Happy New Year, everyone!

This is a beautiful little time-lapse video that shows the passing of a year through the changing seasons in a woodland setting.

The only trouble is, it makes me feel that my life is passing before my eyes…!

Every year I plan to start my Christmas cards in November but every year I find myself in the second week of December having a panic that the last posting day for Christmas is fast rushing up on me and I still haven’t even picked up a pen. Cards from my more efficient friends are already landing on the doormat and stressing me out that I might not get my holiday greetings out in time.

Part of the ongoing delay has been that we’ve been trying to get our Christmas newsletter together. In the past, I used to write little notes in the inside flap of the yearly cards that I send out but as my contact list got longer and my spare time got shorter, it became a painful chore (literally, for my aching right hand) to write out my snippets of news 70 or more times. So a few years ago, we started a printed newsletter which we would include in the mailing.

I’m still a little ambivalent about doing our Christmas newsletter. I know that some people think that such an annual newsletter is “naff” or “too American” (ie too cheesy). On my part, I know that I enjoy reading my friends news whether they send it in the form of a newsletter or scribbled on the side of their Christmas cards. In particular, if we have not been in touch for a while, it’s nice to know what they’ve been up to. I find it rather disappointing to rip open those Christmas cards from friends I haven’t heard from in some time to find only their scribbled signatures — it’s nice to know that they have included us in their holiday greetings list but: What’s excited them this year? What’s made them laugh? What’s saddened them? What have they had to celebrate or be proud of? Isn’t that what friendship is about — sharing the good news and bad, the mundane and the extraordinary?

So, in spite of the extra time and effort that it takes to put together the newsletter, adding photos and writing up our news as well as making it pretty to the eye and easy to read, every year we spend one weekend in early December sweating it out to produce this annual roundup of the past year. When we have wrapped it up and the PDF is ready to print, the marathon is not over yet as we still have to sit down at the dining table and write out the individual Christmas cards themselves. (Unfortunately, I think we have missed the mailing for overseas cards so for our friends and family who live outside the UK, we are sending the PDF by e-mail with a digitally designed Christmas greeting.) It’s all worth it, I hope.

It gives me comfort that ours is not the only household that has been scribbling cards frantically these first few weekends in December. I have the image of thousands, if not millions, of people all over England rushing around doing their cards and on top of that buying Christmas presents and wrapping them and putting up their festive lights and decorations around the house.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, have you sent out your cards yet? Do you include snippets of news in your Christmas mailing? Do you still do it the old-fashioned way with physical cards or do you send e-mail greetings?

Photo: thanks to krisdecurtis from flickr.com (CCL)

Barack Obama continues to use social media with confidence and style. Within weeks of becoming President-Elect, he is maintaining his presence online with the ease of a 21st century man, reaching out to Americans - and the world - via a weekly YouTube address.

Previous US presidents and the leaders of other nations have used radio and television - was it Roosevelt who instituted a weekly radio “fireside chat” with the nation? Today, social media allows anyone to deliver their message to a national and global audience unmediated by the press or advertisers. It makes sense for Obama to use YouTube during the transitional months - there can only be one President at any given time so he cannot broadcast a weekly address on the traditional broadcast media without undermining the sitting President. YouTube is the perfect alternative, enabling him to continue communicating his agenda in this hiatus period while connecting with the younger demographic his campaign was so successful in capturing via a thoroughly 21st century, up to the minute, “hot” medium.

Here is his Thanksgiving address.

More to explore

The Social Media President

Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube channel

Barack Obama continues to use social media with confidence and style. Within weeks of becoming President-Elect, he is maintaining his presence online with the ease of a 21st century man, reaching out to Americans - and the world - via a weekly YouTube address.

Previous US presidents and the leaders of other nations have used radio and television - was it Roosevelt who instituted a weekly radio “fireside chat” with the nation? Today, social media allows anyone to deliver their message to a national and global audience unmediated by the press or advertisers. It makes sense for Obama to use YouTube during the transitional months - there can only be one President at any given time so he cannot broadcast a weekly address on the traditional broadcast media without undermining the sitting President. YouTube is the perfect alternative, enabling him to continue communicating his agenda in this hiatus period while connecting with the younger demographic his campaign was so successful in capturing via a thoroughly 21st century, up to the minute, “hot” medium.

Here is his Thanksgiving address.

More to explore

The Social Media President

Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube channel

Our pro-bono blog project Dulwich OnView was the subject of a conference for the heritage sector the other week, bringing together representatives from the major musuems and cultural centres around the UK, including The Barbican, The Globe Theatre, The Royal Academy, The Natural History Museum, Canterbury Catheral and more - all keen to find out about how we put together the project and how we make it the success that it is.

One of our team editors, writer and museum strategist Steve Slack, described the day for our Dulwich OnView readers and I’ve poached his post (with his permission, of course) to share here with you.

Steve writes:

Dulwich OnView is all about celebrating people and culture in the Dulwich area. Last week we tried celebrating ourselves, for a change.

We’ve just held a successful gathering of the Membership Membership Forum at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The DOV (Dulwich OnView) co-editors gave an extended case-study about why and how we set up this online magazine and why we think it works for us, for the Friends and for Dulwich Picture Gallery itself.

Here’s a snap of us about to present. Left to right are: Alix Slater (convenor of the MMF), Bernard Hunter, standing (Trustee of the Gallery who kindly introduced us), Ingrid Beazley, Steve Slack, Sally-Ann Johnson, Angie MacDonald and Yang-May Ooi (chair).

The delegates at the conference were mostly membership, marketing and development professionals from some of the most prestigious arts and heritage venues in the country. It was great for us that so many turned out to hear our case study and were eager to learn more about what we are doing.

