102 days, 15 hours, 15 minutes, 55 seconds

it still doesn't seem real, yet it's coming at me like a train at full speed. they say that even if you're on the right track you have got to keep moving or you'll get run over. (random quote from i don't know who. i originally wanted to use it as a pick-up line on some guy sitting by himself in Clarke Quay- pick-up lines are used by girls too! i don't want to give the guys the upper hand)

if you are wondering what i'm talking about, it is the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. a ten month long circumnavigation to fourteen ports, although Clipper hasn't yet decided on quite a few of these ports in an attempt to make the host ports pay up for the honor. 

i am leaving Singapore on the 10th, which will give me four days to recover from jetlag before starting my training in Gosport, UK, which will be THREE WEEKS LONG. dear god, i hope it isn't too cold, i am accustomed to sauna temps. 

i found out on Sunday which boat i've been assigned to- surprise surprise it is Uniquely Singapore. everyone i've met so far is lovely, but i do not feel patriotic towards the place that has denied all my sponsorship requests >:I 

what to pack? i have a scary looking balkalava that will keep me warm in stormy weather, and will double up for my occasional bank robberies, plenty of fleece, lots of blank diaries to record my experience and to note valuable lessons.

odd shaped suntan marks have persuaded me that leggings and long sleeved UV tops are THE MOST IMPORTANT THING you should have in warm weather. they still haven't faded, even after 3 months. 

i'm also having to choose a university course before i go. so many people i've met on the Clipper race are engineers, and it may be an option for me since i have A's for physics and Maths, i also have A in Art. i may do architecture. 

but then again what i really want to do is write fiction books. i know that neither of these courses will help significantly with the writing- unless i want to write manuals or exciting books about a spy going under cover as an architect (sorry for the cliche, i'm rushing this post a little)

back to the sailing- 

what kind of boat will it be? fiercely competitive? a party boat? 

who knows. there are stories of people assigned to do nothing more than bring presents aboard to distribute half way through- magazines and chocolate. i think i would be most happy with a fantasy book to escape a little, solid weeks spent in the same place are bound to make me restless. 

La perla lingerie ad.

A witch in swan lake make up ran conducted the torturious routine we had established during the past five hours. I swallowed my shame as she called out in sinaporean slang “body forward, stick your ass up” and forgot my dignity as she passed comments on my rather curvatious stomach. Ok, so I wouldn’t have picked me for a lingerie shoot either, but I had blindly accepted the challenge two days earlier and was only now realising that a great picture could not be achived through determination or intelligent posing. You simply had to have a great body when you were a clothes horse for frightening and elaborate designs using material thinner than their tissue paper wrappings. 

My worst fears about my body were confirmed and confirmed again as I repeated poses in one set after another. Full length, midlength, close up bra, back of bra, close up bra detail, leg and pant shot, mid lenth pant shot, close up panties, reverse panties. In that order it went on and on. The photographer now limited each pose to one shot only and we exchanged long suffering glances as she pushed us to fit in as many as possible before 6pm, although she obviously didn’t care that we got a ten minute break for a lunch of cereal bar and that my feet were sticky and scabbed from unstable and ill fitting vintage gold heels belonging to my mother which I had brought along to wear.

Tips for posing. For the legs, the old tried and tested poses work. Think maralyn Monroe with her legs crossed at the ankle. In undies you don’t want to send out the wrong message. Potential woman customers are going to see them and they don’t want to feel seduced by you; they want to think they will look the same way or better  in their new La Perla set.

Which brings me to the designers of the underwear. Why, honestly, bring out so many variations of the same thing? It was a lot of hard work for me and I’m sure these people aren’t going to bother looking at some stranger and go “oh yes, the extra line of stitching on the bra really makes it stand out… I’ll buy that one!”

 

Seriously though. i’m not even sure if they will bother using my pictures. My body is so unconventional- totally pear shaped. Though they did seem to be on a rather miserly budget. They were trying to shoot their entire collection in a single day, and to top it, all of their mismatched bits of random sized lingerie (I am an A cup and I had to try to show off a C cup more than a few times.) still had their price tags on. Although they had enough money to hire a spotty teenage assistant solely to cut off the tags and then re attatch them after with plastic thread. I wonder if anyone else had worn them before me. I hope I don’t catch any diseases. I would just like to reassure everyone now that I personally don’t have anything like that.

