lioness in japan

I’ve only been let go once before and it was at my first job at a fashion/interior design magazine. The boutique publishing house (it had only one magazine) collapsed after its second issue, after which the German owner did a runner on all the bills he had to pay. Although I wasn’t paid for my last month there, I found a job a week after my last day at work.

A lot of the bad feelings I harboured happened mostly in the lead up to the official announcement that it was all over. Projects and articles were stalled because of financial problems, which of course angered industry associates and rumours burned our ears. This made marching along extremely difficult and we spent a lot of our time smoking and brooding in the dingy staircase outside the office.

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Due to too much excitement, I have to admit I was way too hasty in setting up BEAUTY BOX, v.01 — the design was too common and the URL far from satisfactory.

When I get an idea for a website, I just shoot it out, which is a terrible weakness. With four blogs behind me, I learned you need to refine it again and again.

I’m feeling quite positive about this new venture as an on-going thing so why not do it a little better?

BEAUTY BOX

Sorry for the long absence in “life” posts but this is what I’ve been living and breathing these past couple of weeks.

As promised, I’ve uploaded most of my products so here is the link to BEAUTY BOX, http://www.astrorainfall.wordpress.com, so please help me spread the word!

I’ll give you a summary of how I started this little online beauty biz:

As you know, I’ve been let go of my full-time job in Tokyo, but being the web chick that I am, I decided to do something online so I can monitor it wherever I am (and wherever I may move to).

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I know I’ve been missing for a long time but so many things are happening after my Bali trip and I’m struggling to keep up with my websites for now. The kangaroo’s mum is flying in tomorrow so we would be sightseeing for the next few days. Also, I’ve got two chapters of Japanese homework to tackle before her arrival as there will be zero time to get it done.

Just a sneak peak at what I am working on:

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For a long time, I have been wondering why my readers would email me directly rather than leave a reply in the comments box. I figured whatever they wanted to say was deemed private to them, so I didn’t ponder on this at all.

As the months crept by, my traffic numbers increased to a healthy figure but there was still dead silence in my blogs. I started to fret about the quality of my content and felt like I was shouting into a vacuum on the Internet. Admittedly, my motivation faltered sometimes.

Then one day, my close gal pal ambien told me she couldn’t leave comments on my blog. “WHAT?!” Yes, she informed me that only Wordpress account holders were able to log in and leave a response. Of all things to overlook! So over the weekend, I tweaked the settings on all my websites, Discover Supplements, Get Divorce Advice, and Class Action Finder.

But, Lioness in Japan was still a mess. After whining to the kangaroo, he assured me he would look at it, but with our housewarming on Saturday and recovery on Sunday, we got nothing done. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I went through the php script in my Supplements website and compared it to the one for my Lioness blog.

Several crucial lessons learned: Don’t whine, just hunt for a solution first, even if it takes a few days; there is nothing too complicated in building a website even for a techno-phobe like me. To those who are afraid to set up a blog of their own — don’t be afraid, if I can do it, so can you.

So feel free to send me a note or leave a comment here, I would love for my space to be somewhere people can express themselves. Apologies if my websites looked unfriendly and unapproachable before but it was all a technical oversight on my part.

Thanks for visiting and I would love to hear from you!

I got my first nasty comment in the history of this two-year-old blog, which set me thinking a lot in the past few days. I wanted to wait a little for some inspiration on how to intelligently create a response, rather than fall back on a simple rant.

Here is the comment but if you are interested to read it within context, it’s at my old blog address:

“The problem is you! You are clearly a spoiled low class bottom feeder and trust me the people in this world that know the difference will smell you a mile away. You may have been annoyed but your writing nails you as the cheap dirtbag that you really are. Disgusting human being. Sorry that worthless trashy people like you take up space in this world.” (Signed off as Anonymous)

My first reaction was, “Yikes, who is this from? What an angry comment!”

My second reaction was, “Wow, my first ‘controversial’ comment — maybe it shows that my blog is making more of an impact on the blogosphere!”

My third thought was, “Gosh am I really spoiled?!”

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Presently, I am but I will counteract this by writing about it! Corny, but it did set me thinking about how much I have learned in this area of writing.

Every journalist goes through it and it can be painful, especially during deadlines. But I hate to say this, there are no excuses. You are a professional so act like it. A lawyer wouldn’t tell you he couldn’t litigate because he was not in the mood.

It is the reality of all writers: this happens once in awhile, even to the most seasoned ones. Here are some strategies to fight this mental malaise. But there are no shortcuts and if you have to hand in your copy in the next hour, this blog entry will not help you.

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Inspired by my recent freelance stint, this blog entry focuses on advice to new journalists who wonder how to do their best in a round table interview. This also touches on issues to do with being a stringer for various magazines, but even if you are writing for just one publication, I think you would find these points relevant.

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On rare occasions, I will do freelance writing gigs for the Singapore media. Last year, I interviewed Maroon 5 for two magazines. It was set up by Universal Music and these guys have always been on the ball when it comes to promoting their artistes. I’m glad that I managed to keep in touch with the staff there. The money is frankly not much but it’s something fun to do and I’d like to keep some connections open with work-related peeps back home.

Last weekend saw the MTV Japan Music Awards so a few of their artistes were in town. I was supposed to interview Nelly and Mariah Carey. The kangaroo was quite excited for me, too, “Wow, Mariah Carey?!”

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Working by remote takes far more discipline than I expected. My Sydney trip was slightly easier because I worked from the office there.

One glich, though: Our hotel only had one LAN cable outlet so the kangaroo had priority because he had more pressing, time-sensitive matters to deal with.

What did I do? I just hung around and read my book. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work but I needed to be online to get any progress.

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