Nothing about China, a little bit about books, a little bit about writing. There are stringent controls on the import of foreign books here, and those that do get in are hugely expensive. We've tried Amazon, but the postal costs are outrageous. So when a friend told me that www.bookdepository.co.uk delivers to China without charging any postage, I was pretty happy. And it does! It puts books in an envelope and sends them off one by one by regular airmail. It takes a while, but they arrive eventually. Generally, the prices are lower than the RRP on the back cover, but more than the Amazon discounted prices. Once you've taken into account the lack of postal charges, the book depository wins on price every time. AND the website has a natty page where you can see in more or less real time what people are ordering all over the world. Hours of fun!
And for my second advertisement of the day, is for Microsoft OneNote. This came with my new Lenovo ThinkPad, which is a beautiful, beautiful red colour. I suppose, more accurately, it came with Microsoft Office and Windows 7. And at first it annoyed me, because every time I wanted to print a page, it offered me the option of 'printing' to OneNote, and I hadn't a clue what on earth that was. So I dug around, and discovered that OneNote is a like a computer-based Filofax. One of its major features is that you can just click Ctrl P on any web page and copy it into your notebook. And then you can type your own notes on top of the image of the webpage. So, for instance, I have set up two notebooks. One for personal use, which has folders for travel plans, and other arrangements. It has copy of train timetables in it, and etickets. Another notebook, for writing, has folders for character, plot, themes, and others for research, which are filled with web pages. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for a good-looking piece of software, but I find this a really useful way of keeping material together, notes and internet material all together, and it's revolutionising my writing experience.
That's all.