Tomorrow could be boring

Library closures - should we just accept them?

There have been many library closures in the UK and North America recently. Meanwhile South Korea is opening new ones. What's going on? Are public libraries obsolete? I wrote an article about this topic at Blogcritics and would love it if you took a look and spread the word. I'm not willing to give up on the concept of the library, though I think the current model does need to evolve.

Thanks to Philip Bradley for the permission to use his excellent library posters.

Roses and festivals

This month I have been mostly smelling of roses and attending festivals. If you're interested in what happened in Turkey during the rose harvest, head on over here - and if you'd like to see my Hipstamatic snapshots from this week's festival, check them out here.

 

Seoul Music

I had a really great time in Seoul - read about my trip here!

There is something about Korea that seems to resonate with me; I can't put my finger on what it might be. I hope to go back there some day.

Meanwhile, my next trip is booked: Turkey to see the rose harvest and essential oil distillation in a couple of week's time.

 

Off to Seoul!

This week I'll be the Guest of Honour at a Korean 'Smelly Concert' - a recreation of London's Carnaby Street with a Lush theme. It would have been a better job for Mark or Simon but the former is on holiday and the latter is on his honeymoon. So off I go to represent the perfumery team!

This seems to be a week full of celebration for many. I'm mostly just thinking about a) how to survive the 12-hour flight (though the flights to Tokyo and back in December went well so I don't know what I'm worrying about) and b) how to survive the Korean food (I will not be eating fermented cabbage, red hot chilli paste, squid, deep-fried larvae or dog).

I've got back-to-back interviews scheduled for three days in a row but I will have a day and a half of free time during which I hope to randomly bumble into some excellent local sights. Either that or go shopping.

Where was I?

That was a slightly longer breather from blogging than I expected. Newsflash, in no particular order:

- I was a Face of The Month for a Finnish global networking website. Ironically, all the links (except the one to Basenotes) are inactive at the moment because of a bit of a web crisis with our work website...

- In the last few months I've been to New York, Tokyo and Frankfurt. It's made me remember why I need to have luggage with wheels on (owiesoreshoulders) and have I been pleasantly surprised about my lack of worry and stress about travel in general. I did get a killer migraine on the way to NYC, though, but it didn't kill me.

- I'm now a student member of the British Society of Perfumers. Given my humble beginnings, this still boggles my mind.

- I've gone back to blonde.

- Speaking of perfumery, two of my product perfumes have made it through to production; one of them into a special product sold in over 700 shops worldwide. Did I mention about my mind being boggled yet? I don't know how to react to this. At the moment I'm fluctuating between bemused happiness and detached interest. I'm daring to hope that this could be the beginning of lots more of such instances.

- My book is progressing... slowly. I've approached the project with renewed vigour and have promised myself that the first draft of the manuscript should be finished by the end of the year.

- I'm reading eleventyhundred books at the same time. At least. The Big News is that one of them is a third Terry Pratchett book in a row. It's taken me almost 20  years in England to 'get' Pratchett. I'm now curious about foreign language editions. The jokes, tone and punnery must be very well translated and localised, right? I need to get a Finnish Pratchett book to compare.

- My mother's father's sister tracked me down on the internet and wrote to me. Turns out I have cousins and little cousins that would like to get to know me. As someone who has been used to having no family to speak of, this represents a bizarre situation: I am interested, too, but almost don't know how I am supposed to behave! Hopefully I'll get to meet some of this family when I next visit Finland. I had a similar situation making contact with my father's side of the family after my mother's death. This feels slightly different because the contact has come from my mother's side of the family. I guess I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that there are people out there who consider me 'family' at all.

Speaking of food...

I have food on the brain after the Special K discovery (see last post) and so what could be more appropriate than join in on the National Zero (food) Waste Week orchestrated by Rachelle at the Little Green Blog.

We, in the developed Western world, throw away sickening amounts of food every day. Big supermarket shops encourage us to fill our trolley with far more than we need. According to WRAP, 8.3 million tonnes of food is thrown away by households in the UK every year.

That's just in UK. That's just household food waste. That's disgusting.

There's a separate website for the Zero Waste campaign here and you can join in this week by letting Rachelle know what you're up to. I'm going to keep a close look on how much we buy, how we cook and what we can do to reduce or eliminate food waste at home. I'll blog about my progress later this week.

One of the important things manufacturers and individuals should realise is that all that waste contributes significantly to the possibility of climate change. If more produce and packaging has to be produced than needed; if our waste has to be recycled and processed through the system - that all uses up energy and resources.

If the whiff of eco-warriorism is putting you off, there is one very good reason to eliminate food waste from your household: it's a terrible waste of money!

Disclaimer:

Whilst I fully approve of Rachelle's truly admirable efforts in encouraging the nation to reduce household waste, I must at this point state that I find it frustrating how some bogus treatments such as homeopathy are promoted at the Little Green Blog.

That is the kind of association that makes many people lump environmental campaigning, use of herbs and other valid issues into a giant hocus pocus pile, thereby invalidating great many a completely valid thing.

The excellent book Trick or Treatment co-authored by Professor Edzard Ernst, the world's first professor of complementary medicine, should answer all of your questions about which alternative therapies actually work and pass proper clinical trials. The answers might surprise you.

Many of the medicines we use today without batting an eyelid (aspirin and penicillin to name just a couple) are of 'natural' origin. Because they worked and were shown to have an effect beyond placebo/regression to the mean - they are now considered part of actual medicine. I'll leave you with this:

Read the label

So you want to look like the Kellogg's Special K girl and frolic in a red swimsuit whilst friends ooh and aah at your new shape?

Maybe you should put down that Kellogg's Special K. You'd be better off eating Frosted Wheats.

 

 

There is more sugar and salt in Kellogg's Special K with Red Berries than there is in Frosted Wheats. Not what you'd expect, huh?

Of course any diet plan that relies on some kind of magic meal replacement is going to fail.

If you just like the taste of Kellogg's Special K, then go ahead. But diet food it is not. And forget about it if you've got high blood pressure.

I sometimes take dry cereal with me in ziplog bags to snack on instead of crisps or chocolate. At least that's a better alternative. Or is it...?

The power of advertising is quite amazing.

Strictly for geeks

Script errors :)

Click for full view.

I am missing the series, but can't stand how they wrapped it up.