Tomorrow could be boring

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.

R.I.P. BNTBTBB

The third instalment of Study Notes is now out at Basenotes. Follow my adventures as a student of perfumery. And a complete fan-girl.

The great illustration is, again, by the lovely and talented Grant Osborne. I adore his style!

Meanwhile, if you're interested in perfumes at all and happen to be around London in July, you might want to head to http://www.gorillaperfume.com and register for a bit of a bizarre olfactory event (you can visit free between 14th and 18th of July).

Once upon a time I was virtually cool

The trick to Sky's 'free broadband' offer is that they don't provide you with any. That's what it's beginning to feel like. We moved here on the 21st of December and through various trials and tribulations managed to finally get a broadband activation date for the 4th of February. This itself is horrifying for internet nerds like us. We've been surviving on the dial-up dongle.

It is now 13th of February and we still haven't got broadband and don't know when it'll be connected. Good job it's FREE!

Meanwhile, our alter egos on World of Warcraft are twiddling their thumbs and kicking around tumbleweed. There they are, in their shiny (then) top of the range gear, which we earned through many late-night and weekend hours of end-game raiding. Once upon a time we had a very high gear score. Now, with two new patches between the time we were able to play and the time we'll eventually be able to log on, we'll suck again. We'll no longer be top-of-the-range virtual heroes. We're behind! The guild we were in has disbanded and our raiding buddies have scattered across the server.

In November, I said to Timo: "This is the first time since we've been playing that I feel we're actually not playing catch-up."

I kind of jinxed us, didn't I?

I did get Spore for Christmas and was so excited by it that I ordered the extra parts pack and Galactic Adventures too. Unfortunately Spore has some fatal flaws. Its early gameplay is by far the most enjoyable; swimming around in the primordial soup and evolving your tiny cell. The creature stage is a lot of fun - collecting parts and designing your creature (in a way that has nothing to do with actual evolution, since you can just rip off your limbs and start again if you find suckers instead of hooves and fancy those because they give you better stats). There are millions of possible combinations. I spent hours over Christmas creating all kinds of bizarre monsters and cute two-legged cows.

It's the space-stage that makes this game suck big time. Nonsensical gameplay design aside (you can't build a proper fleet of different ships for starters), the bugger keeps randomly blue-screen crashing on you. And there is no autosave. I'm yet to complete a single game. Instead I keep designing creatures in the designer. That's fun, but then you want to do something meaningful with your critters.

There is a patch that's meant to solve the space-stage crashes, but I'd have to be able to download it online. I've tried logging on with the dongle connected, but no patch seems to want to download. Either this is Electronic Arts' fault, or down to not having a proper internet connection.

Either way my gaming-hobby has certainly suffered lately! It's just about the only thing that stops my brain turning over work-things, so I hope I get it back soon. Everyone needs down-time.

Flavour fail: man gloss

I recently acquired a nifty jumbo-sized Urban Decay Primer potion (which has become a must-have beauty staple). It came packaged with various other mini-sized products, one of which was a Pocket Rocket lip gloss. It's a lovely coral pink colour and I immediately smothered some on without further inspection because coral-pink is one of my favourite lip gloss shades on the planet.

To date, the only things I've known to go wrong with lip glosses are:

1) Brush fail: the old Bobbi Brown glosses had a hairy wand that exploded to something resembling a chimney-sweep after a few applications.

2) Ageing lipline fail: the gloss creeps up where it shouldn't.

3) Lipgloss-hair fail: repeat after me - "Thou shalt not wear lipgloss on a windy day."

Whilst I'm delighted to encounter make-up novelties after over 20 years of various degrees of make-up junkedom, this new surprise wasn't a pleasant one.

The gloss tasted strangely... savoury.

I looked at the packet. Apparently it was a "Timothy" flavour. A man-flavour? Slightly worrying.

