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Newsflash: `World Enough and Time’

Friday, August 31st, 2007

Star Trek New Voyages: World enough and Time
George Takei, Mark Zicree

A perfect day at Worldcon finished with the screening of a new Star trek episode.

‘World enough and Time’ left not a dry eye in the house. (Google for more info please, I’m writing this in a hurry)

The actors took some getting used to, but this is a heartfelt episode and I think we’ve got next year’s Hugo winner on our hands. It received a standing ovation.

Select quotes. Mark: “I guess the moto was was: No Studio, No Problem!”

George: (after some mutual backslapping): “Well, the credit belongs to Gene Roddenderry. He was the great bird of the galaxy.”

They are on episode 3 now: a Kzinti episode!

This could be will be a new cult. What started as a fan film project is about to go mainstream—they are in talks with Paramount—but the webbies were at it first. The first online screening got “more viewers than the old Enterprise” (Mark again). Said George (with regard to internet productions): “We live in a science fiction world”

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No blogging from Japan

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

For the time being, I can’t blog or upload pictures since all I have access to are coin-operated computers without USB.

Yes, the Zaurus tanked.

I also have problems with some characters and can’t log into my email for the time being. I’ll keep trying.

I wonder how this will work out for the rest of the trip. There are no internet cafes (people have the net at home and on their phones), perhaps there are gaming palaces instead. But how can I find them with no guidebook? They were sold out at the airport (Thanks, Borders! With monopoly in place, now you can really fuck over your customers!)

This promises to be an interesting trip (as in interesting times).

Must go, I’m out of coins.

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Goodbye English Summer

Friday, August 24th, 2007

Sorry for not posting, I really am busy. Alas, the more I write, the more dire it gets. So much for having a complete first draft ready in time for Worldcon…

All the same, it’s nearly time to go. I have the writers’ workshop tomorrow (discussing the first three abysmal chapters and the so-so synopsis) and I’ll be on the plane to Japan 3 days later. No going back now.

Despite checking the weather reports daily, I can hardly believe that I should pack only light summer clothes. So the temperatures in the Yokohama/Tokyo area hover around 30°C? It’s sticky and hot? Ha! The weather forecasts for South-East England have been talking about sunshine for the past 3 days now (“It will dry up! It will get warmer! Honest!”) and I’m still waiting. I’ve dug out the long-sleeved shirts and wooly leggings. Hell, I’ve forgotten what the sun looks like. (Actually, that’s not true: yesterday afternoon, there was a strange, yellow light around for a few hours. It confused me because on the planet I’ve relocated to while writing the novel, the light is coppery orange due to the dense atmosphere (the star is smaller too, but not so small that that would make much difference))

Hmm, there are on average ten days of rainfall in central Japan in September. My trip lasts for ten days after the con…

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Japan Preparations

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

I haven’t gone away, I’m just busy.

If anyone had told me a few months ago that revising three chapters of a novel plus synopsis would take three weeks, I’d have laughed in their face. Thing is: that’s all I have to hang the whole novel on. Agents request the first three chapters or fifty pages, whichever is shorter. At present, my chapters fill half that space, and instead of expanding, I’ve been chopping them ruthlessly. Now I’m thinking about merging some, and…

Ah, to hell with work. In just over 3 weeks time I’m going off to Japan (3 days after my writers’ workshop—hellufalot threes around…).

John, who’s a sweety, has just sorted out insurance. The post office currently runs a great offer for UK residents, but their website is down: after you have recalculated your quote, ticked all the boxes, registered (and come back and done it all again), you’ll find that you can’t proceed from the final questionnaire because it won’t let you choose one of the options about how you first heard about the site. Then you open up Internet Explorer and try once more. Then you join the phone queue and forego your online discount. But the prices they quote are still a hundred quit cheaper than the brochure, with a 14 day trip extension. Go figure.

It pays to shop around. The Japan Rail Pass (which you’ll need to buy from an authorized agent outside Japan) varies in quotes from 118 quid on Japantravel to a whopping 169 quid from Seat61. Yes, that’s for the same pass. Seat61 is an excellent information source, but I guess they’ll have to make the money back somehow. However, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the lesser agents still don’t accept online payment, which means yet more phone calls and snail-mail transactions.

It’s almost done. I’ll have to book accommodation for my final three nights in Tokyo and work out a rough intinerary.

