Pre race nerves

The trouble with a race that starts just after midnight is that you don't have much to do beforehand, apart from try to not do anything.

I don't think I managed that.

Snowing, working and sleeping

Today I looked out the window, to see snow, glittering on the trees outside the hotel. I had my breakfast and then got driven up to the hotel, with the dread warning that there would be no car to ferry me home in the evening, because of the snow.

Sleep deprivation, Taiwan style

It probably wasn't such a good idea to go to the cinema at 11:30 last night, but these late-night film trips seem to be a staple of our visits to Taipei, and since Taiwan is good enough to screen movies really, really late (audiences were still coming in as we left at 1:30) it seems rude not to.

Cats and dogs

My girlfriend wasn't particularly enamoured of the painting that I brought home, reacting to it in the same way that you might when your cat fetches in a dead mouse for your delectation. Well, to be exact about this, she said the picture was scary, which I feel is stretching the point. Once a cat is nailed to a cross, even if it has a pair of breasts and a teddy bear attached to it, it's not much of a physical threat.

I assume. It's not like I frequently crucify cats, as I hope I explained yesterday.

Oversleeping

I was still feeling pretty sickly today, so I slept until 1 o'clock and then lay in bed reading Harper's. This seemed like as good a way as any for me to prepare for comedy this evening, and in any case, it's always interesting to read about the zany adventures of Arizonian officials working on creating budget deficits and victimising Hispanics and believing the world was created six thousand years ago. Any one of these faults would be bad on its own, but together they're almost endearing. Cute little Arizonian senators! They're almost human!

Later, we went to Tin Hau to pick up the keys for the new flat. I'd tried to get them yesterday, but in a fabulous feat of jobsworthism,the guard had first denied any keys existed and sent me off to get them from the estate agent, and then when I returned with the agent in tow, magically remembered that I didn't have the right paperwork for the keys he'd had all the time, and by this point I'd lost half my body weight through perspiration and retreated in disarray.

Today, though, armed with contract we picked up all five pairs of keys for our one bedroom apartment, deposited our breadbin and turned on the fridge. Which was enough for one day so we went back to the old flat to sleep it off.

On the way home we had to fight our way through the forces of democratic progress.

Or rather, because the general population doesn't seem too keen on the government's plans for democracy (basically, they don't believe in it and hope it will go away), the government has had to resort to bussing in coachloads of pensioners, paying them $200 and a shrimp dinner to show support for the government's electoral reforms.

Mainly by standing around in Tin Hau near Victoria Park and getting in the way of everyone.

There's more to be said on this, but I'll leave that until tomorrow: time now for some sleep, snatched after a fairly exhausting show at the club. Oh, sleep, when I've had only 13 hours so far today...

Rental agreements

I had to go to Tin Hau today to leave a deposit on the flat I want to move into.

...

And then the estate agent made me clean it off the door.

Badoom tschh!!!

I'll discuss the iniquities of my day, the glory of inattentive but fundamentally decent taxi drivers, talking too fast, the perils of accepting free furniture from strange women and more tomorrow. For now, it's time for sleep.

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?"

Being caught napping

My amazing-and-incredibly-wonderful graph was greeted with deafening silence yesterday. Possibly this means that I'm actually the worst of all people: industrious, yet stupid. Almost stupid enough to be able to ignore consistently my own stupidity, yet not quite stupid enough. Therein may lie the tragedy of my condition.