Good Books and good deeds

I've always been consistent in not giving money to beggars, but I'll usually donate to buskers (homeless or not) who impress me, I often donate to established charity campaigns, and I try to donate blood when and where I can (which reminds me, I should really visit the blood bank again soon).

Sometimes I question my choices when it comes to giving back, and I know I don't do enough for the world on a daily basis.  Knowing that I have taken more international flights than a great many people gives me carbon guilt.  The fact that I've gotten used to the comfort of air-conditioning in hot countries does the same. 

So when I was reading the Oxfam newsletter that arrived in my inbox today, I was happy to be reminded of the fantastic service that Good Books provides.  They have over 2 million titles (books, audiobooks, and music) at reasonable prices, ship internationally for free, and all profits go directly to Oxfam.  They promise no mark ups, and ship from both the UK and the US.  It may sound too good to be true, but through their volunteer work and generous sponsorship, you can donate to a good cause (or many good causes) by doing something you probably do once in a while anyway.

If you're reading this post, I propose two things:

1) Suggest a book or CD (or more than one!) for me.  I have been starved of new music and haven't been reading enough lately, and I have decided to buy at least a few titles from Good Books.  If your recommendation is persuasive enough, I'll go with it!  If I get them all shipped together, it will slightly make up for the environmental cost of shipping, right?

2) Order something yourself, or as a gift for someone else.  If you were going to buy books or CDs online anyway, consider checking out this service before you use your usual one.  The NZ dollar is still down, so it might work out to be a similar price, and you'll get that warm fuzzy feeling for free (not to mention the delight of no added shipping costs).

Looking forward to getting some suggestions!

I feel all special...

Lovely Cassie wrote a blog post (at least partially) about me on her super-fantastic blog, A Normal Day.  It makes me feel all special.  Plus, she likes my iccint.  Gold stars for Cassie!

Cassie and I lead the kind of lives where it's possible for us to run into each other (and Carla!) on a glacier.  We can't forget that these lives are awesome.

x

Things I'd never say out loud, but that I've already told strangers on the Internet

For the first time in ages, I can read the Facebook feeds on my RSS reader - that is, people's status updates, notes, and posted items. 

Status updates I've been keeping up-to-date with somewhat through other means, and posted items seem to be a lot of YouTube videos which I can't watch, sadly.  Some of them actually look interesting.

I thought that the notes thing would be more fruitful.  I regretted not being able to post comments directly (I suppose if something really caught my eye, I could look up the note on my phone and make a comment that way, but, honestly, that's a lot of bother), but then I took a look at the actual contents of the feed.  On first glance, the vast majority of the notes posted seem to have been of the 'random stuff nobody knew or ever ever ever needed to know about me' variety.  On second glance, I realised that a few of those contained 'random crap generated by the internet that is only incidentally related to the author' instead.  My mistake. 

Sure, it's easy to do one or two of these things, and they usually only take a few minutes (I've done a couple myself, but let's pretend that that was for research purposes), but when I have everybody's all corralled together, crowding out poor little blog posts and stray creative thoughts, they become a bit overwhelming.

I know it's not my place to make comment on the state of the Internet, and God knows I should do more productive things with my own time, but I just wanted to say thanks to the people who are actually generating somewhat original content of their own accord. 

But ignore me.  I'm just becoming an Internet grinch because of communism.



In cheerier news, dogs are as smart as toddlers when it comes to taking a hint.

Bumper link round-up

Zubbles!

For those not in the know, China blocked Facebook last Tuesday, and even though I've got some workarounds (I'm still deciding whether or not to keep the paid VPN service, because my internet connection tends to be so bad anyway that it just slows an already slow process down), keeping up-to-date with people (or, stalking them) is much more difficult these days.

The other thing that's hard is posting interesting links that I find.  Getting access to sites I haven't seen in a couple of months also means that I have more links to share.  It's so bad that I have even briefly considered opening a Twitter account, but hopefully it won't come to that.  I may not be able to live with myself (sorry, Tweeters, or Twits, or Twitterers, or Twatters, or whatever the cool kids are calling themselves).  Yes, Facebook being blocked is a significant event for me, and I can still find it in me to hate on Twitter.  I do share things on Google Reader, but it's not easy to see my witty comments when they are imported to Facebook, so that takes half the fun out of it.

Anyway, here are some fun things I've stumbled across recently.  Some of them have already been shared via Reader, but oh wells.

From Everybody Loves Free Stuff:
Zubbles!  They're coloured bubbles, with a name that's fun to say!
Magic salad plate - never have real vegetables touch precious meat products again.
Some gross but also cool anti-acne medication promotional samples.

Some wacky stuff from the Irish Times, including the fact that a Chinese girl who was named 'Chicken Shit' by her parents is finally old enough to do something about it.

