Regina Glei's Blog, page 48

Eric Clapton Concert

I am usually a heavy metal fan, but when I heard Eric Clapton was coming to Japan, I thought, oh my, this might be the last time he will do that, considering that he is already 66 years old. So I promptly bought tickets, since I wanted to see the guitar master at least once in my life. Eric and Steve Winwood toured Japan during November and December giving 13 concerts from Sapporo to Fukuoka with half of the gigs happening in the greater Tokyo area.

He did/does (the last concert, an additional one, is today, 10th of Dec.) four of the Tokyo area concerts in Tokyo's famous Budoukan hall. The building has an interesting history. It was built for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and its function was to house the martial arts parts of the games. "Budou" means "art of warfare" and if you add the character for "warrior" between the characters "bu" and "dou" you get the famous "bushidou" = the way of the warrior.

Ever since the 1964 Olympics, the building is used for concerts as well as national and sporting events. The hall holds about 10,000 people and looked pretty much sold out (despite the steep ticket price of 12,000 Yen (at current exchange rates that's about 110 Euro or 150 USD)).

The concert was supposed to start at 19:00 and only with some five minutes delay Eric and co. came on stage. I had half expected a support band, but there was none.

The band consisted of Eric and Steve, a drummer, a bassist, a keyboarder and two background vocal ladies. The stage was extremely simple without any thrills, the only special item being a big Persian carpet between Eric's mike and the drums. I don't know if that's a trademark of Eric's concerts, but I found that carpet to be very funny. It conveyed the impression as if Eric wants to have a "living room" atmosphere on stage.

During the entire concert the mood in the hall was great. The average age of the audience was around 50, I guess, and thus a bit conservative but also enthusiastic. The entire hall remained seated though (at least until the encore), which was a bit odd for me. It's been a while since I've been sitting during a pop/rock concert. It was very sweet to see some of the people in the audience being taken by the music and a gray haired Japanese lady in front of me who was at least Eric's age was dancing while seated.

While the concert was more than professional and the performance flawless, I was surprised that Clapton did not engage more with the audience. He said "konban ha" = good evening, "thank you" or "thank you very much" after most of the songs and once "Steve Winwood" to praise/introduce him and that was it. He did not even introduce the rest of his band members, which I found a bit sad. I had expected someone with 40 – 50 years of stage experience to talk a bit more to the audience, regardless of whether they are native English speakers or not. Of course people go to concerts to listen to the music, but a little bit of verbal communication between the band and the audience doesn't hurt, does it?

Anyway, Eric played his guitar like a god and I found it amazing that at his age, he can still play like that. I am not a Clapton expert of course and don't know the details, but I was impressed by the "jamming" that took place. I am pretty sure that especially during Eric's solos he improvises and that was awesome.

During the (very short) wait for the encore, the arena got to its feet and some people in the ranks as well, myself and a friend of mine who had joined me for the concert included (as well as the cute gray haired lady in front of us).

The concert took about two hours and ten minutes and though we didn't get to hear "Layla" it was a wonderful evening. And who knows, maybe it wasn't the last time that Eric came to Japan.

Dexter vs. The Walking Dead

Get your hero into trouble. They tell you that at every writing seminar, and they are right. No trouble – no drama.

Two shows that emphasize this guideline to the extreme are Dexter and The Walking Dead.

I like both shows (and I'll keep watching both of them), but I like one of them better. Here is why:

In the Walking Dead the hero(s) are doing more or less only one thing: they suffer. They are nearly gnawed at by zombies every episode, they continue to narrowly escape death. They don't only get gnawed at by zombies, they even manage to hurt themselves otherwise: The black guy cuts his arm and gets a fever, Rick's kid gets shot and suffers seizures and what not. The heroes of the Walking Dead are alone in a hostile world and fight for survival every day despite their horrendous suffering. The characters are overwhelmed by suffering and yet they don't give in, that's why we root for them.

