Tomorrow could be boring

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.

Comfort zone

There is something deeply satisfying about what my boss calls "grunt-work" - seeing the results of your handiwork in some kind of tangible form, reaching for measurable targets, feeling physically tired after work and as though you've really done something with your body.

That's one of the sorts of things I've been getting up to recently, working in our factory and learning about yet another aspect of our business. I love it. It's like a sanctuary. But I know I'd get restless within a week if I had to work there every day.

I seem to be on top form and in the zone on a fairly narrow lane between what most hard workers and multitaskers would consider a normal level of pressure and some kind of fast lane where you're constantly a bit scared that the next task you undertake will be the undoing of you and you'll fail in some sort of spectacular way.

My comfort zone. It's pushing just beyond what I think I can actually do; looking at a challenge and thinking "shit, there is no way I can do this" and then, reflecting on it, digesting the information, learning - and doing it anyway.

Again, the above is probably fairly common. Most people seem to produce their best work when they're pushed just beyond what they think they can do.

But there's a risk of over-doing it (and for me in particular, there's a risk of over-committing myself to too many projects because I need a variety of things in order to be happy) and then the pleasurable pressure turns into unhealthy stress.

I'm super-sensitive to stress, much more so now I'm older. I'm very slowly beginning to learn when to stop before I drop. I did accidentally over-do it a few weeks ago and that was a bit humiliating. I should know better. Anyway, I've had a holiday since then and have landed rather softly back at work this time, which is quite different from when I worked in retail.

I've finally absorbed the meaning of my new job role as a trainee perfumer. I say finally, because since this April when I made the change, I've had only a level of patchy acceptance of my good fortune, not to mention the scope and responsibility of the job at hand.

The factory work has helped. The physical act of rolling up your sleeves and getting on with it was like the final piece of the puzzle.

Droplets

1. Turns out Topiramate was a double-edged sword: it stopped daily headaches and significantly lessened the severity of migraine(s) of which I had two since starting the meds, but it also made me forgetful, dopey, sleepy and all the other 7 fucking dwarfs. Reviewing with doctor and trying others. Taking a weekend break from being human guinea pig.

2. I don't think it's just me being a fragrance snob - in fact, I have gone in reverse-snobbery direction in many ways since starting the perfumery course - but lately, all the new mainstream perfume releases have been dull at best or an offensively poor effort at worst. One recent "prestigeous" line-up smells like a cast of Lynx/Axe/Impulse rejects from the pile that the evaluators thought too thin, crass and synthetic for a body spray.

3. Tuulia, my gorgeous wonderful Finnish loooooooooong-time friend had a baby girl on 11th of September. I am very happy for the whole family. It seems so unreal. She's the first of our group of 3 Uni-friends to become a mother. Not the first from the extended group, it has to be said - we do keep in touch with others too. Timo and I are going to meet the new person and take a much-needed mini holiday to Finland in a couple of weeks.

4. I'm finally fully on the perfumery course-horse. The secret to this one seems to be that I must do some of it every single day, even if it's just a little bit. I was trying to schedule in half-days, afternoons, evenings and even whole days of "course time" and they didn't work out. But since I've been fitting in 1-3 study sessions per day I've finally found my rhythm.

5. Flat hasn't sold yet. I wish it did. Want to move before next year. Ideally before winter.

The trouble with being a science student

I read a lot and I think a lot.

I don't want to live forever, but I'd like a way of knowing what happens to the world, the human race, the Universe and everything.

There are days when I wonder what the point of living is, given that it's likely we'll [the Universe] either crunch or expand out of existence anyway, so even if we somehow [rather improbably at this point] manage to colonise space, there will be precisely zero left of all of our weighty human efforts at the end of it all.

Of course if there's a crunch, there will hopefully be a new Big Bang as a result of it (which makes one wonder how many Universes there have been before ours), but that'll be like shaking the celestial Etch-a-Sketch and starting again, with no trace of our "achievements"; just the building blocks everything is made up of.

Have a nice day!

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)

Maybe "understanding human nutrition" will help with my coffee addiction

The next course in the series that'll make up my Certificate in Contemporary Science has landed this week - the exciting brown Open University parcel containing all the course materials arrived! It feels just like going back to school; getting course books, going to the stationery department of Akateeminen Kirjakauppa and stuffing your backpack full. Lovely, in other words.

