Schmegeggie. I don't know if I have a Yiddish gene or what, but I've always loved Yiddish/Jewish jokes. I wonder if this runs in my family. Marjorie apparently has the gene too; this whole subject came up from a book she's reading, "Portnoy's Complaint", which also reminded her of similar jokes in "The Autograph Man".

These jokes, are each from Arthur Naiman's "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish", except the last, which is from Leo Rosten's "The Joys of Yiddish". These pop up occasionally when you log into a Unix machine; they're part of the Unix "fortune" program.

A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a little more ... that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."

Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation movement. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."

One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "somebody has to buy retail."

Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks he's nobody!"

The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish child, was propounded to me by my father:
"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?"
I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity gave up.
"A herring," said my father.
"A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
"So hang it there."
"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
"Paint it."
"But a herring isn't wet."
"If it's just painted it's still wet."
"But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring doesn't whistle!!"
"Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it hard."

Tuesday is my day of pain. For some reason, I always feel my Sunday soccer game on Tuesday, especially around lunch. I got compliments on how well I played, but we lost. The heat index beforehand, I heard, was 105. I felt my years, especially in the second half.

If Blogger is supposedly owned by Google now, why is there no way for me to search our archive of past blogs? The Google site itself doesn't even index them. Strange, but they DO seem to be archived on MSN.

We had our final Singapore games night last night. For diarist reasons, in attendance were Ken, Nora, Matt, Kim, Flip, Karen, and Loretta. We'll miss the old crowd. It was a lot of fun.

I spent the Tiger Lilies show sitting there trying to characterize them. It's pretty much a Tom Waits meets Tim Burton meets Charles Dickens meets Monty Python meets Shane MacGowan sort of vaudeville show. Really bizarre and wonderful. Apart from the theatrics, it was quite amazing musically too.

We went and saw the Tiger lillies last night. The were very entertaining and rather deviant, especially for Singapore. We knew about the event from our friend Ken, who had seen them in Chicago. That will probably be the last cultural event we attend here as we have 25 days and counting now...

Immigrants always seem to know more about the politics of their adopted countries than the locals do. Well, we didn't learn too much about Singapore's, probably due to the lack of a debating opposition. But Marjorie has charged ahead in learning about Australia's, to the point of impressing an Australian we met recently. Me, I can name only the president, and not tell you much else.

That is, before today. I'm actually familiar with a guy who will soon be running for parliament -- Peter Garrett, the former front man for Midnight Oil. By all accounts his election will be uncontested.

I saw them, phoo, must've been back in 1989 or so, at Visage in Orlando. I have only three recollections from the show:

1. I sold an extra ticket, that I bought for $12, outside before the show for $22.
2. Peter Garrett stopped the show for a minute or so to explain a bit about the Aboriginal rights issue, his pet project.
3. It was hot as blazes, and he kept flinging cups of water into the grateful crowd.

Based on #2 and #3, I think he may be an okay guy.

Greetings, greetings fellow stargazers! Yesterday Venus passed between the Earth and the Sun. As the last time this happened was 1882, no living person had ever seen it before.

Ostensibly, all it looks like is a tiny black dot on a big orange one. This is probably why I don't own a telescope -- unless you own a Hubble, all you'll get to see is tiny dots, or if you're lucky, slightly larger fuzzy dots, all while you're out in the cold getting bitten by mosquitos. One can easily find much better eye candy on-line.

I'll still probably get a telescope someday. There's something appealing about self-directing your search, and witnessing things first-hand.

But astronomy is a feast for the mind, not the eyes. What was amazing about the Venus transit was not that we could witness it, but that we could predict it with such accuracy, and know that it is not a harbinger of doom, but just a coincidental syzygy. Knowing that Venus is only a little smaller than Earth, we can, for a moment, try to grasp the immensity of the Sun.

Part of me regrets that we're not moving to Australia's capital, Canberra. While by most accounts it is a whirling pit of despair, they do do a lot of astronomy that I would love to be a part of.

Not much has been happening as you can tell by the lack of blog entries. I had to work Saturday (our first real demo), and we spent Sunday just bumming around the pool. I feel like I should write about something, but what?

I know! I'll tell you of my secret life... as a woman.

The Virtual Tourist web site is a respository for people's travel photos, stories, and tips. You can include a picture of yourself if you like, and many people do. On any given day you can browse the pictures of everyone whose birthday is that day, or you can just browse by country or whoever's logged on.

There were some complaints about losers using the site as a place to try to chat up women. So a few years back I created a female persona there, just to see what sort of responses I would get. I Googled on "blond" and "model" and came up with this picture (I've lost track of who she really is, but my apologies if you're reading this and it's you).

As a control in my experiment, I created a guy persona as well, using a picture of a guy slightly better looking than me.

I set their "birthdays" as the next day and waited. There were no surprises. The hot chick got about 20 birthday greetings to the hot dude's 10. One guy wrote about two pages worth, that was really rather creepy. To this day she still gets regular mail, while he gets almost none.

They both just had their "birthday"; this year, she got 8 greetings to his NONE.

It's all harmless enough, I guess; nobody's been persistent or harassing. It's been a little eye-opener, I guess, because I could see how this sort of thing could really get to you, if it happened all the time, or in person. I never respond. I thought I could but I really don't know how to "write women".

Here's a few samples of the mail she gets. Names have be omitted.

Hi

I am N----- from Bangalore, India.
i love to travel in India. Especially to places like Goa, Ooty, Kodaikanal,
Coorg and Kerala.
I am very familiar with these HOT destinations in India.
If you would want to travel to India, think of me.
Especially if you love trekking and deep forests
write to me on n-----@yahoo.com so that accessiblity will be easier.
I am 30 and i would love to be your friend.
love
N-----

HOT destinations! Woo!

