The Time Traveler's Wife Novel

Using alternating first-person perspectives, the novel tells the stories of Henry DeTamble (born 1963), a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and his wife, Clare Abshire (born 1971), an artist who makes paper sculptures. Henry has a unique genetic disorder, which comes to be known as Chrono-Displacement, that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. When 20-year-old Clare meets 28-year-old Henry at the Newberry Library in 1991 at the opening of the novel, he has never seen her before, although she has known him most of her life.

Henry begins time traveling at the age of five, jumping forward and backward relative to his own timeline. He is unable to control his travels: when he leaves, where he goes, or how long his trip will last. His destinations are tied to his subconscious—he most often travels to places and times related to his own history. Certain stimuli such as stress can trigger Henry's time traveling; he often goes jogging to keep calm and remain in the present. He also searches out pharmaceuticals in the future that may be able to control his time traveling and seeks the advice of a geneticist, Dr. Kendrick. Henry cannot take anything with him into the future or the past; he always arrives naked and struggles to find clothing, shelter and food. He amasses a number of survival skills including lock-picking, self defense and pickpocketing. Much of this he learns from older versions of himself.

Clare and Henry marry, but Clare has trouble bringing a pregnancy to term because of the genetic anomaly Henry is presumably passing on to the fetus. After six miscarriages, Henry wishes to save Clare further pain and has a vasectomy. However a version of Henry from the past visits Clare one night and gets her pregnant; she subsequently gives birth to a daughter, Alba. Alba is diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement but, unlike Henry, she has some control over her destinations when she time travels. Before she is born, Henry travels to the future and meets his ten-year-old daughter on a school field trip and learns that he died when she was five years old.

When he is 43, during what is to be his last year of life, Henry time travels to a Chicago parking garage on a frigid winter night where he is unable to find shelter. As a result of the hypothermia and frostbite he suffers, his feet are amputated when he returns to the present. Henry and Clare both know that without the ability to escape when he time travels, Henry will certainly die within his next few jumps. On New Year's Eve 2006 Henry time travels into the middle of the Michigan woods in 1984 and is accidentally shot by Clare's brother, a scene foreshadowed earlier in the novel. Henry returns to the present and dies in Clare's arms.

Clare is devastated by Henry's passing. She later finds a letter from Henry which asks her to "stop waiting" for him, but which describes a moment in her future when she will see him. The last scene in the book takes place when Clare is 82 and Henry is 43. She is waiting for Henry, as she has done her whole life, and when he arrives, he clasps her in his arms.

A snapshot of success

FotoHub has gone from photo printing to providing digital imaging services such as B2C online printing, report GCK, LSW, PYN and TWP

FOTOHUB, a digital imaging service provider, once made such a strategic blunder that it nearly went under. But a stroke of luck and founder Vincent Tan's fortitude and quick thinking saved the day.

FotoHub had started as a partnership of five kakis with a deep love for photography. They tied up with Kodak and offered photo printing services on the third floor of Coronation Plaza in Bukit Timah. Business was brisk, given that FotoHub was a stone's throw away from Hwa Chong Institution, their alma mater. Moreover, residents in the Bukit Timah area are generally wealthy and love to travel, so there were rolls and rolls of holiday photos to be developed each year.

Then, in the 1990s, the digital age arrived. The working relationship with Kodak was still going strong, and the business won numerous awards and accolades. Seeing FotoHub's success as a signpost for greater things to come, Kodak offered Mr Tan the opportunity of marketing a new product, the Photo CD. Mr Tan accepted and started a retail outlet that provided this service.

But not many consumers were exposed to digital media; they had neither the knowledge nor the means to pay for a service that converts film into CDs. As a result, FotoHub almost went bankrupt, having invested heavily in the retail outlet and the required specialised equipment.

Just when all seemed lost, Mr Tan got a referral from Kodak - a Caterpillar corporate trainer who had come to know of the Photo CD technology at a conference. He wanted Mr Tan to convert 100,000 slides into digital images for a training session.

With the completion of that order, Mr Tan went on the offensive, pitching the service to the corporate and government sectors, beginning with the Singapore National Archives. After a pilot test of three years, the body awarded a five-year contract to FotoHub, a job that is ongoing today. At last count, 1.7 million of the nation's most valuable images have been scanned and stored in the digital dimension. Mr Tan quips: 'This is FotoHub's national service.'

Next up was a contract with the National Library Board to scan the latter's collection of antique books, a job that's also still ongoing.

Just as things were coming along nicely, Mr Tan got another call. This time, it was the Caterpillar corporate trainer, who wanted to know if Mr Tan would venture beyond Singapore. The trainer's contacts at Shell headquarters in Brunei had been impressed by his digital slides.

But upon touching down at the Brunei airport, Mr Tan could not find the trainer. Being in unfamiliar territory and unable to speak the local language, he contemplated taking the next flight home.

However, he decided to press on instead. Stepping out of the airport, he spotted a booth with the Shell logo. It was a pick-up point for Shell expatriates. So Mr Tan hitched a ride to Shell's headquarters. Upon arrival, he met the Caterpillar trainer and scheduled a meeting with several Shell executives. The meeting was a great success and Mr Tan clinched a flourishing deal which runs to this day and which opens up opportunities in government agencies.

With its inroads in the government and corporate sectors, and the increasing use of digital cameras, Mr Tan felt that it was time to push digital services into the retail realm. Following the lead of first movers such as Snapfish and Shutterfly, Mr Tan set up a B2C online printing business.

Fotohub.com was an overnight success, chalking up users in a short period of time. And unlike its rivals, Fotohub.com allows its users to upload pictures in their original sizes and resolution, not re-sized to save data space.

Mr Tan then pushed for retail stores to be set up all over the island to supplement FotoHub's online offerings. FotoHub's flagship Kodak store was opened at Raffles Place in 2000. Other retail stores soon followed, in Suntec City, Beach Road, Golden Shoe Carpark, Coronation Plaza, Raffles City and Tampines One. These locations were chosen for their high human traffic and high-end customers. Today, the retail business accounts for 40 per cent of FotoHub's revenue, while the corporate and commercial divisions make up 45 and 15 per cent, respectively.

Another area where FotoHub is preparing to enter is content management. Here, FotoHub plans to work with academic institutions to explore new opportunities. It recently upgraded its corporate retail website, www.fotobankonline.com, to allow it to handle images, videos, and documents, including annual reports. FotoHub has also shifted to using Java running on Sun hardware to further enhance its content management capabilities. FotoHub also aims to develop a facial or object recognition tool in the future. With these technologies, Mr Tan aims to position FotoHub as a leader in its field.

Looking ahead, Mr Tan has set a turnover goal of $10 million by 2010, and he believes that FotoHub is well on its way to achieving the target. He also sees an eventual public listing for the company.

The writers are students of the NUS Business School

CHEERIOS to my beloved xiong dis! 6 more reports to go tho.. =.=