It definitely reminded me of something other than lip gloss, but what? I hadn't encountered Pocket Rocket glosses before, so I checked the Urban Decay website. I read the description and thought: "Ah; they're a pisstake of those undress-the-bikini-clad model pens that used car salesmen would buy each other for office secret santa in the 80s. How clever."

This is from the product description:

"Undress our men with the flick of your wrist! Inside the cap of our custom tube is a photo of a yummy man.

And the gloss? This formula is so slick and cushiony, you would love it even in a plain ol’ tube. Each shade varies in opacity and finish, but all have a sweet crème brûlée flavor.

Tilt the tube back-and-forth to strip them to their undies! (We've even included front and rear photos.) Whether you swoon for a future senator or a tree-hugger, one of our men is sure to please you. Our guys make awesome gifts for bachelorette parties, baby showers, or b-days."

Here's the thing. They were going for crème brûlèe, but got McCoy's Flame Grilled Steak crisps instead. Everyone who has tasted steak and the aforementioned crisps knows that these crisps taste nothing like actual steak. Instead, they're flavoured with a fairly sweet, slightly burnt, smoky, umami savoury concoction that I find quite enjoyable when served on a ridged potato product. I don't actually like steak that much. 

I don't want to have gloop tasting of it stuck to my lips. When I realised what the flavour reminded me of I laughed out loud. It amuses me that some flavourist has got away with calling this crème brûlèe.

And it tickles my inner nerd that the McCoy's marketing department has long lead with a "McCoy's - Man Crisps" -campaign.

I imagined various scenarios where this gloss might have been put through a consumer test before launch.

"How did you like it, miss?"

"My boyfriend said I tasted yummy."

Chemicals and mind-crushes

Isn't the picture Grant drew adorable? It makes more sense if you read my new column at Basenotes. This is the second in the series, entitled "A Very English Problem".

I've also got a new mind-crush in the form of Dara O'Briain. His rant about homeopathy and nutritionists is brilliant. Best quote: "Science knows it doesn't know everything or it would have stopped."

I brought back a toxic book from the library: "Toxic Beauty: How Hidden Chemicals in Cosmetics Harm You." It's written by a Reiki-healer who is convinced she knows what she's talking about, a bit like an astrologer might be convinced she knows better about heavenly bodies after talking to some people at NASA. I would despair, but luckily I've built up some resistance to this by now and my own chemistry studies are adding a whole new backbone to the way I view these scare-mongering messages nowadays. Once I finish my course I should really focus on the book I've been researching for the past few years and get it out there. It's time people stopped worrying about insignificant things and started worrying about stuff that could cause real harm instead. To themselves, to the environment and ultimately to the existence of human life itself. Trust me, whether we ingest a bit of lipstick isn't on that list.

Study Notes - a column about perfume studies

Basenotes, the family-owned and run perfume shrine with over 13.000 listed fragrances, industry news and a lively community has a new columnist. I'm hoping to make it a monthly series about being an adult distance-learner of perfumery and a trainee perfumer. For those of you who have been wondering who I work for, wonder no longer. The article contains the answer.

I still can't quite believe any of this is happening. It has been a bizarre journey. And this is only the beginning! I might still manage to somehow spectacularly cock it up. That'd make entertaining reading, but please cross your fingers for more of a positive outcome.

(Illustration by Grant Osborne)

Biggest Muppet Fangirl

In the first company conference I attended after joining, I was asked to do a presentation to everyone (about, oh, 200 people & all the company founders) about what it meant to work for them. Struggling for ways in which to put my feelings to words, I drew a Kermit on the flip chart and said: Well, this place; everyone here - it's like the Muppet Show.

(Laughter. Confused looks).

I continued by explaining that there seemed to be a myriad of colourful, big personalities in the room with a bunch of different talents. And that the company was a big variety show with a great leader at the helm.

Mark (figurehead of company, co-founder, co-owner): "So, are you calling me a Muppet?"

(Silence).

Me: "Well, yes. But coming from me, that's a big compliment!"

