Lights Out

Yesterday, after luxuriating in a little bit of book before bed, I reached over to turn off the lamp only to realize it wasn't on. It was 6am and what I'd been trying to turn off was the light of day flooding in through those damn glass cubes that make up one wall of my bedroom.

I don't know if this is some form of retarded insomnia but I regularly fall into a pattern of going to bed later and later, and before I know it, things are completely out of control and I'm sharing the same hours as certain truckers, gas station attendants, and convenience store clerks.

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Transcriber, Travel Agent & Volunteer-in-Progress

It's been ages since I posted something real--not a list, not a column of snapshots, not a panic-stricken warning. Naturally I'm presently swamped by everything, all at once: work is picking up, my parents have appointed me their personal travel agent (because "you're good at these things"), and I'm slowly finding my way down this young, uncertain path of volunteerism.

Work needs no explanation, although it's rather grueling at the moment because I'm transcribing a speech by a French man with a really bad stutter, and the client insists they want it verbatim, which means I'm not allowed to edit anything--not even to smoothen the flow of text. Not even if I know how to make a passage make sense. Sigh. I also feel like a bit of a jerk for focusing so hard on all the parts where the speaker has a real tough time getting the right sounds out. Sometimes, with the touch of the foot pedal, I make the poor man choke and trip over the same words over and over again. I've never realized how tortured a stutter can sound and I wonder at the mean person who asked this guy to present something at the last minute. I imagine the speaker is nervous and that is what is causing him to fight so hard against his own lips and tongue. Am I being grossly condescending? It's possible he had a good time. Might a person with a stutter enjoy public speaking?

Mom and dad commandeering my services is another matter. My parents are two seemingly nice people who have left a string of broken travel agents in their wake. I've read faxes and emails from these poor traumatized women, where words such as "desperate," "confused," and "lost" peppered the pages like drops of blood. It's difficult to convey just how breezily destructive my mom and dad can be to one's mental equilibrium, without you all brushing me off, assuming I'm being my usual melodramatic self. Or worse, somebody thinking, "Oh, everybody's parents are like that." No, I say, no.

I won't ply you with the minutiae. That wouldn't be kind or interesting. Just maddening. But suffice it to say, I've been witnessing many a hazy sunrise in my peripheral vision, while hunched over the computer, driven by the running requests and urgent itinerary changes that have been laying siege to my email account for weeks. I now think of cities not by their names but their airport codes. I'm learning that almost all English travel-related sites are exclusively for people holding US credit cards (To all those sites: Do you not WANT my business? Well screw you. I hope you soon discover with abject horror just how much business you're losing by refusing money from the rest of the world, particularly my part of the world!). And I actually forgot to reply my boss because her email was pushed to the back of the shelf, so to speak, by a flood of messages regarding flights, hotels, car rentals, and activities.

On a happier note, I'm very slowly finding that I can be of some use to Oxfam Japan. Today I sent off my first PR-esque missive, writing to a Japan website about an upcoming Oxfam fundraising event and asking if they would pretty-please mention it in their calendar. I've also decided to create a message board, and possibly a blog, for all the volunteers in the hope that we'll start to feel a little more connected and aware of what everyone's up to. I believe we need to create a stronger feeling of community, where we can get involved with each other's projects, or simply offer encouragement and suggestions. I'm also thinking that a blog would give a more human, approachable voice to a large entity like Oxfam, especially for non-volunteers, people wishing to know more.

But first I have to get the volunteers to all agree to participate or it will be a very barren message board/blog indeed. We're going to have a meeting this Tuesday, so I'll present my case then. Wish me luck!

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Not as Serious as I Thought

I've probably terrified the bejesus out of everyone who used my coding instructions. Turns out, the problem wasn't as grave as I originally believed--or at least I don't think it is.

After calming down from my initial panic of being responsible for a sudden mass-crashing of blogs everywhere (ha, how I flatter myself that my readership is that large), I went back and studied the critique on my code, and it seems I left out one </span> directly at the end of the code in Step 2 of my instructions. If you look now, you'll see that it's been added. Wait, I'm going to break my own rule of No Overexuberance with Multicolored Fonts and make this forgotten bit of code a bright hussy pink so nobody will miss it.

Sorry for all the mad flapping and the slip-up everybody.

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Hydrangea Galore

Edward giving the hydrangea a personal blessing

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Solution to Expandable Post Problem

Latest Update: Great big apologies: I left out one </span> in Step 2 below. I've since added this missing </span> in bold coral pink--you can't miss it.

Previous posts:
September 2004 - Wrote to Blogger Help but it's been days and still no word. Was wondering if anyone knows how to prevent the "Read more here" link from appearing after every single post. I just want it to appear for posts where there actually IS more to read. Ho hum.

16 June 2005- Help from Blogger Help never came. Or, do I recall receiving a message to the effect of, "There is no solution. Live with it."--yeah, maybe that was it.

