Archive for January, 2006
All is quiet on new year’s day
Stay warm and healthy. Happy spring festival.
Eating Mochi
Mochi is the japanese rice cake. Mochi is made by pounding rice until it compresses into a hard solid.
This particular ceremonial mochi comes in a pack that includes some other decorative add ons. The box comes with instruction on setting up it up in this pattern. It is usually setup a couple of days before the new year. (The Japanese now celebrate their new year around the western new year i.e. Jan 1st) The mochi is inside the two layered mound like white structure.
“Ways to get published the Non-traditional way” at the National Library
Collaborated with the Ivan Chew today for a talk at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library. The event was organised by Singapore’s Media Development Authority. We talked about alternative mediums like audiobooks, ebooks and podcasts, why blogging is good for writers, publishing on demand etc. Ivan has a good write-up on the event on his blog. Links to some of the sites and resources we mentioned in the presentation. It was good meeting publishers, authors and people looking to write their first books.
Audiobooks - Audible.com
Ebooks - Amazon’s Ebook Store , E-Asia (Classic books on East Asia available as e-books),
Podcasts - Yahoo’s Podcast Directory , Fee based Podcasts
Sony’s E-Ink Reader
Publishing on demand
Cafepress
Lulu.com
Writers blog
http://goodmorningyesterday.blogspot.com/
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/
http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/
http://writersblocklive.com/
Also check out author Thomas Barnett speaking about how blogging helped in his writing. Download the interview from IT Conversations site. The part about the blogs starts at 32.35 mins from the start of the audio clip.
Some authors have started offering their books as podcasts. Check out Podiobooks.com
The first author to podcast his book was Scott Sigler. IT Coversations has an interview with Scott where he talks about why he chose to podcast and how to create awareness about your book using a podcast.
Singapore author’s websites
George Tan
Meira Chand
Singapore writing-related sites
www.qlrs.com/
http://www.bookcouncil.sg/
Singapore National Library
Singapore National Library’s Highbrowseonline
ASK! the Library
An useful post detailing sites where you can publish files/ podcasts
Creating Podcasts - Odeo, Audioblog
You may want to distribute some chapters or excerpts of your book as an ebook. You can use Readerworks free e-book creation software to create a MS Reader e-book or you can use Online PDF Creator to create a PDF file.
Zohowriter is an web based service that can be used for collaborative writing and PDF conversion.
Internet Archive - A site where you can store your audio or video
Free Blog Services - Blogger, Wordpress
Rambling Librarian’s Blogroll of Writers’ blogs
Photos of Colonial Burma
More classic photos at Photos of Colonial Days
Technorati Tags: burma, myanmar
My Daruma doll
Meet my Daruma doll. Daruma is the Japanese name of the Indian monk Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma travelled from India to China (where he is known as Damo) around AD 500 and founded Chan (or Zen) school of Buddhism.
Daruma dolls are sold at temple festivals (matsuri). The eyes of the dolls are not filled in. Around new year people buy these dolls. They make a resolution and fill in one of the eyes. If they are able to successfully complete the task then they will come back and paint the remaining eye. At the end of the year the dolls are taken to a temple and burnt.
Daruma dolls are popular with Japanese politicians. They paint one eye before the elections and if they win then they paint the other one.
I bought my Daruma doll at a bookshop. As a convenience these bookshop dolls came with one eye already colored in. The other eye was provided in the form of a sticker saving you the hassle of messing with paint. The character ç¦ you see painted in front is fuku in Japanese or fu in Chinese. It means good luck. This doll also doubles up as a piggy-bank - there is a slot at the top to drop in coins.