In Dexter the story is a bit different. Here we have a psychopath killer whom we find sympathetic and whom we can identify with because the people he kills are even worse than he is. The game in Dexter is not suffering but "will he finally get caught?" We don't want him to get caught and we (or at least I) sit at the edge of the seat when Dexter gets almost almost almost caught and we wonder, "how the hell is he gonna get out of this this time?". Sometimes he has a bit of luck, but mostly by his own design he manages to evade capture in the last possible moment. Dexter is a great character (in my opinion) because of that. He is "super active" he acts upon his desire to kill, then he acts to avoid being captured. That's what (most) readers and TV viewers and movie goers want most of all: An active hero who almost fails but then succeeds to live on for another season/sequel.

Though Dexter season 5 had its flaws, (especially the ending, where "poof" Lumen's "dark passenger" leaves her) I loved it, just like the other four seasons (with season four being the best so far, John Lithgow is just amazing).

I'll keep on watching The Walking Dead, since all that suffering is just amazing, but I much prefer Dexter and am looking forward to season 6

Self-Pub Nikki 10

06nov11,

As one of the marketing measures for Dome Child I have decided to place an ad on a certain SF related site and I asked the site's owner about his advertisement opportunities. Let's see when I get a reply.

12nov11,

Unfortunately I received no reply yet from that SF site where I would like to place an add… Seems I have to send them a reminder.

Too bad that the author page on Amazon US is not transferred to all the other Amazon entities. Would be a nice point of improvement for them. Since that doesn't happen automatically, I made an author page on Amazon UK and translated my bio into German (that was fun!) and also created my author page on Amazon DE.

Next I dived a bit more into the Goodreads features. I added my blog feed and threw some random books from my memory into my read list. Since the other SF site is not answering concerning the advertising issue, I have now asked Goodreads – they also seem to be offering advertising packages for authors and I'm thrilled what those packages will look like.

19nov11

Well, the advertising is an interesting topic. The site I originally targeted is simply not answering me. Therefore I turned to Goodreads. I filled out a form and told them my monthly advertising budget is 50 to 100$. I got an email back telling me, I can use the self-service ad stuff if my monthly budget is below 2500 USD… Wow. So, for 2500 $ a month they give you a personalized ad campaign I suppose. For anything below that you can use the self service feature. This is what I did now and I have chosen to run a one month campaign for 120 $ because the Yen is so nicely strong at the moment. Lets see if this is worth the pains (and the money).

Busy day, I also ordered one thousand postcards for Dome Child. I used the same company two years ago for my Dark Matters postcards. This time around things went so much smoother and easier – Japanese efficiency. You select the size, paper, amount of cards on their website, hack in your address, upload a zip file for your front and back of the postcard and that was it. I remember doing email attachments and some emails back and forth with them two years ago. Now they just print your stuff and you pay the delivery service person who will bring the cards to you. Impressive.

To continue this day of marketing I also finalized and released my first press release ever. For what it's worth…

20nov11

I've been looking for some more sites where I can post my press release, but have not yet found a site similar to PRlog. Man, there is so much stuff out there.

I also browsed the site of Author Buzz. I wonder whether their services are worth the money… If anybody has experience with them, please let me know.

26nov11

The Goodreads ad does not run all that well I'm afraid. They send me a daily statistics and it says there is an average of 1000 views per day but so far the only one who clicked the ad was myself, haha! The 120 $ seem to get deducted per click. If that is really the case, the ad will be up there for a long while – until those 120 $ are used up? I am not 100% sure yet about that part of the deal.

Nevertheless, this shows the difficulties of marketing. There is just too much stuff out there. How do you persuade people, apart from friends and family, to buy your book? I have a full time job and not the time to surf the net for 8 hours a day and leave comments on 500 blogs… So what do I do instead? Pay a 1000 $ after all for an Author Buzz program? I'm feeling a little bit at a loss at the moment as to what to do marketing wise.

