When in England...

The Olympics 2012 are proceeding very nicely now in London as I write this post. Fortunately for us in Malaysia, we have several channels on our satellite network dedicated to the various sports, which make up for the fact that we're not there to be part of the action. If I were, the most likely place I'd be would be at Greenwich Park for the equestrian events.

Several Malaysians I know are in London and they are bound to have periods of lull in between their activities, including shopping. So while they wait here and there, they might fancy holding a book in their hands (and reading it), and I have just the title for them - Watching the English by Kate Fox. It is a rather tongue-in-cheek study of 'the hidden rules of English behaviour'. She has other books to her credit, the titles of which indicate that she has fun in choosing her subjects; one of them is the The Racing Tribe: Watching the Horsewatchers. 

In the book above, Fox, who is a social anthropologist, breaks down her observations into two parts - Conversation Codes and Behaviour Codes. In the first part, there is a chapter on 'The Weather' because, as she declares in her opening line, "any discussion of English conversation, like any English conversation, must begin with The Weather". We had learned this to be true during our holidays in England, when we discovered that  the weather is indeed the best way to strike up a conversation with a local. Even if it's just to say something as obvious as "it's raining quite a bit, isn't it?" to the stranger sharing the table with you in the cafe, while both of you look out at the drenched view outside.

To Fox, her English compatriots can be described as "self-conscious, ill-at-ease, stiff, awkward and, above all, embarrassed", which of course brings to mind the quintessential English gentleman in the film Bridget Jones's Diary - Mark Darcy, played by one of my favourite actors Colin Firth. The film and the book are good examples of another English trait highlighted in Fox's book, that of humour, which is one of irony, understatement and self-depreciation. Being a fan of English comedy (the Monty Python television series and Fawlty Towers come to mind), these are elements I appreciate rather than the slapstick type common to American humour.

As far as behaviour is concerned, Fox observes that "the English may  not speak much on public transport, but when they do open their mouths, the words you are most likely to hear, apart from 'sorry', are 'please' and 'thank you'". However, she warns, this "does not mean that we are good-natured, generous, kind-hearted people. We just have rules about Ps and Qs, which most of us observe, most of the time".

I had a great laugh reading this book, and I still do when reading it again. If you're doing so in public, you might see a raised eyebrow or two as you giggle through its pages.

Making notes

When participating in the Silverfish Writing Programme a number of years ago, we learnt that we need to always have a notebook with us - for jotting down what we observe around us, descriptions of interesting people we see or meet; in other words, anything that could make good material in our writing. An exercise that we did during the programme was to order a cup of coffee at a nearby cafe, sit at an outside table and make notes of what was going on around us. We also had to create a story based on our notes; I wrote an imaginary conversation between two men I had been watching while drinking my coffee.

Notebooks these days come in all kinds of sizes, colours and designs. I can spend a lot of time just browsing through a bookstore's stationery section, looking over the notebooks; it's hard to resist buying one. Much as I'd like to buy a Moleskine, I still haven't been able to justify buying something so expensive for my note-taking. After all, there are so many cheaper alternatives that will still do the job. I prefer notebooks with blank pages rather than ruled ones - besides writing, the blank pages invite me to doodle or draw as well.

Above are a few still-to-be-used notebooks that I have. The gilt-edged notebook and the one in the middle are both gifts. I had bought the one on the right from the Islamic Arts Museum shop, which sells beautiful stationery items. An exquisite notebook (below), which my sis-in-law gave me, is from Japan and attests to the craftsmanship of the Japanese. It's handmade and so pretty that I don't think I shall be writing anything in it at all.

I have been following the tip learnt from the writing programme till today - there is always a notebook tucked into my organiser, which goes from bag to bag with me.

Writers are not the only ones who carry notebooks with them. This site delves into the pocket notebooks of 20 famous men, including Mark Twain (writer), Charles Darwin (scientist) and Ludwig van Beethoven (composer/musician), while this one takes a look into the notebooks of several people, including Marilyn Monroe (actress) and Frida Kahlo (artist).

