Nadia Lee
December 13th, 2008
Cheap Gas and Green Cars

Now gas is dirt cheap again in the States. I heard that it’s going for $1.50 / gallon. This is great for many of us short-term as we ride out the current recession. But it’s a disaster if we let the cheap gas lure us into complacency and not innovate green technology, such as solar power, etc.

Why?

Because as long as we depend on oil as our primary fuel, we’ll always be at the mercy of the OPEC nations. Take a look at the following list of member countries (* denotes founding member):

  • Algeria
  • Angola
  • Ecuador
  • Iran*
  • Iraq*
  • Kuwait*
  • Libya
  • Nigeria
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia*
  • United Arab Emirates
  • Venezuela*

How many of them do you suppose is our ally and promoter of human rights we hold so dear? Not many. We worry about things like gender equality in countries like Iran and Iraq and Nigeria and/or Iranian nuclear threats, etc. Guess what? They can do what they do because we give them lots and lots of money for oil.

December 8th, 2008
The Closer, Poor Hamsters and “Free” Benefits

Hero Material and I’ve been watching The Closer recently, and who would’ve thought it would manifest in my subconscious?

A couple of nights ago, I had this weird dream that Kuro committed some kind of crime. I don’t even know what he did, but that’s not the point of my dream. The poor hamster was arrested, complete with teeny handcuffs. Shiro, with her litter, came to the police station to defend him. I was playing the Brenda Leigh Johnson character (the investigator, if you’re not familiar with the series), so of course I asked her lots of difficult questions. The poor hamster squeaked in distress, hopping around on the table, but I didn’t believe that she was telling me the truth. Meanwhile the infant hamsters were writhing on the table, blind, deaf and hairless. It was just really surreal. Kuro told Shiro he loved her, and the dream more or less ended.

On the non-weird-dream / hamster front, the weather’s been odd. The temperature plunged suddenly, and it’s freezing here. The big news here is the “massive” layoffs of maybe 2,000 workers or so by several local corporations. In Japan, there are two tiers of employment: seishain (full-time regular company workers) and contract / temporary workers. The latter category is broken down into two categories: shokutaku shain and hakken shain. Shokutaku shain is someone employed directly by the company on a short-term contractual basis, usually for a year. Hakken shain is what most Americans consider temp workers, meaning the company got them through temp agencies. When companies decide to cut costs, they usually let go of their contract / temp workers first. Currently Japan still clings to lifetime employment, and companies have certain obligations to their seishain. That includes not firing them first, paying for their health and pension insurance premiums, giving perks, bonuses, etc. (Contract / temp workers do not receive any bonuses or pay raises, etc.) Due to all this inequity in employment, a lot of non-seishain have been protesting the recent layoffs, etc. Furthermore, IBM Japan laid off its seishain (gasp!), which created even more drama. Oi.

BTW — The Big Three bailout is a huge conversation topic in Japan. After all, it does affect Japanese firms. Auto suppliers hope for the bailout since many of them have contracts with the Big Three. I enjoy reading financial analyses, etc. but if I read another person write that Japanese firms have a huge cost advantage because they get free health insurance and pension, I’m going to scream. I’ve been in two countries with nationalized health care. It is not free. Everyone must pay. People pay about $400 or so per month, and if they’re seishain, companies pay a big chunk of it. Companies also pay for their pensions. If that’s not bad enough, Japanese companies must ensure that their workers aren’t overweight or overly rotund around the middle or pay an enormous fine to the Health Ministry for overburdening the national health insurance system. Furthermore, the government had a huge screwup with its pension funds, and since Japan has too many retirees and not enough young workers, it’s planning to double the sales tax. So please, stop with all this “free” stuff.

December 5th, 2008
Some of My Favorite Writing Quotes

These are some of my favorite quotations on writing. If you have any to add, feel free! :)

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.” — Marcus T. Cicero

“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.” — Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.” — Oscar Wilde

“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.” — Oscar Wilde

“Grammar, which can govern even Kings.” — Moliere

“I always write a good first line, but I have trouble writing the others.” — Moliere

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.” — Moliere

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” — William Faulker

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” — Robert Frost

“The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image, but thee who destroys a good book kills reason itself.” — John Milton

“Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.” — John Osborne

“I hate to be a nag, but you have got to read. Like most authors, I run creative writing workshops from time to time, and speak, when invited to writers’ circles and at summer schools, and I’m continually amazed at the number of would-be writers who scarcely read. For ideas to germinate and proliferate there has to be fertile ground to sow them in, and for the ground to be fertile it must be mulched with observation, imagination, and other writing.” — Sarah Harrison

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas Edison

“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.” — Mark Twain

“You must keep sending your work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success — but only if you persist.” — Isaac Asimov

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” — Isaac Asimov

“Great editors do not discover nor produce great authors; great authors create and produce great publishers.” — John Farrar

“The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.” — William Hazlitt

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.” — Oscar Wilde

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” — Oscar Wilde

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” — Cyril Connolly

“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.” — Charles Caleb Colton

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” — Edwin Schlossberg

“Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.” — Jesse Stuart

“The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything.” — John Irving

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.” — Leonard Bernstein

“Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler

“Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.” — John Ruskin

“About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.” — Josh Billings

December 4th, 2008
Shiro Delivers…

…her babies!