Hi there..Hopin not offendin u. Actually, we have not had a chance to get to
know each other so far!. But while browsin virtualtourist web site, I have just
noticed that ur birthday is today. Hence, I said to my self, hey man..do
something useful..why don't u congratulate that woman on her spectacular day?.
I really do wish u a wonderfully great birthday filled with happiness & joy.
By the way, I'm M---- who likes to make friendship with nice ppl around the
Globe. I do have a broad spectrum of hobbies including traveling.
Above all, I neither fight nor bite..hehehe.
Pls. if u r willing to get to know each other, drop me a
line..Many thanks..
take care..
Best Wishes, M----

What every woman wants; someone who doesn't bite...

IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY

Today is your special day,
so celebrate in your favourite way.
As time goes bye,
The years begin to fly.
But, you're only as old as you feel,
even when grey hair begins to yield.
Life is full of ups and downs
But, always wear a smile, instead of a frown.
Many wishes for days to come
and may your birthday be a very
extra special one.

I think this was supposed to be poetry.

Hi fellow(what's is the female gender for that term?) Floridian. I'm over here
in Venice a hop ,skip and ok a two hour ride from you. Saw your pic and wanted
to say hi and (now this is my male chauvinistic side ) WOW......beautiful
(refering to you of course)
Have a great day.....B---
p.s. I moved here last year from NJ....lol

This guy is a biker with a beard.

I saw your lovely picture and wanted to send you a greeting.

My name is [woman's name]. I have lived in Paris for the past 3 years surviving
as an artist/photograher and now I am back in the US in Virginia, taking care of
my dear cousins home and two beautiful dogs while he is in flying in Iraq.

I would love to visit Florida. Hope to hear from you:) You would make a
beautiful model to sketch and paint:)

Zoiks!

How did you spend your Vesak Day? We went to Mailboxes Etc and bought some boxes. I took a nice nap, then we went and had pizza at Casa Roma. On to the ex-pat board's Wednesday Night Drinking Club for a quick pint. All day we both had the Kinks' "Afternoon Tea" stuck in our heads.

We must have done something right, as today was full of good portents. I got my first nibble on a job, and have an interview set up for the day after we land. We got our application to set up a mailbox down there to send stuff to, and it looks like it will be no problem. And at the local grocery store, Marjorie found the beer that was our staple back in Atlanta, Bass, that we'd actually resorted to smuggling in on a few occasions

We booked our one-way tickets for Melbourne today. In a little over a month we'll be southward bound. Can't wait.

Ewwww. We discovered tonight that at some point in the last month or so we squished a gecko in the door jamb of our bedroom door. He ended up rather, uh, Picasso-esque. We named this one "Abstract Art".

And in case you're wondering, the person responsible for gecko cleanup in this house is ME.

The search is on. This weekend I'm going to start applying for jobs in Melbourne. The part I hate is dealing with headhunters (recruiters, I mean). With rare exceptions, they are slime. It is in their interest for you to get a job, yes, but all of their profit comes out of the difference between what the company's willing to pay and what you're willing to accept. So, while they work hard to find you a job, they are always trying to rip you off. But, sometimes it's the only way to get a job. If you go to any of the various job sites, 95% of the postings are from recruiters. And the jobs they list there never really exist, either; they are just to entice you to call them. Each recruiter has just a small changing pool of jobs he knows about that he will try to sell you on. (I say "he" because I've yet to see a female recruiter. I'm sure they exist, but are rare. Is it because women have a more evolved sense of ethics that they don't survive in the recruiting field?)

This one time in Atlanta I was contacted by a really strange recruiter who would call me at all hours of the day and night, and who finally convinced me to come visit him at his office way up in Alpharetta. I told him I definitely didn't want to work in that area, but that didn't stop him from springing an interview on me during my visit, with an Alpharetta company he was in contact with. So I gave an impromptu interview -- a good one, I might add; it wasn't really the company's fault -- and then emailed the recruiter that night telling him I didn't want the job and to stop sending my resume out; I didn't want to do business with anyone who so completely ignored my wishes. He ended up leaving a pissy little message on my answering machine about it, that I wish I had digitized; it was hilarious, in a creepy sort of way.

But what's really worrying me this time is the process of interviewing. Melbournians are notoriously outgoing but unpretentious, while I am notoriously quiet but cocky. My attitude seems to work well with American companies, but I'm going to have to vary my approach a bit down there, I think.

I'm also at a delicate stage in my career advancement, where people are going to want to put me in charge of stuff. Well, stuff I can handle; I just don't want to be in charge of people. I don't like managing at all, and have steadfastly avoided ever learning any presentation software like PowerPoint. I can handle heading up a team of a few people, but only if I can keep my hands in the technical stuff. My plan for making more money is by being worth the price of several other techies, but many companies think that throwing enough cheap young coders at a problem is a workable solution. Fortunately there are more and more who have wised up. We shall see.

Jane, get me off this crazy thing. I'm training my replacement, so he's using my computer. I've been given a Mac portable as a replacement. My boss thinks that I would love Macs if I had to use one for long enough.

Instead I think, how can people stand these things? Why are they considered so easy to use? I can't figure it out. I mean, I know that once you've learned one operating system, you're pretty much indoctrinated, and all you're going to see if you switch OSes are the things that are lacking. But I've been able to get practically NOTHING to run on this p.o.s. None of my Java applications will pop up windows. FOP just hangs. I can find no decent text editor -- BBEdit, which is supposed to be great, won't even let you page down. Moronic! I hate the dumbed-down one-button mouse. I hate the lack of keystroke equivalents for most things. I hate the limited keyboard (you have to hold down a function key to hit page up or down, home, or end). I hate the lack of a consistent way to switch between separate windows of an applications. I
can't even find a way to create a text file in a directory except from within an application. I hate how icons in the system tray jump up and down to get your attention.

The fonts are nice, though.

