Tomorrow could be boring

Experience the dystopian future - today!

If you want to feel like a character in a dystopian near-future sci-fi novel, take the Waterloo & City Line from Waterloo to to Bank at 6pm on a rainy day and behold the gray hordes in long travelator tunnels, all plugged into some piece of technology or another.

I did that yesterday, on my way to Odette Toilette's fabulous fragrance event, "Superhero Scents". Odette (Lizzie) holds monthly events at "The Book Club" (a pub, styled very carefully not to appear like a pub and to appeal to people who prefer Macs to PCs). The basement is like a little secret cave away from civilisation - although one is reminded of the existence of people outside the space whenever someone walks across the pub floor, above, as the basement ceiling is covered in old light bulbs which rattle in that special hollow, slightly eerie lightbulb-way every time that happens.

The guests this time were two Givaudan experts, well known in the industry and knowledgeable about the art and science of perfumery. I think Lizzie has done an amazing job in creating un-pretentious, engaging and fun events that explore our sense of smell and make smelling things into a form of novel entertainment.

Next time you're thinking of something fun to do for an evening out in London, see if there is a Scratch & Sniff on. It's well worth it, even if you're not hugely into perfumes; just want to do something a bit different.

One thing that particularly tickled me was a brief reference to the Battlestar Galactica remake. When Lizzie asked "Do any of you know this?" I chose not to shout out that my ring-tone is the low machine hum of a cylon.

Tumbleweed

After many months of the online equivalent of tumbleweed at this blog, I am at a loss as to what to do with it. I've just spent the last two days at Eastercon (and will be going back for the next two, too - we're commuting again to Heathrow and back). It's been a bit of a custom of mine to take notes and post a con report afterwards but I am actually thinking that it would be currently broadcast to a handful of cute dustbunnies and a dormouse.

I guess we'll see. Keeping some record of my Eastercon experiences has been lovely simply for the purpose of jogging my memory after the event.

I don't really know what happened to my desire and ability to blog. No longer having much time for it is certainly one factor; mostly keeping up with my friends via Facebook is another. The ultimate problem here might be that this wasn't a one-topic, "modern" blog (after all, I originally modelled it on my first, private blog which was among the few thousand first ever blogs, full stop, back when one had to explain that "blog" was short for Web Log and it was this strange thing where people wrote about their lives online. The concept has evolved somewhat since then).

The question of what to do with this blog has been bothering me for a while. I haven't found the answer yet.

Hello from the 19th century!

I haven't quite finished my perfumery course yet. I should have finished it by now but the kind boffins at Plymouth Uni have given me a merciful extension. Just before Christmas, I received a nice surprise: I was awarded a prize for 'the best student submission of 2011'. An actual academic accolade! Nothing that would really matter outside a very small circle of specialists, mind, but an accolade nevertheless. I've just about recovered from the shock. Mind you, this course probably only has about 6 current students...

I'll finally get to visit the perfume museum in Grasse at the end of this month. It's something I've wanted to do since at least 2005 and although the upcoming visit will only be a short one, I am looking forward to it as though it was a pilgrimage of some sort. Well - to me, it kind of is. I cringe at my own nerdyness but there you are.

This week I've read through Septimus Piesse's 19th century The Art of Perfumery and half of Eugene Rimmel's The Book of Perfumes. These are in virtual format. On my desk await a stack of course books and photocopies, plus Ellena's book (the translated version, alas), Ackerman's 'A Natural History of the Senses' (a library copy to see if I need to buy it or not) and 'Lethal Laws' (a book about animal testing I've been reading for work). Whilst all this is indeed fascinating (and somewhat necessary), I am anxious that I won't have time to read George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones before Eastercon (for which we're already booked! It seems that we keep going every other year no matter how much I mean to change that pattern). I'm ashamed to admit that I've come to The Game of Thrones via the TV-series rather than through literary fandom.

Not to mention that fellow T-party writing group members Gaie and Sara-Jayne have both had books out which I really very dearly wish to read soon! I've not been a member of the T Party for years now because I can't get to London for the meetings, but I have now joined a local off-shoot of sorts, partially populated by ex-members of the aforementioned group. It's been absolutely fantastic to actively participate in a writing group again and it has re-invigorated that side of my life.

Meanwhile, I am very quietly hopeful that this year there may be more opportunities for me to do actual perfume work. The Christmas product I scented became a best-seller (probably mostly due to its colourful design but the scent had to play its part, surely?).

It's disappointing that my need for some form of time travel/time stop device is yet to be fulfilled but I suppose things could be far worse. I'm having quite a lot of fun lately, even if it does take half a day to excavate a path outdoors from underneath the piles of books.

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.