Furniture

Today, at long last, our new furniture arrived. I'm at a loss as to what to call it; it's not a chest, or a table, or a television stand, but a mighty combination of them all. We ordered it from a shop in Peng Chau, and for the last month carpenters in Shenzhen have been busily carpenting away, until they finished yesterday and we got the call to say it was being delivered.

Being delivered three hours late, but even though that was a complete waste of an afternoon when I could have been in the office pounding databases into submission, it wasn't all dead time. I cleaned out the Augean stable of my inbox, did some more work on my chatterbot, and ate some cheese. Truly, I'm living like a king.

Upon my return to the office, I found another new thing: a new blackberry phone, to replace the venerable old thing I've carried around for the last two years. This new one is glossy and black rather than decaying silver-effect plastic, but I'm not entirely seduced by the new model yet. The keys are closer together and are all flat, for the sake of aesthetics and at the expense of usability. I used to be able to touch type on my old blackberry; not so sure this one is so good.

And like every phone of this decade, the charging cable is different to every other phone in existence, even other Blackberrys. Or Blackberries. Which is it to be?

After all this excitement, I went to Sheung Wan for some Indian food in a very strange cooked food centre. Well, I say very strange, I think it was possibly quite representative of cooked food centres, it's just a bit odd to find this combination of municipial government building and food court, but you can't argue with a full meal and beer for less than 100 HK$.

And what better way to round off the night than by jamming out with overamplified guitars at Dorsher's flat in Sheung Wan? Even if his miraculous 500$ bass guitar began to disintegrate as I was playing it. Not to worry - there's plenty more secondhand instruments where that one came from.