It was also really encouraging for us to have so many people agreeing that what we’ve done is worthwhile. We – the writers of the Dulwich OnView blog – all left the gallery on Friday feeling really proud of what we’ve achieved as a team of volunteers.

The Dulwich OnView model won’t work for all museums, of course. The Gallery is unique and as a result so are the Friends and this magazine. But we certainly hope it was food for thought for those who attended.

Well done us. A great big pat on the back. We’re also filled with enthusiasm for the future as well. 2009 is going to be a great year for Dulwich OnView.

Related articles:

Dulwich OnView makes impact in heritage sector

How Dulwich OnView came about - Phoneblog

Photo: thanks to Steve Slack (with permission)

Our pro-bono blog project Dulwich OnView was the subject of a conference for the heritage sector the other week, bringing together representatives from the major musuems and cultural centres around the UK, including The Barbican, The Globe Theatre, The Royal Academy, The Natural History Museum, Canterbury Catheral and more - all keen to find out about how we put together the project and how we make it the success that it is.

One of our team editors, writer and museum strategist Steve Slack, described the day for our Dulwich OnView readers and I’ve poached his post (with his permission, of course) to share here with you.

Steve writes:

Dulwich OnView is all about celebrating people and culture in the Dulwich area. Last week we tried celebrating ourselves, for a change.

We’ve just held a successful gathering of the Membership Membership Forum at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The DOV (Dulwich OnView) co-editors gave an extended case-study about why and how we set up this online magazine and why we think it works for us, for the Friends and for Dulwich Picture Gallery itself.

Here’s a snap of us about to present. Left to right are: Alix Slater (convenor of the MMF), Bernard Hunter, standing (Trustee of the Gallery who kindly introduced us), Ingrid Beazley, Steve Slack, Sally-Ann Johnson, Angie MacDonald and Yang-May Ooi (chair).

The delegates at the conference were mostly membership, marketing and development professionals from some of the most prestigious arts and heritage venues in the country. It was great for us that so many turned out to hear our case study and were eager to learn more about what we are doing.

It was also really encouraging for us to have so many people agreeing that what we’ve done is worthwhile. We – the writers of the Dulwich OnView blog – all left the gallery on Friday feeling really proud of what we’ve achieved as a team of volunteers.

The Dulwich OnView model won’t work for all museums, of course. The Gallery is unique and as a result so are the Friends and this magazine. But we certainly hope it was food for thought for those who attended.

Well done us. A great big pat on the back. We’re also filled with enthusiasm for the future as well. 2009 is going to be a great year for Dulwich OnView.

Related articles:

Dulwich OnView makes impact in heritage sector

How Dulwich OnView came about - Phoneblog

Photo: thanks to Steve Slack (with permission)

After about 2 1/2 weeks of being off line, we have managed to ditch our broadband service provider Tiscali in favour of O2 and we are finally connected again to friends, family and The World!

In the first few days of being off line, I thought it might be quite refreshing not to be always available, always connected, always wired. I decided to make the best of the situation by spending my evenings and weekends reading, catching up with friends on phone or meeting face-to-face and taking the time to do other things that did not involve sitting at the computer. And for a time it was quite relaxing not to have to deal with e-mails or instant chat messages popping up on the computer screen at regular intervals. I also re-discovered the joy of sitting in my favourite armchair with a book and a glass of wine on a cold winter evening.

But after a little while, it felt like we were on a desert island and out of the loop and I couldn’t resist the urge to check e-mails. We managed to stay in touch by accessing our e-mail accounts on my partner’s iPhone — which is great for reading e-mails but a bit fiddly and clumsy for writing anything more than a few lines. Also pretty soon, unless I regularly checked e-mails via my sister’s computer or at work, my inbox would become bloated and unmanageable, with email upon email piling in at an unstoppable pace.

It also became very frustrating not being able to keep my blogs updated. I did manage one short audio podcast by phone but I prefer to write my blog posts and having to “perform” the phoneblog all in one take is somewhat stressful and not something that I wanted to do regularly. Not being able to blog made me realise how much it is a part of my life and how much it connects me with other bloggers and my readers who engage with me online.

I also usually keep in touch with my sister and a number of other friends by Skype. My sister and I have a video chats most days in a week — the conversations are usually about nothing much and are the equivalent of having a bit of the natter over the garden fence in the real world but I enjoy them as a way of staying in touch. We still managed to chat regularly on the phone that it’s just not the same — there seems something formal about a phone call these days and of course, you don’t have the fun of seeing the other person in real time.

We were invited to dinner at a friends place and I realised that I couldn’t check the train times online as I would normally do. I also had to dig out the old tattered A-to-Z to work out the directions to her house instead of merely typing in her postcode to Google Maps and printing off the map and handy directions.

My calendar and diary are online, as is my task list. So being off-line meant that my whole life, literally, fell apart as I had no idea what I was doing all where I was meant to be on any given day. I had to hurriedly dig out a paper diary and transfer all my appointments and tasks from the online applications onto it. (I did used to back everything up onto my computer at home, syncing the online applications with Outlook, but that didn’t help me when I had to check my calendar and tasks at work but had updated my home computer in the meantime without it syncing with the online version.)

My parents in Malaysia don’t have a computer so we keep in touch by fax. The only thing is that I fax them via e-mail, using faxtastic.co.uk, which also allows me to receive faxes as e-mails. So being off-line meant that I was also disconnected from them.

There was also a day when I would have liked to have worked from home so that I could go to a doctor’s appointment — and because of remote access to my work computer is, I would normally have been able to do that. However, being off-line, meant that I had to postpone the appointment to another time and go into the office instead.

What’s more, I couldn’t even do my grocery shopping, which I normally do online, nor could I shop for books and DVDs from Amazon. I actually had to go into physical shops to do all that!