 

My pure motivation for doing this is not self belief or a pressing vanity that my body and face needs to be seen, it is just for the money. $200 of it today, which will last about one day in the UK, or buy me one set of sailing clothes. It is worth it for this small piece of independence, my wages feeding or clothing me for a few days anyway. My mobile bad been buzzing all day collecting messages, and I got home exhausted and starving to find that the graduation showcase was tomorrow. I am not sure what it was either, but I had visited a university and had to try on 20 students outfits, where I then squeezed out of them after they had pinned and tucked me in. and so after missing the alarm and wasting five dollars on a taxi, I arrived sweaty and dirty with yesterdays make up. The only way it was bearable staying till 5pm that day was another model, Lyze. She was from tennassee and has an outrageous personality, her impressions of people she had met were unaffected and endearing, and we laughed uncontrollably most of the time. 

Another model was very beautiful, but also explained in slurred monotone speech that she was deaf from birth. I was absolutely amazed that she could lip read almost every word I said. When she didn’t understand, she told me, because everybody speaks differently, she asked me to draw the letters on her hand. That way I showed her my name and told her I worked I n a Jazz bar as a waitress. she loved that. I am quite sure she comes from a very distinguished family because of her good looks and her education which includes hip hop dance and I feel like we’re all in this together. The last model, called Niki, is from Russia. She wanted to study art in Singapore but they said her English is not good enough yet so she has to wait another year. She was very reserved, telling the bare minimum with me initiating all the conversations. Usually I am the one who plays that role but I suddenly became the chatterbox.

 At 5.10 me and Niki left to visit the agency and another casting. I hadn’t seen her eat anything all day except two Coke zeros, and don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t scary thin, about the same weight as me though her waist was much slimmer, but she told me she was on a new diet ever since joining Imodels a month ago. We collected com cards and I showed her my apartment through the massive agency windows that overlooked central Singapore

 My new found role of being the more experienced one, and the more talkative one allowed me to float through the motions dreamily we arrived at the Levi Ladies shop milling with customers and spiked with people who were here to judge the girls who came for the casting. My new confidence allowed me to demonstrate my runway walk without so much as a tremble although it caught up with me in the changing rooms as I changed out of the Levi’s jeans I had been modelling. I had been bouncy, pushed my chest out and generally been what I thought a runway model should be although my equally bouncy thighs are not the best for showing off jeans on.

Niki did the walk I did when I was less experienced. Slow and careful, nervous about the poses she held when she got to the end of the shop where people had gathered to stare at what we were doing in this very public place. My first time was for all the main designers of Burberry on Oxford Street to look at my nervous walk. Niki was lucky in that respect. I was caught out looking at her face when they were taking pictures for reference. She looked- well- really fierce. I suppose there was something about her harshly blond short hair and little lightning tattoos behind her ears but there was something fantastic about her. A few hours later it was confirmed that their nodding and approving lookes at both of us had been translated correctly, me and Niki had the job. I have to go to a fitting today at 1pm. I am not nervous any more, I don’t have enough time to be nervous. 

What Will it be Like on a Yacht for Months? Motivation to achieve your dreams.

On the boat everything is squashed and condensed down to a fraction of what it was originally, food is dried, sleep is squashed into four-hour slots, and soon you end up with a ridiculous amount of time in the day. Think of how much time is spent doing your daily chores out of necessity, what happens when you don’t have to bother with that? When someone else is taking charge of the cleaning and cooking and engine and water and every other role on the boat but yours? When every second of your time is spent towards reaching a common goal. That is when you really achieve something.

