The Sydney writer Carolyn Shine's travel memoir Single White Female in Hanoi has sold about 2500 copies, good for a small press publication. Even so the, erm, interest, she has just sparked in Vietnam is out of all proportion to its sales. To explain: after the book was published, Shine wrote a related article for CNN's travel website, CNNGo.
It was, she told us, about ''why Western women find it hard to pair up with Vietnamese men, whereas Western men can pair up, in a jiffy, with gorgeous Vietnamese women''. It was a sexy topic, but the piece was grounded in exploring cultural differences, especially those concerned with expectations to do with gender roles: for example, Shine suggested Vietnamese men were wary of Western women, certain they wouldn't want to take on the traditional role of looking after children and in-laws.
All very well, if it weren't for two unforeseen issues which skewed how the piece was taken in Vietnam. The first was that ''single'' translated as ''lonely'' in Vietnamese (Shine's book translates as Western Woman, Lonely in Hanoi). And the second was the headline for the article: ''Frustrations of a single white female in Hanoi - Carolyn Shine got so fed up with being rejected by Vietnamese men, she wrote a book about it.'' It is an understatement to say the local lads paid attention.
Then BBC Vietnam and other local websites republished the piece, and Shine found her book's Facebook page the centre of a storm of intercultural debate, romantic pleading, advice, and, well, hate mail, with one post accusing her of wanting ''to rape Vietnamese boys''. ''I had to exercise incredible restraint,'' she said. ''It gave me a taste of what it must be like for an unpopular celebrity - even though some Vietnamese men said I had a point.''
RUG UP WITH POTTER
What's that about clouds and silver linings? The unseasonable gloom has set the Powerhouse Museum's tills ringing. There's been a run on Harry Potter scarves and beanies, with 5000 sold so far. Gryffindor scarves - the most popular - sold out last week and Slytherin stocks are low, writes the Herald's resident Muggle, Joyce Morgan. An additional 30,000 scarves and 15,000 beanies will soon arrive by Owl Post. The rush on wintery wizard-wear caught the Powerhouse by surprise. With Harry Potter - The Exhibition running over summer, not even Albus Dumbledore could have predicted Sydney in December would be as gloomy as Hogwarts in winter. Mary Poppins did a roaring trade in umbrellas before flying out at the weekend. Meanwhile, sleepovers will be held at the Powerhouse on Fridays and Saturdays next month. Impressionable young visitors won't doss amid Death Eaters, but in the transport gallery.
FUGITIVE DEFINITIONS
The US academic and writer Douglas Hofstadter had a word for what is produced when one unconsciously mashes two similar phrases together to produce a phrase with a foot in two metaphorical camps but in a tent in neither (''easy go lucky''; ''gay boy loiterer''; ''a dog's life of Reilly''): he called them malaphors. We might say the malaphor is a species, or subset, of the malapropism (''my wife is six months' poignant''; ''a damp squid''; ''the book suppository building'', and so on). And we might add the malapropism is in turn a subset of Manglish. Manglish is what a group of teeth-grinding Australian pedants called the Plain English Foundation defines as ''any example of spin and obfuscation in our public language''. Each year they compile a list of ''the worst words and phrases we all had to endure from politicians, corporations and government agencies'' and 2011 yielded a bumper crop, among them wincing euphemisms such as ''negative good'' (from a dental industry spokesperson about teeth whitening), and ''gestational carrier'' (Nicole Kidman on the surrogate mother of her child). The foundation's winner cannot be faulted for sheer cowardice before the word it dare not speak: Orica's use of ''fugitive emissions'' for a gas leak. To borrow the film critic Anthony Lane's ''impersonation'' of Yoda: ''Break me a flipping give.''
SHARKS' SONAR SHOCK
You know what it's like when that obnoxious car alarm just won't shut up? Of course you do. It's irritating. Very irritating. Irritating enough to make you want to raise a posse of friends, grab some polo mallets, and smash the blasted thing to smithereens. All that came to The Diary's mind yesterday when it read the Associated Press report about mako sharks attacking sonar equipment being used to track down containers lost overboard from the Rena cargo ship that ran aground in New Zealand's Bay of Plenty. However, The Diary was disappointed to find not cross-species empathy in the realm of bad reactions to bad noise, but a case of sharks being sharks as Department of Conservation shark expert Clinton Duffy told AAP: ''It is likely they saw the sonar as a fish.'' Duffy said anglers in the Bay of Plenty had spotted a large number of the species recently as the water warmed, bringing tuna into the area. The size of the sonar equipment would not deter them as they were known to go after large prey and have been known to chew on outboard motors (the leaf blowers of the sea, to The Diary's mind). The recovery team was back working on Monday, after another container was retrieved from the sea on Sunday. (It was the 89th container to fall into the sea from the Rena - 25 of which have been retrieved.)
STAY IN TOUCH ... WITH JELL-O AND GIMMICKS
THIS can't be a good thing, surely? Big Brother isn't just watching. He's also about to size you up via a new product sampling machine that can determine whether you are the right age - or even the right sex - to receive a sample, USA Today reported. Kraft Foods, the US's biggest foodmaker, rolled out a device in Chicago that dispenses its mousse-like Temptations Dessert by Jell-O, but only to the product's target market: grown-ups. The machine, developed by Intel, can detect facial age with a special camera that scans your face and determines if you are an adult or a kid. If the machine detects a child, it shuts down and asks the child to step away. If it detects an adult - bingo - the sample can be dispensed. Is this the brave new future of marketing or a bunch of hooey? ''This is wow,'' Steven Keith Platt, director of the Platt Retail Institute, a research and consulting firm specialising in consumer experience, said. ''I'll now have the ability to interact with a cool device that dispenses a unique product versus walking up to some old lady with a white apron on.'' But Seth Godin, a prominent marketing blogger and author, says it is lame. ''It's a goofy gimmick, not a useful innovation,'' he said. Godin's probably right. But as for the other guy, The Diary thinks anyone who says ''this is wow'' should be made to repeat that phrase non-stop while backstroking across the English Channel in winter, with a squirrel sitting on his chest, while some old lady with a white apron on sings out, ''Yes, it truly is'' from the comfort of a nearby cruiser. This is wow indeed!
GOT A TIP?
Contact diary@smh.com.au or 92822350 or twitter.com/thesmhdiary
