Issue 1, Vol 1

The publication I'm managing is out! When I opened the package I couldn't tell if they were brochures or the journal itself. They are so small! They look so disconcertingly new and different from the other journals that I was quite confounded, while the editor in Oz seems rather amused. He says they're "really cute", while I call them the "fat little booklets". Nothing much beats holding your effort and hard work in your own hands, minty new.

Things that I like (I)

I like....

....being at the edge of consciousness, the place of twilight and dawn. Where up is down, heat is ice, and where illusion and truth exist side by side. Where dark emptiness expands into infinity only to be filled to the brim by swirls of colourful notions. It is the runway where fantastical thoughts take flight, the realm where dreamscape and reality are so intertwined that I can no longer tell them apart.

Like a feather on a paper's edge, pining for the encouragement of a gentle breath to drift and fall away.

I was nodding gently on the train, which was stoically carrying me to the other side, rocking me to sleep. I heard a voice in front of me, filling my head. I wish I could say the voice has a melodious lilt, but it was flat, with no pointy pronunciation, no sing-song intonation. It was just a sweet, flat voice from a sweet, unseen girl. It soothed me tremendously, and I'll never tire of the voice, I thought. She was talking to her friend and yet she was talking to me too. I heard every word, but I understood none. Every word is empty, so I filled them with my own story. I don't fret over it.

My stop approaches, I had to wake. I pulled myself back from the edge and searched the faces in front of me. So many faces, whose voice was it? Should I compliment her? How to? But the voice has melted away. Or did I imagine it? Who knows?

A hiatus from a timeout

Fact of the day: The shark has to keep swimming to draw enough oxygen into its gills and to stay afloat. Stop moving, and it perishes.

A friend from journalism school has just started a blog and her latest post was about the timeouts in her life, you know, the times when you throw your hands up and said: "Enough!" and quit something because you got tired of it, or you were too busy, or because there were too many obstacles. It could be any reason, really.

It was beautifully written and it made me ponder a bit, when I really should be working on an anthology. Aack!

How many times have I called for timeouts? And timeout from what? One of them was similar to my friend's--we both stopped writing with our own voices because our jobs don't call for that. She works for a transport authority, and spends her time writing apologetic letters to the public (I think). I turned into a cleaner instead, picking up after other people's messes which they call writing: straightening out their warped and crinkled sentences, and discarding the grammatical mistakes they litter all over the prose.

I once complained to a colleague that I never get to produce anything that I can call my own work. It's always about helping others to get published. Whether I get acknowledged for my contribution is entirely up to the generosity of the author and editor.

But at least we've both addressed the interruption by setting up blogs. A fellow blogger gave this piece of advice to anyone who's striving to hone a skill (including writing): don't stop; keep at it even if most of the stuff that you churn out are mediocre. Surely something prized will emerge from the chaff.

Not that I disagree, but I think sometimes it's OK to take a short break. (I don't believe that sharks don't sleep, OK?) After all, it could be a timeout-or-burnout kind of situation. I remember being so drained from writing for a travel publication during my internship that I basically flipped and my, erm, medical condition worsened. I think if not for the enforced hiatus, my friend and I would not have been able to appreciate the pleasure that writing brings us. It's knowing when to get back into the game that's essential.

But that's easy to say and hard to carry out. It's easy to get carried away by the flow of current preoccupations and distractions; it's hard to overcome inertia and to get yourself into swing of things again, like stretching muscles shrivelled from disuse (ouch). Or trying to join the main traffic flow from a slip road during a traffic jam. Dumb analogy, but it keeps swimming in my head and I had to get it out of the system, sorry.

So call for a timeout if you want to, but stay nimble, and keep in sight the road ahead of you.

Some interview notes

Going for job interviews are always harrowing experiences for a lot of people. It's quite interesting when you're at the other side of the table--it's not as nerve-wrecking but still exhausting in a way. It's like, all your senses have to be on high alert to order to sniff out the best from the average.

I (and 2 others) interviewed 4 candidates for a position last week. And of course my colleagues pleaded with me to flex my incredible people reading skills and M'B'T'I the candidates within the 20-mins interviews, which I did, to their everlasting amazement. (I think I shall start charging for this service. Please dial 1900-M'B'T'I-SUCKER for more info). One of them was a clear winner. It didn't hurt that she graduated from H*rv*rd and that she draws very well, which is a great assest as we want her to take charge of an e-magazine.

She has a great smile and seemed so at ease that she put us at ease. I always thought that to score points at an interview, you have to maintain a strict level of professionalism and keep to the issue at hand. But she was a natural, punctuating the interview with little anecdotes that don't even pertain to the interview at hand.

Especially if you're a fresh graduate, all you have to offer are basically a great personality and oodles of enthusiasm. She had an answer to every question we threw at her, no doubt due in part to her super-power brain (why else would she be able to study in freakin' H*rv*rd?), but I think also because she really does have something to offer here. Other things that I observed:

• at least for us, extra-curricular activities are really peripheral in our considerations, unless it's directly relevant to the position. So no point wasting your $ zapping piles of certs of participation in tree hugging etc and waving them in our faces. It smacks of desperation to impress, or to make up for your inferior academic grades.
• I wasn't very concerned about school grades, but my colleague was. I guess they do attest to some degree a person's diligence and commitment to work.
• The interviewer shouldn't talk more than you. Don't think that just because you keep quiet I won't be able to M'B'T'I you, sneak.
• It's OK to profess ignorance in certain things, but there're good and bad ways of doing it. The good way would be to perhaps talk about your proficiency in other (similar) things and how you picked them up quickly as you're a fast learner and you adopt a positive attitude. The bad way? "I dunno." *shrug
• Don't ask banal questions like your working hours and career prospects, or what kind of personality traits the organisation is looking for. What use are of these questions to us? Put it bluntly, the interview is for our benefit. We choose you, not the other way, usually. Instead, show your interest in us, ask questions to show that you've done your research about the organisation, and wants to know more.

Question for everyone

Because I've been doing quite a bit of reminiscing in the previous posts, I'm just curious to know about other people's experiences with this nebulous entity called memory. So here's a question:

What was your first piece of memory about? And how old were you then? Let's talk!