My friend Robert Bryan manages to get in six hours of writing per day while holding down a full-time job and being a Dad.  Or at least he manages to get it in most days.  I'm impressed.  He seems to have simplified his life to be able to do what really matters, truly living La Vida Quaker.  I admire him for it.

Also, I should mention the result of his labors, Arden House, a unique post-apocalyptic YA book where technology is wiped out and two resourceful teenagers use their wits and skills to survive in a hostile environment.  Archer and I both loved it.

This was going to be a post about how I can carve more writing time out of my day ... but right now I am just trying to get through my days minute by minute.

Enough about me, go read Arden House.  If you are not convinced, read Lindsay Harris-Friel 's review on Amazon.  

Also, Arden House Book 2 is coming out soon.  I will be getting Archer a copy and probably even letting him read it before I borrow it.

People are fundementally tribal.

Tribe goals should be

1. Protect your tribe

2. Grow your tribe

Why do so many forget the second goal? Or think pro-creation is the winningest strategy? Because it's not. (Although it can put into context institutional objection to birth control)

What's your tribe?

Hello from Taipai, Taiwan. We're here for two more days, and I'm sort of getting the hang of the city after three and a half days. 

Today involved plan Bs, Cs, and possibly Ds. I'm glad for fairly pervasive wifi here- which I discovered today is even more easily found than I had thought- and for TripAdvisor City Guide, which has a full city map with gps locating when there wasn't wifi. And for remarkably inexpensive transit- the metro and buses are typically $0.50 USD a trip.

Today's plan A was: rent a bicycle, and assuming traffic doesn't want to kill me, follow the linear parks along the river, cross and climb the hill to the National Palace Museum, with a few side-trips to the Aboriginal Museum and possibly the War Memorial.

Bike acquisition: successful. There's an app for that, listing multiple dozens of "youbike" parking lots and how many free bikes there were. I had to walk a bit to the closest one with any free, but that was fine. Renting the bike was great- first 30 minutes free, and you either use your transit card and phone-number to create an account, or for a one-time rental, give them your credit-card. Cheap- after 30 minutes, $10TWD per half-hour ($0.33USD). 

That's my bike. Built like a tank, 3 speeds, not great on hills. The big question was traffic- I was a bit worried, given all the scooters, but my first ride convinced me it wasn't going to be a problem. Everyone gave me lots of room, and there was even some of the safety-in-numbers on streets where cars were in a minority. 

My first problem: I couldn't figure out how to get to the waterfront without going into an automobile tunnel. So I punted and followed the streets until I got to a bridge, and crossed it.

I found the war memorial ("Martyrs Shrine") eventually, and saw the hourly changing-of-the-guards ceremony, which was quite involved, taking over 10 minutes for 5 guards to transit the huge courtyard between the front guardhouse and the huge temple dedicated to the war dead; 5 minutes of ceremonial swapping two guards into place at the temple, then another 10 minutes as the guards marched back down to the gate, and swapped the two gate guards. The scale of the place was meant to impress, and it did. The temple is huge; the wall-of-names written on wood plaques reminded me a bit of the Vietnam memorial in DC in scope, though you can't get any closer than 100 feet or so. I didn't see a note of how many war dead Taiwan has; wikipedia says between 1.8 and 3.5 million casualties including civilians, in the as-of-yet unfinished war between Communist China and the Republic of China AKA Taiwan. I really don't know the history. The story told on the signs was eyebrow-raisingly heroic. Rivalling any other war memorial I've seen, certainly. 

Then I cycled off, after taking use of their free wifi to discover that 1) the route I had wanted to take was another car tunnel; 2) google said there was a walking routing that was more or less direct; 3) there was no convenient way to do this on train without backtracking almost to our hotel.

Long story short: the walking route was over a mountain. Battle-tank bicycle did not have tank-treads and I wasn't going to carry it up many flights of stairs. So I backtracked and used the youbike app to figure out where to drop the bicycle (good bye tank-bike!) and switch to metro. I discovered the "secret" to free wifi at the train station, got bus routing that made sense, and went onward to the National Palace Museum!

But first I took what I thought was going to be a quick look at the "Museum of Formosan Aborigines," basically across the street from the palace museum. That was really cool. Since Taiwan is an island, I expected the story to be similar to the Hawaiian islands, but the cultures involved seem more diverse. There are 500,000 members of some dozen or 15 aboriginal nations in Taiwan- recognized as deserving treaty rights, like in Canada, but an apparently less horrific genocidal relation with the settling cultures, at least as this museum describes the history.  The museum went into lots of ethnography and archeology, going back 15,000 years to the oldest known culture which occupied the whole island and died out completely in the last ice age, then successive rounds of cultures arriving and settling different portions of the island, with many established by the time the Dutch and Chinese came along in the 16th century. It was a lot to absorb, and I wish there were more English-language materials, because all of the video narration was Chinese-only. I may spend a bit of time tomorrow looking into what other Aboriginal sites there are to see here. (I also wonder why the mainland Chinese hadn't settled here much earlier than the Dutch? I will try and figure out that mystery later.)