It really has been quite startling, these last couple of weeks, as it has really revealed how dependent I am on being connected to everyone and everything via the Internet. It was only about 10 years ago that I had first heard about this Internet thingy and at that time, I wasn’t very convinced as to its usefulness. Is it just me that I am a net Holick? Or is this how everyone runs their lives too these days?

Photo: thanks to elvis_payne from flickr.com (CCL)

After about 2 1/2 weeks of being off line, we have managed to ditch our broadband service provider Tiscali in favour of O2 and we are finally connected again to friends, family and The World!

In the first few days of being off line, I thought it might be quite refreshing not to be always available, always connected, always wired. I decided to make the best of the situation by spending my evenings and weekends reading, catching up with friends on phone or meeting face-to-face and taking the time to do other things that did not involve sitting at the computer. And for a time it was quite relaxing not to have to deal with e-mails or instant chat messages popping up on the computer screen at regular intervals. I also re-discovered the joy of sitting in my favourite armchair with a book and a glass of wine on a cold winter evening.

But after a little while, it felt like we were on a desert island and out of the loop and I couldn’t resist the urge to check e-mails. We managed to stay in touch by accessing our e-mail accounts on my partner’s iPhone — which is great for reading e-mails but a bit fiddly and clumsy for writing anything more than a few lines. Also pretty soon, unless I regularly checked e-mails via my sister’s computer or at work, my inbox would become bloated and unmanageable, with email upon email piling in at an unstoppable pace.

It also became very frustrating not being able to keep my blogs updated. I did manage one short audio podcast by phone but I prefer to write my blog posts and having to “perform” the phoneblog all in one take is somewhat stressful and not something that I wanted to do regularly. Not being able to blog made me realise how much it is a part of my life and how much it connects me with other bloggers and my readers who engage with me online.

I also usually keep in touch with my sister and a number of other friends by Skype. My sister and I have a video chats most days in a week — the conversations are usually about nothing much and are the equivalent of having a bit of the natter over the garden fence in the real world but I enjoy them as a way of staying in touch. We still managed to chat regularly on the phone that it’s just not the same — there seems something formal about a phone call these days and of course, you don’t have the fun of seeing the other person in real time.

We were invited to dinner at a friends place and I realised that I couldn’t check the train times online as I would normally do. I also had to dig out the old tattered A-to-Z to work out the directions to her house instead of merely typing in her postcode to Google Maps and printing off the map and handy directions.

My calendar and diary are online, as is my task list. So being off-line meant that my whole life, literally, fell apart as I had no idea what I was doing all where I was meant to be on any given day. I had to hurriedly dig out a paper diary and transfer all my appointments and tasks from the online applications onto it. (I did used to back everything up onto my computer at home, syncing the online applications with Outlook, but that didn’t help me when I had to check my calendar and tasks at work but had updated my home computer in the meantime without it syncing with the online version.)

My parents in Malaysia don’t have a computer so we keep in touch by fax. The only thing is that I fax them via e-mail, using faxtastic.co.uk, which also allows me to receive faxes as e-mails. So being off-line meant that I was also disconnected from them.

There was also a day when I would have liked to have worked from home so that I could go to a doctor’s appointment — and because of remote access to my work computer is, I would normally have been able to do that. However, being off-line, meant that I had to postpone the appointment to another time and go into the office instead.

What’s more, I couldn’t even do my grocery shopping, which I normally do online, nor could I shop for books and DVDs from Amazon. I actually had to go into physical shops to do all that!

It really has been quite startling, these last couple of weeks, as it has really revealed how dependent I am on being connected to everyone and everything via the Internet. It was only about 10 years ago that I had first heard about this Internet thingy and at that time, I wasn’t very convinced as to its usefulness. Is it just me that I am a net Holick? Or is this how everyone runs their lives too these days?

Photo: thanks to elvis_payne from flickr.com (CCL)

Phoneblogging without internet connection - using Pocket PC mobile phone without much success but an iPhone saves the day.

Gabcast! Yang-May Ooi’s Phoneblog #2

Phoneblogging without internet connection - using Pocket PC mobile phone without much success but an iPhone saves the day.

Gabcast! Yang-May Ooi’s Phoneblog #2

It always amuses me when I see writers portrayed in films. Our hero — and it is invariably always a man — who is a moody and sensitive sort, arrives in the big metropolis with his typewriter, a packet of cigarettes and a whiskey bottle. We see him sitting at a desk facing window, tapping away at his typewriter and occasionally dragging on his cigarette. If he is swept away with creativity he types feverishly through the day and night. However, if he is stuck, he pulls out sheet after sheet from the typewriter roll, flinging them into the bin in exasperation and working his way through the bottles of whiskey. Occasionally, he stares broodily out of the window. Eventually, he finishes his manuscript and ties up in brown paper to post off to the publisher.

The next thing you know, he has received a letter from the publisher and is waving it around in his local bar, buying drinks for his friends to celebrate the publication of his book. In the next scene, he is swanning around at a swanky launch party, the toast of the town and on his way to becoming A Famous Writer.

All this happens within five minutes of film time!

