focus group

(Oscar poll results announced tomorrow, I promise...still haven't had a chance to properly tabulate)

So I went to my first focus group last night.

It was an impulse decision, prompted by curiosity (I've always wondered what happened at a focus group, and the topic was digital cameras), greed ($50 for what seemed like an easy hour) and an e-mail from a friend who said that because of last-minute cancellations, the company was desperate to get more people to participate.

After calling the phone number my friend had given me, I talked to a nice-sounding fellow named Avi who grilled me extensively about my use of traditional cameras, digital cameras, buying habits, other demographics. I was nearing the point of irritation (this was just a pre-screening; was this all a scam to get me to answer survey questions for free?) when I was told that I qualified, and that I'd be receiving a phonecall to confirm the appointment later that day.

More prescreening questions during the second phonecall, plus detailed instructions about when and where I was supposed to go, and to bring photo id. I needed to show up 15 minutes in advance, I was told, or I might not be paid.

The next evening, I show up. I'm immediately taken into a small room and given yet another pre-screening interview in which some of the information I gave in previous interviews were confirmed. Except most of the info seemed to be wrong. No, I wasn't between the ages of 45-55. No, I didn't use 6-10 rolls of print film during the past year. Didn't matter, I still qualified (they must really have been desperate for people, I guess).





I am given a name tag and then taken to a carpeted waiting room with comfy seats and a table with coffee, pop, and cookies. Other people with nametags are waiting, as well. We all eye each other curiously; there seem to be a wide range of demographics in evidence...an older corporate executive guy in a suit, a young trim executive woman type, a teenage but chic girl, a student type, a housewife. How do they see me, I wonder?

I'm scheduled for the 7:30 pm focus group slot. 7:30 comes and goes. We waiting room people start getting restless. We start talking to each other. Two of us are focus group newbies, the others have all been through the experience before. One (the housewife) has been to quite a few; the last one was an all-day affair with a full meal. The meal was pretty good, she says. I ask her how much she was paid and find out that she was paid $140 for four hours of listening to talks about mutual funds.

We keep waiting. I'm getting somewhat ticked off. It gradually dawns on me that they have us trapped. We're paid for an hour, but they can keep us waiting forever. I go to the front desk and ask how much longer it's going to be. The woman apologizes, says it shouldn't be much longer, that they're backed up right now.

At the half hour mark, a slick-looking guy comes out and calls my name. He is wearing a silver-gray tailored suit with a black shirt, one earring, and (even though we're indoors and it's nighttime) hip-looking sunglasses. I give a cheer (I actually do cheer, amusing the others in the waiting room) but a few minutes later am sent back to the waiting room because he found out he made a mistake. I get more ticked off. The woman from the front desk refills the plate of cookies.





About an hour after I was told to arrive, I finally get to go in. The room is packed with people and about seven tables with camera-related things on them. I'll be taken to three of these tables. I'm assigned to a guy from the marketing group...I can't remember his name, so let's call him Alvin (I'm grateful that it's not the slick guy with the sunglasses, who ends up being assigned to someone else). At each table, I'm also introduced to a representative from Kodak.

Each Kodak person does a brief presentation on some aspect of the new camera (the overall design, the e-mail tagging, etc.), then Alvin goes through a detailed questionnaire. Kodak is testing customer response to a new model of digital camera that's going to be released next year.

They ask me what I think of the design of the camera. I only get to see a prototype (since it's still being designed), and it is butt-ugly. I tell them so, but am more tactful in my wording. The design reminds me of my very first "real" camera when I was a kid, the point and shoot kind, very plain and very rectangular.

All the questions during the hour seem to assume that I am an empty-headed consumer who goes ga-ga over cool-looking camera design without much thought to actual functionality. One of the initial screening questions was something like "If you had to compare your taste in choosing a camera design to choosing a car design, which of the following cars would you choose?" I laughed out loud, I couldn't help it. When I realized the interviewer was still waiting for my answer, I told him to pick the smallest car.