We celebrated our second anniversary tonight; a very low-key affair, just a nice dinner at home. We tend to make a bigger deal of the day we started going out instead.

Watched the season three debut of Six Feet Under; what gives? All the tension they built up at the end of last season just went "poof".

Oh, and woo hoo! Passed my Java certification exam. It was hard. Multiple choice, but often more than one of the choices was correct, and you had to get all of them correct for it to count. I swear I thought I was blowing it, halfway through, and that I'd wasted the money. Ended up getting 47 out of 61 questions right, or 77% (52% is considered a passing grade). Quite a relief.

I'm scheduled to take a Java Certification Exam tomorrow, so I'm up late studying such thrilling topics as RandomAccessFile invocation parameters and how to instantiate Threads.

While on the subject of 'boring', here's the report from Sunday's game. I continue my offensive onslaught from fullback:

We had the better of the 1st half and scored after a knockdown from Gimson was chested into the goal by Mark S. A fairly even 2nd half in possession but we had many chances to bury them with at least 4-5 clear cut chances. They equalised when a free kick was chipped into the path of their nippy stirker to slot it pass me. After a series of disgracful finishing from us , we won it with the last kick of the game when Kelvin chipped the out-rushing keeper from outside the box.

Next week I'm going to try to score with my hips or butt.

Speaking of vows, Tuesday is our second wedding anniversary. Since we're not buying presents this year I'll use the occasion to document all our travels together chronologically, something I've been meaning to do for a while. The following is probably not of much interest to anyone but us, but the blog has turned into more than a way to keep up with family and friends, it's also a way for us to remember our experiences.

This list only documents trips we've made together.

1. Boston, Massachusetts, September, 1998. We went up to see Elvis Costello play a free radio-station sponsored concert. We started way in the back, but due to a sudden storm that scared away all the non-devoted fans, we ended up right under the stage. Other highlights: Showing Mark where I used to live and where I went to high school, visiting the Boston Aquarium and eating Pizza Regina, yum, my favorite pizza since high school and still one of the best.

2. Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1st trip October, 1998. The first trip we made together to Chattanooga was to attend my friend Chris' wedding. This was also the first wedding Mark and I attended together. We went up subsequent times to go white water rafting, and another trip to visit the aquarium, but I'm sketchy on the dates.

3. Athens, Georgia, Halloween, 1998. The first of many trips to Athens that we've made together (and the only one that will be documented here). We went with a big group of friends to participate in the Halloween bar crawl. We had a blast, this was possibly the best Halloween I've ever experienced.

4. Madrid/Barcelona, Spain, Dec/Jan 1998/1999. Our first trip together outside of the United States. Highlights: Spending New Year's eve in Plaza Mayor with lots of festive Spaniards. Walking around Barcelona and taking in the Gaudi Architecture. Visiting several fantastic art museums.

5. San Francisco, California, June 1999. Another Elvis Costello show, this time at the Fleadh Festival. Shane MacGowan pulled a no-show, the drunk. Other highlights: Watching the seals bark at one another on the waterfront.

6. Austin, Texas, Summer 1999. I tagged along with Mark on a business trip. Highlights: The turtles, bats and nutria along Town Lake.

7. London/Manchester, England, November 1999. Mostly a pub tour as I was exhausted after my first few months as a first year special ed. teacher with city of Atlanta schools (the worst job I've ever had). In one of the pubs the term "heavy gravity spot" was coined for falling over for no apparent reason (other than strong lager). An injured ankle kept us away from the tourist spots, for the most part, the rest of trip, with the exception of a jog through the British museum where we saw the Rosetta stone and ignored mostly everything else. Other: We spotted Henry Rollins drinking coffee in a Starbucks (in the window seat, the attention whore), followed by a discussion about whether or not to give him the two finger salute, we chickened out (he's a big guy) and regret it to this day.

8. Orlando/Cocoa Beach, Florida, Christmas, 1999. My first Christmas with Mark's family. They were, and continue to be, very fun to be around. Other highlights: Going to see multitudes of manatees at Crystal Springs, and gator spotting near the Kennedy Space Center.

9. New York City, New York, Winter 2000. Highlights: Walking around Park Slope Brooklyn, huddled together, freezing our asses off. Also, a rooftop in Brooklyn one in the morning.... well around that time anyway, the view was like nothing else I have ever seen anywhere else, with city and humanity stretched out forever. Our first time staying as a couple with Kristina and Michael who have proved time and time again to be amazing hosts, and have put up with my sorry excuse for a house guest many, many times. Some day soon we hope to reciprocate.

10. W.Palm Beach, Florida, April, 2000. We went to visit my best friend Karen and her husband Tom at their house in W. Palm (they've since moved to Connecticut). What I remember most about this trip is visiting in their house, and swimming in the pool. It's always very nice to visit with good friends and we don't see Karen and Tom near enough.

11. Cancun, Mexico, June, 2000. The water in Cancun was amazing. This trip was the first time I'd gone snorkeling and is still the best visibility I've come across, including a particularly memorable "Mark, Shark!" moment. The other major highlights were swimming with dolphins at Dolphin Discovery, and visiting Xcaret.

12. Boone, North Carolina, New Year's 2000-2001. Our first (and so far only) ski trip together. We discovered that I ski about as well as Mark snowboards, and almost died driving down the frozen roads in my brand new (to me) Honda Civic. New Year's was somewhat anti-climatic as all the bars had closed. We did light a few fireworks purchased at one of the many scary Fire Works! shacks along the Georgia/North Carolina border.

13. New York City, New York, Spring, 2001. We spent the first night of this trip with people we no longer consider friends as we did something unbeknownst to us to piss them off (that's my story, I'm sticking to it). We spent the rest of the trip with Karen and Tom (see W.Palm Beach) and had a blast together. The most memorable event was a sketchy interaction in the lower East Side with some of the scariest looking guys I've ever seen in my life, and a morning trip to the planetarium. Another too-short visit with two of my favorite people.