These basic science courses have been such a boost and so much fun, but most of all, they've helped me stop pooh-pooing my ability to grasp the maths required. My maths-gremlin was big, hairy and loud, left from the Finnish-Russian school days where we'd be bullied by the teacher for not memorising the day's homework in fluent Russian and reciting it in front of the class the next morning. I've always conceded that yes, I may have been slightly put off by that, but you know, maybe those teachers were onto something and I didn't really have that much of a talent for maths beyond the basics. Which was a shame, because otherwise I may have been encouraged to continue my chemistry studies further than I did. I've looked at my old school grades and was a little surprised that my memory betrays me; I'd been doing very well (getting 8 & 9 grades on a scale of 4-10 from both Chemistry and Physics before my maths teacher convinced me I was crap). I did carry on with biology and psychology - the "softer" subjects (and chose those for my final exams too; similar thing to A-levels).

My biology teacher was amazing. The official one at school and the unofficial one at home (an "older boy" I moved in with when I was 16 and he was 23. He was a biology student at the Helsinki Uni at the time). Motivation is a funny thing; if you have a reason to do the "look, Ma!" thing (even if the person who you want to do the looking isn't your Ma), you can do amazing things. You might wonder what a 16-year old girl was doing moving out of home, but that was shortly after the mum running away from home and leaving me with no electricity, food or money-incident, so I just decided "fuck it, I'm out of here." But that's another story.

I guess one of the things I'm really happy about the OU is that I'm mostly doing it to prove something to myself. The topics are relevant to my big dreams too. Few years ago I dreamed of reaching a level of personal experimentation and understanding behind the magic of perfume formulation that'd maybe allow me to do some simple natural perfumes. I lamented the fact that in the real, pro circles, you'd usually need to have an education to match and wondered about the ability to self study the topic. And how far that'd get you. I'm way, WAY off from being a perfumer or a cosmetic scientist, but I've begun to think that maybe that's possible. So far, I'll be glad to get this OU certificate complete (4 more courses to go) and to carry on learning the basic skills at work. Then, hopefully, I'll be able to do the IFEAT perfumery course, after which I'd absolutely love to do the Society of Cosmetic Scientists diploma course. This four-pronged approach of on-the-job training by my current employer, formal science studies, perfumery and cosmetic science studies should enable me to gain a good understanding and a set of useful skills. Also, please pinch me.

Fitting in the studies has been hard. I am busy these days (well, I've always kept myself busy, but now I'm so busy that I can just about stop for long enough to go: boy, I'm busy). Wow, talk about over-using the word BUSY. Now it sounds like bees buzzing. Anyway, where was I? Yes, BUSY. I love everything I'm doing now, but it does take its toll in free time. I find myself foruming and surfing at midnight, or catching my emails quickly in the morning before catching a train. On the days I work from home, I get so fully absorbed in what I'm doing (love it, love it; it's called flow, I'm told - colour me addicted!) that switching gears from work-head to anything-else-head becomes extremely hard. Besides, when you're tired from thinking (home days) or tired from travelling (all the other days), sitting down with a sheet that requires you to balance chemical formulas is a little daunting.

I think my study skills have improved as a result of the OU. I'm still learning, obviously - and I'm a long way from feeling fully comfortable with the amount of work required (10 hours a week sounds easy until you try to fit them in and until you realise that all of those 10 hours need to be fairly intense for you to pass the course. And since I'm not happy just to pass - I want to pass with flying colours - there were a couple of caffeine-fuelled nights spent until the small hours, trying to revise before an assessment. Not a strategy I 'd recommend).

This time, I'm going to do more in the beginning to make it easier towards the end. The course is due to start on the 1st of September, but I'm going to start tomorrow (first, by going over some stuff from the last course just to refresh my memory).  Also, I'm going on a work trip to Chicago for the first official course week (typical), so I'd better get ahead or I'll be behind. And, this is exactly why it's hard for me to fit these studies in, but I'm so determined to plough through and get these qualifications that I don't care. I'll do whatever it takes.

Speaking of caffeine, my boss has this theory - that it could be behind my migraines. I've not drunk full strength coffee for over a month and I've only had one migraine so far (and that was after I swear someone at Starbucks gave me the real stuff by accident). Damn; the boss might be right. I love the smell and taste of coffee so much, that I've not been able to give it up entirely. I've found some palatable brands of decaf to use at home. Now if I could only somehow just stop craving the drink entirely. I don't think I even want to. Maybe I'll learn something on the course that'll make me see the light.

