Moved

We're moving!

From April 1, 2013, keep up with the quotidien rumblings of this blog at its new location on Cushtie.com

All existing posts will remain here, unless Blogger goes loopy and deletes it all.

So long, thanks for everything, and see you on the other side...

Five kilometres, painfully

I got out of bed at 6:30. This was a struggle because I was up until 11:30 last night, reading The Postmortal. That was an enjoyably grim story exploring a future where a cure for aging. (It doesn't end well for anyone: there are other ways to suffer apart from getting old.) It's vaguely reminiscient of the Blair Witch Project, crossed with a blog: the conceit is that the whole story is discovered in an abandoned settlement, and for the most part it feels convincing that somebody would be journalling their experience. Not at the end though. I wonder if I would be.

Something for nothing

Comedy Central Asia were running a promotional event in a large white tent outside Plaza Singapura today. I spent all morning sweating and fiddling with computers, then went down to see what was going on.

GI Joe : Retaliation

I don't know why my wife and I were so excited by the thought of going to see GI Joe : Retaliation. The mere presence of punctuation in the title should have warned us off, along with the wholly negative experience I had of watching the previous instalment, back in 2009. But dumbly, we believed the trailers and thought we'd enjoy it. It had The Rock in it - how could it be bad?

Fight Comic

Tonight I had Fight Comic, and I was dreading it because I've had a week of stress, sleep deprivation and very little time to prepare. Whether it's a crick in my neck, a recalcitrant wisdom tooth that likes to tease me by erupting and then hiding again, or insomnia inexplicably provoked by the sussurus of our electric fan, I've been struggling to cope with the world since we got back from Taiwan. Fight Comic is improvised, but it still requires thinking about the topics that might come up and getting yourself in the right mode.

Rejection

Today I got a rejection letter for The Unwanted Callers Of Cthulhu. I think that took about two months, which makes me worried that it could take the whole year to place it correctly; I'm not sure if two months to read an unsolicited story is par for the course or (worst case) that's actually prompt for the industry and rejections often take longer than that to hear about.

Defeated by the heat

We admitted defeat last night and gave in, turning the air conditioning back on. A week away from the warmth of Singapore has clearly made us weak.

Struggling again

It was silly to spend all week in Taiwan sleeping and resting, only to get the last flight out of Hong Kong on Sunday, depositing us in Singapore at 1:30 in the morning, and only getting back in to the flat after 2am. (There's a separate priority queue at the airport for pregnant ladies, but my wife refused to take it. I was aghast and dumbfounded, as she's not going to have this opportunity to skip the line for a long time now. Maybe that means I could waddle down there with a cushion stuck down my shirt - the family is owed a free ride, surely?)

Overcaffeinated again

I drank a coffee this morning that was so strong it gave me double vision. Bugeyed and overstimulated on sugar and caffeine, I stumbled away from Fuel. Nearby a woman was yelling into her phone nearby, telling somebody not to accuse her, but just say what she wanted to. That confused me. It sounded like the person on the other end just wanted to accuse her of something. Maybe I should have shared some of my coffee.