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This Sunday, some friends and I are taking part in the Human Race around Sydney (sort of like the Amazing Race!), where "competitors will race each other around their chosen city, solving clues and performing weird and wonderful tasks at every station". The event raises money for World Vision projects in Sri Lanka as well as Australia.

If you would like to support us (we're trying to raise $500, which isn't much, but since we had a late start in getting together and registering, we're sort of behind in funds..), you can go to our donation page found here: http://www.everydayhero.com.au/bridesforhire . Alternately you could pass on any donations to me directly :)

Our team name 'Brides For Hire' (a sort of in-joke) was chosen before one of our members dropped out and my male cousin had to jump in. But when you really think about it, in the whole scheme of things, we're ALL brides for hire in some way... >.>

Please consider donating!

Current Mood: giddy

A little over a month ago, I took a deep breath and signed up to NaNoWriMo, a ginormous writing challenge asking victims to type out a 50,000 word novel over the month of November. I didn't take it so seriously till I found out my friend

satyr had done the same thing, and since I have admitted to her my registration, I am now forced to keep myself accountable.

There were many things I did not realise about NaNoWriMo; for one, participants actually plan what they are going to write about before November. I assumed it was just a sort of diarrhoeic expulsion of subconscious gibberish , whereupon once it was officially over one would look back on what had been written and chortle merrily on their obvious psychological fixations. But no, there is a space in the writer's profile to give a brief synopsis of their (future) work, title it, and even tap out an excerpt from their (future) work. I read in the NaNoWriMo forums about one participant who planned to write several thousands of words of his novel before November, and then add another 50,000 during the month itself.

Which leads me onto another thing I did not realise before signing up, the required word count itself. When I imagined what the challenge demanded, my head would actually consistently reduce the word count - "I think they asked for 30,000? Or 20,000? No that can't be right, that's quite a lot. Must be 10,000. Now that I think about it, 7,000 makes more sense..." But no, they asked for 50, 000 words. Over 30 days, I worked that out to be approximately 1667 words a day, which admittedly has left me more than a little nervous. I always found it difficult to write even a 2000 word essay, and honestly required at least a week to work on a draft. I'm not sure how it's possible to write 1667 words in one day without scribbling unpolished, unsophisticated, illogical drivel.

Following the example of fellow NaNoWriMo-ers, I sat down and wrote a synopsis of my (future) novel. It's actually based on an idea I had years ago for a comic, but unfortunately my drawing skills were too lacking to be able to convey what I wanted. I wonder if my writing skills will have better luck?

Belle Immortel

A young girl finds herself growing hideous. After being told about the strange doctor who resides at the top of the mountain, she visits the wizened woman who suggests a dangerous last resort – the drug ‘R-ACC’. Aware of the warnings , she takes it, not truly realising what she will have to go through before reaching the end of her treatment –to become ‘belle immortel’.

The initial title was Bel Immortel but as I don't know French, I'm not quite sure which phrasing is more grammatically correct and more apt for my work.

Current Music: [taiyou no shita] :: Remioromen

I used to have megabytes worth of Word documents filled with half-finished Harry Potter fanfiction stories I'd written, sometimes just random scenes or dialogues. Of course, with the ongoing computer crashes of yore that our family suffered, I lost all of it, and with my slowly changing interests and the increased workload at university, my desire to continually rebuild my little warehouse of words diminished.

However, I do have random snippets that I'd written over the last couple of years - probably not even enough to take up a single megabyte of space - that have been transferred alongside other files onto my current laptop after the other computers in my life became outdated and were thrown out. These were not the fresh beginnings of awakened HP fever! These were just forced attempts to get back into writing - by entering Harry Potter writing festivals and joining HP fiction exchange communities. I admit my writing hasn't really improved much over the years - probably due to my lack of activity and my lethargic reading practices - but some of it isn't too horrible (or so I think).

Here's some random introductory scene for a story I never completed or used for one fic exchange 2 years ago.