O.M.G. Hero Material and I were expecting on Dec 10. But she ended up delivering after seventeen days.

I was quite traumatized at first because I heard a lot of long squeals from Shiro and I saw blood on her. Ack!!!! She even refused her favorite treats. I was about to tear all my hair out when she returned to her nest, squealed some more then came out all svelte, minus the blood.

:wub:

Hero Material and I have no idea how many she delivered or anything. She made a super nest inside a heated house, and we can’t see. I guess we have to wait at least a couple of weeks.

December 4th, 2008
A Fast Update

I can’t believe I went over a week without blogging. I try to post more regularly.

Happy belated Thanksgiving. I hope everyone ate a lot of turkey. We didn’t celebrate it since Thursday is a regular weekday here. Shiro is getting very rotund these days. Not only is she getting bigger, but she’s also quite squeaky. She squeaks at Kuro all the time and kicks him out of the nest. Maybe he bought her a vacuum cleaner?

Furthermore, Shiro sometimes sits on Kuro. In Japan, there’s a saying that goes something like “the wife’s butt is bearing down upon the husband”. It means the husband is the wife’s b*tch. Here’s a example of what she does to that poor boy. Sorry the picture quality is poor, but they were squirming the entire time.

Shiro sitting on Kuro

This is Shiro eating her veggies. She loves to nibble on them.

Shiro eating her veggies

This is Kuro and Shiro fighting (or something). They sometimes paw each other and squeak. The picture looks yellow because of the reflection from their cage top, which is orange.

Shiro and Kuro hamster paw punch!

This is Kuro debating between a bath and a nap.

Kuro debating

On the writing side: All the King’s Women as my NaNo project…it was a failure in that I didn’t get to write 50k words. But I also figured out what was wrong with it. So it’s not all bad.

How’s everyone else doing?

November 22nd, 2008
Many Things, Small and Big

I think Shiro’s pregnant. Shiro and Kuro didn’t mate on Thursday, like they were supposed to if Shira had been ovulating. Also they’ve been hoarding a ton of food, even though I always give them plenty to eat. Hero Material is absolutely thrilled that we’re going to have baby hamsters. My feelings are a bit mixed. It was a bit weird to work on my sex demon romance synopsis on Sunday while Shiro and Kuro were…er…doing it. But the idea of babies…!

I need to do some research on how to take care of pregnant hamsters.

Last night, I was stunned to read that Citi is looking to sell off its assets and/or entire operation. I remember how flush and confident Citi bankers were when I was interviewing for my first job out of college. (I was applying to be an investment banker, but I ended up as a management consultant instead.)

Interestingly enough Ford and GM are selling and/or getting rid of some of their corporate jets after the House hearing. I guess Ford and GM felt very bad after the harsh words re: their extravagances despite their “liquidity” problems. Business Week had a more balanced view on this. I have to agree with some of the points made in there. Commercial airlines really suck, in terms of service and reliability. You can never know if your flight’s leaving on time or not. The worst are the U.S.-based airlines. Per Japanese businessmen I know, Northwest first class is worse than ANA coach. (I have no idea since I’ve never used Northwest.)

BTW — Hero Material and I tried to watch Revolver. Tried because t was the most horrible movie ever. I Love Your BlogWe just gave up. The protagonist’s motivation was very weird, actions bad (meaning they made me yawn with boredom), plot nonexistent, and too many stupid people doing random things. Yawn.

Finally — Lovely Debora gave me a “I Love Your Blog” award. Thanks, DD! :)

Now…I pass it along to: PBWriter and Plot Monkeys. It’s sad, but that’s all I have because the rest is all industry and/or finance-related blogs.

November 19th, 2008
A Mixed Bag

It snowed in Japan. Burr. My city was saved from the horrible white stuff (I really don’t like snow), but the temperature’s falling rapidly. :( It’s going to be colder tomorrow.

On the writing front, I realized that I set up the entire fourth chapter incorrectly. It’s a shopping / planning / conflict sharpening chapter, and I know that part is right. It’s the setting and how the heroine chooses to shop that are wrong.

BTW — This is something that came up on one of the online forums I lurk. One member questioned my integrity, alluding that I’d blindly defend professional associates I have relationships with (such as literary agents, etc.).

I have no patience for incompetence. If I find someone’s performance less than satisfactory, I won’t defend them just because. So if you see me say something nice about some industry professional, it means I really think that person’s nice.

Finally — since the Big Three begging for $25 billion from the government is a big discussion topic among many (it’s huge in Japan too), I’ll leave you with something to consider.

The total compensation pool (that includes salaries plus bonuses) for Honda’s twenty-seven top executives, including its CEO, is $13 million dollars. That’s $13 million for ALL of them, not $13 million per person.

Toyota just announced that it had reduced its directors’ salaries. The company stated that it is important for Toyota executives to set good examples for its workers and that the executives must sacrifice first.

On the other hand, Rick Wagoner (GM CEO) gave himself a pay raise in March 2008. He is currently receiving $2.2 million dollars a year in salary alone. Furthermore, all Big Three executives flew in their private jets to beg for $25 billion from the Senate. ABC news reported that the round trip for Wagoner alone probably cost GM $20,000.