A sonnet in jasmine

It's incredibly frustrating to dream in Shakespeare and write in picture book script. In perfumery, I have such flights of fancy in my olfactory cortex, but my skills aren't up to it yet. I wish I could spend an alternative lifetime in Grasse, piggybacking inside the head of an offspring of a formidable perfume famille whilst he learns the vocabulary of the craft. Memorises notes.

Sort of like Sam(antha) Beckett in France.

I have limited opportunities to start that process now. Depending on the success of my first attempts, maybe those opportunities will increase. I know that I will use every one of them fully.

Actually, when I say "start" - that's a little misleading; I have already been building up a catalogue of notes in my head - not just from childhood, noticing smells perhaps more strongly than others, but I mean the part where you consciously try to commit specific odours to memory. That started with the delivery of my first oils and chemicals, back in 2005.

Still. I feel like I've just about got the hang of "Hello, how are you? Nice to meet you." The part where you discuss matters of the heart and soul still eludes me. I'm determined to learn (as always).

There is the IFEAT Diploma in Perfumery, which I've been salivating about since I found out about it. Anyone have a spare £2000 knocking around?

You've got to start somewhere

It's funny how at school, I couldn't wait to get out of there, but now, I wish I could keep on studying. I suppose adult education and further studies are nifty things. They cater for this.

I was on self-imposed course ban for a couple of years so that I could focus on other things. I still did the space sausage thing and a couple of other things (shh).

For some time, I have been experimenting with a steadily growing obsession; making perfume and cosmetics (and I've written about this before here and here). It's something that ties right back to when I worked part-time after school at the local superstore. Or maybe it goes even further back - to the stuffing of grandmother's rose petals into a glass bottle full of water and hoping it would turn into perfume. I've heard some others tell the same stories, except that for me the fascination never ended. I've ended up working either in, or adjacent to the cosmetics industry for the majority of my life.

I almost quit the whole industry a while back. I tend to get irritated (ok, burst into spontaneous rants) when I see deliberately misleading advertising about cosmetics, companies putting profits ahead of honesty and all those aspects we know are part of selling that next face cream or scent. I also happen to be quite business minded and definitely don't begrudge making profit. It's the core part of why business is business. I just refuse to believe that there can't be a way to run an honest cosmetics business that still makes a healthy profit.

For years I really couldn't find one. I worked for several, respected many of them, but ultimately they all seemed to play the same game.

Meanwhile, I worked in IT and other things; missing the fun parts of the cosmetics industry, but shuddering every time I'd remember the not so nice elements.

Now I work for a cosmetics company that is perhaps at the other extreme of the scale. In many ways it's more of a campaigns and pressure group. I'm enjoying this change to the norm and it's been refreshing and liberating.

And I feel like I've been given permission to dig deeper. I want to go to the next level. So I've looked up a couple of routes through which I could qualify in Cosmetic Science and registered on the first pre-requisite course, which is due to start on the 1st of March. This feels very, very exciting.

Attack of the space sausage!

The Learning Day at Escape studios was great fun, if totally exhausting. I can't remember the last time I felt that (mentally) wiped out. And really, that was a bit unexpected after only a deceptively simple set of exercises. I think it's the mental tiredness I used to experience when working in IT; something I haven't encountered for a long while. When you've intensely concentrated for several hours on the trot and have had to assimilate a lot of information in a short time. Maybe a bit like being in Higher Education (that's if you're actually trying to learn, versus spending your time in the pub...).

In the last two years I might have worked hard physically, but it's a different sort of tired.

When I got home last night I had something to eat, watched Chicken Run (with newfound respect, I must add) and fell asleep on the bed. Was woken up by Timo's call at around 1am: "I'm leaving work." The poor sod had a stupid-busy day.

The software packages we used at Escape were Shake and Maya. I felt immediately at home with Shake; sure, it wasn't simple, but at the same time it felt really intuitive and the concepts were fairly familiar. I've done enough Photoshop work and I "get" certain things more easily than others, so the Shake part of the day was definitely enjoyable on that level. In fact, I wished we could have done more with it. When I begun to understand the power of this package, it was time to stop. It definitely left me wanting to explore it further.