I have spent the last year doing the very opposite with time, indulging hours in whatever pastime captures my fancy that particular day. Is this lifestyle any less fulfilling? I don’t think so, but a few months down the line you will notice that you are no further towards the big idea that is always on your mind, like the book you must write, or the subject you want to become an expert in, or the job you want to have. It takes a strong person to be able to cope in this environment, but an even stronger one to use the environment against our natural inclinations to relax and have fun. E.g., if YOU had a choice between spending the next day reading about the origins of lemons and playing golf or going to the beach, which would you rather do? A clever person would bring the book on lemons to the beach with them, but I am not so good at planning and unfortunately that means that I am caught between the two, achieving neither a goal or deriving enjoyment from it, the day has become a paltry concoction of the two, the worst bits of both brought out.

 

I think that achieving any goal from beginning to end takes the work of two people – I’m not saying that you need another person, but that you need to become two people.

If your goal is to write a book or essay, first give yourself the task of having the ideas, scribbling random notes down, without thinking about the construction or editing of the subject matter, and the creative flow will become easier. Then once you have ripped apart the subject for ideas and have a couple that you would really like to pursue, then you give yourself the task of filling in the gaps between the ideas, explaining, connecting and making it easy for an outsider to read. If needs be, you can hand the finished piece back to the first person where they can give you their creative opinion on which bits to cut and which word would be better there.

Sound like I have multiple personalities? Well, perhaps we all do. You know how being around different people and having to do different jobs requires different sides of you be more prominent? E.g., in school I did physics, maths and art all together. Everyone thought it was a strange mix but I thought it was perfect, because it included and developed all sides of my personality, the rational, the methodical and the creative.

It is strange that we have to end up doing only one job, getting the training for it in university and having a specialized role in a large organization. But then some people are attracted to a life of work that included many roles, but finding that a life of school and an education that has narrowed down their range of talents and vision so that starting your own business or being an artist or sailing round the world by yourself is much harder than you would have thought as the thinking of all possible aspects and outcomes is incredibly overwhelming.

 

What do you do and do you find it hard doing many jobs at once? Write a comment and let me know.

Guide to Homemade Videos YouTube for the Technologically Retarded

Are you making a YouTube video? 

do you have an apple mac? 

here's how i have done mine (yeah yeah, they're not very good but i don't want you to make the same mistakes i did). 

I recorded the video clips on my olympus camera in video mode, then uploaded them to a piece of freeware called HyperEngine-AV, which is quite good for visually rearranging your clips into movies. it doesn't have many special effects, but you can mess with the audio and insert text clips. you can also layer different snippets of film so that they merge and then fade out. nothing too fancy, but perfect for my purposes. when finished you have to export the film as dv format, and i downloaded more freeware called MPEG Streamclip, where you can export it AGAIN as any format you want. i chose MP4 format as it is recommended on the YouTube site. 

So that is that!

the Zulu Agenda

hello everybody! 

I have just got addicted to making youtube videos. humiliating and awesome both at once, they are for me and probably you as well.

As you may know, i have no idea what i want to do with my life. My Dad was saying that he is stuck in his role as a project manager at Barclay's Capital here in Singapore, and he cannot get out of it because jobs that pay well make use of very specialized skills. eg, if you have learnt lots of computer languages, have experience managing projects and have worked in banks before, you are probably my dad (or someone with his job), you have to remember the 'Zulu principle', by which you become an expert in a certain field and as you become more specialized, you are paid more. 

What is the Zulu Principle?

Posted in April 22nd, 2008

This describes your ability to become an expert in any tiny niche in

 a very short time. A few years a woman dazzled guests at a dinner 

party with her knowledge about Zulus it turned out that she had simply

 read an article in the Readers Digest the night before.

Rather than mock this somebody who was listening realised that

 in today’s fast moving world it was an asset and a virtue to be able

 to become an instant expert. He was Jim Slater and he went on to

 apply this to choosing investments by specialising in particular types 

of shares and situations. In essence it is about finding a niche and 

then attempting to dominate it.