Recent Movies

I don't have much opportunity recently to go to the movies, but there are three of them that I saw recently, two on planes (back and forth to Shanghai) and one in Tokyo on the big screen.

Ghostwriter

Bad Teacher

Pirates of the Caribbean Part 4

Let's start with the worst:

Bad Teacher

It was supposed to be a comedy. Comedies are supposed to be funny.

I didn't laugh even once…

Cameron Diaz has starred in some great comedies. First of all The Mask comes to mind and also There's Something about Mary. Alas, the Bad Teacher thing does not come close.

As the title says, she plays a horribly materialistic high school teacher who sleeps during class, lets her students watch movies, wants money for a breast enlargement gig, bullies her fellow teachers and that was it. The movie is as dull as that sounds. It brims with cliche characters, bitchy teacher colleague, dumb (and overweight) teacher colleague. The nice male teacher who is good at heart and in love with her. The rich, idealistic male teacher whom she wants to have for his money. There was nothing lovable about Diaz' character that would justify the nice teacher guy to be in love with her.

As she finds out that whoever's class scores highest in some test by the end of the term will get a check, she suddenly pushes her students into studying instead of watching movies and discovers that they are human beings. She wins the money (if by rigging the test), does not use it for breast enhancement, becomes a better person and gets the good guy…

Some movies are so bad that they are good again, but this one was not one of them. It will disappear into oblivion immediately where it belongs and it's a sad thing that a lot of money went into its production.

Not much better:

Pirates of the Caribbean Part 4.

Without Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly it just ain't the same. Johnny Depp is cute as always and still seems to have fun playing Captain Sparrow, but all in all the movie does not convince as its predecessors did.

They had an interesting take on mermaids which can turn into viscious beasts, but that was more or less the only interesting idea in the movie and did not reach the class of the pirates of the Black Pearl walking over the surface of the ocean from part 1, or the half sea creatures half humans from part 2 and 3, led by the hilarious octopus Davy Jones.

It seems the franchise will yet continue, but its days of glory have passed.

A lot better:

Ghostwriter

The Ghostwriter was better than expected. Polanski manages to evoke atmosphere with the simplest means. The desolate island, the cold house of Pierce Brosnan, the run down motel at the harbor, the ferry – all wonderfully morbid. Poor Ewan McGregor who has no clue what is going on around him skillfully adds to the atmosphere.

I suspected the wife to be the real culprit for quite a while, yet the final clue with the first word of every chapter of her husband's book was a nice twist and gave the expected discovery a fresh tweak. Well acted, well directed and well structured it was refreshing to see this plot oriented and quiet story amongst the bangs and flashes and 3D spectacles of 21st century Hollywood.

We are all individuals…

Japanese TV provides a rather endless source for wonder, amusement and shaking of heads, and that even though I am watching so little of it. I usually only switch it on for the news, during the Olympics or Soccer Worldcup or for the one and a half shows that I might like. Nevertheless, the little that I watch still makes me wonder.

There is (at least I think so) the very interesting phenomenon of about twenty people or more, preferably women, who say something in a choir at the same time, mostly in commercials.

So you got this silly commercial about whatever – a peppermint bonbon, insurance, detergent, you name it, and there is this whole group of women (all of them young and pretty, of course) speaking with one voice. The psychology behind that is probably to tell the consumer that the thing/service is safe. When 20 women say so, it must be, right?

Now, whenever I watch a commercial like that, I can't help but feeling awfully reminded of the ingenious Monty Python movie "Life of Brian" where a thousand people shout the phrase "we are all individuals" in a choir at Brian at the same time.

I am too much of an individual it seems to buy that crap and feel rather freaked out by the choir women – I mean, can't they at least sing?