14. Tokyo,Japan/Singapore/Tioman Island,Malaysia, June, 2001. Our first trip to Asia together. This was the trip that inspired the move to Singapore, and began our first real consideration of life as expatriates. We've been back to all three places if that's any indicator of how much we enjoyed ourselves the first time.

15. Chicago, Illinois, July, 2001. Highlights included visiting the Chicago Aquarium and Art Institute, and later that day stumbling upon a Patti Smith show while walking around downtown. Chicago's a lovely city, where else in America can you find a Picasso and a Chagall outside for everyone to enjoy?

16. Las Vegas, Nevada, October, 2001. We went to Vegas for my very good friends Kristina and Michael's wedding. Most memorable: the rehearsal dinner at "The Pink Taco" restaurant in the Hard Rock Cafe (nice one Kristina). The wedding was lovely and it was so much fun being on vacation with friends! Their vacation wedding inspired us when planning our own event less than a year later.

17. Paris, France, Christmas, 2001. Mark proposed to me on this trip. It was tres romantique as he waited until Christmas eve when we were on a bridge over the river Seine with Notre Dome in the background. As Jonathan Richman says "if you don't think Paris was made for love/Give Paris one more chance..."

18. Key West, Florida, January, 2002. We went to Key West on an exploratory trip to see if it would be a suitable location for our wedding. Which leads to trip 19....

19. Key West, Florida, May, 2002. We got married on the beach at Ft. Zachary Taylor State Park with two other couples elbowing for room on the same beach, in spite of that it was a very lovely sunset ceremony, made all the more special because our most cherished friends and family flew down there to be with us. I highly recommend a destination wedding; you get a vacation with your best friends and an excuse to have a very small wedding (which I also recommend).

20. Charleston, South Carolina, July, 2002. We went to Charleston for 4th of July weekend. It was a nice break away from Atlanta. There are some lovely beaches nearby too.

The rest of our trips together have been documented on the blog so I'll just list them without commentary:

21. New York, October, 2002
22. Orlando/Cocoa Beach Florida, November, 2002
23. Moved to Singapore, November, 2002
24. Vietnam, December 2002
25. Koh Samui, Thailand, March, 2003
26. Bali, Indonesia, April, 2003
27. Sydney, Australia, July, 2003
28. Tokyo, Japan, September, 2003
29. Los Angeles, California/Cocoa Beach, Florida/Atlanta,Georgia, December-January 2003/2004
30. Bangkok, Thailand, January, 2004
31. Tioman Island, Malaysia, March, 2004
32. Melbourne, Australia, April, 2004

Another thing we're looking forward to doing after we move is taking some classes. Like many of the things on our other this, this isn't necessarily something we're prevented from doing here; it's just that with a new beginning and (hopefully) more money, it seems more possible. And it's also a good way to meet people.

I plan on continuing Japanese, and maybe doing some writing workshops. Marjorie wants more Spanish and photography. Together we may do cooking and scuba diving. Oh, and dog obedience, of course.

We took a vow the other night to never again go six months without taking some sort of class that interests us. Unlike my nail biting/neck cracking vow, let's hope we can stick by this one.

On another note, go see Shrek 2. Side-splittingly funny.

Three cheers. Another forum I'm on has a thread going about remarkable experiences. Here's what I posted:

This is the first thing that came to mind as a "remarkable experience". It was just something I was lucky enough to witness.

I was working at Kennedy Space Center -- must've been about 1992 -- and had seen my share of shuttle (and rocket) launches. Landings, however, had always been done out in California at Edwards Air Force Base. They had built a landing strip at KSC, but had yet to use it, except for landing the special airliner that carries the shuttle back from California.

On a day when the shuttle was scheduled to land in Edwards, I was at work as usual. Word started spreading around the building that, due to a weather pattern approaching California, they were going to land the shuttle, that day, right outside our building!

Everyone filed out at the appropriate time, and waiting in the parking lot that was pretty much right across the street from the landing strip. The funny thing was, no one knew which way to look. We knew it would be coming from the west, but also that it would have to circle a few times to lose speed. So eyes were pointed in every direction.

Finally, someone spotted it, directly overhead, so high up that you could barely see it. Everyone cheered, for the first time of three. We watched it begin to bank into its turn.

Two minutes or so later, the double sonic boom hit us -- BOOM! BOOM! Car alarms went off, and everyone cheered again. It pulled a descending curve over our parking lot, and we could begin to see details on the shuttle itself, as its jet fighter escorts pulled up alongside.

But to everyone's dismay, just before it was to do its final, unimaginably steep descent towards the landing strip, it disappeared behind a cloud bank. We were going to miss the landing! It was hard to tell just how thick the clouds were, and where they stopped. Finally, just as the shuttle was leveling off from its descent, it burst MAJESTICALLY out of its cloud bank, almost directly towards us, and everyone went nuts cheering, one more time! Not that the astronauts could possibly hear us; it was just an unbridled outburst of joy amongst a bunch of space geeks. Finally it dipped below the trees across the road and made its landing. We all went back to work with big stupid grins on our faces.

Speaking of voting, we've both decided that if Fantasia gets voted off American Idol, we're never watching the show again.

Singapore Idol starts soon. I'm all aquiver. No, really, I think it will be a hoot, in a train-wreck sort of way.

Stolen Elections? Alrighty, in case you've been keeping up with the comments, the person I referred to who wrote the Vanity Fair Article about hacking the vote was Michael Shnayerson. But, the person doing the research on this frightening phenomena is Bev Harris. If you want more information go to http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
pretty frightening stuff. BE VERY SKEPTICAL IF YOUR ARE VOTING ON A DIRECT RECORDING ELECTRONIC (D.R.E.) VOTING SYSTEM THIS ELECTION!!!! These are what were used in Georgia during the past election by the way. Really makes you wonder.

