Ruminations

As you probably know by now, I love writing my answers to memes. Found this on Pavlov’s Cat and Moment to Moment, in quick succession, and knew I had to do it too:

Accent: Varies. The Malaysian accent is more or less pronounced depending on who I’m talking to and how excited/exasperated I am. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fluent Strine speaker, in that my accent will always give me away. Additionally, when I speak Mandarin, Southern Chinese say I do a mean Beijing accent (it must be all the rhotic vowels I learned to do at uni); Northerners, Beijingers especially, ask if I am Japanese. My accent when I speak Malay? No idea, probably best described as rusty.

Booze: Heineken beer on the odd occasion. Gin and tonic on a hot summer’s evening.

Chore I hate: Vacuuming.

Dog or cat: Cat. See also, Baubles the Cat.

Essential electronics: Computer.

Favourite cologne(s): None. Strong artificial scents make my throat close up and my eyes water.

Gold or silver: Silver.

Hometown: Born in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, but have lived in Perth, Western Australia for more years and love this city.

Insomnia: Never have it.

Job title: Senior Librarian. Sounds more.. grand (does it?) than it is…

Kids: None. Never had a strong urge to have any.

Living arrangements: With M, and Baubles the Cat.

Most admirable trait: Err.. reliability?

Number of sexual partners: All at once?!?

Overnight hospital stays: None yet.

Phobias: Cockroaches.

Quote: “Calm down, no one’s going to die.” This is something one of my colleagues, JC, says from time to time, not necessarily aimed at me, but if I am within earshot it always has the effect of making me stop and take a deep breath. I should really take it as my personal mantra. See also, answer for ‘W’.

Religion: Lapsed-Catholic-turned-atheist.

Siblings: Four. I’m the oldest.

Time I wake up: 5am. On weekends I have been known to occasionally sleep in until 6 or 7am…

Unusual talent or skill: Ability to identify languages I hear. “That’s not Xhosa, it’s Sotho.” Actually I’m exaggerating a bit, I used to know some Sotho and Xhosa speakers, and I got quite good at identifying Sotho especially. I don’t seem to know any speakers of Southern African languages at the moment. But I can tell my Swiss German from German German, Gronings from Standard Dutch and my Teochiew from Hokkien…

Vegetable I refuse to eat: Okra. Its sliminess makes me gag.

Worst habit: Catastrophising. Procrastination comes a close second.
M: CW, I’m going to go ride my unicycle to the shops.
CW: [train of thought starts off that ends with CW a bitter dried up misanthropic hag with a cat allergy; variant is that M becomes a world famous unicycling juggler with hordes of adoring fans fawning over him, and CW a bitter dried up misanthropic… etc.]
The only good thing about this habit is that it tends to be internalised so most people are never subjected to it. (Poor M, on the other hand…)

X-rays: Teef.

Yummy foods I make: Can’t answer this because I am very lazy and don’t cook much, although I used to make a mean crème caramel, an eternity ago.

Zodiac sign: Do I have to answer this if I don’t believe in astrology? Might as well go the whole hog: Libran Metal Dog.

And while we’re on the subject of personal traits,my Bloginality is ISFJ! This apparently means that

In blogging, your journal will always be immaculate and have a touch of style. You may also feel overwhelmed because you want to be a part of everything going on. Because of your wonderful memory, other bloggers may come to you to ask about things you posted months before.

(Thanks to the Itinerant Librarian for the link.)

Categories: meme

Attended a talk on innovation and creativity yesterday, at work. I didn’t find the speaker particularly inspiring (sorry Boss!), but some of what he had to say was interesting. I have to confess that I confessed that I had no idea what people meant when they talked about their organisation being innovative, or about being a part of an innovative organisation or business. It’s a bit pathetic of me, given that I work for an organisation that’s used the word ‘innovation’ in its name for advertising and publicity campaigns. You’d think that I would have at least gone and tried to find out what was meant in this instance. Maybe I was asleep at the time. Or, more likely, I reacted the way I often do to a big media campaign about any product/brand/service - I am immediately very cynical about it and disinterested in what I perceive to be mere spin. After a while chronic indifference sets in, which very quickly translates into me completely ignoring the perceived hype and just getting on with the job at hand. Life goes on, thank you very much, pithy slogan or no pithy slogan. (Is this just me?)

Still, after yesterday’s talk I think I have a bit of a better idea what’s meant by innovation:

• Practical and possibly inventive solutions to problems
• Constant improvement of existing services or procedures. Can we do this better?
• Looking for opportunities in problems (colleague JW’s contribution; she does embody an attitude of seeing potential in problems. I admire this ability - we’ll all be sitting around moaning about The Way Things Are, while JW observes, and then she’ll come up with something that summarises the problem and suggests some solutions. Always refreshing when you’re bogged down in a hellish meeting.)
• Ignore your inner critic when you or someone else thinks of or suggests a new way of approaching a problem. Give yourself time to listen and consider where the other person is coming from, hear them out, where might this work?

The speaker also talked about types of innovation, and the difference between:

• Radical or disruptive innovation. Often these are brand new inventions that many people might instinctly recoil against because they have been completely unthought of, and hence challenging or even frightening. Aeroplanes. Television. ATMs. The Internet.
• Gradual or continuous innovation. Continuous improvement of what we do or offer. Cars in any colour. Mobile phones.

I like the example of mobile phones. The mobile phone is a definite innovation, an improvement on the traditional land line. The portability and convenience aspects are good. Still, I personally think some mobile phones these days are terrible. Many of their features actually worsen the experience of using a mobile phone. The top ‘issue’ I have with mobile phones is poor battery life. Other problems - tiny keypads, clunky interface/software, bad displays, too many unnecessary features (which again drain the battery). Even if I wanted a phone that has a fancy colour display, lets me play games, listen to music, check my email, take a photo, and show off in public - and I couldn’t care less about all of these features, actually - it is immensely irritating when all you want to do is make a simple phone call or send an SMS message, and the battery has been drained by all these supposed innovations. Maybe all we need is to innovate in the area of phone batteries. Ceej says this far more eloquently than I have.

And (now that I’ve gotten that rant off my chest), for those of us in libraries, the message is that we can and need to keep looking at what we do to see how and where we can improve. (Interesting to read this list in the light of my new understanding on innovation. Also, what’s mere hype, and what’s going to be useful for library users?) How are we going to remain relevant to our users? What will our libraries look like in five, ten, fifty years from now? What about librarianship as a profession? Our profession is changing whether we like it or not.

Categories: innovation, technology, librarianship