Househunting in Singapore

It's a funny old thing. People putting their house on the market in Britain and the US are so often advised to do things to make their property more saleable that it becomes a cliche. Brew some coffee, put some bread in the oven, tidy up and eliminate all signs of individuality from their home, so the buyer feels capable of stamping their own mark upon it. So much so that perhaps first time buyers and renters believe that every home they could move into smells only of coffee, freshly baked bread and Glade air fresheners.

Busy, busy, busy

Today I went to the gym, partly because I want to start riding my bike more frequently, and thus feel the need to get Big And Strong. Or at least a bit bigger and stronger. Or at least not have arms so feeble that I can't hold onto the handlebars, or legs so weak that I can't stand on the pedals for more than a moment.

But also because I drank three pints of Wifebeater last night, and needed to clean my system out.

Nuts in health food shops

For a supposedly sub-tropical city, Hong Kong is really rather nippy at the moment. It's now cold enough that when I go outside, I don't get any warmer than when I'm inside my air conditioned office, which is something I can't remember ever happening before. People elsewhere may complain about floods and snow, but do they have to put up with tiled floors and no central heating? I doubt it. Truly, no life is harder than that of the middle-aged English chap, battered at every opportunity by this harsh climate, the cruel iniquities of an income tax system that claws back an eye-poppingly huge 16% of our earnings, and ludicrously expensive public transport. Two dollars to ride the tram from Kennedy Town to Shau Kai Wan? They're robbing us blind.

Still, at least we've got clean air.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

As we walked through the Pacific Place mall yesterday, an angry-looking man in his late forties scuttled out of the music shop that persists in selling people compact discs in this age of downloadery. He had the look of the sort of vaguely demented eccentric who asks irrelevant questions at the end of public lectures on science: wild hair, anorak, vaguely unkempt.

"Stupid shop!" he exclaimed with some rage and vigour. Then he dashed back inside the shop, waved what looked like a bank card at the nonplussed security guard, threw it on the floor and then stomped back out.

I hate computers

Last night I installed Windows Media Player on my laptop, so that I could play music from my enormous hard drive (not that I like to boast) through my Xbox.  I'm not quite sure why I did this.  I haven't ever felt before that there was a big gap in my life which could be filled by playing music through my Xbox.  After all, when I'm using the Xbox, it's so that I can drive computer-generated facsimiles of cars around non-existent racetracks, and I've always been happy in the past to do this to the sound of computer-simulated engines.

Automation software

I'm angry enough that if I had a spade, I'd probably try and commit a violent act of gardening on the next person I met. It's lucky nobody has issued a sunny 'hello' to me while I've been near a frying pan, or there would have been a death by cooking utensil on the news tonight. And it's very fortunate that I don't work in a rifle factory, or I'd be up on a roof right now. What is the source of all this misplaced rage? The title of this post should be clue enough: automation software, in some of its many guises.

Flapping around

Today started early, as all days do. I achieved consciousness after about eight hours, and found myself talking to a man about databases. Awesome stuff, questions about clustering indexes and truncate statements that made me want to pause and say "look here, my good man, I am well aware of the why's and wherefores of relational databases and what not, how about we stop wasting our time and talk instead about ships and kings, of sealing wax and string?"

Fame and fortune, almost, at last

I was intending on talking about this:
 

... However, I found out today that I'd appeared, if only very marginally, in a Chinese newspaper, so I'll leave dancing lions until tomorrow, when I may have processed the photographs more professionally.

Angry

The Ugandan president is apparently angry that Gordon Brown, Hillary Clinton and any other politician that phones him up only wants to talk about 'the gays'. I feel sorry for the poor chap. It must be hard trying to pass homophobic legislation when you have the diplomatic equivalent of a homosexual partyline ringing you every five minutes with salacious details on what 'the gays' are doing. Yes, it must be really ... Hard.