Now the BBC has listed 50 places you must see before you die. Let's see how I do. The ones I've seen are in bold.

1 The Grand Canyon 2 Great Barrier Reef 3 Florida 4 South Island 5 Cape Town 6 Golden Temple 7 Las Vegas 8 Sydney 9 New York 10 Taj Mahal 11 Canadian Rockies 12 Uluru 13 Chichen Itza - Mexico 14 Machu Picchu - Peru 15 Niagara Falls 16 Petra - Jordan 17 The Pyramids - Egypt 18 Venice 19 Maldives 20 Great Wall of China 21 Victoria Falls - Zimbabwe 22 Hong Kong 23 Yosemite National Park 24 Hawaii 25 Auckland - New Zealand 26 Iguassu Falls 27 Paris 28 Alaska 29 Angkor Wat - Cambodia 30 Himalayas - Nepal 31 Rio de Janeiro - Brazil 32 Masai Mara - Kenya 33 Galapagos Islands - Ecuador 34 Luxor - Egypt 35 Rome 36 San Francisco 37 Barcelona 38 Dubai 39 Singapore 40 La Digue - Seychelles 41 Sri Lanka 42 Bangkok 43 Barbados 44 Iceland 45 Terracotta Army - China 46 Zermatt - Switzerland 47 Angel Falls - Venezuela 48 Abu Simbel - Egypt 49 Bali 50 French Polynesia

Thirteen down, thirty-seven to go... Actually I've only ever flew over the Grand Canyon, but I saw it, so I'm counting it.

Lucky for us our friend Ashim, whom we know from Atlanta, had a layover in Singapore today on his way to India so we had a chance to catch up. In three hours we managed to take in Thai food at the Golden Mile complex, check out the Raffles hotel and Raffles City, then walk over to the Esplanade to have a drink while admiring the Merlion in the distance. It was great to see him, and even luckier, he's coming back with his wife and son for four days in December before heading home. Can't wait to see them again.

We watched the finale of Joe Millionaire last night. I mention it here only in hopes that by publicly embarassing ourselves, we might refrain from ever again standing under the broken sewer main of American reality television. What an eloquent pair Joe and the Pyrrhic victor made. At one point Joe described the time he had with one woman as "really neat". They gave them a million dollars at the end (darn, I gave away the surprise). My comment was that with that kind of money, maybe they could buy some chemistry.

The Veteran

When I was young and bold and strong,
O, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
Come out, you dogs, and fight! said I,
And wept there was but once to die.

But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, "The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won ~
The difference is small, my son."

Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.

--Dorothy Parker

So what did YOU do to mark World Toilet Day? Some Singapore-based company declared it such. The article claims that Singapore toilets are among the cleanest in the world. Don't you believe it. Generally, they're okay, but occasionally... I'd rather not finish that sentence.

I have a free hour or two to work on this story I'm writing. And yet, I'm not. You can't make me.

I don't think I have what it takes to author.

I'll finish it, by the end of the month, because I said I would. I'm still plotting it out and such, but I've lost my head of steam. I'm looking forward to the actual writing of it about as much as writing a term paper.

How great are my parents? I mentioned not being able to watch NFL on Thanksgiving, and what came in the mail today from the other side of the world but a video cassette of one of last week's games. True, it turns out they are going to show one on TV here, but they aren't showing a game I'm interested in. Now I have to scare up a VCR. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

We're planning on doing Thanksgiving next Monday, which is good news; as Marjorie pointed out to me last night, they've been showing the NFL Sunday night games here on Monday early evening, which is perfect. It's only Redskins vs. Miami -- eh. But I can't complain too much.

I'm excited to see Master and Commander will be starting here soon. It does star Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, who combined earlier in A Beautiful Mind, and were annoying together well beyond the sum of their individual annoyingness. But on the plus side, it's based on a good book (which I've actually read), it's directed by Peter Weir, and I understand that it breaks a Hollywood taboo as far as the love-interest story, in that it doesn't have one.

Other people's blogs: I've noticed that we have been popping up on some other people's blog links. It's strange, especially if you've never seen the blog before. That said I certainly enjoy many other people's blogs and even in the worst mood (as lately. I blame hormones) three in particular always seem to cheer me up:
I am the monkey- she's Australian, frequently hilarious, and rather warped.
Eeksy-Peeksy- for a silly name, the man is clearly brilliant. He seems to express the biggest thoughts using the most succinct words. Subtle, eloquent. I'd love to read a novel by him.
Metamorphosism- Very witty, and doesn't take himself too seriously. He almost never fails to put a smile on my face with his wry humour.
Eeksy and Metamorphosism are both professional writers I believe, and expats living in Europe. Our blog seems very clumsy to me sometimes after visiting theirs.
Note to Margaret Cho regarding her blog, the Elliot Smith lyrics you misquoted from St. Ides Heaven are "the moon is a light bulb breaking", not "alive. Ball breaking" and are published in the liner notes.

Feeling rather depressed today. Listening to KCRW on-line I heard Elliott's new single, and was reminded that there will be just a few more new songs from him, and then nothing more. Sucks.
The real reason for my low mood though is that it's just so lonely here for us. Mark and I rely so much on each other, and we both need friends. We have a few nice acquaintances we see socially on a semi-regular basis, but in general we don't get out much and the social isolation is getting to me.
At home when I felt lonely, I could always go to my parents house and borrow a buddy (Beau or Sadie or both) for a few days. No doggies here to borrow, and I'm not sure the land lady would allow it anyway. Sigh.

Mark's description of what happened at my office is flattering, but inaccurate. I'm very grateful he was there though. What really happened (as far as I can remember) is that the client, who had been suspected of surfing porn on our computers-which led to many porn pop-ups coming up on our computers at random times, including once while I was helping another client find information on a school (very graphic pics, I was mortified), anyway, the client came into the office and I told him he needed to leave as he had abused his membership privledges and was no longer allowed to use our computers. I based the decision to eject him on the proven fact that he had recently been rearranging our office equipment when we weren't looking even though he had been expressly told not to do that.
Long story short I told him to leave and he refused for a seemingly long time, he lingered for atleast 15 minutes, continually interrupting a session I was having with another client and basically really upsetting me. He's a freak, with a long history at our office of being socially inappropriate (i.e. interrupting sessions with other clients, continually asking the same questions, basically being an ass). I'm really hoping he doesn't come back, but I wouldn't be surprised if he shows up again.
Also for clarification I didn't tell the other student that Mechanical Engineering and Criminology would be an "odd" major, I said "unusual" and difficult due to the course load in most Engineering programs. I did make the McGyver comment though when asked what you could do with the combined degrees.