The movie version of writers came to mind recently because I have been preparing the draft of my third book to send to the publishers. This is the book on New Trends in International Communications which I am co-authoring with Silvia Cambie and although it is not a novel like my last two books, the process of manuscript preparation is exactly the same. You have to keep drafting and redraft thing until you are absolutely happy with what you’ve written, checking and rechecking for typos, grammatical mistakes and errors in context and sense. You then had to make sure that the formatting is consistent e.g. that each paragraph is justified and consistently spaced, that key terms that recur are consistently spelt or capitalised alright italicised and that your page numbering is seamless from chapter to chapter. You need to check the word count of each chapter and add them all up together to see whether your total word count falls within the required thresholds. You need to make sure that the header and footer has the correct references to the book title, your author name and the relevant chapter. It is tedious, tedious, tedious…

We are due to deliver the manuscript at the end of November and Silvia and I have been having regular meetings to make sure that the sections that we are respectively writing work together. She is putting the finishing touches to her chapters and we then need to collaborate on the Foreword before the final bundle is ready to go. And the last thing we will need to do is to collate the hard copy into the correct order, prepare 2 copies to send to the publisher and further copies to retain ourselves. These days of course we also had to prepare the electronic version to send out at the same time.

Once it is with Kogan Page, our editor will no doubt come back with notes and there’ll be another period where we will have to do some further rewriting and re-crafting before the final version will be ready to go to print. The publication date has been set for July 2009, which is around nine months away to give us and Kogan Page sufficient time for the editorial process, the copyediting process, the print preparation process and also to fit in with their overall 2009 catalogue.

A lot longer than five minutes, wouldn’t you say?

I remember that as a teenager, one of the reasons I was inspired to be a writer was the way that the lives of writers are portrayed on screen. In the movies, it all seems so glamorous and intense — and easy. Well, now that I’ve actually become a writer, I have to laugh at my youthful innocence!

Photo: thanks to (waltzing) matilda from flickr.com (CCL)

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3167/2571474701_375990f58c_m.jpg" align="left" title="chopsticks" border="0" width=30% height=30% hspace="6" vspace="6"</a/> There is a scene in a Woody Allen movie where he has taken his date to a Chinese restaurant. He is trying to impress her by showing of how much he knows about Chinese food and Chinese dining so he gives her a demonstration of how to eat with a bowl and chopsticks the “proper” Chinese way. He picks up the ball in one hand, bringing it to his mouth and starts to shovel rice and meet into his mouth while she is speaking and describing to her this skill that he is displaying. Of course, this being Woody Allen, he ends up with rice falling out of his mouth and grease all over his lips and chin, while his monologue is punctuated with slurping and sucking noises as he hoovers - or tries to hoover — the food into his mouth. Needless to say, his date is completely repulsed!

The brunt of the joke is the Woody Allen character and his pretentiousness rather than on the “proper” way of eating with a bowl and chopsticks. However, the comedy highlights how difficult it is to eat elegantly the Chinese way and how much real skill and training is needed to do it well. You are meant to sit up straight, bringing the bowl close to your lips but you aren’t meant to shovel it into your mouth like an animal but rather you should take delicate bites with controlled movements of your chopsticks. Also, you are not meant to cross your chopsticks and instead you should hold them so that they act in a pinching motion. You are definitely not meant to make whooshing or slurping noises!

I had to make a confession. As a Chinese person, I am an utter failure when it comes to eating with chopsticks. Growing up in Malaysia, we ate most meals with a fork and spoon, using a plate for our food. In Chinese restaurants, I always ask for a fork and spoon, which the waiters would bring with a look of disdain on their face. Once, at a food court in Darling Harbour in Sydney, when my mother and I asked for a fork and spoon to eat our Chinese meal, the lady behind the counter immediately identified us as Malaysians because from her experience of her customers, it was always the Malaysians who handed back the chopsticks in favour of the western implements!

Which is not to say that I can’t eat with chopsticks — it’s just that I’m very clumsy with them and I tend to cross them instead of using the pinching movement. I find it impossible to use them for rice and have to resort to the ceramic spoon, which is generally used for soup. At family dinners, if I use chopsticks, I cannot keep up with the rest of the gang as they adeptly and happily devour the feast while I am still fiddling around with my one increasingly pathetic looking piece of chicken and scattering rice all over myself. So if I am to survive in this Darwinian environment, I have to put my pride to one side and get the most suitable utensils to the job — a fork, spoon and plate - to be sure that I don’t starve.

I have also found to my mortification that I am very ignorant when it comes to the finer points of chopsticks dining. I was at a Japanese restaurant with an English friend who spends a lot of time in Japan on business. He was very deft with his chopsticks and I was having a go with my feeble crossed style. As we were chatting, I paused and stuck my chopsticks into the bowl of sticky rice so that they stood up unaided and picked up my cup of tea. He cried out in horror at that was a very “bad luck “thing to do as it was reminiscent of tombstones or what you do when making an offering to the ancestors at the grave. I quickly plucked out the offending chopsticks, feeling very foolish!

Related posts

Dining Etiquette - Gender

Chinese Dining Etiquette

The English Dinner Party

Photo: thanks to ladybugbkt from flickr.com (CCL)

We have one winner drawn at random from the Fusion View email subscription list. Margot* has won a copy of Hilary: An Unquiet Spirit.

Congratulations, Margot! I have emailed her direct to arrange posting the book to her.

And thank you to everyone who has subscribed to receive Fusion View by email/ Twitter or Skype.

*I have obscured the full name for privacy reasons.

View my subscription policy

This clip from Al-Jazeera English on YouTube reminds me how much I enjoy the acrobatics in Chinese Opera - but how I have difficulty appreciating the music, acclimatized as I am to the Western harmonic scale. It’s also great fun that the female roles are played by men - which was of course poignantly dramatized in Farewell My Concubine.

If anyone is still sceptical about the power of social media, all you have to do is take a look at its role in the making of America’s first African American president. Of all the candidates, Barack Obama has probably been the most socially connected online throughout the Democratic nomination race and also in the last year going head to head with John MCain. So, what platforms was he using and what effect did they have on the outcome of the election?

Back in the summer of 2007, I spotted that Obama had signed up for a Twitter account so that his fans and followers could keep up to date with his every movement. As of this week, you can see the “tweets” alerting his followers of the last frenetic activity on his campaign trail as he tried to squeeze as much face time with the public as possible.

