Now completely addicted to having an external monitor hooked to my laptop. It means you can work on twice as many things at once without the delays and the "what was I going to do...?" problems when you don't have a visual in front of you. In fact, I feel hobbled when I'm just out with my laptop.
I also use an external ergonomic keyboard. I'd never be able to type anything of length on a laptop.
My fellow admin in the Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group at LinkedIn prompted us for insights from last season's private mastermind sessions. "List one thing you applied using the feedback you received and the results you witnessed after putting it into practice," writes Tara Agacayak. "If you did not have the opportunity to present your case study, you are welcome to list one thing you applied that you learned in the process of this mastermind that has brought you results."
My response:
My mastermind question was about monetizing expat+HAREM (and I got tons of great suggestions and debate from you all!). The most impactful thing that emerged was that regardless of what my people will tell me they want (when I send out the survey!), my success will hinge on the idea of partnering with people who have related yet different businesses and have high-quality, appropriate products and services to offer.
I may know something is valuable in my arena when I see it -- but that doesn't mean I have the time or energy to create it from scratch myself. I can be a conduit for that product or service, and in partnering with others I can co-brand the thing. And over time, I can grow my community based on those offerings rather than the free ones -- "a small band of givers rather than a lot of takers".
An example of where you see that impact today is in the "Build Your Global Niche" program I am creating with Tara, the mastermind demo we did this month for the International Pro Women of Istanbul and the tutorial mailing list we started. They are early steps to a larger plan for eH, which is about preparing expat+HAREM readers to be a cohesive, actualized community putting a creative entrepreneur web platform to use in their location (and monoculture?) independent lives. To solve their problems with the very tools that are solving ours. To give them access to the people who ring our bells...and in turn to give those bell-ringers access to an appropriate community for their offerings. Win-win.
+++
Among the other enlightening, and empowering results reported:
"I have integrated the main social media tools with my website and I have added posterous to the main tools to work with." (To this I say: that's some integration that not only makes you more visible but also saves you energy in the syndication of content!)
"I re-organized my twitter, creating more strategic and useful lists. I started tweeting other things besides news." (To this I say: I felt your presence on Twitter so much more recently. Kudos for finding a Twitter third party service that lets you do things your way.)
"With your suggestions and guidance I simplified my offerings into two categories - Free and Premium."
"By creating a website for purely professional purposes I ended up getting a great deal more interest in my services on eLance. By redoing the header on my site I find that people spend more time on the website than they had been doing." (To this I say: great you're able to point to those concrete, quantifiable results from the advances you've made (email responses, view time on site).)
"I had a fairly fixed idea of how I wanted my site to be before the session. Afterwards I was questioning every single aspect of it! It really helped to have other people's input, to see where they thought I should head and how to arrange the site. That's the beauty of this group, positive criticism that can change how you approach things." (To this I say: can't wait to see how your site turns out with those added dimensions in the process of creating it!)
"My biggest win has been creating a cohesive visual hub. From that unity, I've been able to start weaving a very colorful picture in images, not just words. Using fun tools like Picasa/Picnik, Animoto (my new fav way to tell stories, which you'll be seeing with my Kickstarter relaunch this month) and taking new photos of our product on Etsy as well as new portraits of our main product - us! - have changed the site dramatically and increased Etsy sales. So, pulling together the visuals our brand projects to the world has been key, thanks to all of you!"
Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). These are my thoughts on a session dealing with social media anxiety.
My first thought is *use automating tools* so you can stock your feeds at your convenience, decide when the info goes out and where to, and you don't have to visit the sites to post. Much less overwhelm. I use SOCIAL OOMPH for my twitterfeed. It's free, and dead simple. (I also post extemporaneously, but for purposes of this response on automation, that doesn't matter.) Social Oomph allows me to enter as many posts as I want, choose the time and date. Hashtags. Only thing I can't do is post the same tweet twice or "@" replies. You use Networked Blogs at Facebook, I see, great. Email mailing providers also let you post a link to FB and Twitter. You can hook up LinkedIn to Twitter to post at LI your Tweets. For Twitter if you try a third party app like HootSuite or Seesmic or Tweetdeck you can break your subscriptions into categories and only peruse one category at a time. "Friends", "Photographers". "China." That might help you dip a toe in.
Also, you can create a category based on a search term so you can easily respond to tweets on your favorite topics without having to wade through lots of material. So, my first advice is USE SOME FORM OF AUTOMATION on each platform and alternate it with spontaneous contributions, reactions to others, replies. (There is such a thing as overdoing it, and obviously not being present which makes people feel they are being pushed at by a machine.) On the Twitter site itself you can use "Lists" to group your subscriptions and only peruse what one list is tweeting. Personally I have used lists to expand who I follow without making my main stream 10,000 people strong! Here is a good list of "power twitter tips" from Chris Brogan "in five categories: intent, technical, business, integrated usage, and off-twitter. Here's a post about "How to overcome the concern that social media is a time suck" with tips on strategic following and here's a personal branding checklist for Twitter usage. Someone here mentioned to weed out tweeters who 'don't say thanks'. To me, I'd rather not read tweets solely thanking people -- empty tweets that say "thanks for the RT!" are a last case scenario. Sometimes I do it when I'm falling behind, but it's of little value.
You might like this latest post from TRIBAL WRITER's Justine Musk about building an author platform with social media (whether you're an 'author' or not). She writes that the path comes partly from 'strategy' and partly from following your instinct. Figuring out why you're driven to write (or whatever else creative thing you're doing) and sharing that "inkling, which will lead to other inklings, which lead the way. You'll promote your own work while you're at it." Musk also she talks about how your blog is your hub, and all these other sites are spokes where you meet your network. "And those different platforms require different forms of content. But you can take your big content – long blog entries, or ebooks or whitepapers — and break it into smaller chunks and bites and tweets. You can take your small content and explode it into something more in-depth. You can transcribe your podcasts and post on your blog; you can tweet cool quotes from your video interviews; you get the idea. Your content feeds your content feeds your content." In a recent Third Tribe seminar Sonia Simone interviewed Naomi Dunsford who said "scare off the people who aren't interested". That could be by your topic alone, your attention to detail, your tone, your seriousness or flippancy, whatever. But basically, you need your people to gather, and how will they know if they're you're people if you're holding back and trying to please everyone? You mentioned not wanting to break down your blog posts. Here's a list of 40 things you can tweet that aren't derived from your blog postings. Good ideas, show the depth of experience and expertise you can demonstrate.
I'm starting a *completely irregular* newsletter about my cultural entertainment productions and all the wild places they're taking us plus my thoughts on the ever-changing media/entertainment world.
In a variety of formats, I'm developing five hybrid projects about identity, culture, relationships. Art historic soap operas of imperial proportion. Funny truths of family culture clash. Personal epic of friendship and healing.
Along the way you can select which of those five you want to hear more of, which project you'd like to follow more closely, what kind of notifications you want. Like: "Just tell me when I can download your Ottoman Princess 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding-meets-Meet the Parents' ebook comedy to the iPad!"
* You may not yet be familiar with my wider body of work, but you probably guessed my beat of women, culture, and history, with an emphasis on personal dynamics, from one family to entire hemispheres.
Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). Once a week someone steps into the center with a case study and asks for feedback and suggestions on their next steps. Here are my thoughts on building out a writing and artist platform:
I use Wordpress and Tumblr (simply as a feed of my blog, microblog and Delicious activities). It seems moving to Tumblr or Posterous might make things much simpler for you as a blogger-- they seem easy/breezy as blogging platforms -- whereas Wordpress's wider capabilities will encourage building a bigger site with more going on. So, since you're talking growth and not just 'make it easier' then I'd say Wordpress.
As for platform building, where are you meeting and engaging with potential readers of your novel (besides Twitter, SheWrites, Facebook, LI, your blog)? Any communities out there specific to the topics in your novel? Taking part in reader-based litchats on Twitter would be another way to start being known as the woman behind the voice that people will be able to read when your book comes out. (Consider posting small excerpts of the book so we know what it's about and grow connected to it?)
Maybe someone here can share leads to artists, writers, cultural curators that you are aware of online -- if you know of them, they're doing something right to get your attention.
As for making the hybrid nature of your work clearer through your platform, I'm reminded of the blog convention of another multifaceted woman: Ruth Harnisch. She breaks down the different channels of her being and lets that be the structure of her site. "The Maker of Mistakes". "The Philanthropist". "The Catalyst". "The Recovering Journalist". Perhaps something like this might allow you to indulge your interests and help a visitor to your site/blog comprehend your better?
The expatharem site has sold books through its Amazon link -- in the first couple of years of the site. The #s since I relaunched the blog are too tiny to count for anything and that may be a result of the maturity of the book or the fact that I don't push it much on the site, and/or people aren't coming to the blog to buy the book or learn more about it. However, yes, making things available to our interested parties is part of making what we do a business. We have to make the offer. It's relevant. However, I also know being on twitter has sold books. People I met there, people who found out about the book on twitter (like during #litchat on expat lit).