Not so much with Maya. I've had the Maya personal learning edition installed for a while, but unlike Photoshop, which I was able to just play around with in the beginning, until I started learning how to use it properly... well, my experience with Maya was definitely not the same! When I'd looked around it before, I just felt overwhelmed. It didn't seem to have a natural way to learn by trial and error because even to do the simplest thing, you'd have to know some of the basics about the interface and various tools. So you have to have an understanding of it even to get started.

Hence why this introduction to the package seemed like a good way to start; to just get an idea of what Maya was like; just to see whether it'd be something I could get my head around and to possibly even enjoy, or to do something useful with.

Our first task was to get somewhat familiar with the interface. So we made a simple ball shape and animated it to make it bounce. This eased us into the software. So far so good. I didn't fall behind, crash the software, or make my ball resemble a Sea Urchin (like some others in the class). Awesome.

Then, we were asked to open a file with two elements already in place: a human hand (with one digit missing; an odd-looking four-fingered hand) - and a polygon block floating above it. We were informed that the task would be to shape the hand out of the block. So far so good. The beginning all made sense; how to modify the polygon shapes into resembling the hand's structure; how to use the different views available, etc, etc.

However, at the point which the tutor had modelled two perfect fingers, my hand was more like a fairly creepy multi-digit space sausage. At least I hadn't created a zig-zagged 3D chess board like the student sat next to me.

Still. A space sausage. So, by this time I felt uncomfortable and like I'd just fallen off the wagon; the tutor had moved onto explaining skinning and I still had one of the four digits missing and the remaining ones wiggling at me, all misshapen and sausage-y from the screen.

In the end, we animated the "hand" to wave bye-bye. I'm thinking I could apply for SFX in horror films.

I stayed behind to chat with the tutor, who, incidentally, had started from a similar background to mine - from drawing and illustration to software and so on. She'd gone down the animation route fairly early on and I have a feeling that this is the crucial difference; I seem to be happier and more intrigued by the still image and by the 2D (or 2-and-a-half-D, as described by our Shake tutor) world. I expressed my doubts to the Maya tutor and she told me not to be so discouraged. She also mentioned that Maya is also a powerful texturing/skinning tool and that those skills are extremely useful in the industry.

Overall, I really enjoyed my Learning Day. It was exactly what I had hoped - a glimpse into the world of cutting edge digital effects, and a way for me to assess whether it'd be worth trying to learn any of these packages.

I think my next software investment will be Corel's Painter 9 (or whatever version will be out by the time I can afford the price tag!). I doubt I'll be delving much deeper into 3D. I don't have the hunger for it - and the work does not happen by magic. Those packages are a tool, just like Photoshop is - the work is only going to be as good as the skills and patience of the user.

However, if 3D would be something that I'd want to pursue career-wise, then Escape Studios would be a very good way to get into it. I'd recommend them on many levels - the tutors all have extensive industry experience, or are currently working in the industry - and the studios and equipment all seemed appropriate and professional.

A modified version of this post was cross-posted to BlogCritics.

My only warning would be: take a packed lunch. And a book. Because at lunch, or breakfast, or just about any other time of the day, you may not want to go out. Sheperd's Bush (at least the bit around the studios/Tube) is a DUMP. Hobos falling over on the road; two branches of McDonald's within 500 metres of oneanother, a KFC, some dodgy all-you-can-eat buffet, a small Starbucks with sullen staff, a slum shopping centre with a Morrisons. Nice.

Claims to fame

I used to work as a make-up artist and hair/wig stylist. I studied at the London College of Fashion for a HND in Theatre Studies from 1994 to 1996, and was involved in a number of productions right from the start. I worked on all kinds of things - fringe theatre, pop promos, extremely dubious low budget films, fashion shows, feature films and so on. I also did some training and demonstrations for British Airways staff and for health spa staff. In the end, the most financially lucrative work came from private consultations and wedding make-up services.

It was fun, exciting, frustrating and exhausting. I climbed from a student working for free to someone being able to charge fairly well for some of the better gigs. However, those good gigs were not frequent. That time of my life could be made to sound oh-so-glamorous and I could name-drop, and frame it in a million snooty ways, but the truth is: I got stuck in that stage of not-quite-there-yet and didn't have the patience to scratch a living for as long as it might have taken to find out if I'd ever actually make it.

One of the worst things about the whole college course and make-up artist career was, that many of us were naively hoping that once we got out of college and found some footing on the showbiz circuit, we'd be able to leave behind all the part-time jobs and temping contracts and shop work and waitressing and all that stuff we had to do so we'd be free and available when The Call would come.

Yeah, right.