By the time I left, I only had an hour for the national palace museum, which I knew was huge, so I decided to punt so I could be sure to make it down to dan's conference hotel in good time to meet up with him for a concert as part of his conference. ...Hah. 

Now an "expert" on the bus system, I managed to overshoot my stop when it was earlier than google maps said. We immediately went onto a bridge over the river. The bus driver was apologetic, but there was nothing he could do but get me to the first stop on the other side. Google maps said it would be 30 minutes to get back across. So I hailed a cab- making the fourth mode of transit today.

I would have still been on time, except the cab driver made a wrong turn. We didn't have any language in common but he made it clear it was his fault when he reset the meter. In the end he got me to the hotel before the concert started- and Dan was waiting for me in the lobby of the rather amazingly opulent hotel. I will take photos tomorrow, as we have a banquet dinner.

After the concert we had a late dinner with one of dan's colleagues, at the same night-market I photographed last night. Verdict: tasty dumplings, really tasty "Taiwanese pizza", tasty fried soft shell crab, so-so clam omelette, and quite awful fermented tofu, which was expected (it's even called "stinky tofu") but it's a dish you're supposed to try, so we did. 

I feel like I learned a lot today, and tomorrow will get me back to the Palace Museum nice and early before the tourist hordes descend. And possibly a hot springs and sauna in the afternoon, if things line up well. 

I had two similar ideas, but never followed up on it. Glad I didn't, because I like this metaphor much, much better. 

Girl You Know It's True.​

in in other news; minor rewrite to the ending & cleanup of Wreck Of The Alberta, two submissions. Took longer than I'd hoped. 

In my defense, the Customs&Immigration droid did startle me.

Anything to declare?

Yeah, don't go to Antigua.

Throwback post. At the HamFam with Matt Lichtenwalner, slacking like the pros we are.

I'm an astonishingly uncoordinated person. I find it interesting, the difference between what it's like to be around me and what uncoordinated people are like in television and film. I don't come across as clumsy because I know I'm clumsy, so I avoid situations that would make it obvious how clumsy I am.

I was frustrated by not being able to juggle, so I spent a week practicing alone in my bedroom, four or more hours a night, until I could juggle. Badly. My juggling ability at the end of that week was comparable to what some people can manage when they're shown how to juggle for the first time.

I keep a super-bounce ball at my desk. When I'm waiting for something, I have a habit of bouncing it off the ground and catching it. Even that, I can only do reliably 10 or so times before it goes careening off and bounces off one of my cow orkers. I'm sure they appreciate that. But generally, I just stay away from things that will expose how bad I am at everything that requires me to put a thing in the right place at the right time.

The big exception is cooking. There are a lot of things you can cook that don't require anything except not cutting yourself. Vegetarian "chili" is easy, especially if you convince yourself that you like coarsely chopped vegetables. Many sauces can be accomplished through simple determination. Even a roux is more about knowing how to recover from problems than physical technique. And pastries are simply, obviously, totally beyond my reach. I once determined that I would make a puff pastry; I spent four hours before tearfully admitting defeat.

That, I hope, is enough context to explain why I am so amazingly pleased with myself that I made fettucine alfredo, starting with flour, eggs, butter, and parmigiano reggiano, and sourdough bread, starting with my own starter, flour, water, and commercial yeast (my starter doesn't have enough loft on its own, and screw those people who claim that sourdough isn't sourdough if you use commercial yeast). I know that neither of those tasks sound like something that actually requires any coordination at all, but believe me, I've found so many ways to manage to mess up both from-scratch pasta AND from-scratch bread, and my success has mostly come from finding ways to produce both that avoid a reliance on my coordination entirely. For example, the first time I actually touch my bread dough with my fingers is when I'm flouring it just before it rises. All the mixing and kneading is done by a machine. I can't even enumerate all the ways this prevents me from giving up in tears.

So the huge writing gig for Pearson officially began today. Yay! I'm checking off another item on my career bucket list: designing and writing cool educational content. And these activities will live in the student manuals as part of a massive ELL program set to roll out in China some time next year and then, eventually, to the rest of the world. Another added bonus - I'll finally collect a paycheck again.

I also signed up for NaNoWriMo because several friends threatened to "divorce" me if I didn't commit this year. By the end of the November, I may need to be committed. BUT I figured out that if I rise at 6 am instead of 7, I can sneak in a guaranteed hour of writing each day.

Now... to find that motivation. I think I saw it zipping down the street, but I'll engage my tractor beam to snare it and reinstall it in my brain.