Many people have become wealthy on the Internet by searching 

out a lucrative niche and then specializing in it, often in areas they 

knew nothing about previously a health cure, pet care, a sport, a 

hobby, a skill, entertainment, a political blog. Today people are 

looking for micro niches, niches within niches. Although you might

 start off knowing little the Internet is such a marvellous learning

 tool you can quickly change that. More over with effort and 

passion you actually become a genuine expert in your chosen

 field.

http://www.zuluprinciple.com/

If you, like me, have an identity crisis every other day and feel like you should really settle down and follow something through rather than becoming the Jack-of all-Trades, this is the approach for you!

the attractive thing about it is not just the great effect it has on your career and perhaps your bank balance, but also gives you peace of mind, defining yourself by being someone, eg, if you had to describe yourself in one sentence, what would you say? if you were an expert in Zulus obviously this would be a defining characteristic.

The problem most people have is finding their niche... what can they be bothered learning about in such depth and then getting a reputation for for the rest of their life?

now, surprisingly for me, it is quite easy as i have taken the first step to becoming an expert on sailing, the ten month clipper race will give me a lot of experience that many don't have. i am going to supplement this with reading lots of books on the subject, and talking to as many people as i can about it. 

How far should i go with it though? after all when i am on the boat with 15 other people who know just as much as me, i am going to have to find a niche within a niche. i am thinking i should specialize in meteorology , based entirely on what i enjoy reading. I recommend 'the cloud spotters guide' by Gavin Pretor-Pinney for light reading for ANYONE, it is a fantastic book, and right now i am reading 'wind strategy' by David Houghton which is great for any physics buff as it has loads to do with WHY the weather acts the way it does, and uncovers mysteries of wind as well as untruthful urban myths.

a few facts from this book: 

when sailing on open water, avoid sailing directly under cumulus clouds as they are caused by air moving upwards and not across the water, so there will be a lull there. 

by night it is recommended to sail under low clouds ad the top of these clouds quickly cool trapping the warmer air underneath, meaning a lot of surface wind is created. this is the opposite in the day, where the clouds are heated to a temp similar to the surface.

I hope you can find your niche, and wish me luck with the weather thing. if you want to know anymore interesting facts, just leave a comment!

Laura Sarson

Interviewed

BIG NEWS!!!

I, Laura Sarson, am going to be in a magazine coming out in March. YES! there will be an article on me and the clipper race. it is 'Expat' in Singapore and has an audiance of 60,000!!
the interview was odd, although the person doing it, Sunita (dep. editor) was very nice.
in conversations with strangers i usually let them do all the talking. i am not a very social person and i learn more by simply observing, but having what i say written down and even the lamest of jokes being taken seriously was an odd experiance.

i have a feeling i came accross as an enviromental nut, i kept going on about my 'love of nature' and everything. i am a vegetarian, and i have talked to a tree in the past, but perhaps i came accross too strong?
my choice of clothing was a slightly gothic black high necked dress, that i LOVE but conflicted awfully with my cheerful demeanor. it probably would have been better if i had acted mysterious and aloof.

tips for getting interviewed by a journalist...

1. know what the aim of the article is. the focus of the article was my involvement in the clipper race, but MY aim was to make people interested in me personally so they would be tempted to visit my website.
2. come up with some good lines before the interview. these are going to be splashed accross the page so they must be good- an obvious question might be 'why did you want to do the race' and an interesting but focused answer would be ' the challange, the open ocean, and the wild parties!'
3. you cannot pretend to be someone else when you are asked questions. it is like being interrogated, you must get your story straight or you come accross as fake. that is the mistake i made with the dress. i should have worn my normal shorts and shirt.
   

Party Hearty!

hey there.
in September i am joining the crew of the 'clipper round the world yacht race' so i got invited to another 'clipper party' last week. 'Parties' to the mind of an 18 year old involves glitter eyeshadow, a bottle of vodka and a lot of talk about other peoples sex lives between bouts of raucous laughter.
i travelled to the party on foot, to the eastern themed bar 'Kazbar' where i eventually located a lonely looking group of people in the gloom. people eyed me sipping their beers, wondering what i was doing there probably. only one fairly sceptical guy has had the nerve to say 'you doin't look like a sailor' probably because i was wearing a mini dress at the time. everyone was excited about the impending race. i immediatly got stuck into a conversation with a woman doing leg 6 (California, through the panama canal, to her old home NYC) and she told me a great story about achiving your goals:

Achieve your goals in only 13 years!