We're not as shallow as we may appear to be based on our blogs.
I read the last post and thought, "Wow, you look at the state of the world, and what a sad time it is to be an American (and perhaps particularly an American living abroad), and we're posting what we want to buy when we move". That seems wrong, but honestly, do you guys really need our opinions about the pathetic state of the world? I doubt it. Still, it's a sad time to be an American, or even a human.

Things we can't wait to buy, own, or otherwise acquire once we move:

Washer and DRYER.

Big refrigerator.

Car.

Dog.

NEW CLOTHES.

Comfy computer chair.

Comfy matress.

High quality sheets and comforter.

MORE CLOTHES.

Coffee maker.

Cookbooks.

Kitchen appliances.

Art.

Magazine subscriptions.

TIVO or its equivalent.

All our stuff from Atlanta.

Their food is to die for. Our favorite Thai restaurant, Diandin Leluk, is unfortunately situated in the Golden Mile complex.

Two weeks ago, the highway behind it collapsed, forcing evacuation of the building.

Today, it was evacuated again -- for supposedly unrelated reasons -- after the building started shaking due to an earthquake across the water in Sumatra. No one else in town seemed to feel a thing, myself included.

One might never want to go near the place again. But only if one hadn't ever tried their green curry soup.

Serves us right. I only knew fifteen minutes beforehand. Marjorie knew all along, but figured if it was a Kevin Smith movie, it couldn't be all bad. The point is, we both knew going in to see Jersey Girl that it starred Ben Affleck, and we went anyway. We got what we deserved.

Itig. Back in high school there were two girls -- Tia and Mary -- who had invented their own language. It was much like piglatin in that it was just a bastardization of English, one that could be both spoken and understood, once you knew the trick. It sounded really strange, but they were able to hold conversations out loud without anyone understanding.

One day I got them to tell me the trick to it. Unlike piglatin, which only operates on a single word, they mangled every syllable. The trick was to essentially put two unstressed syllables -- "itig" -- in front of every vowel sound. So the word "word" would become "witigord". "Sound" would become "sitigound". It chains together for multiple syllables -- "teacher" would become "titigeach-itiger".

It sounds hard, but it's pretty straightforward. I quickly got to the point where I could speak it as fast as they could. I find I still can, pretty much. What's weird is that, even though I could encode it fast in my head, I could never really decode it that fast. And my sister, who was also privvy to the trick, could understand it easily when others spoke it but couldn't speak it very good (if I remember correctly).

I just remembered this recently. I don't know why I'm blogging about it, except that it strikes me as interesting.

Senescence. Not that I can possibly make it, but it's been pointed out to me that my twenty year high-school reunion is next month. Twenty years! Next month!

Life seems damnably short sometimes.

I don't feel much different than I remember myself at high school graduation. I did have a sense of immortality at that age that I miss now, though. That I was always going to be that age, with no overhanging sense of urgency about anything other than enjoying life.

At one point I considered going to work for one of the few companies that are working on life extension (such as these guys). But I looked into it, and don't see much to hope for beyond some modest gains in our lifetime. It would still be interesting to work on, but there are things I enjoy more. I'll still be first in line if they manage to bottle it, though.

Found out last night that my new favorite writer, Greg Egan, is Australian. He's a left-coaster, though, so I don't think I'll be hounding him for book signings after we move. Check out his web site, the very fine story of his that I read last night, and a worthy cause he campaigns for.

I don't need to read any more of his stuff while I'm working on my own, though. It's kind of disheartening, how good he is. He writes as if he lives inside the worlds that he creates, and his characters are real people, not the cardboard understudies so common to SF.

More ways to save money:

8. Plan grocery visits around recipes that use ingredients already in the house. Status: implemented by Marjorie.

9. Begrudgingly turn down invitation to fancy Brunch and other activities because of expense. Status: implemented unfortunately.

10. Make coffee at home everyday, even on weekends, rather than buy $4 coffee at Starbucks. Status: implemented by Marjorie.

We're both being so good lately, and it's hard, but truthfully we don't need to acquire any new stuff before moving. I can't wait until we can really get started checking things off the "to do" list, it's still a bit early to do most of the important tasks (like find work).

Ways to save money in anticipation of a move:

1. Place moratorium on buying new clothes, CDs, housewares. Status: Grudgingly implemented.

2. Get a library card instead of blowing wads of cash down at Borders. Status: Implemented (Mark).

3. Sell back old books to used book store. Status: Marjorie doing first load today.

4. Fill suitcases with housewares during exploratory trip to new destination; trek said goods deep into woods, and cover with plastic tarp. Recover after doing actual move. This saves greatly on shipping and storage expenses. A GPS is recommended. Status: Vetoed by Marjorie.

5. Lunch: hawker center $3 noodles instead of $15 restaurant entree. Status: Implemented (Mark).

6. Switch to Tiger beer, the local brew whose flavor can best be described as "formaldehydy". Status: Grudgingly implemented (Mark).

7. When flying down for actual move, wear three pairs of trousers, five shirts, three pair of socks, to save suitcase space. Status: Can't speak for Marjorie, but I plan to do this.

Oh, my nose! I had been getting so many scoring chances from the back line that the coach today moved me up to center half, late in the game. I lasted only ten minutes before going nose-to-head with an opposing player. I thought I was okay until I looked down and my hands were covered in blood. I thought it was just a bloody nose, but when I got home it looked like my nose was crooked, so we trundled off to the ER. They didn't say much, except that they usually give these things a chance to heal on their own; they don't reset until a week has gone by. I'm supposed to get it x-rayed tomorrow, but now that the swelling is down, it looks straight again. Still, very sore.

We moved around a fair amount when I was a kid, and I was always the first one that ended up having to go to the hospital, for whatever reason. We've been here a year and a half, and I've been three times now.

