I would like to be able to write better. This leads me to read various articles about the art of writing. Today I read Russell’s article “How I Write“. There are some things that worked for him that would never work for me. He would think about a topic for a long period of time, let it simmer in his sub-conscious, until he got to the stage where revelation hit. And then he was able to dictate his whole essay or book. I certainly need time to think but I prefer a cycle of writing and editing.
He gives three maxims to improve writing:
My favourite piece of advice is directed at professors but would be useful to anyone who writes in a field filled with jargon:
. . .I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose. … I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language “understanded of the people”.
Today’s weather advisory for Tokyo told me that there was going to be “Dry Air”. I could guess at what this was but why would it be considered a problem? I looked it up and it appears that breathing dry air can cause problems with asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis nosebleeds, and skin irritation.
It can also make the air feel cooler and make it harder to heat a room. The solution is to buy a humidifier. I refuse to buy something to add water to the air in my apartment when I spend most of the year trying to get away from the overly wet air in Japan.
. . .I received another Christmas present in the post today. It’s a book entitled “How to be an Explorer of the World” and it looks really interesting. It came in an Amazon parcel, gift wrapped and with a little note attached:
Sometimes I rebel against wish lists. I saw a review of this, and thought you might enjoy it.
I am glad that I have rebellious friend and I do have my suspicions about who that friend might be. But I would like to know for sure.
. . .I was reading Chastity’s blog post about a personality test she took. She mentions that the results say she is an extrovert, which is not something she agrees with. Although the test is not a completely serious one I decided to take it to see what my results are. It also says that I am an extrovert. The test is wrong. I’ve have had to take some detailed personality tests when interviewing for jobs and I know that I am an introvert.
The words introvert and extrovert are often misunderstood. When used in personality tests they usually refer to how a person gains their energy or motivation. Does it come from within or from interaction with other people?
A lot of people think that someone who is an introvert is quiet and will avoid the spotlight whenever possible. But actually it is very possible for an introvert to be comfortable in social situations and even to come across as the life and soul of the party. They will, however, find that the experience drains them as they gain their energy from within.
My husband is often mistaken for an extrovert. In company he is loud, noisy and entertaining. But although he enjoys these social interactions he is an introvert. And would, if you let him, spend hours and hours on his own without interacting with anyone at all. He has a room in our apartment, which he calls his cave, where he spends a large part of the weekend. I don’t disturb him as I know he needs to do this to remain happy. It probably helps that I am also an introvert and that I am happy to spend a lot of time on my own.
I have tried a variety of personality tests but I think that the Myers-Briggs test is the best one for determining if you are an introvert or an extrovert. I’m not sure what the best online one is but I took this one earlier this evening and it gave me the expected result.
. . .New Year makes me think about clearing things out. I need to get rid of a lot of old books - at least so I can make room in my bookcases for my new ones. Though when I say old books I really mean books that I will never read again even if they were only bought last week.
This year most of the Christmas presents I received came from my Amazon wish-list. This does mean I got to pick my own books. (Though I did notice that people preferred to buy me DVDs over philosophy books.) Presents included:
I read every day and I have been making an effort to add more non-fiction to my reading. Today I read Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness“. Not sure what I will read tomorrow but hopefully it’s something inspiring.
. . .There are many sorts of books; but good ones are the sort for the young to read. Remember that. They are a great, an inestimable, and unspeakable means of improvement.
Mark Twain
I finally decided to subscribe to Japanesepod101. I need to do something to improve my Japanese listening skills and the podcasts I have listened to so far do seem useful. Compared to the cost of my Japanese lessons the service is not expensive at $25 a month.
They provided a way to import these into iTunes but I am running into technical problems. Some of the files just stop downloading with no errors and others give me errors that seem to be related to invalid URLs. iTunes also keeps losing my password for the podcasts even though I checked the box for this to be remembered. I have never tried to do this before and I had expected it to be much easier. So far I have 1830 files - sounds like a lot but this has been running for around 24 hours now and there are still another 2400 to go.
. . .It’s nearly 2009 and I’m starting to plan my conference travel. I need to find a balance between conferences I want to go to and realistic amounts of travel. I am tempted to attend Frozen Perl at the start of February. I’ve read the schedule, looked at hotels, the city, and even checked the price of flights. But I will be travelling in January and the conference is much too close to my return to Tokyo. It would exhaust me to go.
I really like living in Japan but it’s so far away from most of the conferences I want to attend. I have actually fallen asleep at conferences because I was suffering from jet-lag. I didn’t expect it to be so difficult for me to travel when I moved here but I am going to try to be realistic in my future travel plans.
I will attend YAPC::NA and YAPC::Europe. I will probably attend YAPC::Asia but at the minute I’m not sure when it will be or if it will be in Tokyo this year.
. . .Yesterday was the third Christmas Day we have spent in Japan and it still felt strange. It’s not really possible to have a Western style Christmas here. Not only because of the food - which is hard to get - but also because Christmas is about family and our friends and families are not here.
We had a great dinner in Roti. They make the moistest turkey I have ever tasted. I wasn’t overly fond of the dessert choices, as they didn’t have anything I considered traditional, but they were still good and the rest of the meal more than made up for that.
We know that we need to make new Christmas traditions here. The first year we were in Japan we went to the cinema in the afternoon so we decided to do that again yesterday. We saw “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and it wasn’t a bad choice for a Christmas movie. Not too serious and not as bad as many of the reviews have made out. We also went to see the lights at Roppongi Hills which are really beautiful. Most of the Christmas decorations are taken down here on the 26th, in order for the New Year ones to be put up, so Christmas Day was the last day to see them.
Christmas Parcel Tree
We came back home after dinner and opened our presents. We have done this on Christmas night since we first got married. I really don’t like to be rushed when opening presents and love the opportunity to take my time looking at every gift.
. . .
Christmas at Roppongi Hills
My friend Norwin left the following as a comment to one of my earlier entries. As not everyone reads the comments I thought I would post it on my main blog.
T’was the day before Christmas,
And out in Japan
Karen was having odd food with her man.
While they waited for bedtime
And stifled their yawns
They feasted on chicken
With white sauce and prawns.
Because of the timezone, and physics, and fuss
They will see Santa long before us,
But from faraway Belfast, in dubious rhyme
Happy Christmas to the Pauley’s!
Have a jolly nice time!