Ah, better not… the "we are all individuals" phenomenon has found its way into Japanese popular music in form of the wildly popular AKB48 – (which consists currently of 59 girls according to Wikipedia, not 48). The group holds the Guinness Book entry for the largest pop group. They seem to be around since 2005, though I got aware of them only a few months ago.

AKB48 fans won't like my comment, but to me the girls look all the same, they are all young, cute and pretty.

Whole truckloads of books have been written about the "where does the Japanese desire for uniformity come from" issue, and I will not dare to venture into this territory. It's just that sometimes the phenomenon jumps at me in form of the "we are all individuals" commercials on Japanese TV. But then I am thinking of my Japanese friends and colleagues and find that they are all quite individual and quirky and the haunted feeling of being surrounded by clones eases again.

Self-pub Nikki 9

20oct11,

I thought about selling the paperback version of Dome Child on Amazon UK, Germany and Japan and researched a bit but to sell the paperback via these channels seems like a logistics, liability and taxation nightmare. The taxes story between Japan and the US is nightmarish enough already. So, unfortunately it'll be Amazon US only. Kindle is another story of course, but the sliced tree version must after all be printed somewhere, packed and shipped, which is a much bigger endeavor than sending some bites through the ether.

28oct11,

I enlisted for the "look inside" feature of Amazon, but I need the PDF of the book for that. I asked CreateSpace about it with the nice answer that this is part of the package that I bought anyway and viola, a few days later the "look inside" feature was in place indeed.

02 and 03nov11

On the 2nd I received a message from CreateSpace that the Kindle conversion is already done. That was faster than announced. I went to check it and some parts of it looked a bit strange, so I wrote a message to my CreateSpace team. They promptly answered a night later (sometimes time zone differences can also be of advantage) and assured me that the problems would go away by adjusting the font size on a Kindle or other electronic reading device.

I checked the Kindle self-pub page and the only thing left to do was to set the prices in dollar, euro and pounds and the book should become available on Kindle. After pressing the safe and publish button, a message popped up saying that it will take some 24 hours until the title will be available in the Kindle store. All right then. I'll check that tomorrow.

04nov11,

It took apparently even less than 24 hours for the Kindle Version of Dome Child to go online. When I checked after work on the 4th its beautiful cover smiled at me from all over Amazon US, Germany, France and UK. Funnily though not with the prices that I put into the system. That had me confused for a moment, but by now I think I figures it out.

I set the US list price of Dome Child's Kindle version at 2.99 $ and allowed the system to automatically calculate the UK, FR and DE prices accordingly. You can set them yourself individually, but for the moment I set them based on the 2.99 $ price. Now what happens is that in the UK, FR and DE Amazon adds 15% VAT. So instead of 1.85 pounds it's 2.13 pounds and instead of 2.60 Euro it's 2.99 Euros. So far so good, but the price in Japan on my iPad for example reads 4.99 $. I verified with a US friend that the price is 2.99 in the US and it seems that outside of the 4 countries US, UK, FR and DE Amazon charges 2 extra dollars for the download on their whispernet.

I haven't verified that, but presumably the price in Hongkong or so will be the 4.99 $ as well, when ordering via Amazon.com. Now the funny thing is if someone from the UK checks on Amazon.com the price is 3.43 $, from Germany it's 4.23 $ – welcome to the world of VAT and whispernet charges.

So, I recommend friends in the UK to order via Amazon UK, and in Germany via Amazon DE to get the best prices.

Now, my next step will be to seek expansion into Amazon's extended sales channels as well as other e-book entities, notably Smashwords = the journey continues…

And here are the links to the Kindle Stores:

Amazon US

Amazon DE

Amazon UK

Amazon FR

Subway Manners

There have been numerous campaigns in Tokyo concerning subway manners and most of them were boring, but the series that is currently running has this great animal theme under the motto: "Seen this person" and I cannot but put my two favorite on the blog.

The "don't do your makeup on the subway" one, and my number 1 choice: "don't sleep on your neighbor's shoulder".