Draco looked up at his wife and pursed his lips. Only those who knew him well would’ve recognised this as an expression of annoyance. Astoria smiled sweetly, revealing a straight row of perfectly white, pointed teeth.

“You’re being silly Draco,” she purred, tossing her fur wrap over her shoulder. “My father and mother adore you.”

Even Draco knew this was a downright lie. Nobody adored a Malfoy, especially not those of the older generation who remembered very well the humiliation of the Malfoys after the war. The marriage of Astoria and Draco came out of desperation, with Narcissa and Lucius worried their son would never be able to find a woman of their own class to agree to it. Draco was still not sure how the Greengrass’ benefited of such a union.

“You know, it is fashionable to be late,” he said, his eyes shining with hope.

“How two centuries ago,” Astoria drawled, smirking. “Being on-time is the new avant-garde. Come now, I’m not Apparating by myself.” She touched his shoulder, and he sighed, slowly pulling the length of his body into a standing position.

“Alright, let’s leave,” he muttered, as Astoria slid her arm through his.

With this nostalgia, I went to my old Fanfiction accounts (yes, multiple) and read some of the drivel I'd posted there. The sad thing is not that I can see how badly written some of it is, but that I know that I couldn't do any better today.

For fun, I will post up a story I apparently wrote in 2002 - a short 'drabble' or 'ficlet' the veterans would call it - about Fred and George Weasley. It got 15 reviews! Ooh! That means it's one of the better stories I wrote.

( Twin Shadows )

Current Mood: weirded out

After chatting to a blind man at a bus stop near the Vision Australia building (formerly the Royal Blind Society), the bus finally rumbled to a halt in front of us and opened its doors. I patiently helped him up the steps, and waited for him to pay his fare before I could dunk my ticket into the machine and follow him. Many of the seats were filled, including the front ones saved for disabled and elderly passengers. Watching as he hit people’s legs with his stick, trying to find an empty seat that nobody seemed willing to volunteer, I silently wondered why the school girl wasn’t standing up, or either member of the exaggeratedly oblivious middle-aged couple weren’t offering their seats. Finally an elderly lady rose and ushered him into her place. At that moment the bus took off with a lurch, and the woman tumbled backwards, her fall only slightly softened by hands reflexively held out to catch her. She managed to crawl to an empty seat towards the back of the bus and hopefully had a relatively smooth ride for the rest of her journey.

All this was observed in silence. Social etiquette kept my lips sewn shut, but inside I was angered by the selfish behaviour of thoughtless people.

When finally the bus reached my destination, I alighted and waited at the traffic lights to cross the road, along with others eager to do their shopping and get to places at this busy time of the day. Before the little green man appeared to notify it was the right time to cross the road however, a man sprinted past me, all black suit and briefcase. Only a few moments later the green man flashed into view and the rest of us crossed the road.

Both these incidents got to me. As I said, all this was observed in silence. But not only by me. I noted the four and five year olds sitting on the bus with their parents and grandparents, the young children clutching their mother’s hand as they waited to cross the road.

Watching as we do the wrong thing, as we behave rudely and inconsiderately.

What do you think they’re learning?

In this non-conformist age, we all like to say, “I don’t care about what others think! I’m going to do my own thing!” as if we’re an unwilling member of society, a society which is trying to strip us of our individuality through its explicit and implicit rules. And yet we’ll complain about other generations (usually younger, such as little girls becoming sexually mature earlier, and youths becoming increasingly sadistic and indifferent), blaming television, music, computer games- anything that is new or has altered over time!- for modelling and celebrating undesirable behaviours and attitudes, inconsistent with these implicit and explicit rules of society. It’s easy to take ourselves out of the equation for these consequences.

