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.

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'. This might not mean much to people other a relatively small circle of specialists but it does mean a lot to me. I've just about recovered from the shock.

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.

- 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. 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.

When Twitter is Good

Twitter is at the bottom-feeder end of Information Overload. Ipad is at the top. Both can be useful and delightful, but recently, I've decided to develop a much stricter attitude to what kind of information I give room in my life to. I don't need to know everything. I don't need to have access to more books than I can read in a lifetime. Frankly, the thought depresses me.

I can choose what and when I think about things. Thinking. Remember that, people? Stuffing every orifice full of media and everyone else's inane chatter is not good for you.

Yes, read. Yes, talk to people. Of course. But for Heaven's sake, don't binge on all the chaff, Z-list celebrity gossip and tiniest minutiae of peripheral news items. You don't need it. Don't grant space in your head for it.

The thing about Twitter and any tool is learning how to get what you want out of it. Use it cleverly. Don't allow it to suck you in and convince you that it's important. It is not. Take control of it.

Many people seem to throw themselves at online forums, blogs and social networking sites like an inexperienced rider on a Ducati motorcycle. They think they can ride it, but the bike takes off under them and the machine is driving them.

I love online forums, blogs and social networking sites. I've been active online since there was such a thing as 'online'. It's just now I'm finally learning to use these damn things properly.

Twitter is for getting to know what my favourite people and companies are up to. It occasionally also just makes me giggle. Like this morning, when someone wrote: "Dear delusional teenage girls. A guy who glitters and won't have sex with you is not a vampire. He's gay." Twilight, The Eclipse is released in UK this weekend and it's Gay Pride today. Blam. What a lovely little witticism. Then it's time to turn off the computer and go outside. Or to the cinema.

Tuca Tuca with Mira Manga!

She's just adorable :D