These two pictures say it all: Pretentious girls who are not shy to bring their entire vanity case onto the train. Once I saw a girl even doing her hair with a battery-powered curling iron. It's just obnoxious to have all this eyeball exposure on the train, and the temptation to bump into a girl just perfecting her eyelashes with an eyelash curler is sometimes quite overwhelming. The ad's text says: "Lost in your makeup. Instead of looking into the mirror, how about looking around you."

The other picture: we've had that all, we Japan train riders – someone leaning and leaning and leaning ever heavier onto you until you have his/her head almost in your laps.

It's a compliment for Japan that it's so safe you can do almost anything on its trains, including sleeping without being robbed, doing your makeup without being stalked, but nevertheless, it's like the slogan on the sleeping bird's poster: "Hanging in deep sleep. The sleeper's neighbor's expression ain't brimming with enthusiasm."

Hats off to the smart advertising company, who came up with that lovely animal poster campaign.

Trip to Shanghai

It's a cliché to say that but I just love traveling, because it is always an adventure. This time I flew to Shanghai on a business trip, which is a mere two and a half hour flight away from Tokyo, but it's a flight into a quite different world. It was my third time to visit China and my second time to visit Shanghai. Last time I was in Shanghai was ten years ago.

Upon arrival, the adventure started with me not knowing how to get to my hotel. So I signed up with the eager taxi lady behind some desk just in the arrival area what made her look official. She spoke only rudimentary English but seemed to have her stuff together and produced a block of paper and jotted down a price. She asked for 450 yuan, which seemed quite high to me, but I didn't know what else to do at that moment, after all it has been ten years since my first Shanghai visit.

Instead of leading me outside, she dragged me one floor up to the departure lobby which I found a bit odd. She shouted into her phone all the time and I wondered who took care of her desk now. Well, maybe she got replaced the moment she left.

Some five minutes later a guy arrived in a private car and she shouted at him and he kept waiting with me while she hopped into the car. This guy spoke a bit better English and asked me to wait a few more moments. Then it was his turn to shout into his mobile and we waited another five minutes.

The guy turned around to me suddenly and said "It's gonna be a Buick" and prepared to leave. I didn't want him to, since I had already paid at the front desk and how was I supposed to know they wouldn't totally screw me and leave me standing there for good. So I told him I don't know what a Buick looks like and he said "Oh" and stayed.

Another few minutes later some guy and the woman from before appeared in a Kia, not a Buick … And they loaded me into the vehicle. I was already wondering where the hell they'd be taking me.

The young male driver spoke a few words of English but not many and dived into the Shanghai traffic, which is loud, chaotic and comes with an incredible amount of honking. Well, Jakarta was even louder and even more chaotic.

Somewhere along the way the driver made a U-turn and I wasn't at all sure that he knew where he was supposed to take me. The car had no taxi sign on it by the way. I showed him the address again which I had printed out in Chinese luckily and this time around he made it and brought me indeed to the Marriott Changfeng Park.

While stopping, he quite openly asked me whether he can have a tip. Well okay…I offered him 20 Yuan, which was probably not enough and he said he wanted money from my country. Well, the only thing I had on me was Japanese Yen otherwise and they come along in bills of 1000 and up only, so I ended up giving him a thousand yen, which is about 8 USD or 100 Yuan. Anyway, I was just glad he hadn't taken me to the red light district or something. Later on, I found out I had been diddled big time. The regular taxi ride to the airport costs 60 Yuan from my hotel…

The hotel was nice and my room on the 18th floor had a good view. Till the first work duty, dinner at night, I had some five hours of time left on my hands and since the other days would be filled with work and no time for sightseeing, I decided to quickly head for the Bund (that's Shanghai's main tourist spot where the Huangpu river separates Pudong from Puxi) and at least briefly sniff some tourist air.