Also: here's a great interview with a 'unmarketing' book author about how he built both a support system and a target audience on Twitter and presold 3,000 copies of his book. Good lessons there about how to engage and when to sell.
In response to your question about using your own name as a brand, an SEO specialist I know from ThirdTribe (@CraigFifield) just offered an impromptu SEO consult on Twitter before the end of his workday/workweek. I took the liberty to ask him for an opinion on this, in general terms. Here’re the tweets (which overlap, as Twitter does)....
CF: i have 15min before I quit for the day -- how can I help you with SEO or your Blog?
AA: wd someone's name be a better blog name for SEO than tagline about art and the creative life?
CF: in terms of SEO I would use a keyword that people are searching for. Or, I would go for branding and ignore SEO
AA: that is, are proper names SEO at all? and generally used words and phrases amount to very little in SEO world?
AA: so in researching keywords "creative life" what result would prompt good use of that phrase in blog title?
CF: depends how your audience uses those words. I would do some keyword research to decide. do you have an example?
AA: ok think i got it! (branding with a proper name means SEO considerations unnecessary)
CF: well, unless your brand will eventually be big enough to be searched on :) make your brand name unique to win there
Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group).
If you were to create a blog to sell this skill I imagine you sharing resources, techniques, news about the grant writing process and opportunities. Examples and lessons drawn from your own experiences consulting others. Taking questions from your readers and addressing the answers in a post, all the while very clearly offering your consulting services -- more of the same high value understanding of the field, and personalized attention for the client -- at the end of each post, in the side bar. Offering a teleclass on the basics of grant writing. selling small ebooks with up-to-date resources and your guidance on various elements of grantwriting, and considerations for different sectors.
I bet you could knock out 20 topics you'd want to cover in a blog series, and that would get you very well started. try making a list of catchy headlines to peg the subject matter... "Grants, in this economy?!" "The secret of getting a grant" etc.
I'm not familiar with the territory but you might like to distinguish yourself from the other grant writing consultants out there -- so a bit of research to see what they're doing and how you might like to approach it differently. what you know/care about that they don't. personally, i'd love to see you bring a little of your personality to this business -- if it's at all possible. Who needs dry info when they can get a little zing with solid advice? It could be simply in the language you use to talk to your readers about what might be a dry subject.
I would love to learn more about grants *I* could get! Bet we all would. You could be the cool educator of your audience. How about targeting the audience you already have -- and help them find grants to do the work they love -- rather than splitting off to service a different group of people?
Check out the cool shelf of books (including my Expat Harem, and my college pal Lisa Lemole Oz's US: Transforming Ourselves and the Relationships That Matter Most, and my Twitter acquaintance Maryam Montague's Marrakesh By Design) from Victoria C. Rowan's Ideasmyth clients.
I've worked with Victoria as a holistic creative consultant since I did her journalism bootcamp at Mediabistro in 2001. (Victoria launched Mediabistro's media training program.)
Later I joined her writing critique groups for 40 weeks, and then I was a private writing coaching client.
Her workshops focus on "development of craft, professional writing habits, editing skills, communication skills, marketplace savvy, career development, and life/creativity management in that order."
From Andrea Martins' ExpatWomen.com Creative Entrepreneurship Through Social Media: The Case Studies of Anastasia Ashman and Tara Lutman Agacayak
Anastasia and Tara are expat women entrepreneurs who have used social media to successfully grow their businesses and online profiles. We asked these two progressive business women to write an article for us, sharing their experiences and tips.
Interestingly, whilst they both herald from the same part of Northern California and both currently live in Turkey, their paths did not cross until they met on Twitter.
Creative entrepreneurship means thinking innovatively to both create a business and to promote it. Expatriate women make ideal creative entrepreneurs because they usually require flexible and fluid work to fit their lifestyle (which typically means that they need to be creative in their business concept) and they are increasingly internet and social media savvy (which means that they are typically more willing to use social media creatively, to promote them themselves and their business).
Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, together with easy-to-use blogging systems remove many of the personal disempowerments far-flung expat women have traditionally experienced. They can also be powerful professional tools, especially for expat entrepreneurs. The niche nature and 24/7 cycle of the web can diminish cultural, linguistic, geographic and time zone disadvantages to both career development and entrepreneurial endeavours abroad.
Social media makes it easier to create these one-of-a-kind businesses by helping define and embody your brand, whether you are a writer, a coach, a consultant, a photographer or so on. Applications and tools such as blogs, Twitter and YouTube enable you to extend your brand across the web and convey your multi-media message in text, video or graphics. You can monitor your brand, see how others connect with it, and evolve it as your expat journey transforms you. Well-curated Tweetdeck and Hootsuite columns and specialized LinkedIn groups provide access to state-of-the-industry practices, trending thought, and leading players in your field of business, as well as the opportunity to become known as the experts that you probably are.
How Do We Use Social Media?
The best way to explain how social media might be able to help you and/or your business, is to share with you our own real-life case studies…
Case Study One: Tara Lutman Agacayak
Anastasia: Tara, going online solved your information technology (IT) career disruption after accompanying your husband to a small town in Turkey. How?
Tara: I first started experimenting with online sales by offering trinkets on eBay. Shortly afterward I started Citara's, an online boutique selling handmade Turkish products with my husband. Setting up an independent retail site was entirely different than selling through a hosted site like eBay. Getting our products in front of the right people required a unique set of tactics on the web. In this new attention economy, social networking and content marketing became vital to our online business. Citara’s started as a static website, but the brand has extended to a Twitter handle and Facebook page. We have also partnered with a non-profit called Nest where we donate a portion of sales to their microloan program generating funds for women's craft-based businesses. The work we do is editorialized through our blog and disseminated through channels we have set up on Twitter, Facebook and Kirtsy.
After building an offline network of artisans in Turkey I partnered with my expat friend Figen Cakir to start Behind the Bazaar, a site promoting independent artists and designers in Istanbul. It relies solely on social networking for digital word of mouth marketing. Using our blog as a content hub we offer a unique perspective on the local creative community. Content is then re-broadcast and re-packaged through Twitter, LinkedIn groups, and our Facebook page. We also act as experts on Localyte providing – an alternative view of Istanbul through the eyes of its artists.
Last year, Figen and I also started Intarsia Concept (IC) as a place for people to congregate and share resources for building creative businesses. Many creative entrepreneurs are their own entities. They manage their own PR, define their brand, and handle their own marketing and customer service. We envisioned IC as a supportive and informative environment for those starting their own creative businesses. Using our blog to centralize content we extend conversations out to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and bookmarking sites like Kirtsy and Delicious. I monitor HARO (Help A Reporter Out) requests for press opportunities and respond to questions on LinkedIn and Twitter. I engage in forums and groups on Ladies Who Launch to look for opportunities to collaborate or barter services.
Social networking is not just about getting your message out, but about opening two-way channels of communication and listening as much as you speak. It is the opportunity to learn from the greater community and create win-win opportunities.
Case Study Two: Anastasia Ashman
Tara: Anastasia, your writing and cultural entertainment-producing career is built on the publishing world's "author platform". What does this mean and how is it related to social media?
Anastasia: I have been location-independent for eleven years, arriving in Istanbul from New York City in 2003, after Southeast Asia in the ‘90s where internet access revolutionized my estranged life. I virtually compiled and edited the book Tales from the Expat Harem with Jennifer Gokmen, through email with more than 40 people in four different time zones. My second book and cross-media projects like intellectual global nomad salons and screen development of Ottoman and Byzantine princess stories require a vast rebuild of web presence and activity.
The publishing concept for launching a career – the author platform – is a good model for the globally mobile woman entrepreneur. In order to make sales, land assignments, get project funding, attract collaborators and partners, a professional needs to demonstrate her platform of influence and credibility. She needs to pinpoint her market, get substantial attention, deliver the goods, including: a targeted mailing list; an audience; and alliances with others with similar audiences; access to media outlets (generating her own newsletters, blogs, podcasts); making appearances; and other speaking engagements.
To this end, social media offers opportunities to build a more robust and far-reaching platform with fewer resources. I interact with readers, agents, marketers and publishers in live chats on Twitter, meet peers in networks like SheWrites, TravelBlogExchange and the small business community Biznik, while SocialMention and Google alert me to people discussing my subject matter so I can join the conversation. I share thought leadership with fellow writers, travelers, globalists and culturati by posting favorite web finds to Twitter and Facebook feeds, and bookmarking them at Delicious. I upload presentations to SlideShare, and contribute to LinkedIn groups for: filmmaking; my college alumnae; the expat life; Turkish business; blogging; and digital publishing.
On my main sites I develop my own material, community and skills. I revolve ideas about female identity, history and culture at my individual blog, and foster relationships with my global niche of Turkophiles, intentional travelers and hybrid lifestylers as founder of the expat+HAREM group blog. Technology helps me amplify with syndication to Networked Blogs at Facebook, to Kindle, my LinkedIn profile, and Amazon Author Central. My ultimate goal is to create viral events – a worldwide rave for my most shareable ideas and properties – where my network voluntarily distributes my digital content to their connections, deriving their own meaning and use, telling my story their way. As I locate, interact with and help interested parties across the web, I create my ideal word-of-mouth market worldwide.
