2003 is here. Let's hope it's as exciting and eventful as the last, though it's hard to see how it could be. We went to a small party at a friend of our friend's here, and considering how much red wine I drank, I'm lucky to only be feeling a little crapulent. I've been up for three hours and Marjorie's still asleep; I don't think she's faring as well...

I forgot to mention the cool thing I bought in Vietnam. I've decided to collect musical instruments from wherever we visit, and in Vietnam I decided on an instrument I saw played at the water puppetry: the dan bau. It's a single string, and you pluck only harmonics on it. The bar sticking up on the right is very like a whammy bar on an electric guitar. It's really cool. And it actually plugs in to an amplifier.

Tomorrow, once everything is open again, we start house-hunting in earnest. We have a number of criteria, which we hope won't hinder our ability to find a place:

Must be near MRT (subway). We're not going to have a car, so this is a must.

Near a grocery store. ("Cold Storage" is the only chain out here.)

Washer/dryer in building, or at least hookups for them. We're not into trudging bags of clothes onto the MRT.

A nearby pub. You might view this as a somewhat alcoholic- (or at least British-) sounding requirement, but we liked having one nearby where Marjorie used to live, just to nip off for a quick bite and a pint.

Wired for fast internet. A must, here.

Speaking of pubs, there's a hairdresser up the street that has a sign that reads "Unisex saloon". And another one two doors down apparently copied the misspelling. Lots of funny manglings of the English language all over southeast Asia. Reminds me of this site.