I’ve compiled my luggage list. Aside from the usual trinkets (toiletries, first aid, pills, books, camera and (in my case) Zaurus with usb drive and a few printouts of the first three chapters of my Magnum Opus plus synopsis to shop around agents), I’ll take the following:

3 dresses (one semi-formal which I just bought for a fiver down the local charity shop 🙂 ),
1 pair light cotton pants or leggings,
1 T-shirt,
2 pairs socks (I wear them at night),
1 pair pyjamas (yes, really. I feel safer wearing proper clothes at night, in case there’s a fire drill or the tent gets swept away in a typhoon. Polycotton is light and dries super-fast for frequent washing on the road),
2 bras,
3 lots underpants,
tights,
towel,
tent,
sleeping mat,
duvet cover (in lieu of sleeping bag),
flip flops,
cotton pumps,
court shoes (heck, it’s the Hugos!)

Yes, you got that right. No jeans, sweaters, raincoats or boots. Apparently the lowest temperature in Japan will be around 24°C (ha!) and a rain coat won’t help much in a typhoon. I’ll pick up an umbrella locally, if needed.

All the same, this is about the most idiosyncratic list I’ve ever compiled. The advantage of taking dresses along is that they are quick to slip into and look presentable with a minimum of fuss. They’ll do as easily for the street as for meetings or parties.

I just hope that I won’t regret not packing warmer. It may be August, but down here it could be October. Strike that: we’ve had warmer autumns than this.

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Japanese Lessons

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

Speaking some of the language—however little—adds a whole new dimension to the travel experience, and if you’re planning to set off to rural pastures on your own, it could be essential.

It helps that Japanese isn’t particularly tonal and the words tend to be short. Even a complete beginner can pick up a few vital expressions relatively easily.

I’ve just downloaded the JASFIC Japanese Phrase Book (requires Japanese fonts for Acrobat Reader)—a big thanks to the JASFIC volunteers 🙂

However, I would be lost without some auditory feedback. In Malaysia and Indonesia, I could half-way read the subtitles to movies, and yet not speak a word much beyond ‘Salaama’, let alone negotiate prices or ask directions. I’ve learned from that experience: Listen to the locals. Reading a phrasebook is no substitute (especially when travelling to countries where you can forget about reading anything!)

There are several sites which provide free Japanese lessons—well worth investing a little time in.

My favourites (at the moment) are Japanese online, which offers free registration for people who want to take advanced lessons, although there’s a waiting list (beginners’ lessons are free-for-all) and Chiron’s Survival Japanese Course, which is a little harder to follow for slow learners like myself, but has very useful auxiliary notes on grammar and word structure.

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Alone on the Road?

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

Looks like we’re not going to Japan together. But I could go on my own. The question is: do I want to?

The answer is (perhaps surprisingly) no.

As is the case with every conference and convention that I’ve attended so far, Nippon 2007 will be held in some convention centre surrounded by posh hotels miles away from the city centre. If I stay in my chosen budget accommodation, getting to the centre will involve at least two train rides and I have to play the party-pooper in order to catch the last train home.

That’s off-putting. I know what I’m talking about, because it was like that in Glasgow (there, as in Yokohama, public transport was so involved that I ended up trekking to the convention centre in my dress shoes—my feet still ache at the memory).

But that’s not all.

If you want to experience more on your travels than the average tour-party member, loneliness comes with the territory. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t turn on you and bite you on the arse. This is why I now shy away from prolonged solo trips.

However, there are different flavours of loneliness. There is that quality feeling you get if you’re riding on the roof of a train with your rucksack as your pillow and the stars overhead, or when you exchange some sweets and a smile because you would really like to talk to each other but neither of you knows the words. And then there is the kind of loneliness that you get in a big city, when you can overhear everybody’s conversations but nobody wants to talk to you. Or—multiply that by ten—everybody else is having a great time and just assumes that you do, too. “See ya!” they say with a wave and turn around to talk to their mates. That the kind of loneliness you get when you attend a festival or a convention on your own.

No thanks, I can be lonely at home, free of charge. And in the meantime I can get on with some work.

Being home alone isn’t a bad thing.

P.S. Bollocks to that! I’ve just booked myself into the Hotel Senai opposite the youth hostel and within walking distance from the con. My hubby said that if he isn’t coming, I don’t need to rough it and I should stay somewhere nice.

I’m still in two minds about travelling anywhere else in Japan afterwards. I may not bother. But going to Worldcon is important to me, I want the first draft of ‘The Centuries Summer’ finished by then and seriously shop around for an agent or publisher. I’m attending this con as a writer—that is why I have to go.

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Japan, condensed

Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Japan, Sushi Restaurant“>

We flew back, and I mean right back. Across the tropics, all the way from Capricorn to Cancer, and across half the world to arrive back in winter. Time and space reverted again. It’s cold in the north, February proper, and walking out of the plane was like walking into a fridge.

Welcome back to the real world. And dammit, it’s chilly out here. But tonight I wasn’t disgusted by the stale warm air blowing out of the doorways—rather than the cool refreshment of air conditioning—because, tonight, we were in Japan.
[read on]

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