Armed with a map, I walked from the hotel to the nearest subway station, which turned out to be a 25 minute or so march along residential high rises. A shopping street with familiar shops led to the subway. Kentucky, MacDonald's, Baskin and Robbins, you name it, Shanghai has them all. When I had been here last time some ten years ago, the main mode of transportation had been bicycles. Now it's cars and some scooters, a surprising lot of them are electric scooters, which is a bit spooky, since they are so quiet, but at least they don't stink.

In the subway an interesting scene happened. A "beggar", an old man, was walking through the subway with a much younger guy with a flute in tow. The guy with the flute was equipped with a microphone, amplifier and a speaker somewhere in his bag, meaning potentially "rich" stuff. He directed the old man by jabs in the ribs hither and tither to where some people offered him a coin. I felt sorry for the old man, who looked not very healthy and as if he was being press ganged into this "professional" begging and I am sure that the guy behind him took all the money from the poor guy and would give him only leftovers to eat.

I made a little mistake by getting off at East Nanjing Road station instead of West Nanjing Road station. I walked towards the Bund and walked and walked and it just wouldn't want to come up. Not that the walk had been uninteresting. A man on an e-bike passed me who wore a red velvet hard riding cap instead of a helmet, well, better than nothing, since 80% of the bike riders don't have helmets at all.

When I arrived at a subway station called People's Square I started to wonder where the heck I was and pulled out my map. While doing so, two Chinese people asked me in excellent English to take their photo, which I did. Then they walked with me, saying she was visiting from somewhere, he was a Shanghai native. They asked where I was from, where I worked, where I was going. I finally noticed that they were up to something when they wanted to drag me to an "original Chinese tea ceremony". I bet that their scheme of Chinese friend visiting Shanghai native was a scam. Whatever a Chinese tea ceremony is I do not know, managed to leave them, and kept on walking towards the Bund.

I hit the main shopping street and man… Such masses of people. I will not complain about Tokyo being loud and hectic ever again. Tokyo is a place of tranquility compared to the busyness and noise of Shanghai. The photos I took don't really manage to convey the noisy chaos. Finally, after walking for two subway stations, surely some six or seven kilometers in total, I reached the Bund and it was as impressive and pretty as I remembered it and again masses and masses of people.

After the Bund photo session, I returned to West Nanjing Road subway station, rode back towards the hotel, hit an elegant super market and a bakery and returned to the hotel. After a short rest I met my first colleagues and the official part of the journey started. Our work dinner consisted of international cuisine in Shanghai's French quarter. It was outside in a garden and the weather was just perfect for spending an evening outside. The next day, the nice weather was over and heavy rain and fog accompanied a temperature drop of ten degrees Celsius, which made the place colder than Tokyo.

During the work seminar I attended in Shanghai, we were given the opportunity for quite an unusual experience: the "dialogue in the dark".

I had rudimentary heard about a dinner in the dark, where you have dinner in absolute darkness, and this dialogue in the dark is indeed organized by the same institution. It lets people with normal sight experience blindness. Our group was led into a completely dark room where there was really not even a shimmer of light left. We were given a blind person's cane and that was it. An instructor told us that there were 3 tables in the room and enough chairs for the 20 of us and we had to find a chair first of all in complete darkness. After that was accomplished with much noise and bumping into tables and chairs and each other, we found out that there are trainers with us at each table and we were given tasks.

As a warm up we were supposed to write a poem onto a piece of paper, each of us one word. After about five people, someone finally noticed that the pen was not switched on… Then we (tried to) constructed a rainbow from different sized wooden pieces. Next we had to stand up and attempt to make a square with a piece of rope and last but not least, back at the table, we tried to have a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit, which we had to distribute to the table members.

We spent two hours in complete darkness and they went by like nothing. It was quite an adventure to rely on sound, touch and smell and nothing else and communication – to be forced to speak and work with the people around you in such an extreme environment was an awesome experience.

