What's So Special About 2013

You might be wondering why the blog got a re-design and why I now have a tumblr account and a facebook page filled with links to my writing work. Maybe you're not. But 2013 is the year to be serious about my career. After all, 13 is both a prime number and a Fibonacci number, so it doesn't get more geekily auspicious than that. Especially since the next year that will be both a prime number and a Fibonacci number will likely be after I die.

The schedule of events is as follows: I will be celebrating Tell A Fairy Tale Day on the 26th February by putting a fantasy short story up on Kindle Light, and finishing the current book in time for people to take it on summer holidays in August. The book is about a cat. Well, the cat thinks it's about the cat, as cats tend to; it's really about the family who adopted the cat, but don't tell the cat or he'll be offended and give you a sanctimonious stare. 

Those two projects are, in relative terms, simple. Adjusting to the technology needed by writers in the 21st century is less so, but I'll survive it I'm sure. So please bear with me while this African girl (you can take the girl out of Africa, but you can't take the Africa out the girl) adjusts to publicity tools that leave me baffled most of the time. I hope you have a great 2013, and we get to interact often over the coming months!

Brij x

Hunting and Gathering

I've spent the last year and a half drifting between houses on my path to job satisfaction. That means multiple housemates with multiple personality quirks. A few situations were happy cohabitations everyone in the group brought food home, everyone spontaneously re-filled the toilet roll, and everyone participated in cleaning up. Not everything happened like clockwork, but there was an organic structure of provision, which brings me to my question. 

Why is food provision and household cleaning traditionally one person's job? It's a lot to handle, being the sole provider of nutrients and cleanliness for a group of people who don't think about the mechanics of it or offer thanks for the effort. And what about those who live alone? How is one person able to put in a full work week - with overtime and travel time - and still manage to have a clean, tidy house and a well-stocked fridge (of things that are not slightly mouldy, given how often eating happens at home)?

I have a suggestion to offer. It's not my idea, but I think it's one that merits considering. Within any group of people, a variety of schedules, interests, and geographical locations present themselves. My family moved to Mauritius when I was a kid, and...well, grocery shopping in Mauritius in the early nineties was an interesting and culturally-enlightening experience. The saying went "you can get anything in Mauritius, you just have to know where to find it." Those places were usually tiny little stores, about the size of a one-car garage, stacked to the ceiling (often with bundles of things hung from hooks on the ceiling, haphazardly across the whole room) with a dazzling array of...um, everything. In addition, most of the good places to find things are on skinny one-way streets in obscure towns halfway across the island. So the community of ex-pat wives (who, by definition, weren't allowed work permits) formed an informal shopping collaborative. 

If someone knew where to get something another member of the group wanted - or even where to get the best fresh tuna  - a shopping trip was arranged. The kids (if we weren't in school) were piled into the back of the car, and it was a social/educational trip (we were inadvertently learning the kind of French and Creole needed to shop. We were also learning stealth evasion skills by standing behind piles of carpets/balls/zippers). Likewise, if someone planned a trip to a particular far-away wonder-cave, money was exchanged in advance, and the desired item was bought by proxy.

This works well in communal living arrangements. It's possibly the best way to run shared houses: a central shopping list that gets bought at the tastiest/cheapest stores as people pass them. Everyone saves time, and a few nights every week, you come home to the wonderful surprise of a cooked dinner. In addition, transport money is saved, because it's worked into the work-travel budget. If you or your housemates travel to other countries regularly, be careful of the laws governing importation of alcohol, tobacco, and food items. For example, in Denmark, you can't import Marmite or rusks. I'd hate someone to go to prison for importing yeast products for nostalgic reasons.

Twitter Welcome v 2.0

Hello!

The origin of the twitter welcome can be traced to Will Wheaton - aka Dr Sheldon Cooper's nemesis - who thought he should elaborate what his twitter feed was all about in more than the 140 characters allowed by the site. I think it's a good idea. It was recently brought to my attention by Mr C who runs sidepodcast, a Formula 1 site I guest write for periodically, that I needed to update my twitter welcome; he clicked through from my profile and thought my blog had been mothballed. It was agreed that I should update my twitter welcome twice a year to keep it current with the things happening in my life/on my twitter feed. So without further ado, allow me to enlighten you on a few things about my twitter feed:

1) I'm rather fond of fast cars, and it shows. If you don't follow Formula 1 and I tweet something that includes "Brunoooo" on a Sunday, feel free to disregard it, because I'm tweeting about the race. 

2) I'm nerdy and I know it. I sometimes get overexcited about science news and share the links. If you don't understand the article, feel free to ask me about it (or contact the author of the article).

3) I love to have dialogue with other users on twitter. Twitter was best before it got huge and everyone used it as a personal marketing tool; I want to get back to the days of chatting with people I'd never met but shared interests with. If you like something I tweet and want to talk about it, don't be shy.

4) I have divergent interests. Part of being a writer is having homework every night - the theory goes that if I immerse myself only in one subject, my characters are dull and one-dimensional. Thus, you may find me tweeting about botany, astronomy, racing (cars, that is, not horses or camels), fiction, photos, news, or simply life observations. 

5) I try to practice humourology. That is, I try to find the funny side of every situation. Now, it's not always possible, but I do try and hide a giggle in every 140-character contribution to cyberspace.