Perfectionism. I read an essay today that struck a chord with me and my current efforts to write. It was about silencing your inner critic, and had particularly harsh things to say about being a perfectionist. I had always taken a sort of pride in my perfectionism, when perhaps I should have seen it for what it is: a voice that always says that the things I do aren't good enough. Not a desire for excellence, but rather an impediment to progress.

You know, now that I read that, it sounds like a load of self-help shinola. It's possible that that perfectionism can become debilitating, I suppose, but there's nothing wrong in general with wanting to create something good. I've still become fairly accomplished at a lot of things. Never mind.

Things not available in Singapore:

Smoke detectors

Nyquil

Dayquil

Bonine (motion sickness medication)
Which is why it's so nice when a care package arrives from your parents containing all the above. Thanks, Mom and Dad...

Bedways is rightways. Yesterday, we woke up and were sitting in bed reading. Marjorie said, "Let's just do this all day." So we did, or at least we tried. I switched over to working on my story after a point, starting (again, from scratch) the actual composing of the prose.

I couldn't make it a whole day in bed; eventually I had to run off to the library, where I finally got a library card, after my third try (long story). It's kind of cool, book checkout is all DIY these days. I checked out, among other things Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, which I'm not finding a lot of good advice in. He recommends cheats that I don't really approve of. Not surprising, as he's a writer I don't much care for (though I did like Ender's Game when I first read it; who didn't?).

Anyway, in the evening, we moved the TV into the bedroom so we could watch DVDs from bed -- Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mr. Show, and Larry Sanders.

There should be a National Stay In Bed Day. Give it a go yourself. You might actually get some stuff done. You can afford one day a year.

Last night we caught our first film of the Singapore Film Festival with friends Carolyn and Mike -- the disturbing but engaging Capturing the Friedmans. Seemingly uncensored, too. Wow. We all talked about it for a half hour afterwards, which is a good sign. Next Tuesday (I think) we're seeing Osama.

Oh, and I've given up on Gmail for the present, until they include an address book that works. Bummer.

The way we were: I just spent about 20 minutes reading the archives of our blog back to our first international move. Reading back, it seems like our life in Atlanta was much more exciting then our life here (ironically). And I was clearly naive about how long it would take us to migrate to Oz. There's a post from Aug 2002 were I suggested we start the process then because I thought it would probably take 4-5 months, HA! Just in case anyone's curious the process actually took much closer to a year: about 4 months time for the correct agencies to evaluate our job skills, and about 8 months actual processing time beyond that. That's all water under the bridge now though, because we've got our passports back today complete with with new permanent residency Australia visa stamps.

New email. From being a member of Blogger, I've been offered an early chance to set up a Google Gmail account. I'm excited. The free gig of storage is what sold me -- I hate having to delete old emails. So so long, hotmail, I hardly knew ye. I'll be sending out my new address soon. Any predictions on how long until I get my first spam?

There is a Feng Shui convention in town next month.

Can you imagine the squabbles that go on while they're setting up their booths?

In other news...

From the Gooooooooaaaaaal Dept. comes this report on Sunday's game:

PM played a lacklusture 1st half as the heat forced many to play below par. As with the AM game , it took a goal in the middle of the 2nd half to wake us up. Mark S scored a rare goal off a corner before Kelvin rounded off the comback with a scrambled goal after good work on the left.

I've been averaging about a goal every other game this year. Not too shabby!

From the Too Damn Funny Dept. comes a report on the worst records ever. What's funny is that I've been hearing the "winning" song all over town in the past month, for some reason.

Writing. Six months after vowing to write a science fiction short story, I have the outline half done.

That's not as dire as it sounds. I had stopped work on it for several months. Just in the past two weeks has my interest in finishing it been rekindled, and I have the plot almost completely worked out, thanks to some heavy thinking sessions while riding mass transit. I came up with a narrative device that will let me tell the story much easier. All the pieces of the plot fit together nicely; it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it even has a [gasp] theme. Ninety percent of the time I'm working on it, I think it's going to turn out original and wonderful and hailed by one and all; only the other ten percent of the time do I think it's going to be crap. Which, considering my usual self-doubt on creative efforts, is amazing.

I'm starting to worry about the size of it. Maybe it'll turn out to be a novel after all, although I shudder at the thought. There's a dangerous middle ground, I've learned, where stories are too big for magazines and too small for novels. A rather large gap, in fact: between 20,000 and 40,000 words, a story is useless. I'd rather shoot for under 20,000 than over 40,000, but it seems like I have an awful lot of plot and required expository.

I've heard that fiction can be five times harder than non-fiction to write, and now I believe it. I'm still reluctant to sit down and work on it much of the time. But once I get started I get into it. Still, if I end up with 20,000 words, and get published in one of the top magazines, that would earn me a measley $1000. How do people make a living at this?

Okay, this makes perfect sense to me. Why are there not more things like this in the world?

I'm feeling much better today about our move. Excited really, in a good way. This is the way it was before we moved to Singapore too, one day completely depressed and anxious, the next day very happy at the prospects for the future. This time I predict less depression about leaving though. Singapore has been very educational, and it's a fine city, but I'm ready to move on (to quote someone very close to me "it's not just the heat that's oppressive"). Plus, when we left Atlanta we were leaving behind many people (and two dogs) that we really love. We've made friends here that we'll be sad to leave, but many of them are not going to be in Singapore much longer either.

"He had yellow eyes! So, help me, God! Yellow eyes!" Yesterday's post about the chimpanzees got me thinking back to my junior high school days.

That's when bullying was at its worst for me. My compelling need to be considered the class brain certainly didn't help matters, but that was my primary source of happiness so I wasn't about to quit. Another factor was working against me; I cried very, very easily. I would've given anything to be able to control that but I couldn't. Once other kids figure that out about you, it's all over. Still, because I never fought back, I never really got beat up.

