Hero Material and I've been watching The Closer recently, and who would've thought it would manifest in my subconscious?

A couple of nights ago, I had this weird dream that Kuro committed some kind of crime. I don't even know what he did, but that's not the point of my dream. The poor hamster was arrested, complete with teeny handcuffs. Shiro, with her litter, came to the police station to defend him. I was playing the Brenda Leigh Johnson character (the investigator, if you're not familiar with the series), so of course I asked her lots of difficult questions. The poor hamster squeaked in distress, hopping around on the table, but I didn't believe that she was telling me the truth. Meanwhile the infant hamsters were writhing on the table, blind, deaf and hairless. It was just really surreal. Kuro told Shiro he loved her, and the dream more or less ended.

On the non-weird-dream / hamster front, the weather's been odd. The temperature plunged suddenly, and it's freezing here. The big news here is the “massive” layoffs of maybe 2,000 workers or so by several local corporations. In Japan, there are two tiers of employment: seishain (full-time regular company workers) and contract / temporary workers. The latter category is broken down into two categories: shokutaku shain and hakken shain. Shokutaku shain is someone employed directly by the company on a short-term contractual basis, usually for a year. Hakken shain is what most Americans consider temp workers, meaning the company got them through temp agencies. When companies decide to cut costs, they usually let go of their contract / temp workers first. Currently Japan still clings to lifetime employment, and companies have certain obligations to their seishain. That includes not firing them first, paying for their health and pension insurance premiums, giving perks, bonuses, etc. (Contract / temp workers do not receive any bonuses or pay raises, etc.) Due to all this inequity in employment, a lot of non-seishain have been protesting the recent layoffs, etc. Furthermore, IBM Japan laid off its seishain (gasp!), which created even more drama. Oi.

BTW — The Big Three bailout is a huge conversation topic in Japan. After all, it does affect Japanese firms. Auto suppliers hope for the bailout since many of them have contracts with the Big Three. I enjoy reading financial analyses, etc. but if I read another person write that Japanese firms have a huge cost advantage because they get free health insurance and pension, I'm going to scream. I've been in two countries with nationalized health care. It is not free. Everyone must pay. People pay about $400 or so per month, and if they're seishain, companies pay a big chunk of it. Companies also pay for their pensions. If that's not bad enough, Japanese companies must ensure that their workers aren't overweight or overly rotund around the middle or pay an enormous fine to the Health Ministry for overburdening the national health insurance system. Furthermore, the government had a huge screwup with its pension funds, and since Japan has too many retirees and not enough young workers, it's planning to double the sales tax. So please, stop with all this “free” stuff.

It snowed in Japan. Burr. My city was saved from the horrible white stuff (I really don't like snow), but the temperature's falling rapidly. :( It's going to be colder tomorrow.

On the writing front, I realized that I set up the entire fourth chapter incorrectly. It's a shopping / planning / conflict sharpening chapter, and I know that part is right. It's the setting and how the heroine chooses to shop that are wrong.

BTW — This is something that came up on one of the online forums I lurk. One member questioned my integrity, alluding that I'd blindly defend professional associates I have relationships with (such as literary agents, etc.).

I have no patience for incompetence. If I find someone's performance less than satisfactory, I won't defend them just because. So if you see me say something nice about some industry professional, it means I really think that person's nice.

Finally — since the Big Three begging for $25 billion from the government is a big discussion topic among many (it's huge in Japan too), I'll leave you with something to consider.

The total compensation pool (that includes salaries plus bonuses) for Honda's twenty-seven top executives, including its CEO, is $13 million dollars. That's $13 million for ALL of them, not $13 million per person.

Toyota just announced that it had reduced its directors' salaries. The company stated that it is important for Toyota executives to set good examples for its workers and that the executives must sacrifice first.

On the other hand, Rick Wagoner (GM CEO) gave himself a pay raise in March 2008. He is currently receiving $2.2 million dollars a year in salary alone. Furthermore, all Big Three executives flew in their private jets to beg for $25 billion from the Senate. ABC news reported that the round trip for Wagoner alone probably cost GM $20,000.

