iPadding around

So here’s the thing.

I mentioned a while ago that my husband, who doesn’t give frivolous gifts like jewellery or flowers (*stop changing my spelling to American, WordPress!!*), does give gifts that DO stuff. Like computers. Like iPhones. Like iPads.

I mentioned that he had given me an iPad. Not exactly against my will (who could turn down such a gift?) but far earlier than I thought I ought to get one.

I have been enjoying it as an e-reader, having finished both The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest on it, and dipping into Ulysses off and on, reacquainting myself with Winnie-the-Pooh, even importing PDFs to read in the iBook app.

Holidays, holidays

Round here, we celebrate Columbus. 

No; celebrate is too strong a word. Commemorate is a better one.  

Whatever the situation, we have holidays round this time. After all, the island of Guanahani, where the new world landfall took place, is somewhere in our archipelago. Or in the Turks & Caicos, which is part of our archipelago (pace TCIslanders).

Anyway. Today was a holiday.

Yay.

Spent it on the beach, eating.

Yum.

So there.

Facebookery

I’m on Facebook, and here’s why.

Much as I shy away from virtual communities (I get quite enough real community in my life, thank you very much), I tend to join them when it seems as though there is a practical purpose to be served.  

Here’s the practical purpose with Facebook (MySpace too, clearly, but I am not drawn to MySpace):  it’s a cheap, fast-and-dirty way to announce stuff.

I live in a country where over the last 15 years we have gone from a single broadcast monopoly (one government-owned corporation that controlled all radio and television – Americans, sit in wonder, and then remember we were once owned by the Brits, who until relatively recently had something similar, at least with television) – to an open broadcast community and a proliferation of radio and, in the last five years, television stations.

Everybody wants to get in on the ground floor.  Everybody wants to make money.  But the corporate community is the same size as it was, and its advertising budget hasn’t increased one whit.  What with fuel prices being high (though dropping), etc, the cost of advertising has skyrocketed but profits haven’t.

And in this market, what I (read we – we have a company) do and what I want to advertise is niche-specific and has a high capital cost.  

I’m talking theatre here.

Fifteen years ago, a production would cost maybe $12k-$15k to mount.  However, with judicious marketing (on the single television station) and good occupancy, the same production could bring in $20k-$25k.  Doable, right?  Leaves us enough to mount the next one, keep things going.

These days, though, you don’t know who your audience is, and you don’t know which radio station they listen to.  Television is still predictable – the idea is to get a spot on the nightly news.  But that isn’t either cheap or easy.  

Enter Facebook and other networks.  And the Bahamian public has adopted Facebook as its net community of choice. More and more people are getting the word about fun things to do out, and expanding their networks, and targeting people who are interested and ignoring those who aren’t.  Pretty ingenious, no?  And also pretty cost-effective.

For now.  Until they figure out a way to charge for that too.

Don’t get around much anymore

Last night I had a dream about a strange place near to our international airport that used to be, among other things, a classy bed and breakfast resort as well as a girl’s boarding school.  (That part is unclear.  You know how dreams are.  It may have been a co-ed boarding school, but it’s just not easy to tell anymore.)  In the dream, it was being used for a meeting.  The meeting started out as a meeting of civil servants, although it changed to a spot for the remote broadcast of our national festival and a secondary site for that festival, to be conducted by the armed forces of the country (read police and the defence force — our version of marines) for people who are on their way to the airport and want a taste of the festival.  And yet, considering the fact that access to the performance space was up a rickety old iron ladder and onto a sloping roof, it seemed a little optimistic.  And then, given the fact that a dead aunt of mine, who when she was alive was both one of the most beautiful women of many people’s acquaintance, and also, thanks to various health challenges, lame in one or both of her long, long legs, turned up, it seemed, well, a little dream-like.

There were, come to think of it, many long-dead people in the dream.  It was peopled with the dead and the missing.  You tell me.

But I say all that to say this:  I have been scarce, and will continue to be scarce, because I am in the process of changing jobs yet again.  I never thought I would be the person I am when I was growing up.  I never imagined a nomadic existence.  But my professional life has so far been peripatetic, and once again I am moving on.  The dreams that go with the period of transition are always vivid, improbable (more so than usual), and surrealistically coherent.  Last night’s was no exception.

So there that is.  I shall be posting spasmodically for a while longer.  Then, after things settle, let’s hope the regularity of my posting on this blog will resume.

Perhaps there will be more dreams to share — who knows?

Cheers.