(Everyone is holding their breath).

Mark: "Oh, I quite like being compared to Kermit. At least you didn't say Napoleon."

(Relieved laughter).

TRUE STORY.

Packing books

We have well over a 1000 books squished into a studio. We need to put them into storage so that normal people can come and view this flat. For us, living in a tiny library has been good. For most people, this flat would have seemed rather full up. Granted, we do now want to move (and no doubt we will fill up the new place with even more books), but the move has more to do with wanting a good location for us to settle down in and for both of us to be able to commute from.

These are the boxes so far. There is a second row behind these that's not visible. The stack was a bit taller to start off with, but Timo re-organised them after they fell on me whilst I was sleeping.

Speaking of commuting, I have some news. My new-new job is starting tomorrow. I'll need to be closer to the coast and so really can't wait to move. It'll be more overnight stays until then. I can't quite yet begin to believe what's happening. The current company I work for is one of the few in the whole world who do all their own product scents and fine fragrances in-house and buy their own materials. I'm very lucky to even work for them, much less be in the situation I am.

My job has involved bits and bobs in the lab; nothing too official, some experiments, some collaborative work here and there, that sort of thing. They have always known that I'm like an eager little puppy wanting to learn more, but I've also always known that I am one of many others who would like a slice of their time. I've made it very clear that my aim was (and is) to learn about perfumery and cosmetic science; I started self-study before I joined this company and have taken steps to brush up on my basic science skills (all the Open University stuff I've been doing). I was determined to find some way of getting diplomas or other qualifications - there are various courses available - but nothing beats practical experience and being taught by gurus in the industry. So it's been a case of hoping for the best and expecting nothing.

I've now officially become a Trainee Perfumer. The IFEAT Diploma course I've been so wanting to do starts soon (amazing) and I'll be doing lots of basic work at our factory and lab, learning the ropes and helping out where I can. I'll carry on doing a few other things too.

Yes, I've worked in the cosmetics industry for 20 years, so yes, for many people I know this latest development is probably a "duh". But it seems like a very big deal to me. From my novice experiments in this very flat (in 2005) to here has been an incredible journey.

Trains, planes and moral choices

Unless you live in a cave cut away from any kind of media (self-sufficiently, perhaps? Well, now that would be lovely) - you must know that travelling by train is the morally correct choice these days. Planes? Definitely not acceptable, at least not for domestic journeys. Automobiles? Hmm, if you drive a hybrid, or a Smart like I do is it a bit like greenwash? Is it really much better to do slightly less harm than regular cars? Aren't you adding to the grand total anyway?

I'm trying to be reasonable and make compromises.

I've never been big on flying all over the globe anyway, so that's fine. The trips I've taken have mostly been work-related and faraway holiday destinations or frivolous weekend trips to Europe using cheap flights have never attracted me. Check.

Driving - well, I've only been driving for a few years out of my life; I got my UK license and the Smart about 5 years ago. It was at a time when I was feeling extremely stressed and burnt out so having the independence was important. Nowadays I really try to think about the trips I make (almost all of them work-related) - should I drive or take the train?

Some longer-distance journeys really feel easier by train versus the car: you can settle down for a good while and work on your laptop or read a book. I travel a fair bit for work and do tend to take the train most of the time. It just makes sense.

And then some trips make you want to scream in frustration and never take another train journey ever again. Like the one I had yesterday.

A simple enough proposition - 2 hours one way with 2 changes. Not too terrible, right? Except that due to some incompetent advice and one train cancellation, the journey turned into 4 hours and 4 changes. I was frozen into a solid flesh-ickle by the time I fell out of the train that had carried me on the last leg of the journey. And thanked my earlier self for having driven to the train station so I didn't have to walk 20 minutes in the cold to finally get home.

I want the futuristic criss-crossing overground bullet-train networks, or cool, magically unpolluting hover-cars, or teleportation, please.