One of our members quit one minute into the exercise suffering from claustrophobia. I was astonishingly fine and not afraid at all, the knowledge that this was happening in a controlled environment with experienced teachers helped me to persuade my subconscious to be not afraid of the dark.

I had not really expected our teachers to be blind people, but it didn't surprise me to find out that they were after all. The leader and three instructors, meaning 4 blind people coached us through our two hours in the dark and their calm and experience and tricks helped a lot. They told us that there are 280 million visually impaired people on the planet and that China alone has 12 million blind people. Quite a number. I have yet only briefly checked the Tokyo homepage of the organization and I am hoping they also offer dinners in the dark. I'd be very interested in experiencing that! By the way, our teachers were all Chinese and they spoke excellent English… Amazing people.

On my last day I had not much time before I had to return to the airport, just enough to go into a huge Tesco supermarket next to the hotel. I love going to supermarkets in foreign countries and again I knew why. In the middle of the fresh produce section huge tables with raw meat on ice stood around for self service. Meaning you can shove the dead chickens and half a pig's leg into a plastic bag yourself… I bought some crackers and a bunch of exotic teas. People with microphones shouted through the whole shop praising some goods. I can't help it, even that sounded aggressive to me. At the cashiers' desk some real aggression was going on. One guy before me was not happy with his receipt and complained about something being too expensive. He shouted at the clerk lady and I am sure he used not very polite expressions. She remained tough though and with a last insult the guy dashed off.

I threw my purchase into my suitcase and went off to the airport. The traffic on the highway is just amazing. One fat truck after the other, almost scraping your car. People driving like there was no tomorrow and no seat belt on the backseat. I grabbed the handle and had some horror versions of awakening in a Chinese hospital with an arm missing after a traffic accident…

Luckily, I arrived all in one piece to witness the next scene of conflict. Some woman surrounded by police men and two cars was shouting like mad in front of the terminal building. I have no idea about what but it sounded horrific. This time I had taken a regular taxi to the airport by the way and the ride indeed cost me only 60 Yuan. Though I had to remind the driver to turn on the meter and then to give me a receipt. To make him friendly, I gave him a twenty Yuan tip, which finally put a smile on his face.

The trip was short and mostly business, but even so some five days to remember. And it looks like I am going to get to China a little more often from now on due to my new assignment. I'm looking forward to it, Shanghai is a thrilling place, a broiling metropolis and you can feel the bubble mentality, people suddenly have money in this town compared to ten years ago and they are spending it, just look at the masses in the Apple store…

Dome Child out at Amazon.com

I posted the entry before this one a tiny bit too early. The Dome Child has magically appeared on Amazon! Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

New face for the homepage

Since I still cannot (don't want to) really make a big announcement that one can actually buy Dome Child already, I have endeavored to give my good old homepage a facelift.

I am starting to get a bit worried about Amazon. I emailed them (or better to say CreateSpace) and asked why I cannot see Dome Child on Amazon US yet and the answer was this time that it takes 5 to 7 business days and that it wouldn't happen in one go, but that things would "gradually" become visible. Hm… nothing is visible yet and a good 5 business days have passed already.

Guess (hope) the book will get its Amazon page while I am in China and that I can announce stuff the coming weekend.

So, in the meantime, I changed the design of my homepage (by simply using one of the other 90 designs that yahoo web hosting offers). I think the new design looks pretty cool!

I hope the world will agree with me.

I still can't help the name though, since I bought that name some 5 or 6 years ago or so, but when I Google myself the page comes up nevertheless, so I guess I can and will live with it.

Another tiny thing: I tried to access the design features for my homepage on the iPad = via Safari and there comes the nice, interesting message that the page can only be edited via Explorer and Firefox … didn't know that yet. And, oh yes, cannot insert the Japanese version of the Ghosts of Tinian short story, it displays just fine, but once the site is saved the Japanese characters simply disappear… does anybody know any cures for that one?

Well then, off to Shanghai tomorrow.