I was 17 years old (she said) and in Sunday school that week our teacher made us write down everything we wanted to achieve by the time we were 30. so i wrote my dreams down and the envolope was sealed and i never saw it again. i left home to go to university, got a degree then a job, and visited my parents at the age of 29.

my mother rushed to me and told me 'your sunday school teacher is looking for you' of course i had forgotten about the envolope and i was interested to find out what my 17 year old self had written.
to my surprise i had acomplished nearly everything- to get a degree with honours and so on. only two things i hadn't done... to make a certain amount of money per year and to go swimming with dolphins. i was rising quickly in my company so i found that i got a pay rise a few months later, and as a surprise my boyfriend took me on a trip to swim with dolphins.

now, this lady had the help of a rather odd though passionate sunday school teacher (who keeps a letter from their students for 13 years???) but you can DIY. that is the power of writing down your dreams.

later on she started a list of what she wanted. she went on to complete a half marathon after only 3 months of training.

i am starting a list.

1. to raise money to circumnavigate the world in any way possible.
2. to do something crazy every day to write about in my blog.
3. to write a book, but not just any book. THE book- the one you are always looking for in bookshops and libraries but can never seem to find.
   
4. to run a marathon. nuf said.
   

SIngapore Clipper Race departure 2008

Slogging for Sailing

Ever since the Volvo Ocean Race visited Singapore in January, i have been smarting terribly from my defeat in the grinding challange that took place there. grinding is as painful as it sound, being the winching and trimming of sails, done with a two handled rotation device, and it is hard. i have decided that the next time my nemesis, the grinding machine, comes along, i will be prepared. i am starting a vigorous training routine to get me ready for the Clipper Race including running, and a whole lot of upper body work as previous crew members have suggested to me.

i run along the singapore riverside about three times a week doing about four/five miles in 50 minutes (which i know from my excellent 'Polar' heart rate monitor i got for Christmas.). it is the strength training that is a problem, i have been reduced to using baked bean tins for weights as i cannot possibly afford gym membership.
for those doing a bit of home training themselves, here is a few tips;

firstly, running/jogging - if you are already running a few times weekly you will burn roughly 100 calories per mile you run. it is extremely motivating to imagine that donut you had at lunch... simply disappearing, as if you never even ate it. from my experience, i can say that the important thing is to keep going rather than keeping a quick pace. twenty minutes in, if you are going to collapse you need to slow down, to walking pace if necessary, just keep jogging. i promise in two minutes you will be able to go faster again. it is recommended to take about one breath for every three steps you take, but i take four steps. anything is fine as long as you have a rhythm so you don't have to think about it. weight loss experts say that running when you are hungry will burn off more fat, which makes sense. yesterday i went for a run about 9pm and i hadn't eaten anything since 2pm - the first ten minutes i was encumbered with a crippling pain in my stomach but by the time i had finished my usual circuit it had gone, and i did a second one easily. exercise is an incredible appetite sup present which is odd because the two are opposites. if anyone knows how this happens i would love to know!

i used to do swimming, and breast stroke is great for working the arms. honestly, i was too embarrassed to do front crawl as mine is more like a snails crawl. My mum came along with me to the Volvo Race and also partook in the grinding challange and she was excellent. so what does she do all day? Housework actually. yes, all that lugging around of furniture and scrubbing of stains actually puts our flabby arms to shame with their strength.

lastly, some ideas for unconventional training. i love spending ten minutes working on juggling, i can do it for over 30 seconds now and it develops your hand - eye coordination so that you have good reflexes. my dad frequently annoys me by throwing things at me with the phrase muttered a millisecond later 'THINK FAST!' but the head injuries have decreased since learning to juggle. i also have a drum kit. we live in a tiny apartment so i don't get to play it very often, but when i do it works those arms like crazy, just an added bonus to making a hell of a lot of noise for no reason. i should really get muffling pads but I've had no complaints yet (from neighbors).

