Boats in Halong Bay
Halong Bay from the Amazing Cave
(also, Halong Bay is among the most amazing places on Earth. Four hours each way from Hanoi, but well worth the trip. Canoeing among the rocks is a truly incredible experience)
Temple of Literature, Hanoi
Old City, Hanoi
So, starting from Sunday, I’m not going to be the world’s most available person.
That’s because I’m leaving two weeks for Vietnam with my family. Program includes Hanoi, Hoi An and Saigon. This is the first time I go to Vietnam, and it’s going to feel… peculiar.
Haven’t committed yet, but there’s a very good chance I’ll be taking my laptop (several of the hotels have wifi) and do some occasional email checking. Also, this isn’t going to be the last you see of me by any means, as I’ll be doing a series of guest blogs (more details on that later).
Arg. Getting to work today: 2h30 minutes in a packed bus (vs. 45 minutes usually).
Yes, it snowed. Loads and loads of snow, to be precise, and it’s not a good idea to have hills between you and your destination in that sort of case, especially when the cities are taken by surprise and don’t put salt on their roads to remove said snow.
Also, the suburban trains were on strike, just for the heck of it.
(getting back from work: 1h00, thanks to a colleague’s car and half an hour crammed into a train that was literally packed to the rafters. The mood has been better.)
So, here’s some of what I got for my B-day:
I am surrounded by people who know my weaknesses 🙂 (also, I got a lovely Bday card from AR towers, with a cute little robot on it, which was very sweet)
In other news, Saturday was plumbing day, aka the day when I cleaned the bathroom of limescale (I do this regularly, but hadn’t paid attention to my washbowl tap or to my showerhead). I have proved conclusively that my practical sense is close to zero (as in, don’t try to unscrew the tap without making sure the washbasin is properly plugged–this ended with a bit of the tap inside the washbasin outlet, and ten minutes’ worth of scare while the BF took the outlet apart). But now it looks to be all clean 🙂
It would seem I share a birthday with Neil Gaiman and Sesame Street. (and Martin Luther, incidentally).
One step closer to fame and fortune 🙂
aka very, very busy. Just realised that I’d failed to book tickets for the British Museum’s Aztec exhibition, and that they were disappearing relatively fast (basically, no weekend availability until mid-December). So booked myself and the BF for December 12th, early morning. First time the BF and I go to London, so I can show him all the nice places (giant Waterstone’s, anyone?). Still not sure on the travelling, so we’ll have to do that too.
Also just saw that Quai Branly, Paris’s ethnological museum, was holding a special on Teotihuacan. Is it Mexico year, or something? (not that I’m complaining, just figuring out when we visit with a huge slobbering grin on my face).
I am currently salivating over the catalogue of the British Museum exhibition and the various souvenirs (and the BF is already worrying about how he’ll have to drag me out of the place).
Meanwhile, I have printed out the synopsis for Harbinger of the Storm, and have been rereading Servant of the Underworld and made notes about how to proceed (mostly for character coherence). I’m also rereading stuff about Aztec power and the imperial court. Should be able to start the draft soon-ish…
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to go and fight the laundry into submission (and the ironing, and the critting, and the cooking…)
So, now that I’ve got some decent sleep…
Spent the afternoon of yesterday at the BF’s PhD defence: he was working on quantum physics (entangled-photon sources, to be precise). I knew just enough quantum physics that the defence was somewhat familiar, but sadly not enough to actually understand most of what was going on. The question session lasted one hour (at which point they lost me completely), but in the end they awared him his PhD, with a Very Honorable Mention–which was pretty much the highest grade they could give him, so much happiness.
Then there was the cocktail, and the evening with drinks at Matthieu’s place–and I went to bed completely knackered. Slowly emerging now 🙂
-Sent revised version of Foreign Ghosts (the Xuya novel) to agent, and am now working on an appealing blurb they can use for marketing (and struggling a bit since this is multi-character in a weird setting).
-Updated the Servant of the Underworld page. I can haz blurbs!
-Got my synopsis for Book 2 of Servant of the Underworld approved by Angry Robot towers: it will tentatively be called Harbinger of the Storm. After much brainstorming, it looks like the series title has settled onto Obsidian and Blood.
Looks like book 2 of Obsidian and Blood is going to be the next project on my plate (right after I tackle the revisions for Servant of the Underworld).
Have I mentioned the bit where I feel perpetually swamped? I had some inkling that might be the lot of the novelist, but I didn’t think it would come quite that fast…
And it’s tea purchasing time :=)
I try to keep a balance between the different types of tea, but a quick glance at the tea boxes showed that I’m running low on white tea and on flavoured black tea (thanks to Mum’s trip to Vietnam last year, I have enough green tea to withstand a siege. And it’s a good one, too).
And this is where I’m dragging Matthieu:
L’Empire des Thés (awesome shop in the Chinese district which has a bewildering choice–including good blends and neat perfumed teas).
I was cleaning up house on my work computer, transferring the contents of folder A to folder B. After emptying folder A into folder B, I proceeded to dutifully erase folder B from the system.
There goes the totality of the data I was working on.
*bangs head against wall*
(It’s not as dramatic as it sounds: we do have backups, and I’ll probably get the data back tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I was left feeling rather silly).
