Why, why, why is this town obsessed with a glam ballad that's more than a decade old? I hated it when it came out; now I loathe it. Extreme's "More Than Words". I hear it nearly every day, in a restaurant, mall, or taxi.

Then again, who am I to judge? We're going to see Level 42, Go West, and ABC tonight, on the pretext that we both kind of like ABC. Shoot that poison arrow, baby.

This is your brain on drugs. Try this. While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot. While doing your foot is circling clockwise, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.

What direction is your foot going now?

The forces of darkness are winning.

Worms. The new Blaster worm attacked my home computer yesterday. I didn't realize it at the time. I'm good about running Windows Update to get the security patches but somehow it still got through. If you get a warning saying that your computer will reboot in 60 seconds, that's it.

Viruses. I just got another virus mailed to me, which of course I didn't open, but it's still the fourth time in the last month.

Spam. I'm still getting twenty a day, five of which manage to oil their way into my Inbox. I love the new strategy of giving them an innocuous curiosity-inducing title, and coming from a common-but-not-too-common name, like today's batch of "Wanna know what I heard" from Natalie F. Hughes, "You forgot to respond" from Cameron Kelly, and "I don't think so" from Zoe Green. Respectively, these contained ads for -- chyeah, right, like I'm going to open them.

Pop-ups. More and more have been sneaking past my Pop-up Stopper. You'd expect that sort of thing from the likes of on-line gambling casinos, but I've been getting a bunch from Orbitz lately too.

Why can't a man surf in peace?

Bits of tid. A few morsels from the past few weeks:

Saw this giant moth (perhaps a butterfly?) at Mount Faber park a week ago.

It being full moon, there are a few people burning sacrifices in the street in front of their houses as part of the Hungry Ghost festival. One was an old lady who was feeding a rather sizable fire with fake money she was pulling by the handful out of an Ikea bag.

We took second in team trivia at the Yard the other night, and won five Heineken t-shirts.

InstallAnywhere is a damn fine piece of software. That's not a compliment I throw around lightly. Highly recommended for building installers for your software.

Had my worst soccer game yet the other day, gifting the other team a goal when I tripped over the ball instead of tapping it wide. Gave myself a nice bloody hipper in the process too. This was just when we were fighting our way back into the game, and it totally killed our momentum. I hate having to wait a week for any chance of redemption.

News! The Tasmania deal is now apparently a lock. We're just waiting for the final formality confirmation in the mail. I'll likely be heading down end of September/beginning of October. We've got lots to do before then. Marjorie will join me for a week of it, probably, and then hopefully we'll get a few days to do a side trip to Melbourne. Woop!

I just spent about 30 minutes reading the archives of our blog. It's amazing how "normal" life in Singapore has become for us. So many of the little things that were so exotic when we got here have become normalized or commonplace. I suppose that happens to everyone living abroad.
Another thing that's interesting to me, is tracking my attitude; little glimmers of culture shock denied. Singapore is certainly one of the easiest places in Asia for a westerner to become acclimated to, but it's still Asia. Is it ethnocentric to think spitting and picking your feet in public are gross? Other differences hard for me to accept are the tendencies of some people to drag their feet and/or walk slowly, seemingly oblivious to other people (painful to me when I'm in a hurry and want to get around them).
All in all, living in Singapore isn't bad. It's hot, and sometimes (frequently) I wish there were more entertainment options (I.E. good live music-not cover bands, uncensored movies, uncensored t.v., etc.), but, for the most part, the people here are friendly, it's safe, and there are plenty of great restaurants. Truthfully, I think I'd be mostly content if we just had more friends here. We miss the old posse.

Happy National Day! Singapore is 38 years old today. I believe Malaysia is 40 now. You may not know that Singapore started it's independence as part of Malaysia but was booted out. That's right, Singapore was forced into being the independent country that it became. I don't know the whole story, but I've been reading/skimming Lee Kuan Yew's book "From Third World To First" for the past 6 months and I know the story's in their somewhere.
Anyway, in an attempt to do our part at learning a bit about our country of residence Mark and I went to see the "Homeland" Imax at the Science center.
We also went iceskating at the Fuji ice palace. Big fun, except they made us buy gloves to wear while skating. Cloth gloves. How were these supposed to help us? I smell shakedown. We also tried to go see the facilities at Snow City but they wouldn't let us sneak a peek. Their loss.