The tweets link to live video on his very own social network my.barackobama.com, developed with the input of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Obama also has a Facebook page with over a million “friends” and a Facebook application as well as a presence on MySpace. TechPresident.com gives a good analysis of these three social networks in “You’ve Got a Friend in Barack Obama”.

There is an official Obama Blog on his website, run by staffers and with a range of multimedia content, including live video such as his victory speech streamed via social networking video site Ustream, as well as YouTube videos.

Beyond this handful of tools, you can see on his blog links to “Obama Everywhere” - other platforms where he has an online presence, including interactive opportunities via mobile phone.

But a bunch of social media tools in themselves are not going to make a president all by themselves. The key is how they were used by the Obama campaign. Supporters, fans and followers were encouraged to take an action to show their support for the campaign - whether by organising local events or giving a donation, however small or large, or raising funds. According to the BBC, Obama’s online campaign “attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (£403m) - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined.” With an overflowing war chest, he could out-do McCain by buying more airtime in the traditional broadcast media and also extend his own on-the-ground real world contact through more local outreach offices than the Republican campaign.

The BBC also reports that “Mr Obama had an unprecedented level of support among young people and new voters in the 2008 election. He won the votes of those under 30 by an impressive 66% to 31%, much higher than in any previous election. He also has a huge majority of those who voted for the first time, who supported him by 68% to 31%.” The Washington Post comments that the Millenials (those under 30) “are migrating toward each other, regardless of race or ethnicity. … (They) may have found their first president — one who engages them in their own space.”

Obama’s success was not entirely due to social media but he used it smartly in conjunction with other communication tools. Broadcast media is still hugely influencial and there’s nothing that will replace face to face human contact whether it’s through speeches at rallies or simply walking amont the people and kissing babies. But social media broadened his reach to those people he might not have otherwise been able to connect with and it also enabled ordinary people to do small things which came together as a whole to contibute to an enormous win.

Picture: screenshot of the official Obama website

If anyone is still sceptical about the power of social media, all you have to do is take a look at its role in the making of America’s first African American president. Of all the candidates, Barack Obama has probably been the most socially connected online throughout the Democratic nomination race and also in the last year going head to head with John MCain. So, what platforms was he using and what effect did they have on the outcome of the election?

Back in the summer of 2007, I spotted that Obama had signed up for a Twitter account so that his fans and followers could keep up to date with his every movement. As of this week, you can see the “tweets” alerting his followers of the last frenetic activity on his campaign trail as he tried to squeeze as much face time with the public as possible.

The tweets link to live video on his very own social network my.barackobama.com, developed with the input of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Obama also has a Facebook page with over a million “friends” and a Facebook application as well as a presence on MySpace. TechPresident.com gives a good analysis of these three social networks in “You’ve Got a Friend in Barack Obama”.

There is an official Obama Blog on his website, run by staffers and with a range of multimedia content, including live video such as his victory speech streamed via social networking video site Ustream, as well as YouTube videos.

Beyond this handful of tools, you can see on his blog links to “Obama Everywhere” - other platforms where he has an online presence, including interactive opportunities via mobile phone.

But a bunch of social media tools in themselves are not going to make a president all by themselves. The key is how they were used by the Obama campaign. Supporters, fans and followers were encouraged to take an action to show their support for the campaign - whether by organising local events or giving a donation, however small or large, or raising funds. According to the BBC, Obama’s online campaign “attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (£403m) - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined.” With an overflowing war chest, he could out-do McCain by buying more airtime in the traditional broadcast media and also extend his own on-the-ground real world contact through more local outreach offices than the Republican campaign.

The BBC also reports that “Mr Obama had an unprecedented level of support among young people and new voters in the 2008 election. He won the votes of those under 30 by an impressive 66% to 31%, much higher than in any previous election. He also has a huge majority of those who voted for the first time, who supported him by 68% to 31%.” The Washington Post comments that the Millenials (those under 30) “are migrating toward each other, regardless of race or ethnicity. … (They) may have found their first president — one who engages them in their own space.”

Obama’s success was not entirely due to social media but he used it smartly in conjunction with other communication tools. Broadcast media is still hugely influencial and there’s nothing that will replace face to face human contact whether it’s through speeches at rallies or simply walking amont the people and kissing babies. But social media broadened his reach to those people he might not have otherwise been able to connect with and it also enabled ordinary people to do small things which came together as a whole to contibute to an enormous win.

Picture: screenshot of the official Obama website

Tony Burns is a lawyer by day, whom I know through my day job in the City. In the evenings, he has translated a children’s book from French into English, which is a daunting challenge for anyone at the best of times. I wanted to know what prompted him to take on this task and what the process of translation is like - so naturally, I invited him to write about his experience on this blog.

Tony writes:

A family connection

Les 3N et le Bouton d’argent (The 3N and the Silver Button) was written by my great aunt, Roberte Armand, as part of a series of children’s adventure stories which she wrote and which were published by Hachette in France between 1970 and 1978. Roberte Armand was my grandmother’s sister, the youngest of three daughters, all of whom were given boys names by my great grandfather who wanted a boy but never had one! She is now 91 and is still in fine fettle, living in the French Alps. An extremely active person all her life, with an amazing imagination, Roberte Armand grew up in Grenoble, France. An acclaimed science teacher (her father was himself a well known professor at Grenoble University) , she had four children, three sons followed by a daughter, upon whom the characters in her books are based. The beautiful countryside in which she grew up forms the setting for the stories, which are aimed at 9-12 year olds.