Why have we all been so slow to adopt new ways of conducting business? Some individuals and organisations have embraced video conferencing and systems that allow remote communication and distance leadership. Maybe we need to make all modes of (polluting) transport so excruciatingly uncomfortable that we'll only use them when absolutely necessary.

Things and how to use them, part 1*

I used to really love writing lists. Then I wrote so many of them about so many things that they started to feel strangulating. And the tool became the point. Luckily, I was able to go on a Time Manager International course (I don't work for them, no, really, I actually found a corporate-sounding course genuinely helpful) and decided to have a go at NOT writing lists (and using their methods instead). So I stopped writing lists for a bit.

When I say I used to write lists, I'm not sure if the extent to which this habit had been ingrained into every aspect of my life is clear from the deceptively simple word "list".

The course tutor didn't know how to arrange his face when I explained the system I had developed to cope with my juggling. (I really like having a variety of things on the go at once, but I do have an upper limit to how many plates I can spin. The older I get the better I get at noticing when I'm reaching that limit before I drop any plates).

The system went like this: Normal Word document with a 3-column (multi-row) table. Each type of task was categorised a little bit like one might categorise blog topics: "homelife", "reading list", "health & fitness", "project name blahblah", "project..." etc. Each of these categories had its own colour. I had matching colour set in mini pens too; so any notes I made after I'd printed the current list could be made in the same colour.

The columns were: TASK (written in the appropriate colour, so I'd know by just looking at it whether it was work-stuff, my own stuff or other stuff), STARTED and FINISHED.

I would update the list about once a month. I'd print it off for the rest of the time and update things by hand (here's where the coloured pens became relevant) as I went along, so I always knew where I was with everything.

Obviously I still used a diary too, plus I had a year-planner where I could see at a glance what was going on.

What made that quite good is that it minimised post-it-notes and separate bits of paper. What made it quite clumsy is that updating it on my computer took too much time and it wasn't that easy to update on the go (despite the coloured pens). Plus, by the time I really started juggling (i.e., I started my current job and became even more of a plate-spinner), the list would get several pages long and it was beginning to seem like a millstone rather than a helpful tool.

Then there was the annual list. Now this, I'd been doing for years, at least for 10 years if not more - and it consists of just a simple A4 typed list of all the boxes I want to tick that year. It would include things like "finish X course" or "read X book" or "change address at X" and bigger things too; goals that might transfer from one year to the next.

I could also talk about cataloguing because it relates, but that's another topic. I have a feeling that all geeks like cataloguing things (and it's a really slippery slope - once you've catalogued your current reading list & written cute little book reviews for everything you read, then what's to stop you from cataloguing your entire book collection, or CDs or...).

Anyway, so after the Time Manager course, I put my lists to one side and really tried to survive without them. In the beginning I found it quite difficult, but not impossible. In fact, I had been expecting the transition to be harder. It would have been, but the new style of organiser was awesome - and completely suited to the whole plate-spinning way of life (working parents might enjoy this, or anyone running their own business, or working freelance on multiple projects): each main area of your life/work has its own numbered category. Each category has its own segment at the back of the organiser and what makes this superior to my list system is that you can react immediately if some new info becomes available. You can just put it in the right section - and the next time you are dealing with that topic/person/project, you just open at the right section and ta-dah, you pick up where you left off last time. No more trying to hold too much stuff in your head, or finding where you wrote that important bit of information.

It also has sections for "ideas" and "notes", which is lovely for those yet-to-be-categorised things on the run. The diary segments are awesome too; much more room to schedule your days and weeks than in any other organiser I've seen.

The downside? It's HUGE (I needed the larger size to fit everything in). But - you can just remove relevant bits (mini diary which is detachable & notepad) & take them with you on trips or to meetings. Though that then puts you back into the whole updating in one big chunk, rather than on the move. Still; small price to pay for the awesome tool. I now really rely on this and it almost feels like a Personal Assistant.