so there are some things to mull over if you are thinking of starting sailing or perhaps just want to tone your triceps in time for bikini season. (guys... ism looking at you).
toodaloo,
Laura.

ohhhhh!

i was calling up companies yesterday, one that dealt in yacht charter and they were not keen to put it nicely. no, they were not. they reccomended that we try the tourism offices, but i don't know what the singapore tourism board would want with me! an expat with mighty few links to singapore in any way. i will try though :)

Quest for sponsorship

hiya, 

so in my quest for sponsorship for the 'Clipper Round the World Yacht Race', there have been a lot of ups and far more downs. Last week i accomplished more work than i have done in the past 6 months! my dad being the main reason for my doing any work at all, mainly because he views any form of laziness as something like a criminal offense. 

so i was on the laptop 11am-4pm and 7pm-10pm everyday! unfortunately i am rather depressed at the moment as i am running out of companies to contact, which may sound impossible with the millions of companies around at the moment, but they have to meet certain requirements or i could just b wasting my time:

• they have to have a marketing budget big enough. a lot of big companies have a budget for sponsorship as well but this is usually for community or charitable activities so no luck there.
• they have to have offices and customers based worldwide so they will benefit from my promoting them in the many countries we visit.
• they have to want to reach an audience interested in yachting and travel. the industries i have been contacting so far have been;
  

1. wind energy companies based primarily in the UK
2. sun cream companies, which would be absolutely perfect as they have worldwide distribution
3. yacht charter companies and websites that sell yachts. people on the race will have a keen interest in things like this because the 400 people taking part on the race as well as the people viewing the race will have further contact with yachts
4. package delivery companies. the idea here is a media stunt with the yacht delivering parcels round the world, a demonstration of the distance it has to travel and an excuse to give people a gift or award in the various ports.
5. marine electronics, actually only one company so far has been contacted but they are hard to find when you have a specific idea in mind, but a few other wi-fi companies who install them in yachts for Internet in port.

A breakthrough came when i emailed the editor of Expat magazine, who had previously expressed interest in doing a feature. he mailed back asking if we could arrange a time to meet. of course, when mailing him i gave him some dirt to work with on living in Singapore, which added flavor to the story. as i have been telling people, if you give the media a story out of the ordinary they couldn't be more happy to have content to fill those columns.

plenty of rejection letters came through, most companies, however, didn't even bother to send anything back. i have called a few of them and they always have the same answer - they don't 'do' that kind of sponsorship. Though i know if they thought about it they would see the amazing potential this race has. i am chock full of ideas, all i need now is an innovative company that is ready to become famous.

another breakthrough came with Bhavik Gandhi - a man who rowed across the Atlantic ocean alone as well as being a great sales person. he raised US$ 6,000,000 through sponsorship so he said that US 55,000 is definitely doable. what surprised me, as i looked on his sponsors page is the diversity of the companies, most of them nothing to do with rowing and many of the companies in direct conflict with each other like the communications companies ericsson and nokia that were both supporting him. he must have got a none exclusivity contract with them.

i found out about him through my mum, who is looking for a job in a company which provides entertainment packages for companies who want to put on some corporate hospitality for clients. Bhavik used to work for them, so now i have an excuse to interrogate him with the pages and pages of questions i have written out.

For those who are following it, the Volvo race left Singapore on Sunday. we got there just in time, trying to save money by taking public transport was not a good idea and they were half gone, traveling to the start line somewhere out of sight to set off for Qingdao, China through the harsh Siberian winter that has come with this January - which is surprisingly similar to the route taken by the Clipper race i want to be on. this time next year i could myself be travelling through icy storms to the colours of Chinese New Year on the other side. the similarities between the races end there though as they take a marathon route round the Antarctic instead of heading to California like we will be.

i want to go on this race so much. when i shut my eyes i see where i want to be - at the top of the mast sailing into the sunrise on the horizon, with all my senses heightened from the four hours of sleep that we got that night. that is when I'll be happy, and feel at peace with the world.

till then life is a nightmarish blend of stress and procrastination in my search for sponsorship.