6) My username is not a reference to Mixed Martial Arts. (As an aside, I have been meaning to get into MMA, but haven't found a gym that offers it.) In Southern Africa - where I was born and raised - "Mama" is a title given to female herbalists (and older women, but I'm not using it in that context); Alexander McCall Smith abbreviates it to "Mma" in his fiction. Because I majored in botany and human biology, my uni friends got used to being given herbal tea to cure what ailed them when visiting me. The twitter handle is a reference to my African herbal heritage.

7) (And this is possibly the most important) I have occasional bouts of rather colourful language. I apologise for this. Still, I assume a minimum age on my blog and twitter feed (if you're under 18 and are wondering whether you should be here, ask your parents if they're okay with my content. I don't want to get in trouble with them), so I run under the assumption that we're all grown-ups and can handle it.

Thank you for following me, and I hope we'll have fun together!

Brij x

The End of the Epic Bike Ride

I made it to the end. The last few days involved battling miserable weather between Lincolnshire and London, struggling with...well...London, and finally making it down to the coast. In the process, I managed to take a caterpillar 60km - no idea how, he just crawled onto me in a bus stop and I only noticed him when he crawled up my neck in Peterborough. London, as usual, was the source of much heart-ache for me. 

I stayed with my brother and sister-in-law-to-be, who graciously offered up their couch. However, London's bumpy roads managed to pull my bike rack off twice - something that hadn't happened previously on the trip - and getting lost trying to find my way out did little to improve my antipathy towards the city. I've discovered that the only Londoners willing to speak to a stranger aren't Londoners at all, since the only ones who gave me directions were northern or foreign. Londoners, it would seem, have two responses to "google maps has got me lost; how do I get out of this city in the direction of Brighton" - "Brighton's far," and "oh, you'll never get there." Thanks, that's really helpful. 

Brighton, on the other hand, is easy to navigate and has friendly locals; the only possible hindrance is the proliferation of what my aunt calls "bastard hills". The last thirty-odd kilometres on the A23 is enormous hill after enormous hill, peppered with road works for added challenge. So much so, I had to stop and eat the last of the plumpy nut bars (not their official name, but they taste reassuringly like Plumpy Nut, the fortified peanut goo that UNICEF gives to malnutrite babies) that Mum had sent me just to get over them.

I'll write about Goodwood later, because that's a piece for another website. Have a great week, everyone!

Bike Ride of Epicness - Day Eight

I have now made it as far as Louth. Yesterday was an easy day in terms of distance - 90-odd kilometres - but I still managed to get hopelessly lost. Google Maps tends to send me by the wiggliest-windiest route, and none of the roads it suggests are signposted in a helpful way, for example "Louth - Right - 10 miles." Most of them don't have signposts at all, so I've got pretty good at getting directions. For future reference, people under the age of thirty are useless for directions, as are old ladies. Winner of the day was a farmer - slim, older man with an Einstein hairstyle - who stopped his tractor to chat to me as I stood on the side of the road looking confused. His directions were "follow me; the field I'm going to plough is just before the road you want." Towards the end of the day, I had found a farm road that looked like it went nowhere - but had been reassured that it went through to an A-road - and sat down for a cry. The sun was going down, there was no mobile signal, I'd almost run out of water, and I was tuckered out. A guy rode up - turns out he was a beat cop from Grimsby who was out testing his new road bike, and a very nice bike it was too - gave me a 150mL Coke and refilled my water bottle from his spare. He then rode with me to the nearest town with signal to call for assistance. 'Twas a good day after all. Today's mission is to get to Harlow - about 200km. No getting lost today!

P.S. Blogger seems to think I live in Hawaii. It's 6:20 a.m., not 10:20 p.m.

Bike Ride of Epicness - Day Six

Day six and a rest break. I'm at a friend's house, and what a luxury it is to have a bed and a bathroom with a door! I did 150kms yesterday; I was scheduled to do 100, but Google Maps was vague about which left I should take. Needless to say, I took the scenic route down the A19, around the York ring road, and then left to Hull. I did try find a shorter route, but the consensus was that the A19 would be best. This morning, I'm struggling to stand. 

Beans, beans, good for your heart,

The more you eat, the more you fart;

The more you fart, the better you feel.

Beans, beans at every meal.

A few observations:

I know James Hunt thought Marlboros were the breakfast of champions, but he didn't know about the turbo-charging properties of baked beans. Seriously, I think NASA JPL should look into this.

People turn into complete morons when they have a car-full of kids. The ring road around York was torture with people jostling for position, cutting people off, not paying attention to cyclists, etc.

150kms is too far for one day. I'm very glad I had scheduled today off!

BIke Ride of Epicness - Day 4

Another quick update.

I crashed (as in, got too tired to carry on) at 70kms on Wednesday. Thursday dawned with a blustery gale - between 15 and 25km/h wind - which I pushed against as hard as I could. At around the 45km mark, I almost got blown under an eighteen-wheel truck. I decided at that point that it would be more sensible to pull off, so found a farm that didn't mind randoms camping. They let me pitch in the forest by their fowl lake (from the colour of the water, 'foul' would also work in that sentence as a descriptor for 'lake', but it didn't stink), which was nicely sheltered from the wind. I took photos; I'll upload them soon.

As an aside, if you're ever driving up the A1 to Edinburgh, stop at the Cook and Barker pub in Newton-on-the-Moor. It's a lovely, lovely place. Best service and nicest chips so far this side of the border.

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