Those who are the worst offenders are those perceived with relatively higher power and position. Why? Because those are whom people pay attention to the most. In the 1950’s Monroe Lefkowitz and two of his associates conducted an important study on the effect of the social factor of status on strengthening or weakening a prohibited behaviour – crossing the road before the correct traffic light signal appeared. It was found more violations occurred when a model dressed in representative high social status gear (ie. suit and briefcase) did it first. Certainly, a behaviour performed by a respected and relatively powerful figure has the power to convince observers the behaviour is acceptable and even appropriate. The man or woman who puts on their business suit every morning therefore also dons the mantle of responsibility of being a good role model for others, not just within the context of work but anywhere and everywhere.

This responsibility doesn’t merely apply to those literally in a position of power in a company. Expanding the range to teachers, parents and people in a PR profession is still inadequate. Anybody- in fact, everybody- has some degree of power and in different situations can be in a relatively higher position to another, realising it or not. If that young schoolgirl in the bus had stood up and offered her seat to the blind man, she might have provided guidance to peers also seated in the bus, perhaps even other older passengers who had forgotten common courtesies and needed a guilty reminder, and she would have demonstrated to the children in the bus the sort of behaviour and attitude we’ll expect (and complain about when we don’t get it) from a younger generation; that is, respect and manners.

Here’s the bottom line. We’re all part of this society whether we like it or not, and hence we’re all endowed with a responsibility that unfortunately we can’t just pass onto somebody else. So teach yours (or someone else’s) children well by doing it right yourself. Remember, someone is always watching you.

Been listening to le old skool stuff- Public Enemy, D.O.C., Ice-T... There’s something terribly…hardcore about them all. Our lecturer told us that female DJ’s tend to use more ‘pop’ elements in their mixes. I would say that rap these days tends to include more pop elements- who can deny that Eminem uses an actual melody line in his songs? Snoop Dogg, Coolio, Dre, Cypress Hill, Wu Tang Clan- even the way they rap is more lyrical and melodic than it used to be. Maybe that’s it- rapping styles have become more complex- less like someone just talking and more like someone having a conversation with the listener, with tone and other non-verbal signals. Listen to Vanilla Ice- or don’t, that’s a bodgy sort of dude- listen to Rappers Delight by the Sugarhill Gang (a fairly famous song in the history of American rap), and compare this more straightforward style (though it did break into history by being more complex and clever than earlier rapping) to today’s multitude of rap songs. Listen to Fresh Prince (before he went by the name ‘Will Smith’)- there’s a straight-forward storytelling style which slowly transformed into a funky play on the sound of the words, cleverly integrating it into the actual immanent elements of the song as opposed to just using a rhythm as a background to the rapping.

I conclude that (obviously) rap has become more complex, interesting and integral to the melody and rhythm of the song.

Somebody asked me why they call RnB…’RnB’ these days, since they hardly contain elements of the old rhythm and blues where the name actually sprung from. I do still believe most hip hop/rnb songs involve progressions of blues chords, less visible than the recognized blues scale sure, but still making use of 7ths and the cycle of 5ths. Take 112’s ‘It’s Over Now’, when they break into their interlude-y bit with their pritty harmony… As for ‘rhythm’, that has to be broken down…Elton John was one of the first white…people to break into the RnB charts, with his song ‘Benny & the Jets’ (Dusty Springfield beat him to it). Does ‘rhythm’ suggest a play upon the traditional 4/4 timing? What does rhythm imply in the name RnB?? I don’t really know…I mean these days the Neptunes seems to be doling out a set rhythm for everyone (and it appears to be the same one!). Maybe the definition of ‘rhythm’ has to be clarified for me.

And lastly, how do you tell the difference between rnb and pop? Is it as easy as saying ‘Britney Spears is pop, and Mary J. Blige is RnB’? Isn’t that simply splitting genres into race-specific categories? Justin T. is most likely RnB, as shameful as it is to admit it…but what the heck does that mean?? Why is Cry Me a River RnB, why is Britney Spears’ Sometimes a pop tune? I..don’t understand classification, I suppose everybody else knows, in which case they can explain it to me.