August 2009

This is just a quick heads-up to let everyone know that my Amazon Wish List is finally online! As I mentioned in my birthday post, it certainly doesn’t contain the sort of stuff you’d normally associate with a model’s wish list—or most women’s wish lists for that matter. Indeed, when I look at it, it actually comes across as pretty geeky! Hell, I’ve even got a couple of Star Trek DVDs in there—I’m a big fan of Voyager, but that’s the only Star Trek I’ve seen so far. So as I already have all the Voyager DVDs, I thought I’d try the first seasons of the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine to see if I like them too (as well as the British equivalent of Star Trek, Blake’s 7). I also already have the first series of House M.D. and I absolutely love that, so I thought I’d put the rest of them in too.

As for music, it’s mostly soft classical, as that is what I listen to for pleasure most of the time—I guess it’s also because it’s what I’m most familiar and comfortable with. The latest CDs from a couple of my favourite pop singers are in there too (Tori Amos and Katie Noonan). I have a lot of Australian composers and CDs in there, as I’ve found I really relate to them—they not only evoke my adopted homeland, but often have a lot of oriental influences as well. The prices of the Aussie CDs will probably come as a shock to my American readers, but that is what they cost down here. Besides, the prices are in AU$—although the AU$ isn’t worth much less than the US$ these days.

Well, both myself and my blog have just celebrated their birthdays—and it has also been about a year since I last posted a major update on what’s happening with me—so I thought it was high time I posted another one. The past year has brought some disappointment, but also some new hope.

First of all, we have pretty much given up on getting a publisher for the English language edition of my health and beauty book. To make it worth our while to hand over so much of the profit from my book to a publisher, we really need them to get behind it and promote it on an international scale—this is especially true given that the majority of my fans are outside of Australia. However, as a first time (and somewhat unconventional) author, no publisher has been willing to invest this much in me at such an early stage. We remain hopeful that we will be able to get a Chinese language publisher who will give me the support I need, but even though Mandarin is my mother tongue, translating my book back into Chinese has proven surprisingly difficult—English is just so much better for getting across many of the concepts I try to express. I haven’t given up on it though, and we will soon be getting the English version of the book ready for publishing and selling ourselves over the internet.

If we are going to promote it ourselves though, we really need to generate a lot more capital than we have now—we need an extra stream of revenue, while still giving us the freedom to continue with my projects. And this blog has given me the inspiration and encouragement I need to figure out a way to achieve this goal: basically, I am going to be combining the sort of interaction I have with my fans here with my nude modelling work. How will I do that? Sorry to be a tease, but I actually don’t want to give too much away right now until we’ve figured out all the details of exactly how we’re going to go about it. Suffice it to say though, we are very confident it will be something my fans—and I—will greatly enjoy. Given that it will be pointless to launch my book without it—and especially as my fans have been waiting so long for me to return to modelling—we have actually shelved any further work my health and beauty book, so we can get this exciting project going as soon as possible. Barring any major unforeseen difficulties, it looks as though it will be ready to go by the end of next month. Read the rest of this entry »

Well as I mentioned in my last post, it was my blog’s birthday on the 1st. Now, today it’s my turn.

As I said in my birthday post last year, I didn’t publicise my birthday in the past, as I didn’t want to impose on my fans, and I never do anything to celebrate my birthday myself anyway. However, the feedback I got from you made it very clear that you wanted to share this day with me, so now I am! Indeed, I’m now wondering if you’d like to take it a little further, with perhaps an Amazon wish list or something like that. I always thought the way other models did this was a huge imposition on their fans, but like celebrating my birthday itself, I guess I shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions on this. So once again, I am asking you what you want—would you like to be able to buy or send me gifts?

If you do, there’s still the question of how to go about it. I’m actually not an easy girl to buy gifts for, as I don’t like most of the things women are supposed to like—I don’t wear makeup, I think perfume is manifestly wasteful air pollution, jewellery is a colossal waste of money, and fashion is perhaps the greatest con foisted on mankind since religion. I never buy expensive name brand clothes, as I always find that there is a cheap, generic equivalent that is actually at least as good, if not a whole lot better. Indeed, for me some fashion brands are actually downright ugly—for example, to my eyes Louis Vuitton bags look like something my grandmother wouldn’t be seen dead with! Still, I do like CDs and DVDs, so perhaps you could buy me those. At the end of the day though, the gift I like best of all is simply money, as I really need to generate as much capital as I can for the next stage in my career (more on that in my next post!). To that end, I guess we could set up some PayPal donation buttons or something like that? I know it isn’t a very “personal” gift, but I am a very practical girl!

Yep, it was one year ago today that I started this blog! I hope you’ve been enjoying it as much as I have. Unfortunately I haven’t had as much time for it recently as we’ve been very busy working on a brand new project to extend my interaction with my fans even further—we actually have an idea for something that’s never been done before in the way we want to do it. So we aren’t absolutely certain we can pull it off, but we are confident—it will just take a little time. Also, right now my broadband internet connection has been dead for days(!), so unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to respond to everyone’s recent comments—but I will as soon as I’m fully back online! Anyway, when we launch this new project I will be getting more active online again (including with this blog), so I think this might be a good opportunity to ask you all what you would like to see from me in the future. There’s a good chance it will be something we are planning to do anyway, but all suggestions are welcome!