Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Tired of Tanaka-san: adventures in Japanese learning

My story with Japanese is long and involved. I first got me a copy of Teach Yourself Japanese when I was in high school. I was fascinated by the East, I had a knack for languages, the book was cheap… oh, come on, do I really have to make excuses?
The Teach Yourself book was good but as a high-schooler I had too much to do already. I had much more success with the Teach Yourself French book. We’ll get back to that.

My brother did take Japanese and Chinese in University, and then worked with Japanese artists as a music promoter. Back when he was doing it, his Japanese was good. Today he says he’s out of exercise, but that’s just his perfectionism speaking. He’s good.
Some of it brushed off on me. At the turn of the century I could manage a basic survival exchange, and if my counterpart was not talking too fast, I could understand what they were saying. I could read about sixty kanji. Basically like a Japanese pre-schooler.
I took a formal course, paid with the income from my very first job.

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My birthday fundraiser was a success!

My birthday fundraiser closed last night. This means I am now officially old. My fifty-second birthday was seven days ago, but by placing the fundraiser astride the birthday date, I gave myself the illusion of having one week more.
Ah!
But if I am, indeed, old, I am also quite impressed, and grateful, by the response of my followers – that in the end collected 299$ for The Ocean Cleanup.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
You are the best.

And 299 bucks’ 50% more than planned, and I really hope this small contribution helps pulling a bit of plastic out of our waters.
It’s been fun, and quite satisfactory, and I think I’ll do it again next year.
I’ll be older then, and I’ll try to collect more money for another worthy cause.


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Two book proposals on their way to the editors

After a month of May that felt like November but without the cheer, a suffocating hat has come to the Belbo Valley and the hills of Astigianistan are sunk in a Cambodian humidity.
Sometimes a chopper flies by, and it feels like a rerun of China Beach.
Soon I’ll start working at night, and spend the days in a state of semi-comatose stupor.

But, because one has to make a living, I sent out two book proposals this morning. Very sketchy, as these are the opening shots, but promising.
Also, these are (fingers crossed) sure things – both publishers are positive the things will be published, and indeed they were the ones that asked me to provide proposals and work plans.
These are books I will write – maybe by night, but I will.
The worst that could happen is for the editors to tell me they’d rather have it differently from the way I plan to write it. It’s OK.

Both the projects will be quite fun, and this is good, because writing for hire can be soul-crushing. One book will be a sword and sorcery yarn with a Mediterranean/Ray Harryhausen twist, and the other a non-fiction book about explorers and adventurers – a proposal I landed last month at the Turin Book Fair. One will come out in English, the other in Italian.

It’s been a good morning, despite the heat.


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And should the Winter never come? What then, uh?

I am not a fan of Game of Thrones, and I did not like the books by Martin when I read them. So sue me.
I still appreciate Martin as a writer (mostly because of Fevre Dream) and I like what he’s trying to do with his books, even if I don’t care for the way he’s doing it. The Wars of the Roses? Really?

But I have watched with mixed emotions the evolution of the Game of Thrones fandom, their reactions at the way the show and the story were developed and all that. Always good watching how a pro does his thing, and how the punters react.

Yesterday I read somewhere that George R.R. Martin explicitly said that the whole “winter is coming” thing in his books was intended a metaphor of climate change. Now … yeah, I know, I told you already, I am an environmental scientist… this sort of intrigued me.

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