I wrote three chapters of the new book, then found it was pretty much a Filipino version of my Africa book - bad situation at home, hopelessly looking for a woman, prostitutes, work arguments, travel, suddenly finding someone out of the blue, pregnancy with a real baby this time. In fact- a true story of my life 1992-2002. Unfortunately, the Africa book has been highly unpopular. And I've now hit a description of leukemia treatment - something that could be even more unpopular with the reading public, due to either boredom or horror. So we may be looking for a restructure here.

I also wrote a couple of associated short stories set in the Philippines. for giveaways- one about a Big Fat Rat , another about a visit to a waterfall that featured in several war movies. And I fixed up an old story of mine called "Girls Car" about working on three wheat bins in 1968-9, and sent it to a competition. Plus I started contributing to a monthly poetry competition called "Silverquill" mostly to find out what others are writing. Mostly same old, with a few "modern multimedia" efforts. Poems artfully describing puddles of water and swimming pools under mango trees seem to be successful, while anything describing pain and emotion is out. .  

I also actually read a book for once, a 1996 Australian bestseller by Sue Woolfe called "Leaning Toward Infinity , mostly because it was (sort of) about mathematics. It contained an extraordinary amount of lyrical metaphor and nested reminiscence, to the point the plot and characters were somewhat obscured. I'm rather surprised the public went for something so complex, but perhaps things were different then.  I wrote reviews for Amazon and Goodreads calling it "bold". Which has overjoyed Sue who usually gets "Pretty" or "Hates mathematicians while not knowing any" in reviews.

This book, along with my brother Tom's prize winning novel, were brought back to life by a funded university project aiming to digitise Australian classics and put them in ebooks for lending etc. The project finished about a year ago and ... ahem .. its websites and technical evaluation have already largely disappeared. So much for the digital age. 

In woe at all this, I have turned back to my true love or hate, writing papers about DNA haplogroups and trying to scrape up data for analysis. This one is about Haplogroup I1, which suddenly sprang out of nowhere around 2600 BC The descendants of Mr I1, who was probably a fisherman or flint knapper, occupied Scandinavia within a few centuries. The haplogroup features strongly in all the "recent" invasions of Britain - the AngloSaxon and the Viking. About 15% of all British men are paternally descended from Mr I1 - impressive as they have arrived so indirectly.