Hero Material and I are getting married.

Sorry, May, but there's no picture of the ring. Hero Material and I decided to skip it. I don't really wear rings, and I can't justify spending thousands of dollars on something that I'm going to wear for about a week at the most. Furthermore, with the economy the way it is and the expenses going up (thanks, IRS!) I'd rather not. But we're getting a nice set of wedding bands with sapphires. So I think that makes up for it. :)

Shiro‘s doing awesome. She now weights 28 grams, incredibly energetic and jumps on top of Kuro all the time to assert her dominance. Yay! :)

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Have you seen Nalini‘s Angels' Blood cover? It's just awesome. It's out on March 3. I can't wait. :)

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Two industry insiders' view on Kindle's text-to-speech feature:

Neil Gaiman's position is that TTS is okay. Jason Pinter disagrees since TTS can potentially cannibalize audio sales. He quoted an interview with Robert B. Parker:

…what about an author who makes $60,000 a year, $10,000 of which comes from audio sales? What if, down the road, the Kindle cannibalizes his/her audio sales to the point where another contract is not offered? Audiobooks are more expensive to produce than print books and carry a higher price tag, so the author loses out on a certain dollar amount for every audio sale lost. Saying this issue is no big deal is like a politician claiming we're in a “mental recession” while riding in his private jet, unaware that below him there are people losing their homes. At some point perspective is lost, and while arguing dollars and cents may seem silly to some, to other it ceding this completely may at some point alter their career.

There have been other blogs and organizations stating their positions on TTS. But what I find singularly interesting is that most of pro-TTS people are telling authors to just hand over rights without getting compensated. I haven't seen a single pro-TTS people telling Amazon to cough up some dough and pay the authors for TTS.

BTW — IBM has TTS technology that sounds like a real human. So it is a very real possibility that something like Kindle TTS may replace audio books within years.

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This interview with Binky Urban just rocks. I love the part where she discusses McCormick.

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Nathan Bransford discusses sympathetic v. unsympathetic characters. Everyone should go read it. :)

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That's it! Do you have anything to share? Or discuss further? :)

mood: stuffed…! Hero Material and I had three days of gluttony starting Friday
eureka of the week: figured out two important world building / plot elements in All the King's Women; must incorporate them into the current draft

Happy belated V-Day! :)

Hero Material and I ate tons of food. On Friday, I made cheese fondue — very very good! — and on Saturday, we had Italian and on Sunday, I made beef stew and a ton of garlic bread.

I still feel stuffed.

We also went to a local jewelry store on Saturday to look at some custom made rings and design diagrams (pics). I do like diamonds, but for our engagement and wedding, we decided to go for sapphires. Hero Material has six loose gems, and I love their deep blue color. The issue, of course, is the right setting.

I liked some of the designs, but it was much more than I expected to pay. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I want to spend that much money given the current economic condition (recession) and so on. Hero Material thinks that I'm fiscally conservative — meaning I don't like to spend money even during bubble — but we'll have to see. The designer told us that it takes about twenty days, so if we give her a month, she'll have all the rings ready for us.

(My mom was determined to send me hundreds of jewelry store catalogs. I had to ask her to not bother since it's really not necessary.)

Speaking of spending money…

Numerous Japanese news stations reported about U.S. “stimulus” bill's “Buy American” clause. (BTW — it was very amusing to watch it since Japan is incredibly protective of its own domestic firms.) The foreign countries' problem isn't that the U.S. is spending the money it doesn't have, but that it wishes to use that money to buy American-made steel and so on for construction projects, etc.

Now, I'm not a big fan of protectionism — I'll blog more about how it can really hurt consumers later with some examples from Japan — but come on! The bill is supposed to stimulate domestic economy. The American taxpayers are going to be infuriated if the government uses $800 billion of their money and stimulate the economy of some other countries, when American economy is in recession.

I can't help but think that the countries that complain are just looking for “free lunch”. They don't want to spend the money but still get the benefits. If they want to stimulate their own domestic industry, they too can pass a $800 billion stimulus bill.

mood: hopeful
Shiro's status: still hanging in there

On the writing front, revision is kicking my butt. At the same time I absolutely love the story, and I don't want to shortchange my characters. So that means I just have to gambaru*.