11 Photos Where Black People Were Awkwardly Photoshopped In or Out (thanks for the link, Dave).

Even though the riots in Xinjiang were terrible, and apparently caused by an inadvertent scream, it's nice to know that the Chinese armed forces are still kicking it old school by using crossbows.  That's right.  Crossbows. 

Possibly the biggest bunny in the world, who should probably just join that morbidly obese family who were asking the British government for more money because they are too fat.  Actually, he's too cute for them.

Possibly the worst piece of 'writing' I've seen in a while.

It's official: Asians are the best at racism.  Yay us!

And finally, some cute.  Care of Disgrasian as well, Asian babies vs animals, and links from Eve: poor Chinese kitten who needs a home, and My Milk Toof, which has to be one of the very cutest blogs I've ever seen. 

Enjoy!

It may just be temporary...

...but I can read blogs again!  Whee.  I have so many to catch up on, though.

Of course I can't actually visit the sites yet, but it seems that my feeds are working again.  Right now, anyway.

Come on, China, just go that little bit further and let me see some pictures.  That would be super duper.

In less dorky-slash-controversial news, I had a great visit to Chengdu to see some friends and some pandas (who I like to consider friends), my mum and her sister came to visit Shanghai, and I've just been generally stupid busy with work, socialising, and other random commitments.  All the visits have been wonderful, but slightly exhausting in that they have all been in the same few weeks.  My friend Alex is in town this weekend, and as soon as I've said goodbye after having a super fantastic time with him, I'm going to hibernate in my apartment for a couple of days.  I need sleep.

The internet is broken

I just had to type out a blog post on my phone because we still have no internet access in my office. Conspiracy theories abound. Then I got even more paranoid about posting something that had so many no-no words in it. So I put it on my other blog. If you want to read it, hopefully you know where to go.

I'm so iMbarrassed*.

The links didn't work in my last entry, which is an awful virtual faux pas, especially as I specifically mentioned the links.  So, here they are, even though you don't really need them.

This blog, which you may or may not be reading.
Another blog, which is written with Wordpress. [This link didn't work until Dave corrected me. Thanks, Dave.]
Some information on what happened at Tiananmen Square nearly 20 years ago.


*Have you noticed that everything's called iSomething these days?  i'M not iMagining iT, am i?  My iSP at home is called ihug, but it has been for years.  I hug.  Do you?

Censorwhatty?

This is by no means an explanation for my negligence of blogging duties, but I can't access Blogger right now. In order to even publish this, I had to use a proxy site to enable instant posting of emails to this blog (yes, I just linked to myself). [EDIT: Apparently that failed as well, so I'm using the proxy site to post this.  If there end up being three copies, that's why.]

I've had issues with accessing Wordpress blogs for a while now (thankfully I can usually see the one I actually post to, and yes, I just linked to myself again), and can only read them via an RSS reader. Now the same thing is happening with Blogger sites, and I can't view pictures (which is especially unhelpful for ... most of the blogs I keep up with). I gave up on seeing embedded videos ages ago.

YouTube has been unavailable in China for weeks now, and there's no sign of that changing any time soon.

It's a little less than two weeks until the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre* (or 'Protest', if you prefer). Coincidence?

Meantime, I'm going to see pandas in Sichuan province next week (a little over a year after the earthquake hit there), and the week after, my mum is coming to visit. Yay! The weather is in the high 20s, and looking to get warmer. Thankfully M&S is here to supply clothes that fit me. And Jaffa Cakes.

 

Random cute craft picture.  Thanks, Dave.  I would like to make this.  

*I picked a BBC link that I can't see, so my apologies if it's not the best.  

E-pology.com: could it work?

It's after 2am on a school night, and apparently there's a horn-honking insomniac convention just up the road.  It's marginally annoying, to use a completely inappropriate modifier. 

I should be trying to sleep, but the attempt will probably be futile.  Meanwhile, looking at this screen is making my eyes sore.  Maybe that will help in the long run. 

I've just been thinking about how generally useless I've been in keeping in touch with even the most important people in my life (minus the arguably lucky one or two who hear from me all the time).  I think the perpetuation of 'social networking', which is now making me think of smalltalking and greasing up to strangers in case it pays off for you in the future, has probably made it worse.  Not only has it brought me back in touch with old friends and acquaintances, it's introduced me to new people, who I will probably never even meet in real life.  These connections can all be wonderful, but they just add to the ever-increasing number of social obligations in one's life, and there can some real repercussions to what are essentially virtual social rules.  In the past couple of years, I've noticed friendship dynamics and social mandates changing as we all become more connected to each other, despite the fact that these connections can be via cables and wireless messages flying through the ether.  I constantly worry that I'm giving too much of myself away to too many people, but then I'm afraid that I will offend them if I deem them unworthy of my 'friendship'.  And as much as I want to indulge the selfish, self-preserving, privacy-treasuring parts of me, I still baulk at the idea of hitting 'delete', 'ignore', or 'block'.