After we are finished (and it takes exactly an hour), they thank me and give me a $50 bill in a plain white envelope.

My overall conclusion? It was worth doing once, just to see what it was like, but I doubt I'll do it again. :-)

---

Today's Blatherpics:

I turn 40 this Friday! These are photos of a birthday present sent to me by my friend Helen (she recently moved to London from Amsterdam).

	Front of the t-shirt that Helen sent me for my birthday. The picture in the front is of the Clangers, a kids' television show from the 70s. She said that even though I might be turning 40, I'm still a kid at heart. :-)
	Me in the t-shirt.
	Helen also sent me some chocolate bars: two Curly Wurly's, and two Cadbury Fudge Bars. This is the newspaper in which the chocolate was wrapped. :-)

defender

Woohoo, Lord of the Rings won four Oscars last night! I'll collate the results from the Oscar poll tonight (unless someone wants to do it for me before then :-)) and announce winners tomorrow. I didn't pay attention through the entire thing, but I did have favourite bits:

- Cirque du Soleil performance

- When Randy Newman finally won for Best Song (he's been nominated SIXTEEN TIMES before without winning)

- Every time Lord of the Rings won an award, of course :-) It won in four categories: makeup, score, cinematography, visual effects.

Here are the list of winners, for those of you who care. I want to update Waiting For Frodo, of course, but it'll have to wait until tonight or tomorrow. Need to get some work done first. :-)





Jeff helped Parki move his Defender machine into the One Trick Pony office yesterday morning. Jeff and Bryan are sharing the space with Ray, Scott and Tony. VERY cool office.

While we were picking up Parki and the machine, I checked out the a very cool (and one-of-a-kind) table that Parki designed himself out of snooker balls, snooker table felt, steel rods, plywood boards, refectory leaf table slides, sheet glass, and assorted fittings. For details and construction photos, see this page. He did most of the table construction himself.





Anyway, I pretended to be helpful while Jeff and Parki moved the Defender machine (which still works, by the way) but actually spending most of my time documenting the process. It looks pretty darned cool in the OTP office.

I've tried playing Defender at Parki's, but I play pretty much the same way I did when I played it years ago when it first came out. I suck at it bigtime. :-)





The three of us had brunch at Curiosity with Alison, Jeff and Kye. Kye slept through the entire thing. :-) Alison and Jeff gave me my birthday present, which consisted of lots of cool Japanese chocolate and candy (yum). I turn 40 this Friday!

Worked on the short story collab in the afternoon, then had dinner at my sister's place. Sara played some musical pieces that she had either composed from scratch or arranged (from pieces she had learned in her lessons) for certain scenes from the Lord of the Rings movie, on her own initiative. My favourite was her Balrog piece...very scary-sounding!

I was bursting with pride, of course. :-)

---

Today's Blatherpics:

	A mask that Parki made years ago (that guy is way too talented for his own good). I had it hanging in the old Inkspot office. Now it hangs in the offices of One Trick Pony.
	Fridge magnets on One Trick Pony's fridge door.
	Parki's snooker table.
	Parki and Jeff relocates Parki's Defender machine from his house to the office of One Trick Pony.
	One Trick Pony office.

scott potluck

Fun potluck at Scott's last night. Sadly, Parki wasn't able to make it, but Reid and Luisa were there as well as Scott's sister, Heather.

My Moroccan Chicken turned out pretty well even though the sauce on the pan burnt in the oven and set off Scott's fire alarm (!).





After dinner, we watched some homemade claymation-type of movies that Scott had done when he was a little kid. Wow, I was impressed! I liked the first one the best, where a big clay ball with eyes was being bugged by four little guys. It finally ate the little guys but got indigestion, spewed them out, and in revenge they ate him. The whole thing was animated to the tune of the "Sugarplum Fairy". :-)

The second film was about a (toy) plane that crashed and caught fire (plasticine flames). The pilot was rushed to a clay hospital. A bus crashed and caught fire. At this point, Scott said he started experimenting with setting fire to lighter fluid for flames instead of using clay. He obviously was really entranced by this because the last half of the film was mostly of various objects in his basement being set on fire (the toy bus, the pilot, etc.).