Anastasia & Tara’s Social Media Tips
Do:
Don’t:
Think Long-Term
The good news is that if you are patient, dedicated, committed, giving and authentic, you
will
will
will
Anastasia Ashman aims to further the worldwide cultural conversation, raising the feminine voice on issues of culture and history, self improvement and the struggle for identity – from one family to entire hemispheres.
Tara Lutman Agacayak works with creative entrepreneurs around the world in multiple facets to craft viable and lucrative businesses.
January 2010
Additional Resources:
My comments from a discussion thread at the private forum for expat entrepreneurs run by Karen Armstrong: You can find me on Facebook (which I'm using increasingly more as a place to share what I'm reading, thinking, what I'm doing, etc -- and created recently an Expat Harem page which still needs a lot more love), Linked-In (which I've begun to join in forum discussions here and there) and Twitter.
With Twitter I'm back in school (taking business courses, marketing and media affairs), I'm at summer camp, I've rejoined the publishing industry, and making new filmmaker friends, and following peripheral interests through the lives of people more devoted, taking part in live discussions about literature, editing, branding, virtually attending conferences and events like yesterday's brown bag luncheon thrown by Random House on the topic of digital publishing.
The other two sites have their purposes but nothing touches Twitter.
Brainstorming with a friend about a connection- and gathering-based global community we want to build for ourselves.... An intimate yearly salon of thought-leaders, change makers, cultural creatives, and humanists for sustained conversations with other globally-mobile progressives.
My Near Eastern archaeology baccalaureate program ended with Constantine founding New Rome at Byzantium. I left the Byzantine world undiscovered when I forgot my college diploma in a rental car and professionally drifted toward pop-culture...tv, music, film. Later when I married a Turk and moved to Istanbul it was natural to neglect Constantinople’s first millennium since Ottoman civilization felt much closer to home. Then in the summer of 2007 near the aqueduct of Valens, I stumbled over a patch of lumpy turf and found a forgotten footnote to the world’s most famous Byzantine landmark.
Opposite the glass Istanbul Municipality building, a triangular plot of land on Atatürk Bulvarı was inexplicably not developed. Perhaps I could use it. I needed another attraction to round out the Süleymaniye-area walking tour I was creating for National Geographic Traveler. Travel historian Saffet Emre Tonguç confirmed the overgrown archaeological site above the Haşim Işcan underpass was indeed notable if not much to look at. The sixth century remains of Anicia Juliana’s palace church, Haghios Polyeuktos. I needed more detail. Not for me of course, for National Geographic.
My friend Edda Renker Weissenbacher, author of books on the Chora church and Iznik tiles, added that the massive ruin, mostly unexcavated, represented a social grudge of royal proportion. A little research showed that the obscure-sounding princess Juliana of the Anicii (462-529) was the wealthiest and most aristocratic resident of Constantinople. She could trace her roots to Constantine the Great and counted other Western and Eastern Roman emperors in her lineage. But the glory was coming to an unbearable end. Offered the throne when a revolt seemed likely her husband, a general, ran off in fear. Her only son had married into the ruling emperor’s family yet the commoners Justin and his nephew Justinian ascended to the throne instead.
Juliana struck back with the most patrician of socio-political weapons: faith-based art and architecture patronage. By 527 she had enlarged her ancestral church, making it the capital city’s vastest and richest. Carved with pomegranate flowers, cherubim, palmette -- and peacocks, the symbol of empresses – in pointed ways it proclaimed her fitness for the throne. At the 2006 Byzantine Studies Congress art historian Matthew Canepa described Juliana’s use of Oriental motifs as the kind of “cross-cultural political savvy” that could only spring from an imperial background, someone familiar with diplomatic gifts and spoils of war from the East.
The project also conveniently sunk her fortune into her own legacy. New peasant dynasts planned to expand the empire but they wouldn’t be doing it on her dime! Kateryna Kovalchuk, a Byzantine doctoral student in Belgium I stalked online, directed me to a 6th century story told by Gregory of Tours which describes Juliana receiving the young Justinian on a fund-raising mission. The princess pointed upwards. Her gold was pounded into tiles and affixed to the church roof.
Recalling that the adjective ‘byzantine’ characterizes elaborate scheming to gain political power, I checked the date of Juliana’s architectural ultimatum. Polyeuktos, described by scholars as perhaps the most decorated building in history, predated the world-changing Haghia Sophia by ten years. Justinian’s response, and response it was indeed, had a much sparer design and was fifty percent bigger. Other irresistible facts: The emperor’s wife and co-ruler Theodora was the daughter of a bearkeeper and a scandalous carny if ancient historian Procopius was to be believed. He sniped in his Secret History that she raised her skirts “to show off her feminine secrets”. My scorned princess -- yes Juliana was now mine -- built a pious hot-seat for a low-born ruler and his checkered-past queen!
I was now officially losing money on the National Geographic assignment as I pored over dig reports in A Temple for Byzantium by Martin Harrison, head of Harvard University’s Center for Byzantine Studies. Mysterious relics are often uncovered in Istanbul but when foundations were dug at the civic center in 1960 the marble arches found were unusually explicit. Greek inscriptions identified a ruin known through literature to historians since at least the 10th century. (The grandiose verses, from the Palatine Anthology’s collection of classical and Byzantine poetry, recounted the construction and dynasty of its patroness.)
Houseguests came to town.
I spirited them to the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, whose Turkish archaeologists also took part in six seasons of excavations at the site. The small H. Polyeuktos section was crowded by a marble column inlaid with amethyst and green and gold glass that once held a canopy over the altar, as well as epigrammed arches decorated with acanthus vines and feathery tails of peacocks. Preeminent Byzantine historian Steven Runciman detected immense meaning in these few Juliana commissions. He thought they display the elusive origin of Byzantine style: the first combination of Roman craftsmanship, Greek balance and Oriental ornamentation, for the purpose of Christian ritual.
If the technique of Polyeuktos was mid-6th century zeitgeist, Juliana upped the ante with its decidedly nostalgic form. Laid out in the Biblical measurement of royal cubit, the floor plan matched a Holy Writ account of King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem – a legendary structure intended to house the Ark of the Covenant and itself modeled after Moses’s moveable Tabernacle. A supremely tough act to follow, even for an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It’s no wonder when Justinian dedicated his Haghia Sophia he exclaimed ‘Solomon, I have surpassed you!’ He meant to best the Queen of Kings down the road.
Along with the throngs, I’ve unwittingly admired her pioneering handiwork scattered in the gardens of the Haghia Sophia and the Topkapı Palace, as well as in the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Three deeply carved basket weave capitals from the Polyeuktos adorn the western façade of the Venetian basilica, while a majestic duo of pomegranate-flowered piers guard its south door across from the Doges Palace – all plundered during the Fourth Crusade. Those knights failed to reach Jerusalem to wrest the Temple of Solomon from the Muslims, but returning with Juliana’s inspired replicas I imagine them rationalizing a mission complete.
My own mission has just begun. Juliana awaits underfoot. Who wants to sign my petition to have the municipality building relocated to a new site?
See my Byzantine princess board at Pinterest, and my Ottoman & Byzantine board.
An art historical soap opera of imperial proportion. (See my Pinterest board of images related to this particular story here.) I've been developing this story since, while creating an Istanbul walking tour for National Geographic Traveler, I literally tripped over the foundations of a social grudge between my superlative-but-forgotten 6th century princess and Justinian -- which prompted the Holy Roman Emperor to build his world-beating Haghia Sophia Church a mile down the road. The man needed to best Anicia Juliana. See my Pinterest board of Byzantine popular culture trends.
Multiple story delivery methods in development.
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My Mediabistro alumni interview with Claire Zulkey for Mediabistro Toolbox. I took Mediabistro's first media program given by creator of the series, Victoria Rowan, in 2005.
I took Parris Island Journalism Boot Camp with Victoria Rowan, Fall 2001, eager to reinvigorate – and focus — my writing career after being laid off from a trade magazine editorship.
Also, like many writers who have not explicitly studied journalism or the business of writing, I knew I could benefit from a more professional approach to the craft.
Yes. One week we interviewed newsworthy acquaintances and tried to sell the profiles. With that material I published a profile/book review/event announcement in the Village Voice — the managing editor’s hybrid idea when I emphasized the curating work my multimedia poet interviewee was doing at St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and an upcoming performance there of a new Brion Gysin book.
Thanks to Victoria’s pragmatic ‘so-what, why this audience, why now’ coaching, emphasizing these elements of my pitch set my subject at the helm of an upcoming event where avant garde artworld legends would be appearing. The right story for the right audience.
I also understood from Bootcamp that I had a time hook most appropriate for a weekly newspaper like the Voice. The editor’s suggestion entailed a lot more work but Bootcamp taught me that if an editor was gracious enough to tell me exactly what he could use all I needed to do was accept the challenge. As Victoria explained, “We’re here to eliminate the reasons an editor has to reject your work.”
MB’s Bootcamp offered operable information about writing and selling in seven genres (personal essays, travel, op-ed, business features, profiles and reviews and tone-dependent pieces like the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town).