The day that stands out in particular was in the first week of class in seventh grade, which would put it at September of 1978. During the first day of REAL gym class, all the boys had to shower together, nekkid, for the very first time. We were all kind of nervous about it but got through it just fine. Standing around in the lobby outside the locker room afterwards, we were feeling pretty good ourselves.

That was when Randy and his little band of thugs came out, and started working down the line of boys, accusing them of being too chicken to get their hair wet. The wetting of the hair was, of course, not the real issue; he was just establishing his dominance. Still, I cowered in the corner of the lobby, dying for the bell to ring, and wishing to God that I had gotten my hair wet (as if would have made any difference). He worked his way past and through a couple of my friends and down to me. I can still picture him screaming up at me in his nasally voice. (Yes, up. He was a full head shorter than me, and scrawny too. It's not about size, it's about how mean you are.) I don't remember what words I used to placate him but eventually he and his entourage moved on.

You can bet that the next day, all of us who were out in the lobby made sure we got our hair nice and wet.

Somebody in the class actually stood up to him about halfway through the year. Randy jumped on him, knocked him down, and they wrestled around a bit, right there in the locker room. He escaped mostly unharmed, and was left alone for the rest of the year. I could easily recognize in this a ticket out of tormenting, but of course was too much of a chicken to try it.

Junior high is a time of great fear but also of great fun. And it's amazing how fast the needle can swing from one side to the other. The only movie I've ever seen that captures this is Welcome To The Dollhouse. I've known many people who can't even watch it, but I thought it was amazing.

Emotion, I've heard, is the trigger your brain uses to know when to store something in long-term memory. So it's no surprise that I can remember so many little details about that fearful day outside the locker room. And my mind can still drift away while pondering all the things I could have said or done.

Best lines from games night at the American Club tonight:

1. During a game involving a timekeeper --
Nora: I'm going to the bathroom. Here, Flip, you take the timer.
Flip: What was your previous record?

2. During a discussion of using phrases like "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzapies" to remember all the planets --
Marjorie: These memory tricks, what's that word for them again?

"These are the days it never rains but it pours." Mark's article (that he didn't usurp) has really resonated with me. It's so true, more choices don't make people happier. I see that very frequently in my job at USEIC where I advise future college students. They are never happy to have to choose from the hundreds/thousands of American colleges and universities, and even when they are excepted and the choice comes down to two or three, they often come into our office hoping we will decide for them. Frankly, I wish someone would do that for us now with regards to Australia. Of course I'd resent it if someone actually did butt in. Chances are where we end up will depend on where we get offered a job.
We've got some hard weeks ahead of us. We need to: Inform our landlord we'll be leaving (and pray she'll return our hefty deposit), find jobs or at least a job for Mark, figure out how to get the stuff that won't fit into our suitcases to Oz, plus the several other big/small tasks that go with any move such as utilities, banking, packing, wanting to die from stress. Then once we get there we'll have to find a place to live, arrange for our things in the USA to be shipped (which will most likely involve me going back to the States to arrange the move), and all the other big/small tasks in the reverse.
International moves are not easy, particularly when you're strapped for cash. But, this is what we want (we hope) for now. Hopefully, we'll be happier for the choice in the long run.
I'm guessing we'll be moving the first full week in July so anyone still hoping to visit us in Singapore has until the first week of June to come (we probably won't be able to handle any visitors after that).

Two fascinating articles containing much insight into the human condition and the keys to happiness:

The Tyranny of Choice cites recent studies to suggest that having an abundance of options may actually be a recipe for unhappiness, and suggests some guidelines on how to best cope in a society where often there is no lack of choices. This is something we can really relate to. Unfortunately you'll have to buy the magazine to read the whole article.

No Time For Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture describes the changes that occur in a baboon society when all the agressive males died off due to tuberculosis they caught while fighting other tribes. Fascinating stuff.

Quitters Inc. report. A few weeks back I reported on my plans to quit cracking my neck and knuckles, as well as biting my nails.

Quitting "cold turkey" is not possible for these compulsions, I think, since I do them involuntarily, and the means to do them is close at hand. With something like smoking, you have to conciously go out and buy the cigarettes, which gives you a lot of time to think about it beforehand.

So I've been just tapering off these habits, stopping and mentally scolding myself when I find myself doing them. No snapping of rubber bands on the wrist or anything.

It's kind of working. My nails look better, at least, but I still catch myself biting fairly regularly. My neck feels all the time stiff like it wants to crack, and it's giving me headaches, so I'm still occasionally partaking of a good twist. Knuckle cracking seems to be my biggest success; although I haven't quit 100%, it's getting more difficult to actually do it, as the joints stiffen back to their normal range of flexibility.

Next thing to work on is my habit of smashing plates on my desk while singing "Lee dee dee dee dee".

I'm not much of a photographer, but I really like this photo I took at the wildlife park. And what can you say about this one (Marjorie with a baby wombat) but "Uh boojie-boojie-boo..."

Melbourne was lovely, really. It has almost all of the features of our imagined "perfect town": public transport is reliable, there is lots of green space, people are friendly, there's a lively local music scene, it's near the beach and the mountains so one could go snorkeling and skiing, they have trivia nights at bars, shopping is good...... Almost perfect really.
I was more than a bit sad to be returning to Singapore, but when we got here we had a very unexpected surprise in the mail; our Oz permanent residency visas have been approved, and we can move whenever we're ready. Wow.

Melbournians are an interesting bunch. They are brash, outgoing, friendly; tall, big-boned, and barrel-chested. They say things like "How are you going?" and "Ta" for thank you; if they like something, it's always "quite nice", "brilliant", "lovely", or even "gorgeous". They really do say "no worries" a lot, but we haven't heard that many "g'day"s.