I've thought about electronic personal organisers, but so far, none have grabbed me. I also really hate the inability to "leaf through" stuff in a natural papery way. There is something necessary about paper in these for me.

The Annual List has stuck with me. I thought about what I was using it for and realised that it was still serving a purpose. It's a nice, reassuring, focusing, self-motivating, anti-flapping tool I will probably continue to use forever. I just tore up the 2008 list (only 4 things on it I didn't tick off; pretty good) and wrote up the 2009 list. The biggest item on the 2009 list is "Sell property/buy property/move house?". That's the aim, but who the hell knows what's going to happen. Luckily there are lots of other things on there that I can get done. The moving house thing might be a bit more complicated.

So now I'm friends with lists again, but in a new way. Our relationship has been re-defined. So far so good. And luckily, there's always Facebook and its list-writing-bandwagon for when I get cravings.

* This in no way implies there will be future parts to this series, though there may be, depending on circumstances and availability of loose thoughts in need of a home

I want my Miss Piggy Powder Compact right NOW! Hay-ah!

Perhaps it's a desire to be forever childlike and cute like the Japanese girls, or an attempt at denial over one's own age - or maybe just a simple nostalgia marketing trick - but it seems that various unlikely characters have been appearing on beauty compacts for a little while now.

Can't say who was the absolute trend-setter, but Paul & Joe's Disney make-up range must have been one of the first of the recent batch. Bambi face powder or, what is that, a tube of dog shampoo? No, it seems to be a hand cream. The star of the range surely has to be the skunk powder. You too can smell this good!

I've seen it sold in Harrods here in UK if you absolutely must get hold of some.

Recently, I spotted that the quirky make-up range Too Faced has decided to become super Smurfy - the blue characters have been chosen as the theme for a new make-up range. The creator of the range, Jerrod Blandino, is convinced that "Smurfette was the 'it' girl of the 80s generation". Yes. We were jealous until we went blue in the face.

MAC is also up to something - I've read that they will be launching a Hello Kitty line this spring. That seems suitably cute and appropriate, but their current special collection might raise a few more eyebrows. Would you consider Dame Edna your style icon? Not to say that the way in which her looks are applied is sloppy (she always looks excellent on stage), but the look is intended to be a send-up of an over-done drag-queen. And it fits the bill very well. I suppose MAC is a range with colours and textures fit for theatrical as well as everyday looks and maybe launching a Dame Edna range is in some ways a nod towards MAC's make-up artist roots. Since the Estee Lauder aquisition, we've had more "seasonal looks" and the sort of fluff you usually associate with a mainstream brand - not to mention MAC perfumes, which clearly indicate Lauder Group meddling (same happened to Bobbi Brown after they were bought by the Lauder Group - all of a sudden there was a perfume launch).

So with Dame Edna eyeshadows and lipsticks, MAC can teach us all how to send up your own customers, or if you prefer this interpretation, to pay homage to its own beginnings as a professional make-up line. Or if you think like me, you'll applaud them for doing something that gets all of us writing about them.

What I really would like to see now is a Muppet Make-Up range. Are you listening out there? You could have Animal deodorant (it brings out the animal in you), Gonzo concealer (hide your little beauty flaws) and a Miss Piggy Powder Compact (you too can be like the most glamorous pig in showbiz). Come on! It's not such a leap. There was even a Miss Piggy's Guide To Life back in the day.

More bubbles

My first product is in the shops. Specifically: the product idea I came up with, helped develop (both conceptually and as a fragrance) is now out worldwide. Customer feedback has been encouraging. So far, nobody (openly) hates it. So far, many people like it.

It feels very strange to have something that you've dreamed up - out in so many homes. People will walk around smelling of something I had a part in creating.

I hope so very, very much that this is first of many. I'm going to carry on as if that were the case. You never get anywhere by simply hoping, now do you?

(P.S. If you want to know how this all started, read some of the story from "Why I think I'm a nose").