I have to wonder if his parents ever saw this footage. :-)





I was also super-impressed by how far Scott has gotten in his guitar playing! He's only had the thing for two weeks, after all. He already knows nearly 20 chords (including a barre chord!) and how to fingerpick. Suburban Curtains may be ready to go on tour sooner than later.

Having brunch with Parki, Alison & Jeff today, then finishing off my current bit for the Michelle short story collab.

Hope you're all having a good weekend!

---

Today's Blatherpics:

	Part of Scott's extensive Mickey Mouse collection.
	Pot luck group: Scott, Reid, Jeff, Luisa, and Heather.
	Scott's sister, Heather.
	Scott & Reid ham it up with one of Scott's swords.

UT practice

Had lunch with Amanda at the Hospital For Sick Children (she works there), then did some writing for a couple hours in a coffee shop on University Avenue. I've become addicted to coffee shop writing. It's the perfect work environment for me...I'm not online, there's interesting activity going on in the background but not too much, it's cozy but not too cozy. I wear headphones and listen to a harp CD on my laptop to help blur background conversations.

Today I nursed a cappuccino for two hours. The staff didn't mind because the place wasn't super-crowded. In fact, I had an amusing conversation with the two women behind the counter while I was waiting for my cappuccino about all the different kinds of coffee-related drinks and the wide variety of confusing terms. They showed me a "cheat sheet" they sometimes use under the counter. :-)

I made Chicken and Shrimp Creole for Allison and Jodi last night. It turned out pretty well despite the fact that I discovered at the last second that I only had Minute Rice in the pantry instead of regular white rice. And you know what's really weird? I'm actually starting to enjoy cooking. Cooking used to be an inconvenience to me, an annoyance that got in the way of the time I could be spending online. Now I get a real pleasure out of chopping stuff up and cooking it and having it come out edible. I suppose I've learned to appreciate downtime much more.

Just to clarify...I'm not saying I'm a good cook. But at least it's not such a chore anymore. I think it helps that I know I don't have to do it every single night. There have been days when I'm on a real roll in my writing and want to keep working until the very last minute. Then we'll order in, eat out, or Jeff will make something.

Allison, Jodi and I got a ton of practising done last night after dinner. We also recorded some songs on the tape we plan to donate to Interfilk: The Road Home (love song I wrote some years back), Hockey Monkey song, Waiting For Frodo, May It Be, Obsession (my Harry Potter song), Unforgotten (a Lawrence Dean song), and a Secret Song to be debuted at FKO. We plan to include the lyrics/chords to all the songs we put on the tape, too...does anyone know Lawrence Dean's e-mail address, by the way? If so, please do let me know, thanks (Thanks to Rick Hewett for sending me this info! - Debbie).

Jodi and I were pretty amused by Allison during our first attempt at recording Waiting For Frodo. When we got to the part where Allison's supposed to sing "only xx months to go" where xx is the number of months left until the next Lord of the Rings, Allison sang "only nine months to go" then stopped singing and playing guitar abruptly. With a delighted grin, she exclaimed, "Wow, is it really only NINE months?!"

It took us several takes after that (mainly because whenver we got to that line, we'd all break down into giggles) to get the song on tape. :-) To be fair to Allison, I had my own special way of interrupting songs. While recording "The Road Home" for the Interfilk tape, I sneezed right in the middle of a particularly tender lyric. I couldn't help it...I tried SOOOOO hard to hold back the sneeze, but of course when I tried to NOT sneeze, I had to sneeze all that much more.

Allison and Jodi wanted to keep that particular recording attempt for the Interfilk tape (the verse interrupted by my rather desperate-sounding sneeze, followed by a brief silence then an Urban Tapestry giggle meltdown) but I wouldn't let them.

I can be pretty heartless sometimes.