The Three N stands for Nathalie, Nick and Noel. Nathalie, at 9 the youngest of the trio, but nonetheless very perceptive represents her real life daughter. Nick, her brother is the aggressive one who teases his sister endlessly, and Noel, the cousin (Hachette insisted he be the cousin and not brother), who is the reasonable one, and kind to Nathalie, represents an amalgamation of her two eldest sons. Knowing the family, although those children are my mother’s generation, I can honestly see how the characters in the book represent real life people. I think that is really important because it makes the characters seem more real.

The 3N series

In total, 14 books in this series were published in the 1970s by Hachette, France, in the “Bilbliotheque Rose”. They have never been translated into English. When the 15th manuscript was submitted, a new person at Hachette decided he did not like the books any more, commenting that there were not enough “savoureux gouters” - “delicious teas”, as could be found in Enid Blyton books! No more were published, although there are 16 unpublished manuscripts, not to mention the most recent addition to the series, written last winter, some 30 years after last downing pens. The latest story is called Les 3N et L’Extra - Terrestre, and focusses topically on the problems of global warming.

A book at bedtime

I started on this project after reading a couple of the books to my eldest son. He was 8 at the time and although I was having to translate as I went along, he was fascinated by the stories. After reading the second one to him, I thought the story was so good that I decided more children should know about them and began the long and daunting process of translating. As a busy lawyer with 2 young boys , time is at a premium, but after 9 months the draft was finished! I was lucky enough to live in France for a few years as a child, and with a French grandmother and having spent alot of time among French people, I have a good grasp of the language. My A level and degree level French skills came into their own. Translating is an art because there is not always a perfect translation possible, particularly where you have a play on words or a pun which simply does not work in English. The French have an obsession with food, which comes through, but then Enid Blyton was also very keen on her lashings of ginger beer etc!

The translation process

I was fortunate to have the author on the other end of the phone if clarification was required but luckily this was not needed too often. There was one passage which involved the children visiting a mink farm which I advised might not be politically correct nowadays. Two weeks later I received through the post a revised extract from my great aunt where she had re - typed one entire page of the book (probably with her original 1970s typewriter!), changing the reference from mink to exotic fish, with associated changes in the dialogue! She did admit to being stumped by this request but came up with the idea after several trips to her local library in France!

As the work continued I got more and more into the characters, and began to understand how they themselves thought, picturing the real life characters when they were themselves children. It was a very rewarding experience.

I am also delighted that the whole process has rejuvenated my great aunt. To go away and write another book at 91 is proof of that! She has been so excited about the renewed interest in her stories and it would mean so much to her if they were to be published again. Her children are also thrilled that her mother has reacted in this way.

My boys are now 9 and 7 and into Enid Blyton in a big way, as I was, Secret Seven, Famous 5 etc. Those stories are still selling very well even though they were written in the 1950s. Well here is something to match them, but with subtle differences (only one of the stories has a secret passage!). I think children just love a good story, from whatever era, and this is what these books provide. Being a mathemetician/ scientist, the author leaves no unanswered questions and all the plots end neatly with all loose ends tied up, just how children like it.

The feedback I have had from children who have read my translation has been 100% positive. These are mainly children in my son’s class at school and that of my goddaughter. Adults too have enjoyed it. “When’s the next one coming out?” they say.

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Tony is looking for an agent/ publisher in the UK to take on The 3N and The Silver Button so that more children can have the pleasure of reading the adventures of Nathalie, Nick and Noel. So if anyone can help with suggestions or recommendations as to what he can do next to bring Tante Bob’s book to a wider English-speaking audience, please do get in touch by leaving a comment and emailing me via the Contact Form and I’ll pass on your email to Tony.

You can read the first chapter in English by downloading the pdf from the box below, or via this link to The 3N and The Silver Button

Photo: of Tony and Tante Bob (with permission)

My post last week on Chinese Dining Etiquette inspired a number of very interesting comments about how people deal with the expectations and obligations around paying for a meal when going out with Chinese friends and family. A couple of them got me thinking more about the social and cultural dilemma around paying for meals in the context of the gender divide. Do women feel the same social pressure to offer to pay for a meal as men do, whether they are from an eastern culture or a western one?

Back in the old days, before women’s lib, it was the expectation and duty that the man paid, if a man and a woman went out to a meal together. (I am thinking here of Western culture from around the 1930s through to the 1960s, which would be my parents and grandparents generation. I am not clear as to what would have happened in East — whether it would have been acceptable for a single woman to go out for a meal with a single man during that period in Asian culture. If anyone can share their experience of that from an Asian perspective, that would be great!) My parents completed their higher education in the UK in the 1950s, which is where they met and dated, so the Western tradition played its part in their courtship. Growing up in that context in the 1960s, that was certainly the etiquette that I absorbed.

However, I came of age in the 1980s, when the women’s lib of the lates 60s and 70s had evolved into out-and-out feminism and young women now fully expected to have careers of their own. That was the era of women’s power suits and I remember an ad for Charlie perfume that featured a beautiful woman striding into a stuffy gentlemen’s club dressed in a sleek three-piece trousersuit with a tie. At university, I had long discussions with my girl friends about the etiquette of paying for a meal. Should we offer to pay for our half of a meal when we went out with a young man? Should we pay for the whole meal? Or should we play the demure young lady and let the man pay, just like in the old days?

It was generally agreed that if we paid for the whole meal, it would threaten the manhood of our date, framing us as a scary/ ballsy feminist types who would emasculate him and so frighten him away forever. But if we let him pay the whole tab, we agonised, would that mean that we would be seen as weak little women who would feel obliged to sleep with him - because the implication was that we would have surrendered all our power to him by surrendering to his greater masculine wallet?