Business Week recently published an interesting article titled “Obama's Victory: A Consumer-Citizen Revolt”:

This column is dedicated to the top managers of American business whose policies and practices helped ensure Barack Obama's victory. The mandate for change that sounded across this country is not limited to our new President and Congress. That bell also tolls for you. Obama's triumph was ignited in part by your failure to understand and respect your own consumers, customers, employees, and end users. The despair that fueled America's yearning for change and hope grew to maturity in your garden.

Millions of Americans heard President-elect Obama painfully recall his sense of frustration, powerlessness, and outrage when his mother's health insurer refused to cover her cancer treatments. Worse still, every one of them knew exactly how he felt. That long-simmering indignation is by now the defining experience of every consumer of health care, mortgages, insurance, travel, and financial services—the list goes on.

Obama was elected not only because many Americans feel betrayed and abandoned by their government but because those feelings finally converged with their sense of betrayal at the hands of Corporate America. Their experiences as consumers and as citizens joined to create a wave of revolt against the status quo—as occurred in the American Revolution. Be wary of those who counsel business as usual. This post-election period is a turning point for the business community. It demands an attitude of sober reappraisal and a disposition toward fundamental reinvention. If you don't do it, someone else will.

I found the article very interesting, although I'm not sure which came first. Is it the consumer need for cheap stuff or the corporate need (driven largely by investors) for profit? I think they feed off each other. In order to provide consumers with cheap stuff (which are now more disposable than ever before) made companies cut cost ruthlessly in order to make as much profit as possible. And as companies cut cost by laying off people and reducing wages, people's need for cheap stuff became stronger.

Speaking for myself, I don't expect companies to provide any help in case their products break before the warranty expires. So I buy from either:

1. companies well-known for manufacturing reliable products, or
2. companies with the cheapest products

The former is usually reserved for big ticket items like laptops, cars, TV, etc. The latter is reserved for little things like ballpoint pens, kitchen timers and notebooks or things that I can live without.

BTW — I do expect and demand that big Japanese retailers do better than their American counterpart. For example, I buy a lot of electronics from a big regional chain store. Its service staff always provide great assistance when products they sold break down and facilitate the warranty process between their customers and manufacturers. Not to mention, its sales people know everything about the products they sell and are happy to spend however much time necessary to help you make the best purchase possible, even if you leave the store without buying anything. I don't have to waste my time surfing the net for information because somebody there will give me the answer I need to make a decision within a second. The store is not the cheapest in the city, but it earned my loyalty, and I absolutely adore shopping there.

Finally, something to make you laugh — The Matrix Runs on Windows:

Happy Veteran's Day! No matter how you feel about the current war, please do thank them. They've served our nation with their lives so we can enjoy our freedom.

On the writing front — I've given up on NaNo. It's not that I hate it or anything…well…maybe. But ultimately it just wasn't working for me. The current project requires a bit more thought from me, esp. because I'm dealing with a brand new world and characters. Besides, I can't write the middle section unless I'm fairly satisfied that the opening's more or less on the right track. Why? Because I don't want to throw away the entire manuscript and start over. So currently I'm trying to get down about 1,000 to 1,500 words a day, five days a week. I'm not aiming for a super clean first draft, but I want to be able to keep a big chunk of the storyline and so on. Already I cut about 1k from the opening I wrote during my NaNo attempt because it was just…bad. So I've started a new progress table (see below):

Moving on to general life matters — DD asked me about my dwarf hamsters. Shiro and Kuro are doing great. Hero Material and I spent over $100 on new cage expansions and toys for them on Sunday. They have tubes to nowhere, two wheels, a heated nest, a wooden arched bridge, a new feed box, a sand bath, a litter box, hanging wood blocks they can chew on, etc. They're so happy in their little heated nest unit because it keeps them very warm, esp. in winter. Japanese apartments don't have central heating, so it can be fairly cold at night. (May is convinced I'm going to be one of those hovering mothers who's going to spoil my children rotten.)

Some pictures —

Hamster ball:

A brand new water dispenser:

A newly decorated old cage (contains: a heated nest, a water dispenser, a toilet paper core, a sand bath, a litter box):

An expansion cage / secondary unit (contains: two wheels, a water dispenser, a wooden arched bridge, a new feed box, hanging wood blocks, an L-tube):

Two wheels (one new, one old):

Tubes to nowhere (they connect the cages actually):

A bonus pic — Kuro in her brand new litter box!