I benefited most from Victoria’s deconstructive clarity about composing and selling nonfiction writing — and today it is appreciable how much I learned about piloting a writing career.
Calling all women writers who have lived, worked, studied or traveled in Turkey for at least a year: Contribute your voice to a new anthology of foreign women’s reflections on modern Turkey. Deadline: August 1, 2004 TALES FROM THE EXPAT HAREM: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen
The book aims to be a personal, entertaining read for both students and scholars of Turkey as well as armchair cultural travelers, fans of women’s literature, and expatriates of all stripes.
During Ottoman rule, the word 'harem' (from the word ‘haram’, meaning sacred and forbidden) referred to both the population as well as the living quarters of the foreign-born brides and servants of the Turkish sultan. An intimate and confined community of women, it was a place for sharing womanly wisdom and cultivating cultural tradition.
In this non-fiction anthology we invoke a modern day Turkish harem with its chorus of voices and shared female experience -- in the sense that the expatriate population is naturally cohesive and isolated due to the process of assimilation. Newcomers learning to maneuver within a new set of variables and cultural boundaries necessarily experience a limitation of freedom: language barriers act as an obstacle to travel and independence, cultural naivete hinders social interaction, and ethnocentric rigidity impedes dynamic experience.
Taking the reader on humorous and poignant journeys of cultural contrast and discovery, our contributors break free of the confines of the harem, breaching the confined world of the unassimilated to touch the true heart of Turkey. Whether newly arrived or well-established expatriates, or Turks repatriating to their homeland after a long absence, all our contributors are foreign brides of modern Turkey: wedded to its culture, embedded in it even, and yet forever outsiders.
We are looking for high-quality personal essays, insightful flash non-fiction and colorful travelogue--in English, 2,500 words or less. Unpublished work is preferred, although well-crafted previously published work will be considered.
Further information and to submit work please visit the rudimentary site: www.expatharem.com
Inquiries info@expatharem.com
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CHAPTERS:
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TIPS FOR WRITERS
We prefer personal essays with evocative language and dialogue, detailed description that sets the scene and sketches the people. You may have heard this type of writing referred to as creative or literary nonfiction – facts conveyed with the devices of a novelist.
TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.
SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.
BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.
BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.
BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?
POSSIBLE BREAKING POINTS/BOUNDARIES/AREAS OF ILLUMINATION
TIPS FOR NONWRITERS
TELL US A TALE, A MOMENT WHEN YOUR SENSE OF SELF WAS CHALLENGED, WHEN YOU LEARNED A TRUTH ABOUT TURKISH CULTURE.
SET THE STAGE – TELL US WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOU ARE, HOW YOU CAME TO BE THERE AND THEN TELL US WHAT HAPPENED.
BE SPECIFIC. FOCUS ON YOUR THEME WITH EVERY PARAGRAPH MOVING FORWARD TO YOUR DESTINATION, YOUR POINT. DESCRIBE DETAILS THAT YOU WANT US TO EXPERIENCE. GIVE US A SENSE OF PLACE, A SKETCH OF A PERSON. SIGHTS, SOUNDS, SMELLS.
BE LIKEABLE. REGARDLESS OF TOPIC, WIN US OVER WITH YOUR HUMANITY, YOUR HUMOR, YOUR GOOD INTENTIONS. REVEAL YOUR MOTIVATIONS, AND BE POSITIVE.
BE RELEVANT. HOW DOES YOUR STORY FIT INTO THE BOOK? WHICH ASPECT OF TURKISH CULTURE, OR BEING A FOREIGN WOMAN IN TURKEY, DOES IT ILLUMINATE?
My software developer husband and I designed and built a new web-based writing tool. It was inspired by my experience as a freelance nonfiction writer. This online service provides a basic foundation for writers to get organized by recording revisions, tracking submissions, compiling market information and registering rights and income. For the past six months my husband and I have been designing and building a new web-based writer's tool. In this season of resolutions, we're happy to announce the launch of Writer's Desk, an online workspace to improve the way writers spend their time. We'd be honored if you pass the opportunity to colleagues and friends -- writers of all kinds -- who may have resolved to get organized this year.
SITUATION
Being a writer often sneaks up on a person. Not many train for the vocation nor start with all the equipment, contacts, long view. It's no wonder that eventually the snowball of success or dogged enthusiasm becomes an avalanche of produce - or expectation. Then buried writers inch along using outdated, poorly conceived systems to track work; repeatedly resolve to better keep writing in circulation; dream of one day expanding to new markets. SOLUTION
My computer scientist husband watched me -- a New York-based freelance writer -- function in this typical writerly way. But unlike sympathetic others in the writing trade, he found observing me in action unbearable. So we pooled my professional nightmare with his software developing expertise to construct a website that has revolutionized the way I work and is too useful not to share with the wider writing community.
If you can operate a web browser anywhere in the world you can use this online service to simplify the logistics of being an active writer. Subscription is less than USD20 per year and while the site is optimized for the U.S. market, feedback from international users will help make it a global service.
FREE SUBSCRIPTION
Register for a thirty day free trial at www.writers-desk.com to judge if Writer's Desk improves your current method to:
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We just opened it to the public as a subscription service. You can find the creative and business workspace at www.writers-desk.com
Writers use tools to *write* and tools to *sell the work*. Writer's Desk is a bit of a cross between the two since it helps a writer envision her portfolio, both published and unpublished; encourages hierarchical thinking about projects and other writing ideas in order to more deeply develop material; offers a place to consolidate market contact information and notes; and helps track submissions, rights and income.
I can upload documents to the web service for retrieval on the fly -- and open and update my account from any computer with Internet access. So for me, logging on to Writer's Desk every day affords a quick overview of what I've done, what I must do today, what I plan to do and what I hope to do.
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A superb and versatile tool to manage song submissions and grant applications.
-- songwriter, Seattle, WA
Smart use of web technology. Finally I'm not tethered to my laptop.
-- journalist, New York, NY
Perfect for disorganized writers. Especially helps follow up with editors and agents!
-- novelist, Lawrence, KS
Portfolio overview is priceless. Great to develop new ideas, exploit material.
-- essayist, Des Moines, IA
Suits my purposes: developing scripts, tracking festival submissions.
-- screenwriter and director, San Francisco, CA
As a writing friend or associate of mine, I’d like to cordially invite you to beta-test WRITER’S DESK. This new web-based writer's tool was designed by my computer scientist husband after unbearably observing me in action. Too useful not to share, we soon plan to launch it as an online subscription service. If you can operate a web browser, you can use this database software intended to simplify the logistics of being an active writer. An online centralized place to store and manage information to maximize your writing potential, WRITER’S DESK can help you:
TRACK SUBMISSIONS AND MONITOR PROGRESS
DEVELOP YOUR WRITING GOALS
ORGANIZE YOUR RESOURCES
HOW TO BE A BETA TESTER
The beta test starts in October. During the test period, use the tool to its fullest extent to evaluate how it works for you. While using and in an exit questionnaire, share your impressions about any and all aspects of the tool. (If you lack sufficient time or motivation right now, but want to be kept abreast of WRITER’S DESK developments, let me know by email before October 1. I will be happy to notify you when we launch so you can enjoy the software at your own pace.)
In exchange for your active participation as a beta tester, I am pleased to offer the online service free for a year, with significantly discounted membership thereafter. A considerable additional benefit of being a beta tester is that later versions -- customized with your valuable feedback – may align not only with the way you truly work, but how you have always dreamed of working.
Interested beta testers, please email me by Tuesday, October 1 and let me know what computer system and version of IE or Netscape you plan to use. Soon you will receive a detailed email with a link to the tool and the start date of the test.
Thank you for taking a moment to consider assessing WRITER’S DESK beta version, I appreciate it!
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Welcome to the WRITER’S DESK beta test. Thank you for trying this new web service, your enthusiasm and sense of adventure are appreciated! Here are further details of the test -- which begins today -- and a link to the tool.
CONTROLLED BETA
The test you are about to participate in is a controlled beta test, which means that it is not open to users beyond those who are initially invited. Any new accounts registered after the beta group has enrolled will be blocked. Others will be able to try the system for free when we launch.
However, feel free to refer associates who might be interested in trying WRITER’S DESK in an expanded test.
SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS
Since this is a beta, we will regularly update the site, incorporating fixes and changes based on the results of testing and your feedback. An update takes about five minutes, but for now we ask you not use the site between 11:00 p.m. – 11:30 p.m. nightly. If or when the schedule changes, you will be notified by email. We will also alert you to longer updates.
SAFEGUARD DATA
Like all beta versions, the WRITER’S DESK software you are about to use is potentially unstable. While no data has been lost during development and alpha, we recommend you safeguard the information you enter in the tool by printing it out. Also make sure you keep a copy of any documents you upload from your personal computer. The database will be backed up daily and transferred to a remote machine, but not the documents you have uploaded.
CONFIDENTIALITY
By participating in this beta you agree that you will refrain from sharing details -- large and small -- about WRITER’S DESK with anyone from the start of the beta period until we publicly announce launch of the service. We apologize if this goes against your communal grain. When we launch we would be more than happy if you mention the web tool to others!