So start carrying a notebook with you (and use it) - you will be in distinguished company!

Ten years later...

In mid-2011, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from Suria Zainal, now Senior Director at the Malaysian Timber Council (MTC). It had been ten years since we met; I was then the writer of MTC's tenth year anniversary coffee-table book, which was produced by Editions Didier Millet. Suria told me that MTC would be celebrating their twentieth year in 2012 and they would like me to write the book. Of course, I said 'yes'! It's not often that a writer can claim to have written two commemorative books for the same organisation, ten years apart!

On 12 July 2012, MTC held a simple but classy dinner to celebrate their twenty years of serving the Malaysian timber industry, during which the book was launched. I hadn't seen the book at all before this. The text had been written by me, revised by MTC where necessary and edited by Datin Noor Azlina Yunus, with whom I had worked on my first major writing/editing project as well as my book projects for UMW Holdings. 

The design was undertaken by an advertising company and Azlina and I were not involved in the process, although we did have a look at the initial book draft. At that point, many things were not right with the book. After that, due to time constraints, Suria and her team at MTC carried on without us. It was therefore with some anxiety that Azlina and I (both of us were at the dinner) pulled the book out of its slipcase when we received our copies after the launch. Well, we were both pleased with the end result; the book we held in our hands looked nothing at all like the draft that we saw. 

The book in its slipcase.

The book... uncovered.

The start of a chapter.

Some of the pages above and below.

The book also shared the thoughts of key industry personalities.

Suria, who managed the project, had wanted the tone of the twentieth anniversary book to be somewhat informal compared to the earlier book. This was to be achieved by an anecdotal approach in the written text as well as a contemporary and bright, but not garish, design. I believe that she achieved her objective. 

The tenth anniversary book certainly looked very different 

from the newly-launched twentieth anniversary book.

Meaningful mementoes

When on holiday abroad, like many people, I would head for the souvenir shops and come home with stuff that were really not special at all. After a few years of such pointless purchases, I felt it worth the money to buy local craft, pottery, artwork or, being a bookaholic, books. Not big books because they would take up too much space in, besides adding unwanted weight to, my luggage. But little books with a unique attachment to the towns and sites I visited.

Places in England are particularly good at turning their literary heritage into meaningful mementoes. When in the Lake District in 1995, we took our son Amir (who was about nine years old then) to The World of Beatrix Potter at Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria. To remind us of our trip, I bought Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other stories in the series, reproduced with the original pictures.

On the same trip, we also stopped by at Keswick and I went away with this beautiful book of poetry.

This anthology celebrates "the powerful beauty of the Lake District's landscape" with poems by England's Romantic poets, including Wordsworth, Keats and Byron, which are matched with photographs by Rob Talbot and paintings by contemporary artists. 

On an earlier trip to England, in 1991, when we had driven through another part of the country, these two little books, A Shakespeare Treasury and Winston Churchill: Wit and Wisdom, were my souvenirs of two places we went to - Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and Blenheim Palace, where Sir Winston was born.

Now, decades later and in a new century, I would sometimes take out these books, read them and remember those times and places.

What's cooking?

People who know me know that the kitchen is not my 'natural' environment. I'm fortunate, Alhamdulillah, that Hubby doesn't expect me to whip up dishes for him and that we have Rini, who's a fantastic cook. While I may not do much cooking, I do love cookbooks and can happily while my time drooling over the tempting photographs and even reading the recipes. My favourites are cookbooks that can help you produce dishes within minutes. So when Jamie Oliver came out with his Jamie's 30-Minute Meals cookbook, I was off to the bookshop to get a copy.

I love the book - the photographs are fabulous and the recipes are easy to follow. He breaks them down into little steps and you really can't go wrong with them. Believe it or not, I have even made his chicken pie (recipe on page 92 of the book) for a pot-luck with friends, who gave it a thumbs-up. If I can do it, anyone can!

While Jamie's book is THE ONE for me, I do have two little Family Circle 'fast' booklets amongst my cookbook collection.

I suppose it's obvious by now that whenever I do step into the kitchen, I prefer not to stay there for too long.