working 9-to-5. My current work-from-home set-up doesn’t seem to require a quarterly overview (hence, the empty spaces in the above picture of the quarterly section).
The weekly section will feature the same layout as the Space 17′s – week on the left page and notes on the right. This was a layout I used when I was working, but had forgotten about until I saw the one in Space 17.
This layout will actually give me more notes pages. Another advantage is that the notes will be next to their respective week.
So, that’s the planned layout for my 2010 planner. I haven’t made them yet, but I expect to do so soon, at least before the end of this year.
I will be following up on how I use the Quo Vadis Habana for my 2010 planner throughout the year.
Note – as the pictures show, I haven’t really been using my paper planner. It’s one thing to plan and to have a planner, it’s another thing to actually use the planner to plan! I’m hoping my 2010 planner will help me to be more oganised and to really use the planner. It looks promising – I’m looking forward to writing on the Clairefontaine paper (which is smoother and classier than the Moleskine … but I’m digressing).
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Posted on 2 December 2009 @ 17:07 in Writing
Here you go …
The certificate has already appeared online, on my FaceBook profile. My thoughts about this year’s participation are elsewhere online. That’s the reality these days – this blog is not my only online home. I have three other (two public and one private), all of them more immediate and easier to update. Oh dear … but I digress.
Before November started, I had plans to write a non-fiction NaNo this year. Then I found out I won’t be able to submit it for verification to “win” the purple bar. I do love the purple bar, it’s the official acknowledgement that I have indeed written a 50,000-word novel. Why can’t I submit a non-fiction NaNo, I asked online in the NaNo Rebels forum. Someone explained that the “No” in “NaNoWriMo” stands for “Novel”, and “novel” is fiction. Then someone else said the “No” can also stand for “Non-Fiction”. Haha … yes, yes … ok, ok …
But just when I got used to the idea of having a green bar (unofficial acknowledgement for a 50,000-word novel), some “old friends” nudged me and said “you haven’t written our story yet.” Meanwhile, I was having doubts that I would have enough words for a non-fiction NaNo to get the green bar. But I didn’t want to not write it – it is something I had to write before January 2010.
So I decided I’d write a fiction NaNo to keep the non-fiction NaNo company. They became known as my fic NaNo and nonfic NaNo.
In the end, they both crossed the 50K finishing line. And I submitted the fic NaNo to “win” the purple bar for the sixth time in eight years. The word count difference was just 10 words – 50,839 words for the fic NaNo and 50,829 words for the nonfic NaNo. Which surprised me as throughout the month, I was writing more for the non-fiction project (at one point, it pulled ahead by more than 2,000 words), but later, I wrote just enough to pass the 50K line. And I finished one day earlier than planned – 24th instead of 25th.
My personal daily target was 2,000 words for each. Some days, I wrote more, which allowed me to take 2 days off during the month, and also to write below 1K on a few days, too. On the days that I wrote, I would begin with the fic NaNo, write about 1,000 words and switch to the nonfic NaNo. It often felt like I was in a writing relay, and definitely in competition with myself!
Most days, I spent about four hours total on the two projects. It’s a good thing I was using my trusted AlphaSmart Neo. I had thought of doing some on “H”, my ASUS eeePC 1000H netbook, but eventually didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t – the Neo was 100% distraction free, with no Internet, no games, nothing to lure me from my words.
I often had trouble sitting down to start the day’s writing. But when I did, and as soon as I typed the first word, I was off and running. The next word would suggest itself in my head, and the next, and the next … I never said no to these words as long as each followed from the previous word and strung together to make a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a scene and a chapter.
So what are my two NaNo projects about? You really want to know?
Fiction NaNo 2009
A group of close schoolfriends make a promise to be together on the eve of the new millennium (about 20 years later). I had this idea from a few years ago, and they were the ones who reminded me at the end of October that I had not written their story yet. So I resurrected the story, but with a twist – one of them goes missing and the “leader” goes all out to look for her, as she feels the responsibility to make sure the promise is kept. Yes, it’s a group of female schoolfriends, and yes, the story is set in Malaysia. Quite contemporary, too, right?
Non-fiction NaNo 2009
January 2010 will mark 10 years since I became a giant panda “watcher”. I’d been meaning to write up an account of my various black and white experiences, but haven’t (“procrastinator” is my middle name). If I was going to get it written, November would be the month to write it.
At first, I was worried that I would not have 50,000 words for my non-fic NaNo. After all, it’s just an account of what happened in the last 10 years between Chet and her black and white furries. But I surprised myself. As I laid down the facts and descriptions, I found myself reacting to these facts and descriptions, attempting some rough analysis of certain black and white phenomena, and even, at one point, ranting and raving about a particular recent event.
So, what am I going to do with this year’s two NaNo projects?
The fic NaNo is my sixth complete NaNovel in eight years (I didn’t complete in 2002 and 2006). It’s also the first one I think has some hope of seeing daylight. After a short holiday, I will look at it and start the revising, rewriting, editing, etc.
As for the nonfic NaNo, I think I’ve fulfilled a promise to myself to write up my black and white experiences since January 2000. Some parts may see daylight. As for the entire nonfic NaNo – maybe.
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