BEING A TESTER
During the beta period, use the tool as often as you can and to its fullest extent to best evaluate how it functions for you. But also test its limits: don’t fill in every field or only partially fill a field. Enter what you think might be bad data and see how the system reacts. DO ODD THINGS! If all goes as planned, you will know when the system fails when you end up on an error page, on which the path of the page that generated the error will be displayed. But any other odd behavior should be reported. Let us know what happens to you, and while you work, share what you’re thinking by jotting observations and questions in the feedback form. Which sections seem gratuitous, which are vital, what is missing?
EXIT QUESTIONNAIRE
When the beta ends, in an exit survey we will solicit your opinion on possible new features, based on our own plans for developing the service, and your feedback while testing it.
GET STARTED
Proceed to http://www.writers-desk.com. Register. Preview the Getting Started page, and you’re on your way!
We look forward to hearing what you think of WRITER’S DESK and thank you for your time.
At the age of 8, my three favorite activities were:
That year for my birthday, I got a baby doll (the kind with the big bald plastic head) from my aunt back east who didn't know me at all.
Eerily foreign, I didn't know what to do with it.
Should I take it in the car to my tea party and to the office?
A baby had no place in my life.
In development, to be located at www.flamingeast.com
Presenting a feverish vista onto Southeast Asia, from the Age of Discovery through the Golden Age of Travel….spiked with the delirium only a good bout of malaria can provide! A site of resource and entertainment for Western nostalgia-seeking Baby Boomer travellers to their Generation X backpacking cultural tourism children. A window into this part of the world both past and present, through the atmospheric and romantic filter of history, art and literature (COOL ARTS): summoning up awesome adventure, the pursuit of commerce and spirit of exploration that once characterized the Western world's relationship with these Crossroads of the East.
Our upscale, well-educated English-speaking target clientele are historically- and aesthetically- saavy people as well as others enchanted by our handsome, substantial, well-read and humorous rendering of the region. They include both people who voyage in the flesh and those who visit this part of the world virtually. We'll provide the attractive, entertaining context for their explorations, as well as provide access to select products, suppliers, resources, establishments and destinations which currently celebrate South East Asia's colorful legacies and legends. Cool Arts South Sea will offer a comprehensive and contemporary look at an old place, all the while having a little fun with the history, art and literature generated both in the West about this place, and here in Asia.
For instance, the first edition of the site might feature in its TERRA INCOGNITA Tales section a piece about the tea trade and how pidgin english originated from the Europeans' need to communicate with the Chinese in some language they could both understand; and in the Hot Spot section, a spotlight on a Bangkok-based publisher of quirky travelogue reprints from the 19th century and reprints of antique books about Asian elephants. This publisher currently sells online and we would want to get involved with that, perhaps offering his wares in our ARCHIPELAGO TRADING section, or operating as a portal to his site. In further additions we would add archives, a searchable timeline, more products and vendors, information about resources and destinations featured in TERRA INCOGNITA and ARCHIPELAGO TRADING.
Also for instance in the first edition, the more rollickingly interpretative COOL ARTS section: in the Literature section EX LIBRIS we might feature excerpts of turn of the century British Malaya newspaper items along with jocular contemporary criticism and images in GALLERY section to illustrate the points. These artistic, computer-assisted images (and sometimes the images of the literature itself) and their wacky explanatory captions could be sent to one's friends via our POSTAL CARDS section. In PANDEMONIUM we may start compilation of a series of famous people who've had malaria, and the outcomes of some of their bouts, such as the esteemed naturalist Alfred Wallace, who originated the theory of Natural Selection while in a malarial fever in this part of the world. The fact that Darwin is better known for his Origin of Species may be directly related to that debilitating but illuminating fever. We might explore this in more detail in our NATURALIST'S CORNER which will highlight the natural world and the people who came here to study it, a subsection most likely of TERRA INCOGNITA. We might also ask our audience to nominate other worthy parties for inclusion in the MALARIA HALL OF FAME which may be set up in Pandemonium.
In any case, we want input from our visitors, we want to know what they know, what they love, what they want to know more about and we'll give them every opportunity to tell us, as well as offer them a GLOSSARY to explain the terms and phrases we use, some of which are not used very often any more. We want to bring them back in all their mystique and style. We'll also ask our visitors to sign our GUESTBOOK to build our database, vote on the first items to be offered in ARCHIPELAGO TRADING (some of which we may produce ourselves in our COOL ARTS product line) and tell us what they want defined in GLOSSARY, as well as suggest venues or tales they'd like to see featured in TERRA INCOGNITA. Very interactive.
By the third incarnation of the site we hope to have a virtual community beginning, as well as some ecommerce structure in place, and a more fully-fleshed portal-like directory growing.
What follows here:
1) The company philosophy as it was written for the ABOUT US section, an introduction for our visitors
2) The site map
3) A description of the design theme for the site and logo
4) Directions for home page and directory page with design and mouseover information
5) Extended definitions of bracketing periods to be placed in site's glossary
6) Materials and Labor: breakdown of what we have, what we don't
COMPANY PHILOSOPHY
AN ILLUSTRIOUS MYSTIQUE
"The part of the world that lies around the South China Sea", as one European narrator so circuitously referred to it, was once immersed in an illustrious mystique. Pirates and monsoons held sway on the seas while headhunters and mosquitos did their part in the interior. Yet over several centuries an international set of adventurers, traders, colonizing industrialists and pleasure travellers risked these and a slew of other tropical hazards. Along with Asiatic goods and unimaginable riches, fanciful tales filtered home: of ancient races, shining temples and blue, impenetrable jungle. Even the air was different here, as the east wind apparently came laden with the aroma of silks, sandalwood, spices and camphor. Well, no longer.
LOSS OF NAIVETE
Oh, Southeast Asia (and the scattered bits all around and around...)continues its enveloping assault on the senses; its roots are as deep as ever; and its jungles, untouched by the Ice Age (although mauled by Cro-Magnon's less-hirsute relatives), still encompass a greater diversity of species than any other place on earth. But in today's shrinking world we have lost a most colorful naivete, the uncensored awe and attendant romantic notions that once swirled like a thick fog around exotic new lands.
A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD PLACE
COOL ARTS SOUTH SEA seeks to renew the wonder that existed in these watery crossroads of the East from the Renaissance's Age of Discovery with its ambitious empire-building and search for profitable trade-routes, through the impossibly sophisticated steamer trunks-and-servants Golden Age of Travel, and beyond. By conjuring the senses and sentiments of those vaporous days, as well as helping you access suppliers, establishments and destinations which celebrate those colorful legacies and legends, we propose to take a new look at an old place.
RESOURCES FOR THE HISTORICALLY-SAAVY TRAVELLER
Cool Arts South Sea intends to amass both modern and ancient resources, for today's more historically-saavy traveller, whether you voyage by virtual-armchair, in the flesh, or both. A wide array of avenues will aid in enriching your trip, and assure the mementos you bring home to loved ones reflect your most adventurous notions of the place. From firsthand accounts of Asiatic travels, to the hippest opportunities for capturing a vanishing slice of South China Sea life, Cool Arts South Sea marks the spot.
FOR RELUCTANT ADVENTURERS
Fear not. Cool Arts South Sea is the perfect place to begin exploring uncharted territories, an introduction to the mysterious world that lies at the intersection of the East and the West, the past and the present. We aim to provide general explanations and further references for all newcomers whose interest is aroused. (with GLOSSARY and mouseover texts) If you don't see an explanation already on the site, refuse to be daunted in the face of the unknown (like all good explorers) and ask us for one -- we will do our best to supply it.
MAIN STREET MEETS SULTAN STREET
We are the intersection of old and new; east and west; straight-ahead historical fact and irreverent revisionist fantasy; gravity and levity. So in addition to straight-ahead historical representations, you will also see hybrid ventures and fusion perceptions, those with meaningful East-West elements and contemporary slants on ancient motifs.
TWEAKING THE FOLLIES OF THE DAY
Our particular interest lies in the rediscovered and reinvented treasures of the region -- and our modern, tongue-in-cheek spin on the region's events and customs (of natives and foreigners alike) not only memorializes the lives and livelihoods past, but also wickedly tweaks the follies of the day. Our romantic fog banks burn off when the sun gets hot enough!
SHARE THE WEALTH
We invite all you world-class explorers and armchair historians, landlubbers and seapuppies to be active participants in our search for meaningful destinations and quality purveyors of flaming east mystique -- by nominating for our ever-growing roster the unique gems you have mined in your own South China Sea escapades.
OUR FLAMING FUTURE
…includes a full-fledged virtual community and ebusiness. Meet others with similar interests -- and debate esoterics or tropical topicals-- as well as access an unusual collection of products, services and other instruments tailored for the historically and artistically astute Cool Arts South Sea crowd. See our PRODUCTS page for more information and to vote on the products, services and other instruments you want to see first. If you would like to be kept abreast of this site's advances check that box in the guestbook.