News/Updates

As a follow-up to yesterday's Blathering on filk newbie nervousness: Andrea's current Supporting Note column is focussed on filk newcomers and also offers tips on how to overcome performance nervousness in the filk circle.

Chris Conway reports in Blatherchat that R.A. Lafferty has died. You can also find more info about the Hugo-winning author here.

Tomorrow's the deadline for the Blatherchat Oscar Poll! There are Genuine Prizes for the top three votes (the most accurate predictions) and since only three people have voted so far, this means that Chris Conway will win a prize even though none of his predictions will come true (he didn't vote for anyone on the official ballot, though his vote list was fascinating, nonetheless :-)). This means, of course, that if you cast a vote now and no one else does, even if you're just voting for one category, like Best Picture, then you'll automatically win an ultra-cool Inkspot pen and a custom-made silly poem! Vote here (list of nominees here) and help me overcome my current secret insecurity that my offering to write poems for people has actually scared them off rather than encouraging them!

Today's Blatherpic:

Storefront in Chinatown on the weekend.

filk intro

Movable Type 2.0 is released, yay!
(You can now e-mail Blatherings,
see left-hand sidebar)

Met with my friend Michelle yesterday afternoon. We're collaborating on a short story that will appear in a DAW fantasy anthology. I'm a tad nervous (I've never collaborated on fiction before) but excited about the project, which is due April 1st.

I have to say that so far, the collaboration process is a lot more fun than I expected. It's exciting to develop story ideas with another person; you feed off each other's enthusiasm and creative energy.

Michelle might be attending FilKONtario in a few weeks (she's friends with both Tanya Huff and Joey Shoji). I forgot to ask if this means her husband Tom is coming, too...Tom was the person who first introduced me to filk, many years ago. It was an Ad Astra, and Tom told me about a bunch of people that got together in the evenings to sing and play music together. Sounded kind of cool, so I agreed to check it out with him.

I confess my first impression of filk was not the greatest. There was one (1) person in the filk room. He and Tom shared his copy of "Minus Ten And Counting" and hesitantly made their way through a song or two, trailing off in parts where they were unsure of the melody (Tom has a nice voice but is way too shy about it!). "So this is filk," I thought. No sign of guitars or other instruments.

At Ad Astra next year, I peeked into the filk room again, just out of curiosity. This time there was a rollicking session going on, with lots of people and fun music. Intrigued, I shyly made my way into room and sat at the back, had a great time.

The next time I attended a filk circle, I brought my flute. I sat at the back and didn't open my flute case the entire evening; I was way too shy. I repeated this process a few more times, then finally worked up the nerve to actually take out my flute (*gasp) and noodle on it as quietly as I could. I remember that I was so nervous that first time that my hands were shaking. Someone complimented me on how nice it sounded, so I was encouraged enough to keep playing.

I'd probably still be shyly noodling in the background if it wasn't for Clif Flynt. Tom and I roomed with Clif at a convention called Conclave some years back. We had never met Clif before. When Clif found out I played the flute, he and Mary Ellen started dragging me onto the stage sometimes when they performed. I was terrified! I wanted to stay out of the limelight, in the shadows where no one could see me or hear me!

But then I realized that hey, this is kind of fun. One of the first concerts I ever played in was with Clif, Mary Ellen, Julia Ecklar, and Joey Shoji. I think Allison still has the video of that concert somewhere; we watched a bit of it a few years ago, and I was shocked to be reminded of how long my hair used to be back then (down past my waist).

Anyway, I blame Tom for getting me into the whole filk scene, which is why I'm hoping he comes to FilKONtario, too.

Having lunch with Amanda today. Jodi and Allison are coming over for dinner (I'm making Shrimp and Chicken Creole from Anne Linday's Lighthearted Cookbook) and for a practice.


Two more days left in the Oscar poll!. Prizes: cool collector Inkspot pens and instapoems created just for you! Cast your vote here.


Today's Blatherpic:

A picture of Michelle from our university days, taken by our friend Andrew.