Anyhow, you may or may not have noticed that I figured it out. Not by myself, but with the aid of the excellent Blogger Forum. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the original thread *, so I am going to have to actually use my brain and attempt to recollect what the heck I did, because Obachan asked, and I'm something of a sucker for a call for help (even if my assistance if often of the incompetent, and sometimes even erroneous, variety). Heh, now you are all terrified to take my advice, yes?

Sadly, I'm all you've got--believe me, I Googled. Okay, let's begin, class [mwa ha ha!].

1. Go to your blogger Template. Right before </style>, paste the following:
   
   <MainOrArchivePage>
   span.fullpost {display:none;}
   </MainOrArchivePage>
   
   <MainOrArchivePage>
   span.shortpost {display:none;}
   </MainOrArchivePage>
   
   <ItemPage>
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
   </ItemPage>



2. After <$BlogItemBody>, paste:
   
   <MainOrArchivePage><br />
   <a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">Read more!</a>
   </MainOrArchivePage></span>
   
   
3. Save your template and republish the blog.



4. Go to Settings, then Formatting, then scroll down the page to find Post Template. Whatever you type in this text box will appear in each new draft. Type in:
   
   <span class="fullpost"></span>
   
   and (in the following line to prevent confusion):
   
   <span class="shortpost">.



5. Here comes the extra work. When you click Create (new post), you'll see both <span class="fullpost"></span> and <span class="shortpost">.
   
   If you write a short post, and don't want the "Read more!" link, then erase <span class="fullpost"></span> from your draft and make sure <span class="shortpost"> is at the very end of your post.
   
   If you write a long post, then erase <span class="shortpost">. Paste <span class="fullpost"> where you want the "Read more!" link to appear, and paste </span> at the very end of your post.

Make sense? God I hope so.

I really am incompetent when it comes to HTML and coding however, so if you follow my directions and things don't work out, I truly recommend asking someone over at the Blogger Forum. The people over there are very nice and almost all my blogging questions have been answered by them.

*I did find a different thread, but the person's suggested solution sounded a lot more complicated than what I do, so I think my way is better.

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Questions that Cause My Brow to Crinkle Adorably

While some people sit and ponder philosophical matters, I sit and ponder:

Why...

1. would people with hairy armpits use stick deodorant? Does the waxy stuff somehow fight and claw its way through the thicket to reach the skin beneath?



2. do people who go on a diet that cuts out one of the major food groups think that (a) this is a good idea and (b) they could possibly maintain such a diet without eventually [i] going bald/toothless from malnutrition (which strikes me as counterproductive to the most common goal of dieting) or [ii] caving like a big pile of rocks?



3. don't men fight for widespread acceptance of skirt-wearing? Women fought to wear pants, and I believe skirts are just as worthy. They're so much more comfortable and well-ventilated than pants, especially on hot summer days. You'd think, with all those sperm in danger of overheating, that guys would wish to get with the program.



4. does synchronized swimming have to propagate an overall atmosphere of a psychotic military-run funhouse? I think what those women can do is an athletic miracle. Yet for reasons I cannot fathom, they feel the need to ridiculize (yes, my word) the dignity of the sport with the goose-step march to the pool, the hair that looks like they practiced too close to an oil spill, the painted dummy grins, and the menacing music compounded by a lot of exploding in and out of the water with "grrrr" arms and clawed hands. Whenever I watch synchronized swimming, I want to focus on the athletes' skill, but I end up helplessly distracted by the theatrics instead.



5. before the pesky existence of borders and mean customs officers, when humans were free nomads traversing the earth, did a bunch of us decide the Arctic would be a neat place to settle? I imagine these people, wandering further and further north, witnessing the steady recession of most life-forms, and they thought what? This is great. Let's keep going until we're engulfed on all sides by blinding-white landscape, where we'll never have sex naked ever again, and we'll eat mostly frozen things as chapped as our faces? I know there are people out there who love cold weather, and maybe we were a little more hirsute back then--but I'm talking about the very beginning. If life was once all about the most basic survival, wouldn't wanting to move to a place that cold be like having an evolutionarily suicidal gene? Obviously I've forgotten everything I ever learned in social studies class--except how sailors used to get scurvy; and also pemmican (like an energy bar made with powdered meat, berries, and fat)--so I'm sure there's a painfully obvious answer behind this migration mystery.

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Slow Sweet Sips

Yesterday, I woke in the middle of a dream about the cherry liqueur described by the protagonist Framboise in the book Five Quarters of the Orange *: eventually, the alcohol seeps through the drupe to penetrate the stone, drawing out the scent of almonds, she explains.

It's not surprising I'm dreaming of liqueur. The next season is already looming and the signs are everywhere: the blossoming balls of hydrangea, the bags of ume (Japanese apricots) in the supermarket, cherries getting cheaper (100 yen per 100 grams--a miracle!). It's the rainy season! This means two things: seriously soggy people and homemade ume shu--lumps of rock sugar and tart ume steeped in shochu--and maybe ume boshi if you're a fanatical Japanese Martha Stewart type. I tried making ume shu three years ago, but tragically, my husband's fear of the two little jars I have stashed at the back of the kitchen cabinet has infected me as well. Let's just say I wasn't terribly thorough in the sterilizing of those jars.