Re: Shiro —

On Monday, I held Shiro and cried. She was very weak, kept collapsing on her side and Hero Material and I were sure she was dying, esp. since she lost even more weight (17 grams).

The idea that Shiro might be cold and unmoving when I wake up made it very difficult for me to sleep, and Hero Material got up at 5:00 a.m. to check up on her. (He couldn't sleep well either.)

On Tuesday, Shiro ate some baby food, little chunks of her favorite nuts, grains and a little piece of dried protein treat. She also drank some water and walked better. Her eyes seem more open and alert, and we were just so grateful to have her still with us.

This morning, we weighed her. She's about 20 grams now. Hero Material held her and gave her more food. She loves the attention, I think.

I want to thank all my friends who sent Shiro good thoughts and prayers. I also want to thank generous people over at Hamster Hideout forum who gave me invaluable advice.

Thank you.

* gambaru — Japanese for “doing one's best” (at least in this context anyway)

mood: hopeful…!
currently working on: All the King's Women revision round 1

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the vet took some of Shiro's poo for tests on Friday. He said it'd take about three business days, so he told us to wait until Wednesday or Thursday for the result.

Meanwhile, Shiro's been very wet and uncomfortable. Also her diarrhea made her fur matted and dirty. I went out and bought a bottle of special unscented and alcohol-free shampoo for small animals for Shiro, and Hero Material and I washed her last night. She bit me hard twice. I didn't mind though. She's very sweet (and super-feisty) and doesn't usually bite, so I know she must've been extremely stressed out about getting washed with soap and water.

Hero Material and I've been also hand-feeding her. She's very picky about her food now, so we bought all kinds of stuff that a hamster might want to eat (except sweets) and chopped them up and fed them to her. She's been very good about taking those small bits of food from us, and she loves diced skinless almonds, walnut pieces, crushed peanuts, chopped carrots, corns and baby food.

Today, the vet called Hero Material. He started the conversation by asking about Shiro's health; he knows she's been losing a lot of weight. So he used a super polite form of Japanese to say, “Is Shiro still alive?”

Of course, we were happy to tell him. Shiro's one tough hamster, and she's a fighter.

The vet said that the test came back positive for parasite eggs. They're very unusual, and he doesn't know how she could've gotten them. But he said he'd prescribe some medicine to kill those nasty things in her tummy. He also wants to gather more poo samples and run extra tests to rule out other possibilities. Since there's no animal medical insurance, he said the tests and medicine would cost “too much”. Hero Material told him nothing was too good for our Shiro. (Besides, the Japanese doctors' idea of expensive is $20-30 for a visit plus medicine and $70-100 for lab tests. That's like nothing to us Americans who are used to paying hundreds of dollars just to say the word “doctor”.)

Hero Material and I are very hopeful that Shiro's going to make a full recovery. When that happens, I'm going to feed her so she doubles her weight. (She lost about half her original weight so far.)

A little haiku I wrote for Shiro yesterday:

Her life not an ounce
Small, wet white — trundling by
Brings tears to my heart

I got to watch it today since it just hit the big theaters here. (Yes, the price I pay for living in Japan…!)

Quantum of Solace is a fantastic Bond flick. I loved it. I know some people complained about Bond being too dark and/or the character development relying too much on what happened in Casino Royale. But I always thought the lack of continuity and Bond's development were weaknesses rather than strengths of the franchise; there's something very callous about him not caring about all those dead Bond girls, etc. So I didn't mind that Vesper's death played a significant role in Bond's character in Quantum of Solace. As a matter of fact, I thought it deepened the movie and Bond as a character. Besides, the kind of work he does is dirty and not supposed to be light and fun. Read Fleming's novels; Bond might be a playboy, but there are other, dark sides to him too.

BTW — the theater had some technical difficulties, and the movie had to be stopped in the middle for about three minutes. For the inconvenience (for which they apologized in person four times), they gave everyone a voucher for a free movie ticket valid until April 30. We can choose any film we want. W00t! :) I think I'll save it for a reward day.