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SITE MAP
HOME PAGE
|
DIRECTORY
__________________________________ _______________|_________________________________________________________
| | | | | |
ABOUT US/SITE TERRA INCOGNITA COOLARTS POSTAL CARDS ARCHIPELAGO TRADING |
| _____|______ | |
CONTACT US | | ____ __|_______ GUESTBOOK
Hot Spots Tales | | |
| | |
(Fine Arts Philosophy Literature)
GALLERY PANDEMONIUM EXLIBRIS
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MAIN THEME: Artistic, aesthetic, historically-based but funky and contemporary
COLOR/MOOD
Burnished, old-timey feel - no bright, clear jewel tones, no mcdonald's yellow or corporate blue
Mysterious and spicy colors, muted or "dusty-looking" (like burnt orange, maroon, teal and seafoam green, cream, white, black, dusty rose, dusty purple)
DESIGN ELEMENTS:
Two Typefaces for Headings and subheadings:
1) EASTERN/ASIAN (like current Rickshaw)
2) WESTERN/EUROPEAN COLONIAL (like current Caslon Antique)
MUST CONTAIN AT LEAST ONE OF EACH, IF NOT MORE:
Old maps, cartography symbols like galleons and compasses, nautical symbols, yellowing parchment paper, clipper ship, fancy cruise luggage labels from grand old hotels
Architectural details (like shophouses, temples, atap villages); Sculptural details (like Angkor Wat figures): Textile patterns, fancy borders, wood carvings
Bamboo, Palms, beaches, Padi fields, jungle, tropical fruits, spices, orchids; Elephants, tigers, cobras, monkeys, butterflies
And if can find a place:
Trademarks from defunct businesses, matchbook covers, old photos, stamps, money, advertisements, signboards with different languages, old newspaper and book excerpts
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HOME PAGE - Centered Logo on Map background, with copyright and viewing info. All fits on one screen
Above logo, medium font Caslon Antique intro:
"Ahoy there! You've run aground in the Flaming East…
prime territory for world-class explorers, swashbuckling privateers and [sniff!] the most discriminating of gentility's travellers."
Below logo, also medium font:
"Presenting our feverish vista onto the fringes of the South China Sea
-- or "INDIAE ORIENTALIS ET INSULARUM ADIACENTIUM," as those Latin-happy cartographers would have it -- from THE AGE OF DISCOVERY through THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRAVEL…
spiked with the delirium only a solid bout of malaria can provide!"
(* mouseover definition: "the East Indies and adjacent islands")
(*mouseover definition: (1450-1650) an explosive sea-faring period of world exploration and East-West trade routes)
(*mouseover definition: (1880-1939) from the Victorian era of the swift steamship to the advent of the modern jet age, when the allure of exotic ports of call dovetailed with technological advances…..and the entire planet became a playground for the rich and famous)
Mouseover box on Logo: "Whether you come via luxurious ocean voyage or that damn bumpy road to Mandalay, by trusty mail steamer from darkest Borneo or the night train to Singapore…all routes lead to the world of COOL ARTS SOUTH SEA. Click to enter."
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DIRECTORY PAGE plus LOGO
ICONS OVER ELECTRIC BAMBOO THICKET:
Each icon has a boldfaced title underneath and beside the icon, a description. Plus a mouseover-box invitation.
Title: ABOUT US (Lady's head with superimposed compass)
Mouseover: Get oriented!
Description: The swiftest means to orient yourself in this mysterious domain. Recommended for all maiden voyages.
Title: TERRA INCOGNITA (Steamer ship)
Mouseover: Explore "unknown territories"!
Description: Investigate select venues and vendors, destinations and diversions, travels and tales.
Title: COOL ARTS (Mosquito)
Mouseover: Succumb to a tropical fever!
Description: Run amok with our biting look at art, literature and philosophy.
Title: ARCHIPELAGO TRADING CO. (Chest of drawers)
Mouseover: Dive into our treasure trove!
Description: Hunt through unearthed treasures and prospect in our jungle motherlode.
Title: GUEST BOOK (Elephant with chops)
Mouseover: Stoke the flames with your opinions!
Description: As a memento of your peregrinations with us, kindly leave your mark.
Title: POSTAL CARDS (Missent Postcard)
Mouseover: 'Wish you were here!
Description: Let your correspondents know how you're managing in the tropics.
Extended definitions of periods (to be placed in glossary)
THE AGE OF DISCOVERY (1450-1650) Concurrent with the European Renaissance. With access to new sea-faring trade routes pioneered by world-class explorers like the Portuguese Vasco de Gama and Spanish Ferdinand Magellan, Europe enjoyed a massive expansion of trade with the Far East. Eastern riches flowed into Europe: tea, sugar, cocoa, spices, gems, drugs, silks, embroideries and fine fabrics.
GOLDEN AGE OF TRAVEL (1880-1939) The Orient's exotic ports of call became pleasurably accessible when two things happened almost concurrently: the invention of the steam-powered ship (replacing the 19th century's far-ranging but slower sailing ships, the clippers) and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Not long after, a stylish Victorian Age phenomenon began to take shape: Extremely civilized round-the-world cruises complete with servants and steamer trunks became known as "Making the Grand Tour". New status symbols cropped up: A suitcase full of fancy luggage labels marked the well-heeled and well-traveled person. Luxury liners circumnavigated the world, disgorging their celebrity and high society passengers into fabled playgrounds, like Asia's grand hotels: Singapore's Raffles, Penang's Eastern and Oriental, Rangoon's Strand and Saigon's Continental Palace.
MATERIALS AND LABOR WE HAVE:
a great deal of historical and artistic images we can play with
a library of historical travelogues, and books on many far-ranging and pertinent topics
supply of researched materials, topics, phrases, the platforms for expansion into features, etc
our own images ready to go
rudimentary list of companies/ventures to approach for inclusion in the site, both online and off
registered domain names
registered Malaysian company
draft of proposal letter to featured companies to enlist their cooperation/collaboration in portal/ebiz
Site Development schedule in three phases
metatext and comprehensive list of keywords for search engines
writing and design talent/capability
scanner, color printer, photoshop, corel draw, dreamweaver, hotdog web editors
MATERIALS AND LABOR, etc WE DON'T HAVE:
Technical resources and state of the industry experience
Coding: html, java, cgi and others for all pages including mockup of site theme
Programming for Postal Cards (to send or bring recipients to site to pick up)
Programming and database institution for Guestbook
Server (requirements, location, etc)
Ebiz solutions and related support and guidance, including advertising and promotion
Product copy from a web venture in development, 1998
Description of Product Line:
We intend to offer a spectrum of products from the affordable and funky, like T-shirts and stationery items to pricier items like clothing, jewelry and home furnishings based on more regal traditions and of finer quality materials, including original art. All will sport cool, informative labeling which places them in the proper Cool Arts historical context, making them perfect for gift giving. No explanations needed!
We envision Cool Arts South Sea products as intelligent and hip travel mementoes, ideal for all visitors to this region, whether real or of the armchair variety! Our products will not be typical tourist items, the things that are easy to find in this part of the world but dreadful to own and use, like those crudely decorated sarongs tied in inverted nooses around the necks of hotel lobby mannequins; like plastic keychains with scorpions imbedded in them; like woven and varnished tea trays. This kind of merchandise is already available, as are more traditional handicrafts made in villages all over Southeast Asia. We mean to provide an alternative to both these souvenir and gift options: by designing our own products; by sourcing appropriately themed products from other companies; and for gathering and putting our value-added spin on any pre-existing items which happen to catch our fancy. Whatever we chose to offer, from the authentic to the fabricated, be assured Cool Arts South Sea products will be accessible and fun while giving you the distinct impression you're somewhere exotic, in the middle of it all.
For instance, our clothes will be geared to individuals interested in traditional outfits, the kind you might see the locals wearing in Vietnam, Burma and Malaysia but not know where to find, or modified pan-Asian outfits which can make the transition into your life without excessive drama -- at least emotionally. That is, you'll be dramatic but you won't feel strange.
FABULOUS SILKS Just an example of the local treasures awaiting your hot little hands: these elegant and wildly-designed, one-of-a-kind, batiked brocaded silks lend themselves not only to the traditional and hybrid Malay women's jacket-and-sarong sets known as the kebaya, but also translate auspiciously into luscious western outfits. Although such silks are often glimpsed worn casually, they remain unfailingly formal -- the dress shirts for men constitute a high-style variation on the national dress.
I may live in a plush suburb of Kuala Lumpur, but being a First World transplant in a newly industrialized country, I spend most days simply surviving.
Every step presents an adventure as civilization unevenly veneers wilderness, the ground itself quicksand.
Consider head to toe casualties of an innocuous invitation to lunch, for example, from ego to footgear.
In a booming land often untroubled by zoning regulations, meeting friends at a prominent equatorial hotel may unexpectedly require a swampy trudge through the mosquito-infested construction site separating the elegant establishment from the main road, strappy suede sandals intended for marble floors providing meager protection.