But that's old news. This year, my dreams are telling me to give cherries a go. I did a search on making cherry liqueur and I was rather disappointed when many of the recipes suggested piercing the cherries and/or crushing the cherry pits with a hammer to speed the process along. Such a no-nonsense approach ruins the appeal, which for me is the idea of whole unmarred cherries suspended in alcohol, the two initially trading colors--the alcohol staining red, the cherries bleaching white**; and finally after half a decade (or so), the natural and inexorable surrender of the seeds' perfume. What fun would there be in pulverizing everything for more immediate results and losing half the treasure: those whole cherries, plump with liqueur, and perfect for adding to ice creams and--as the book that pervaded my dreams suggested--crepes?

I did eventually find a recipe for whole Cherry Schnapps, but now that the dream has lots its immediate grip and I'm wondering where the heck I'll be geographically in half a decade (or so), I don't know if such long-term plans fit into my life.

Alternately, summer and the aromatic peach (with its also almondy, albeit supposedly poisonous, stone) is just a couple of months away. Bourbon peach tart, anyone?

*In case you were wondering, Five Quarters of the Orange (by Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat) was a pretty damn depressing read and Framboise a stoic, unsympathetic character--though maybe that's just me not being able to handle "serious" books--but the bits that focused on food were pretty wonderful.

**At least this is how I imagine it--I'm not sure that the cherries really do turn white.

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Crack That Whip!

This news is a little late, but remember when I got all conscience-ridden, which prompted a lot of vague things, one of which was to eventually write to Oxfam? Well, I'm now an Oxfam volunteer--and I say this with no proud puffing out of chest. Maybe even a slight chest deflation.

When I received a reply to my inquiry about volunteering, I was thrilled silly because, one, they replied and, two, they didn't tell me to "go away, you pitiful non-Japanese-speaker, you." In fact, I was so pepped, I agreed to a 10am (ouch*) meeting, I dutifully did my reading on Oxfam, and I even debated with myself as to whether to wear a skirt to the "interview."

Turns out I could have been spared the wrenching torment of an early rising, I didn't need to wear the skirt, and it wasn't an interview. The meeting I attended a few weeks back was not, as I'd assumed, an interview but an orientation. I was not being asked to come in to fill a position several times a week; instead I was pointed to a shelf of brochures and told, "Do whatever you like." With perhaps one or two full-time staff, Oxfam Japan is extremely new and virtually unheard of in this country. In fact, from what was explained to me during the orientation, they were having a hard enough time that, just last year, a foreign volunteer group was created in the hope that the Japanese public would be inspired to get more rigorously involved. Because it is the support of the Japanese people that is needed; most foreigners just don't stick around long enough.

There seem to be quite a few volunteers, but everyone does his or her own thing at his or her own pace. It is this casual flexibility that has allowed me to be so readily welcomed, and for that I'm grateful. But--and here comes the big, horrifying revelation--I fear I won't accomplish anything in this environment. It's not that I lack initiative--okay, yes, I lack initiative. Why do you think it took me 27 years just to admit that I need to actually *do something*? Hell, if I were brimming with solutions as to how to be more socially/politically active, wouldn't I have done something by now? It's not like I've simply been waiting to don a lime-green Oxfam t-shirt or to be told to "Do whatever you like" in order to burst into action.

Please don't get me wrong. Ignore my bitchy attack of the lime-green (which in fact is rather fresh and charming). I don't fault Oxfam Japan--they're doing the best they can on extremely limited resources. And don't think I'm apathetic. I want so much to help in any way I can. But I had hoped for a bit of direction, a bit of a crash-course intro into everything. I'd imagined ongoing projects that I'd assist with and through which I'd learn a bit about the workings of an NPO. Instead, I got what felt like a brisk handshake and a "So long and good luck!" Not even a pink Mary Kay starter kit, damn it. What worries me is that I don't feel that my situation is any different from when I was first flapping my hands about, uselessly crying, "What should I do?"

And now that I've grumbled a bit, now I've got to figure out what the heck to do, start setting projects for myself, because it would seem that Oxfam Japan is what I've got to work with, and if I don't act soon, I'll just get lost in one great big dither. I'm a ditherer! And a slacker. I am the Goddess of Slackery. Anyone feel like helping to crack a whip over this goddess's head? I need all the help I can get.

Note to foreigners in Japan: Don't be discouraged by my dung-headed pessimism. If you've got more energy and creativity than me--you do, trust me--please join Oxfam and help with what I think is the most crucial mission at this time: to increase awareness of the organization, particularly among the Japanese people. Or, as I was encouraged: Do whatever you like!

*You may roll your eyes, but 10am is no laughing matter. I sleep at around 4:30am, have a dog that needs to be walked, and live an hour's commute from anywhere. For me, waking up at 7am is like asking someone with a nine-to-five job to wake up at 4am. Seriously!

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Anthropomorphism My Ass

Edward: I look like I'm posing for a Polident commercial...

...but inside, I'm really crying.

Hmmm, okay, no, inside I'm also smiling.

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