Speaking of Kuro — as much as I find Shiro and Kuro adorable, I have a small…err…issue. The problem is that I cook, and sometimes even after a vigorous washing with soap, my hands smell a lil like food, so Kuro — she's the glutton of the two — nips or just outright bites my fingers. But she climbed onto my hands last night and sat there for a bit. So for that, I'll forgive her for trying to eat me. I even wrote a haiku dedicated to my hamsters' uber-cuteness:

The haiku critiquer told me that maybe I should expand my imagination since mine only described something as it was. Maybe next time I'll write about the man-eating Kuro.

BTW — The Big Three begging for $50 billion from the U.S. government made the headlines in Japan. Japanese people are astounded that the Big Three want to use $25 billion out of the amount requested on health care.

I'm usually against bailouts in general, and I'm not sure if throwing money at them is going to solve the real reason why they're so cash-strapped: they are losing market share, and their operation is extremely inefficient.

The Big Three seem to believe it's fashionable to blame the subprime crisis / credit crunch for their cash problems, but even when the economy was doing great, the Big Three weren't raking in dough the way Toyota, Honda and Nissan did. Since Ford has just decided to ramp up its gas-guzzling F-series truck production (hey, the gas price fell!), I'm not convinced that the Big Three will use any of the money to build more fuel-efficient environment-friendly cars. Also I don't think the Big Three will be able to survive even after the $50 billion bailout. Why? Because they can't force people to abandon their Japanese and German cars and buy the Big Three cars. Legislating people to buy American cars would be the least American thing to do, and unless the Big Three can make stylish, fuel-efficient and reliable cars that American public wants to buy, they will continue to burn cash at an exponential rate and ultimately fail. There's a reason why Deutsche Bank downgraded GM target price to $0.00 / share yesterday.

Finally, I'll leave you with a haiku I wrote a couple of weeks ago in my Japanese class. The topic was seasonal joys.

Japanese Air Self-Defense Force Chief of Staff General Toshio Tamogami made headlines for his inflammatory and revisionist essay on the Second World War. He claimed that Japan was tricked in to joining WWII, and that Japan was the true victim. He also denounced the Constitution, which prohibits Japan from possessing offensive weaponry and engaging in act of military aggression. In his view, Japan should rebuild its army.

This essay was bound to infuriate China, South Korea and other Asian countries who suffered at the hand of Japanese Imperial Army, so Japan's Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada ordered Tamogami to resign.

Tamogami quit, but he is refusing to shut up about the controversial essay. He is currently going around, saying how he is right and how he has the right to free speech.

This seemed to have annoyed Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is in an extremely difficult position thanks to the subprime mess and strong yen. (The Japanese government does not like a strong yen.) He doesn't want to anger China and South Korea because their cooperation is vital in order to minimize the impact of subprime and strong yen on Japan.

So Aso, in his usual blunt fashion, declared the essay unacceptable. He ordered “reeducation” for Self-Defense Force members so that they not only understand the official government interpretation of history, but also adjust their own points of view accordingly. In addition, he told Hamada to punish any and all Defense Ministry and Self-Defense Force personnel who express opinions that contradict the official government interpretation and position.

I love Japanese politicians. LOL.

There have been several articles and blog posts about how the subprime crisis is going to make it near-impossible for new writers to sell, blah blah blah, and I'm sure many of you have read them already. They do look pretty gloomy, the end-of-your-dream-as-a-wannabe-pro kind. And some aspiring writers are feeling so discouraged that they don't even want to bother querying until the economy improves.

This is what I think about the entire situation:

It's never been easy to get published. I can't think of a time when someone squealed, “OMG! It's sooooo easy to get published.”

It's always been difficult to get published and build a career. What changes is the factors that make it hard to do so.

But one thing you know for sure is that people will continue to buy great books. Everyone's looking for a fabulous story, the kind that makes them lightheaded with excitement. And that's what you the writer can control. So write something that leaves agents and editors panting for more, and no matter how bad the economy is (or whatever), they'll publish it and readers will buy it.