So “going Dutch” would seem to be the most sensible option but there were still worries about what message this signalled: would we be saying that we were “just friends” and lose any opportunity of the relationship developing into something more intimate in the future? For some of my girlfriends, sharing the tab with a man still felt too forcefully as if they were asserting equal rights with men and therefore pushing our “feminist values “on him. And no one wanted to be seen as a feminist — because feminists were all men-hating, shorthaired, hairy-legged, angry, unreasonable lunatics, weren’t they? And so these tricky questions occupied us late into our student nights.

These days, 20 years on, I don’t think about the issue very much at all. Sometimes I pay for the whole meal, sometimes I share the bill and at other times, I gracefully accept a meal paid for by someone else. This is partly because the whole dating issue is no longer on the table, so to speak, so that particular aspect doesn’t come into play. Amongst my friends and close family, there is no game-playing or status-flexing needed, so if someone pays this time, someone else offers to pay next time and it all comes out in the wash. And gender no longer seems relevant in any of it.

I wonder, however, whether the dilemmas we had back in the 80s arose because we were all young and uncertain at that time of our lives or whether we were living through a transition time for women. Did young men at that time really feel threatened if a woman paid for part or all of the bill, as we girls worried so much about? Did they really expect to get into bed with us more easily if they paid the bill or was that just an anxiety on our part? Similarly, do I feel more relaxed about these things now because I am older or because I don’t have to date anymore or because women have reached greater economic parity with men in our modern times? I am not sure. Maybe it’s a combination of all the above?

What are your thoughts? I hope you will add a comment…

Photo: thanks to goonjrulz from flickr.com (CCL)

I used to type by pecking two-fingered at the keyboard — it was very laborious and painful, hunching over the letters with my head nodding up and down as I checked between the screen and keyboard every few seconds. Finally, I taught myself to touch type using a book from Pitman’s Secretarial College, which was a long tiresome process in itself over the course of three months. It paid off, however, as I slowly increased my typing speed over time from 20 words per minute to around 70 — 80. Touch typing helped me write my novel is easily, enabled me to do my job as a lawyer more efficiently and these days, means I can churn out e-mails, documents and blog posts very quickly. However, the downside is that spending hours on end at the computer during office hours and then in my own time in the evenings typing away means that my hands and elbows get tired and cramped. My shoulders and neck are often stiff and achey. Also, being stuck in a sitting position for long periods means that my legs and back are also badly affected.

I am guessing that this is a common experience for many people. All the discomfort that comes from having to sit and type in order to communicate on the computer takes the joy out of surfing the net and connecting with friends, doesn’t it? Well, for those of you who are fed up with typing, salvation is at hand!

I have just installed the latest speech to text software from Dragon Naturally Speaking and I am dictating this blog post while wandering around my study, occasionally standing by the window to watch the world go by. I hardly have to touch the keyboard as the program types out everything that I dictate and if I want to make an amendment, I can give it voice commands to do so for me. The version that I am using is the “Preferred” version 10 which comes with a wireless headset. It is very intuitive to use and has a huge vocabulary — it has recognised place names like Dulwich and Norwood, proper names like Joan Baez and John Steinbeck and unusual words like chorizo. I can give it voice commands to move around web pages and also control the keyboard. One of the other functions I like about it is that if I am away from my study, I can dictate into a digital recorder and then later, can next be recorded to my computer and Dragon will transcribe the audio file into text.

When you first install the program, you have to spend about 10 — 15 minutes training it to get used to your voice. Initially, it felt a bit strange “talking to” the computer and I was a bit shy! However, after a few minutes I got quite into it and now it seems the most natural thing in the world — in particular, because I use the wireless headset and tend to do my dictating while looking out of the window, it does not feel as if I am “talking to” the computer. The great thing is that I can speak at more or less a conversational pace and it is accurate upwards of 95% of the time, provided I enunciate clearly. In fact, it is much quicker for me now — one week in — to dictate than to touch type because the program is so much more accurate than my typing e.g. it doesn’t transpose letters or hit two keys at the same time!

I think to make the best use of this program, it is a good idea to have an outline in your mind of the structure and flow of your article, blog post or e-mail so that you do not have to spend much time afterwards editing and/or moving text around. Normally, I would have to do some minimal editing and rewriting just to tidy up anything that I have typed anyway, so having to do that at the end of a dictated text isn’t such a big problem — it only becomes a pain if you have to do substantial rewriting on your dictated text.

Being able to dictate text easily and accurately has really made blogging and e-mailing so much more fluid and less physically tiring. I am also more inclined to flesh out my e-mails to my friends because it doesn’t involve tiresome typing. As for blogging, it is helping me stay prolific and engaged.

So, if you are tempted to try Dragon Naturally Speaking, please do come back and let me know how you get on. (I have no association with the program or company and get no benefit from this review.)

I used to type by pecking two-fingered at the keyboard — it was very laborious and painful, hunching over the letters with my head nodding up and down as I checked between the screen and keyboard every few seconds. Finally, I taught myself to touch type using a book from Pitman’s Secretarial College, which was a long tiresome process in itself over the course of three months. It paid off, however, as I slowly increased my typing speed over time from 20 words per minute to around 70 — 80. Touch typing helped me write my novel is easily, enabled me to do my job as a lawyer more efficiently and these days, means I can churn out e-mails, documents and blog posts very quickly. However, the downside is that spending hours on end at the computer during office hours and then in my own time in the evenings typing away means that my hands and elbows get tired and cramped. My shoulders and neck are often stiff and achey. Also, being stuck in a sitting position for long periods means that my legs and back are also badly affected.

I am guessing that this is a common experience for many people. All the discomfort that comes from having to sit and type in order to communicate on the computer takes the joy out of surfing the net and connecting with friends, doesn’t it? Well, for those of you who are fed up with typing, salvation is at hand!

