Gratuitous Leap Day post

In the over-10-years that I've had this blog, I've posted only once on a Leap Day. Reading it, man, it feels like a long time ago.

I don't remember people calling it Leap Day until this year. Is it a new thing?

Anyway, as one dry wit tweeted today:

Remember, unless you are freelance, today you are providing your services to your employer for absolutely nothing.

I worked pretty hard today, then on the way home from dinner with friends, I stopped and looked at the moon, so I could look for Jupiter and Venus (via @orrh). It is crazy, just crazy, to think that that faint, white blob of light is Jupiter, so damn far away.

Speaking of which, you've seen "The Scale of the Universe 2", haven't you? Haven't you?! My friend Ripper showed it to me and it absolutely blew my mind.

I will now go to sleep with the theme song from Big Bang Theory in my head.

Speaking soon

Without meaning to, I've lined up a couple of speaking opportunities for the rest of February, most of them related to writing and publishing in the current media environment (in other words, what the heck is happening to writing and writers with all this Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/other-online-services-with-catchy-names-with-no-vowels going on?).

1) As part of Social Media Week, I'll be speaking with the POSKOD.SG editorial team. We've given our event the not-so-snappy title, "Old-School Storytelling in a New Media Age: The View from POSKOD.SG". The event is free; please register on the event page so that we roughly know how many people to expect.

Details: Wednesday, 15 February, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Sinema.

2) The following night, I'll be at the monthly Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) Roundtable session, speaking on "Troublesome Women as Project and Paradigm". It's the same title as the paper I co-wrote and delivered at the conference on gender last month, but will have somewhat different content, tailored towards a less academic audience. Register at the AWARE event page.

Details: Thursday, 16 February, 7:30-9:00 p.m., AWARE.

3) And in the last week of February, I'll be giving a talk "Finding Your Voice Online" at Jurong Junior College (27 February) and Raffles Girls' School (29 February). It's a talk I've conceptualised about how I think aspiring writers can make use of social media tools and other online platforms to develop their writing skills, as well as other related skills and habits that are useful to have as a writer.

I'm offering this talk as part of Words Go Round, the Singapore Writers Festival school outreach programme, so it's only for students of those schools. If you're in a secondary school or junior college in Singapore and want me to come give that talk, point your English teacher to the Words Go Round website, which has more details about the talk and how to make a booking.

Tomorrow is talk preparation day. Do not disturb until it's time to hit the pub (or in tomorrow's case, a Mexican restaurant).