Stuff and nonsense

My plan to buy less stuff by writing everything down seems to be working. Or at least up to a point.
Today, I bought another pair of shorts and some trainers, but this was the first thing that I've purchased since the 23rd of February. If you exclude food, that is. I did think about tracking all the things I've eaten and drunk, but last time I tried that my head exploded when I realised how much I was spending on mushroom and cheese pockets at Starbucks.

There is a tension that I've discovered in trying to write as many reviews as humanly possible on Tripadvisor, while at the same time not spending money on ephemera, because there's only so many free things to do in any city before you either resort to reviewing the wifi in every Starbucks, or bankrupt yourself eating vealburgers off the stomach of naked virgins. Or whatever passes for cordon bleu cookery in this day and age.

However, I haven't quite got that desperate yet. I've found a new distraction, which is to find something I like and then look at all the reviews marked "Terrible". Take Chinatown, for example. You might think the people who hated it did so because they have a phobia of red lanterns, or steamed buns, or dragons, or little waving cats.

But no: instead, there's two angry Australians ranting about the time they bought a minor electronic device in a shop in Chinatown, then later checked the price and realised they paid over the odds. I'm a traditionalist: I believe you should check prices before you buy things, not after, because it's usually a simple away to avoid buyer's remorse (or a feeling of burning bile and rage). It also seems a bit off to damn the whole of Chinatown because of a couple of greedy shopkeepers. I mean, that would be like forever despising all of Australia, because you once went to Sydney and your mates tried to get you to go to a filthy strip club full of octogenerians. And I don't know anyone like that.

Oh. Ignore me while I readjust my hypocrisy.

We've finally taken up residence in our flat, and I've taken the first steps to getting the Rabbit video finished. I only have 29 days of free Adobe Premiere to get it done, but after tonight's mucking about, it looks like syncing the audio shouldn't be so hard after all, although possibly when it comes to exporting the whole thing, I'll end up with a five minute mpeg of a silent black room.

Well, that's peace and quiet, anyway.