I have just installed the latest speech to text software from Dragon Naturally Speaking and I am dictating this blog post while wandering around my study, occasionally standing by the window to watch the world go by. I hardly have to touch the keyboard as the program types out everything that I dictate and if I want to make an amendment, I can give it voice commands to do so for me. The version that I am using is the “Preferred” version 10 which comes with a wireless headset. It is very intuitive to use and has a huge vocabulary — it has recognised place names like Dulwich and Norwood, proper names like Joan Baez and John Steinbeck and unusual words like chorizo. I can give it voice commands to move around web pages and also control the keyboard. One of the other functions I like about it is that if I am away from my study, I can dictate into a digital recorder and then later, can next be recorded to my computer and Dragon will transcribe the audio file into text.

When you first install the program, you have to spend about 10 — 15 minutes training it to get used to your voice. Initially, it felt a bit strange “talking to” the computer and I was a bit shy! However, after a few minutes I got quite into it and now it seems the most natural thing in the world — in particular, because I use the wireless headset and tend to do my dictating while looking out of the window, it does not feel as if I am “talking to” the computer. The great thing is that I can speak at more or less a conversational pace and it is accurate upwards of 95% of the time, provided I enunciate clearly. In fact, it is much quicker for me now — one week in — to dictate than to touch type because the program is so much more accurate than my typing e.g. it doesn’t transpose letters or hit two keys at the same time!

I think to make the best use of this program, it is a good idea to have an outline in your mind of the structure and flow of your article, blog post or e-mail so that you do not have to spend much time afterwards editing and/or moving text around. Normally, I would have to do some minimal editing and rewriting just to tidy up anything that I have typed anyway, so having to do that at the end of a dictated text isn’t such a big problem — it only becomes a pain if you have to do substantial rewriting on your dictated text.

Being able to dictate text easily and accurately has really made blogging and e-mailing so much more fluid and less physically tiring. I am also more inclined to flesh out my e-mails to my friends because it doesn’t involve tiresome typing. As for blogging, it is helping me stay prolific and engaged.

So, if you are tempted to try Dragon Naturally Speaking, please do come back and let me know how you get on. (I have no association with the program or company and get no benefit from this review.)

Today, is the 79th anniversary of the Wall Street Crash, which happened on 29 October 1929. In the context of what has been happening in the financial markets this month, this blog post is not so much a celebration of the anniversary but rather a remembrance — rather like the remembrance of the Great War on 11th November of each year. Every year, on that day in November, a two-minute silence is observed and we are meant to have learnt something from that terrible conflicts that devastated Europe almost a century ago. But have we? And have we learned anything from the stock-market crash of 1929 that led to a decade of hardship, known in our collective memory as the Great Depression….?

I thought it would be apt to be reminded of what happened leading up to the Wall Street Crash and also, think about what happened afterwards in terms of social upheaval as well as some of the institutional legacies that came out of that period. The following is a link to the podcast of a history lecture by Prof Jennifer Burns of the University of California Berkeley on the Wall Street crash and the Depression.

   Podcast: The Great Depression and New Deal

The podcast is part of her lecture series on American History which was recorded in 2006. It is an excellent podcast series and although part of a university course, very easy to follow as a layperson. I have found it a fascinating introduction to American social and economic history from the American Civil War up through to the present day.

For more information about the Great Depression, you can also check out thegreatdepression.co.uk, where I found the photo to illustrate this post.

This is an easily digestible video series (excuse the pun, ha-ha) on Chinese Dining Etiquette for Westerners wanting to navigate the etiquette of dining with the Chinese, either as guests in China or as hosts inviting Chinese to your home. The expert giving the advice is an American business consultant who has a couple of decades worth of experience living in China, Mark Kemsley.

The one below is a short clip on the minefield of ordering a meal when you go to a restaurant with others in China — it all hinges on whether you are a guest or host as to whether you get to order or not.

I had never thought of it before but when we’ve been out for a formal Chinese dinner with family friends in Malaysia and arrive as guests, the meal has usually already been ordered beforehand or we settle down to chatting round the table while the host has a long and complicated discussion with the majordomo about the menu, occasionally asking us about any favourite dishes we might like to have. If my parents are the host, then my mother would be the one in charge of ordering beforehand by phone or organising the menu when we arrive.

One of the things that the business consultant does not mention in the video is the fight over the bill after the meal. Often, at these big Chinese family dinners there is a lot of excited scurrying about towards the end of the meal as the head of the guest family tries to pay for the meal in advance of the head of the host family. This usually involves a feint move with the guest pretending to go to the gents but then pausing to have a whispered conversation with the majordomo to surreptitiously pass over wads of bills in payment. This means that the host has to be on guard during the last course of the meal in order to parry this move by going over to pay first, or to have agreed a secret pact with the restaurant in advance that they should not to accept payment from anyone but the host. I guess it must be an honour thing among men but I have to say, I find it all very silly watching the various patriarchs duking it out with their wallets at the end of an otherwise pleasant evening! Perhaps I’m just too westernised but it seems to me much more civilised to allow the host to pay for the meal this time and to get the bill the next time when you’re hosting the meal…

But then, as Mr Kemsley suggests towards the end of the video, such dinners are as much to do with money as it is to do with spending time with friends or family. As the host, you need to make sure that you are seen to spend money on your guest by ordering the most expensive dishes — so presumably the corollary for the guest is to show that you, too, are generous and wealthy enough to treat your host.

I’m curious to hear from my Chinese readers what your take is on all this. Have I missed some of the cultural subtleties in my westernised view? I’d also like to hear your experiences, if you are a Westerner who has navigated Chinese dining etiquette — are there any nuances or cultural differences that have struck you?

You can also compare all this with English Dining Etiquette by taking a look at my post on The English Dinner Party