But perhaps even more startling than the region’s frequent ambushes on both my natural instincts and established convictions is the chronic role I play in this survival game:
When planning a whimsical, open-ended trip to Southeast Asia from the dream-factory comfort of my home in Los Angeles, I projected with my sterling education and big city experience I would cut through local rustic life like a machete-wielding explorer clearing a path through ancient undergrowth.
There would be culture shock, surely, but nothing perilous.
How could an entire rainforest of a country, sixty-percent untouched wilds and the rest sparsely populated by 20 million people, compare to the gritty intensity of life in that untamed concrete jungle of New York City, a hotspot I’d already survived, if not conquered?
I not only miscalculated the proportion of predators per square kilometer in this mountainous green peninsula, I misjudged my strengths. Instead of useful skills and equipment, the professional and personal properties I brought with me hindered my progress and exposed me to the bitterest situations.
Once the high-minded “no lying, no cheating, no stealing” system afforded me the freedom to leave my backpack without incident anywhere on the suburban Philadelphia college campus and to complete my exams unsupervised, but it was hardly a weapon – or a shield. Stretches in New York and Los Angeles may have awakened my general security habits, atrophied from collegiate ethics, but I can’t say I’m prepared to face unbridled depredation in the real world.
My classical archaeology degree was no tool of success in a developing nation where the past is swiftly being razed and architectural conservationists fighting for World Heritage status are pests for authorities and property owners aching to level historic and crumbling settlements for profit.
My muscular command of the English language, a skill which had clinched opportunities and pulled me out of tight spots before, won me no particular allies in the Asian tropics nor was it a translation aid in communicating with the natives.
Previous prolonged exposure to professional entertainment media, producing and administrating studio motion pictures, Broadway and television shows didn’t inoculate me against the rabid tradition of amateur hour, otherwise known as karaoke, nor the backward entertainment industry’s endemic third-rate productions and pirated material. Instead, my allergic reaction – symptomized by general irritability and catatonia, lack of enthusiasm while warbling La Bamba into a microphone or pawing through DVDs of the latest Hollywood releases at the pasar malam night markets -- was heightened.
A Northern California background, values marked by non-conformism and far-left political correctness, was no compass for a conservative landscape where children are segregated and schooled by race and religion, and classified ads for jobs, housing and advanced education baldly specify the race, sex, age and religion of those who can expect to receive preferential treatment.
Here Malays call themselves Bumiputera, or princes of the earth, and Chinese people refer to themselves as ‘Chinamen’. That's a term I would have been disciplined for using as a child and when I type it today, my Pacific Northwest spellchecking program reminds me I am way, way out of line, suggesting I substitute ‘cinnamon.’
Here I am automatically designated "white", upsetting a lifelong resistance to America’s own crude race option of ‘Caucasian’. There is no use for my more nuanced self view of being ‘Indo-European’. Besides, what difference could it make to people who presume I’m exactly the same as every other light-complected person who ever set foot in these latitudes, and more recently, whoever crossed their path.
So along with a new cultural classification, I now hold a fresh history. I wear the mantle of red-haired people, Dutch and British and French colonials, stinking privateers and planters, pompous district officers and butterfly-chasing naturalists, decadent drug-addled Orientalist writers, American expats flush with corporate money, and beer-drinking young backpackers who take their tops off after a few.
Here ascetic living is rarely a style choice, plastic is the craze, and harsh green fluorescent lighting is preferred over illumination that might generate more heat.
So, weighed down with impractical baggage and unschooled in the wily ways of the jungle, from the moment of my arrival I have been fresh meat for stealthy indigenous hunters, a wrong-thinking creature captured unaware and defenseless in alien territory. I even set traps for myself, behavior a terrible tangle: Nerves snap when the situation calls for pliancy, I telegraph approachability when being inscrutable and remote would achieve a better result.
If I had disembarked as an insulated expatriate under the aegis of a multinational company, doubtless palms would have been crossed in advance, maps drawn, guides and porters waiting – and, ensconced in a world geared to my needs, none of this would matter.
Instead, I was a corporate nonentity on a tiny budget, accompanying an ethnic Chinese but Malaysian-born companion who had grown unaccustomed to the country after decades abroad. Along with his mother-tongue, he had forgotten many other crucial details, including that the Chinese are second class citizens in Malay-controlled Malaysia.
First, enroute from Tokyo, the national airline misplaced my brand new Ping Zing golf clubs and Plop putter, still pristine in their factory boxes. I promptly filed a claim at the Penang airport and trusted the airline bureaucracy to locate the missing equipment.
Instead, the huge corporation slumbered for weeks, deflecting my earnest attempts to follow up at one branch office after another like an elephant brushes off a tenacious fly. Finally, the mailman brought a form letter telling me what I already knew: the clubs were gone. The sensation of blasé victimization mushroomed when I read the airline’s offer of compensation for my loss: Ringgit Malaysia 48 (less than $20USD) per kilo, reducing the worth of my state-of-the-art clubs to their weight in ultra-light graphite composite.
The vessel that carried all my worldly goods over the Pacific Ocean anchored in the Port of Penang, an island state off the northwest coast. In meetings the weeks before, my boastful local freight forwarder, a chain-smoking Chinese character named K.K., clad in Camel cigarette brand khaki safari suits, dismissed my worried-white-woman questions about port procedure and protocol, saying, “Leave it to me, it’s always the same.”
So I don’t begin to know the details but when he failed to show up at the Penang container yard to represent me and my interests, the unattended household container was ransacked by customs officers with the abandon of rampaging chimpanzees, to judge from the scene when I arrived.
After rending boxes from end to end and strewing delicate computer peripherals and precious belongings across the hot tarmac, like mischievous primates they pilfered lightweight shiny trinkets, Ray-Ban sunglasses and Harley Davidson keychains. Later, when my jumbled container was opened in front of my suburban Kuala Lumpur home, family heirlooms skittered into the sludge-filled storm drain.
The silent Tamil moving crew, neon yellow uniforms florid against their dark skin and bloodshot eyes, pretended not to notice. The only woman on the scene, the only foreigner, the only hysterical person, I climbed down to retrieve my things from the muck, not knowing what dank-living creatures I might meet, nor what distress signals I was emitting to the entire zipcode’s blood-thirsty leeches.
Within a few weeks my new pedigreed puppy, romping in the sunshine of my ‘padlocked residential compound’ known in the United States as a gated front yard, was whisked away in the jaws of another predator. A snapping, snarling Rottweiler of eight weeks, the ink on her pedigree papers not yet dry, the Little Brontosaurus Kid’s fearsome promise attracted the marauder she wasn’t mature enough to dissuade.
Later I discovered they were right, it was to be expected. An article in The Malay Mail, a tabloid newspaper specializing in grievances of the common man, reported that a dog theft ring had been operating out of my suburban, not-particularly-criminal neighborhood, stalking RM30,000 worth of well-bred canines in the time I lived there.
Cut-throat dupings and uncivilized endangerments permanently enflamed my pampered sensibilities.
Soon it didn’t matter whether the offense was personal or to my environment, or to society as a whole. The government, the press, the business community! The health care system, the food service industry, the tourism trade! The injustice, the danger, the rudeness!
I squawked and squealed to everyone who would listen and many who wouldn’t. Some local counterparts who had experienced mountains of loss and hazard sympathized, but no one recognized or mirrored my particularly American need for restitution, for justice.
“It happens,” my boisterous neighbor Tuan Tin would sagely explain, nodding and absorbing my bad news. “You can’t do anything,” she’d finally blurt if we talked long enough, quickly daubing her tears as if her tattooed eyeliner would smear.
But Tuan Tin the Buddhist did think a person could do something. She changed her faith to raise a young son stricken with leukemia, embracing Christianity that offered him a rose-colored future in heaven with the son of God – rather than Buddhism’s projection that if he lost his struggle with this life he might be reincarnated as an ant.
No jungle mother wishes her son to become a lowly ant. And so it is in sink-or-swim Malaysia: certain beliefs offer rosier futures than others.
I had wondered how Malaysians maintained their refreshing naïvete in the face of spirit-crushing jeopardy and now I knew. Benign acceptance of life's treachery is an integral aspect of the sunny Southeast Asian disposition.
Over the years, I must have heard it all.
As much as these scandals were reported in the paper or whispered at kopi tiam neighborhood coffee shops, it seemed no one took further issue with the government or their employer, their landlord or their doctor, no one threatened to sue or strike, quit a rubber-tapping job or moved away from the palm oil plantation.
My resilient Chinese acquaintances, sure to point out that their immigrant brothers can be found thriving up the smallest river in the darkest corner of Borneo, have an expression for this zealous phenomenon. They call it kiasu, “afraid to lose” in the Hokkien dialect.
A survival attitude that can seem like a complete lack of generosity or respect for others, the syndrome is in full flower in Malaysia and perhaps most obvious on the roadways.
An attempt to merge into another lane will compel the car behind to speed up, horn blaring, in order to pass first, as if breathing your exhaust is the kiss of death.
Even down south in the land-poor island republic of Singapore where the culture is kindred but the jungle is less immediate a threat, paved over and fenced in, being kiasu is still part of life. It’s shrunk to a vestigial trait – and likenesses of Mr. Kiasu, a grasping self-centered Singaporean comic book character, grace the bumpers of luxury cars on the republic’s orderly one-way boulevards.