There are so many facets of these new social phenomena that I want to address, but I should probably just start a "Miss e-Manners" column instead.

In the meantime, if you're reading this, there's a good chance that you may consider that I have been a less-than-ideal correspondent.  Even with (and perhaps because of) the hundreds of notifications and reminders I get, I may have missed your birthday, or let an email response fall by the wayside, or totally forgotten to do something that I said I would.  I send my deepest e-pologies.  I don't have any real excuses (just virtual ones, ha. ha. ha.).  Please don't hesitate to send me a nudge or reminder; I respond well to external motivation.

And now...I'm going to try to sleep again.

New Year's Resolutions

Usually at this time of year I will at least have attempted a Christmas post or copied and pasted some of my Christmas email in a thin attempt to update the world on my goings on.  I at the least managed to get that email out, even if it was extremely last-minute (my usual style, so at least I'm being consistent). 

If I am to sum up the year succinctly, I would have to say that it's been interesting, challenging, lonely, strangely rewarding, and always Asian.  As usual, I've met some great people, although not as many as most years (and in some cases I haven't actually met them), and I've taken the plunge with a full time job.  I like the place where I live and the people I work with, but there's definitely room for improvement in several areas of my life.  All of these involve me trying to find some self-motivation, so let's hope there's some floating around here somewhere. 

In the lead up to Christmas I got really busy at work (even more so because we don't get a holiday for it in China), and a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to find reasonable plans with which to ensure people that I was occupied with.  One of my sisters came to visit for a while, which was wonderful, and thankfully I was able to impose upon a lovely almost-stranger and had a fantastic Christmas break in Wuhan in central China.  Now I have no plans for New Year's Eve, but a wander around town and a night in sounds kind of nice.  I have my apartment to myself a the moment (even though the empty room is costing me), and I'm enjoying it a fair bit.  I'm promising myself that I'll stop listening to the Christmas music soon, though. 

I am currently typing on the AlphaSmart 3000 that arrived in the mail today (along with a spare dryer part that means I can dry my clothes quickly, and some oh-so-slightly belated Christmas presents that I love), and I hope that it will somehow help me with this motivation/distraction problem that plagues me on a regular basis.  What is an AlphaSmart 3000, you may ask.  Well, it's what I like to call a '90s retrofuturistic word-processing keyboard.  It's also made of green-blue semi-transparent plastic, so it really doesn't get much better.  In a nutshell, I can type almost as much as I want without having to worry about power cords, boot-up time, or the deadly distraction of the internet.  I'm in bed right now, and when I'm ready to go to sleep, I just have to hit the on/off button (no save necessary), or just let it switch itself off in ten minutes.  I hope that it will help me with a lot of the writing that I've been telling myself I need to do (paid and unpaid), and at the least might help me keep up with my correspondence.  I may be laying an awful lot of pressure on less than a kilo's worth of glorified calculator, but every little bit helps, surely?  I'm also going to take it in to the ridiculously-long, somewhat-pointless meetings I have to attend, and annoy people with my incessant clickity-click as I do other work but pretend to take notes.  Awesome plan, if I do say so myself.  And if none of that works, it makes a handy peripheral keyboard for my laptop.

So, my resolutions involve somehow improving my social life, work habits, and language education, but I think it all boils down to being brave and just getting stuff done.  I can do stuff.  Right?

Scotland Photos

I've been meaning to post links to my photos from last Autumn but it was so much effort uploading them that I never got around to it.  So finally, here they are!

 

Scotland Autumn 2006 - Knockengorroch, Pirate Party, Toga Party, Letter Party, Skye, Hallowe'en.

 

Edinburgh November 2006 - Guy Fawkes, Quiz Nights, Farkins' Last Pub Crawl, Christmas Lights, Ceilidh, Box Wars Party, Wendy's Leaving Drinks.

 

You still have to sign in to see them.  Sorry!

 

I've linked these in my sidebar, and have also put a link to my Farcebook page in there as well.

 

Hooray for being (slightly more) up to date!

Sidebar Updates

I realised the other day that somehow I don't have a link to Michelle's Travelpod on my page.  As we're like, BFFs and all, it was weird.  Like, OMG. 

 

So I did a mini update on my sidebar and have added links to the following pages:

 

Michelle Bond - globetrotter, information management specialist, future international pyrotechnics consultant.

 

Carol Humber - Self-confessed geek extraordinaire!

 

Updated: Kathleen Broderick (soon to be Rogers) - USA Breast Cancer Research Fundraiser.

 

Kiwi FM - All Kiwi, all the time.

 

[Although the intentions are true, all acronyms in this post are said in a most sarcastic tone - although pronounced in a very accurate Valley Girl accent]