Here in the former Third World the jungle still rules and inhabitants face the endurance game with gusto. I must admire the Malaysian brand of fearlessness, although I cannot help but wonder whether I mean foolishness.
Throwing themselves headlong into traffic circles congested with over-laden, careening lorries and reckless motorcyclists, they navigate situations that give me a vehicular-induced migraine. Faster vehicles bump cyclists and pedestrians into squalid gutters while pedestrians scurry with packages and babies across dusty highways in the blistering heat.
In their neighborhoods they face a gauntlet of hazards while doing errands, going to work and school. In flimsy, open-toed sandals urban jungle-dwellers weave their way through tetanal conditions for which this sissy Westerner considers construction boots sine qua non -- sidewalks blooming with rusty metal stumps of defunct street signs.
But the most consuming phenomenon, at 4 degrees North of the Equator, is the invisible march of the tropics: life and death cycles of spores and microbes, accelerated by a steamy atmosphere.
Microscopic organisms stain the pages of my books with veiny brown splotches, and under the glass of framed artwork, blemish cream-colored matting.
My college diploma now appears to be an antique.
Wood furniture oozes crusty white sap, while piles of sawdust appear on the floor under chairs and couches, microscopic organisms eating everything in their path.
Thick moss grows overnight in the storm drain out front and mildew darkens the exterior of my house, buckling freshly-applied anti-fungal paint.
During muggy New York summers I used to suffer from a seasonal outbreak of acne that I theorized sprang from walking the city streets, sweating and accumulating layer after layer of powdery black carbon monoxide. To cheer myself up, I imagined the worst and called it tropical face rot.
But in the perpetual August of Kuala Lumpur, a trip to my local dermatologist for the same condition gets me no respect and no relief.
Statuesque Dr. Singh, a Sikh in pristine lavender turban and smooth olive skin, holds a magnifying glass to my epidermis and assures me I need no medical treatment. He sends me away with oil-dissolving cleanser.
Dr. Singh knows tropical face rot when he sees it, counting among his patients those in rural Kelantan, the northeastern-most state, victims of the flesh-destroying disease leprosy. Once leprosy patients were easier to find near Kuala Lumpur, leper colonies surrounding the city.
Now dwindling leper villages are taken over by a new growth business, plant nurseries for the nouveau riche.
After decades of beating back the jungle, in densely settled areas greening one’s property is a cutting edge practice. Tiling over their compounds for easy cleaning and felling trees since the shady, oxygen-producers attract loud dirty birds and the egg-eating snakes that follow them, suburbanites repopulate properties with greenhouse-grown varieties of docile plants. Favored is the papery-flowered Brazilian vine bougainvillea since it doesn’t attract birds or bees with a scent, drip nectar or soil the walkway with whatever sticky juice more succulent plants spit.
Envisioning myself the great white planter-cum-naturalist in the denuded suburbs, for my small patch of land I yearned to create a sanctuary of bird-friendly fruit trees and night-blooming jasmines, exotica impossible to grow in cooler, drier climates.
Capriciously, I planted a mountain banana culled during a four-wheel drive weekend trip into the interior. No sooner was it in the ground than it started attracting trouble.
“Evil spirits live in mountain bananas,” my professional Malay neighbor Khatidja warned through our Cyclone fence. “Better to get rid of it, yah?”
But instead of heeding animist jungle wisdom I dismissed her alarm as lowland, big-city snobbery.
Besides, my Collins Field Guide to birds of Southeast Asia said Arachnothera flavigaster, or spectacled spider-hunters, built their nests on the underside of banana leaves at this elevation and I wanted to encourage that. The three foot stalk grew with ferocity, fruiting faster than I could distribute its petite orange bananas or make breads, cakes and frozen drinks. Sturdy shoots with elephantine fronds may look spectacular on a verdant hill-slope or rimming a muddy river but made my place the neighborhood eyesore, tropical equivalent of a wrecked car up on blocks. Within three months the wild baby banana towered nine feet, overtook the yard with new stalks, required constant pruning of dead leaves, cut the light coming into the house, and had to be uprooted by an itinerant handyman with a pickaxe.
But my quest for butterflies, birds and blooms wasn’t going to be diverted by a rogue mountain banana that may or may not have been haunted, so I consulted the experts. The Malaysian Nature Society’s bird watching group publishes a list of indigenous flowering plants and birds they attract. I settled on the sweet-smelling ylang ylang Cananga odorata but for an unexpressed reason nursery after nursery neglected to cultivate the tree. The five foot tall sapling I later planted was shamefully ripped from its natural place in the first growth rainforest by an enterprising garden supplier.
Armed with binoculars, I was now ready to catch sight of Nectarinia zeylonica, the purple-rumped sunbirds that would materialize just as the spindly white flower buds matured. But on the eve of each flower cluster’s opening, its branch was crudely hacked by an anonymous, superstitious neighbor. Perhaps it was that faceless individual across the street who rings an eerie bell five times a day, shadowy figure illuminated by a lone candle, or the middle-aged yuppie who practices his golf swing on his tiny patio every evening. Regardless, I consider myself a failed planter, and no naturalist in my own neighborhood.
I’m no environmentalist either. I have a limit when it comes to legions of bugs.
When I was a California girl I pored over green ways to clean, the awful details of toxic paint, EMFs and sick buildings, but now I contract an exterminator to spray a deadly malathion solution around my house and garden on a regular basis to combat ants and termites, aphids and cockroaches. The fact that the sprayer has three thumbs, a birth defect, serves as a monthly reminder to me of the world I am fostering.
Sometimes the peril for me lies not in being devoured but in finding my own daily sustenance.
Insects and microbes rule so jungle guts have grown as hardy as jungle soles.
Squeamishness could sound a person’s death knell, whether by over-excitement or starvation or both. Detection of the dreaded rat urine-borne Hantavirus at one of the capital’s major food courts did not affect its popularity nor require it to be closed for extermination and testing purposes. Intrepid jungle-dwellers scarf down dishes prepared by sidewalk hawkers who operate without the benefit of soap and running water, without refrigeration, without covering food from the elements – like the concrete dust drifting over from the construction site next door.
Sometimes I wonder if I am overreacting like a prissy Puritan when I cannot finish my meal after a trip to a particularly bad restaurant bathroom, a bare room with a concrete floor and a bucket of water which, when poured on the floor, snakes in an open drain past the cooking area. Or am I simply the insomniac product of alarmist U.S. media?
As an American I admit that I am burdened with an E. coli information overload, but I am not sure if all this science-based survival information shields me from danger any more than the ignorance of it protects the unconcerned people around me.
Despite outstanding questions, I have survived five long years as fresh meat for the elements, the mosquitoes and the microbes, my endurance fueled by the desire to overcome local life’s obstacles, and falling short of that, being mired in the fatalism of the forest.
Every day I undergo a battery of wilderness precautions, slathering on repellents and sun-blocks, strapping on serious head- and footgear. Making sure I'm carrying enough water, towels, extra supplies, I scurry along suburban walls like a rodent, avoiding the midday heat and blistering rays. On trips abroad I trawl through adventure stores for the latest in jungle trekking equipment, floatable sunhats and collapsible canteens.
And, like most of the world’s vulnerable creatures eventually do, I’ve developed a prickly exoskeleton to shield my soft innards. I’ve earned my special place in the ecosystem, striking hard and fast at the first sign of trouble from landlords and airlines and resort-operators. I put my counter-attack in writing and raise the alarm, sending a copy to the paper of public grievance, The Malay Mail. Casting a spotlight stuns the predator and slows the plundering, but I have not found a way to completely stop the human depredation, nor accept it.
Walking around the shops one sun-drenched noon I slipped into a typically uncovered monsoon drain, substandard concrete returning to its slippery component of sand under foot. Just another victim of the country’s noxious civil engineering, there was nothing to be done and no one to call, except perhaps a friend to drive me to the nearest medical klinik.
“Everyone falls in, don’t you worry,” the Dr. Azreena assured me as she cleaned my exotic-looking but painfully pedestrian gash. She's probably right since ungrated three- to ten-foot deep drains surround residential and business blocks like steep-sided concrete moats, separating people from everything they need to do.
A tribe that survives and grows strong on folly like uncovered drains and plummeting elevators, improper food handling and toxic dumping: lawyers. Not like the Malaysian breeds, bogged down in insipid real estate rental agreements or stalking around British courtrooms in powdered wigs and black batrobes, but the hungry, late-night television-advertising ambulance-chasing strain from the U.S. Malaysia is a paradise of prime litigation just waiting for a new rule of law.
In the meantime, when my friends in the States -- who picture me a wild adventuress in a pith helmet regardless of what information to the contrary I reveal about my life -- notice the huge indented mark on my leg, I have the option of glamorizing its far-flung cause: it does look a lot like a shark bite.
In fact, I'm lucky to be alive.
+++ Variations of this appeared in The Expat magazine in Singapore, Men's Review magazine, and Agora web portal for international living and studying.