We had a brilliant excursion the other day. It was a tour we booked through Autopia, and it started at a wildlife attraction where we got to hold a baby wombat, and hand-feed kangaroos. Next we visited a coal mine in Wonthaggi, which was quite interesting. This place marked the southernmost either of us has ever been, and I think we were 60 meters underground at the time! Then it was on to Phillip Island, where we took a brief stop at a lookout point before moving on to the "penguin parade", where huge crowds of people gather every night as the penguins come up the beach after a day of fishing. It was cold, so we only watched a few dozen little waddlers before heading back to the van. It all ended with a pizza dinner, and was all in all a quite lovely brilliant gorgeous tour. Met lots of folks from all over too.

Last night we wandered into a pub that was having a lively trivia night and serving Harp (well, they were out of it). Just as we were joking that we'd found our place, they played a Pogues song. Brilliant!

Melbourne is cool. We've mainly just been exploring neighborhoods, riding around on the trams, checking out supermarkets -- all the things we need to do to evaluate this as a possible place to live. And it's passing in every regard, so far. We're staying in St. Kilda, and have also checked out the Toorak, Prahran, Carlton, and Fitzroy areas of town. Lots of really inviting little areas, and the people are outgoing and friendly. Weather's a little warmer than we'd like right now; we're jonesing for cold!

Sunday night we checked out one of the coolest clubs we've ever been to; the Esplanade Hotel here in St. Kilda. It's a gigantic place, converted from an old hotel, and had three separate rooms with different live bands.

Our motel is right next to rave club. It's a friendly place, graciously sharing their (earplug-defying) bass notes with us until the wee hours. On Saturday night it kept us up until 5am. We figured, hey, we can deal with it for one night; it's Saturday after all. And true, it was better on Sunday night; it only went on until 4am. We've switched to the other side of the hotel; hopefully it'll be better tonight.

Wildlife spotting: penguins, sulphur-crested cockatoos, magpies, magpie-larks, black swans, a flock of rainbow lorikeets, and a lot of different birds in the botanical gardens, where we went in search of flying foxes, which have been (shall we say) convinced to move to another area of town. Tomorrow we're taking an organized tour to Phillip Island to see the penguin parade, among other things.

"In your satin tights, fighing for your rights. Wonder Woman": Gotta love TV here. We watched Wonder Woman this morning. Last Saturday it was The Bionic Man. Quality shows
On other fronts: I'm ill again, same symptoms. This is gettin very, very old.

Herbie Hancock would be proud. Okay, these dancing robots really freak me out. How cool would a pocket-sized one of these be?

Traffic. I've been doing a little reading up on Melbourne in anticipation of our trip. Long time readers of this blog will know that traffic control holds a stupid fascination with me, so I was quite interested to find that Melbourne has invented their own unique maneuver, the hook turn. Can't wait to try one. Unfortunately, we're not renting a car this trip.

Last night was the first time I ever made a cabbie pull over and let me the heck out of his cab. Not because he was driving poorly, either. It was because he was berating me. I tried ten times to tell him that I wanted to go to where Alexandra St and Pasir Panjang St meet, but he was too drunk or stupid to understand. Instead he opted to mumble insults at me for five minutes: "When you get in cab, you should know where going! You live in penthouse near there, or something? Why you waste my time?" Most of the cab drivers in this town are wonderful and entertaining, but this guy should've been reported.

Eulogy. Alistair Cooke has shuffled off this mortal coil. Alistair, if you're somewhere reading this, I'm sorry I nodded off during all those documentaries of yours they played us back in elementary school. You still planted some good seeds.

For your listening pleasure. Our new friend Ken lent us an amazing CD that somehow escaped our attention. Well, perhaps it's not so surprising considering this town is a musical hell-hole, but there are so many artists on this CD that we (and especially I) love that you think I would've heard of it. It's called Wig In A Box -- Songs From & Inspired By Hedwig & The Angry Inch (which we've never seen, but I'm sure we will soon). Dig this crazy track listing:

1. The Origin Of Love - Rufus Wainwright
2. Angry Inch - Sleater Kinney & Fred Schneider
3. The Long Grift - They Might Be Giants
4. Sugar Daddy - Frank Black
5. City Of Women - Robyn Hitchcock
6. Freaks - Imperial Teen
7. Wicked Little Town - The Breeders
8. Nailed - Bob Mould
9. Wig In A Box - The Polyphonic Spree
10. Milford Lake - John Cameron Mitchell & Stephen Trask
11. Ladies & Gentlemen - Stephen Colbert
12. Tear Me Down - Spoon
13. Hedwigs Lament / Exquisite Corpse - Yoko Ono & Yo La Tengo
14. Wicked Little Town - Ben Kweller W/ Ben Folds & Ben Lee
15. Midnight Radio - Cyndi Lauper & The Minus 5 [featuring Peter Buck]
16. The Origin Of Love - Jonathan Richman

The big surprise here to me is the Cyndi Lauper song. I know what you're thinking, but the girl can still belt it out! The whole album is great; there doesn't seem to be a weak track on it.

In addition to having great musical taste, Ken is also a talented artist. Check out some of his work.

Huh huh huh, customers suck. Trying to get my DVD burner working yesterday, so I contacted their online "chat"-style support. Not exactly an enlightening experience. What follows is the exact transcript (they email it to you afterwards.) My comments in brackets.

Daniel: Thank you for contacting Iomega's Online Support Services. How may I help you?
Mark: Hi... Was chatting to Vivian earlier about getting by CD-DVD burner working. He had me install your HotBurn product
Mark: It got only as far as "Writing the Lead-In area" and hung up

[Five minutes pass.]

Mark: you there?
Daniel: Yes.
Daniel: Ojne moment please.

[Ten minutes pass.]

Daniel: Which version of Iomega Hotburn software are you using?
Mark: 2.4.2
Mark: build 70
Daniel: Ok.

[Five minutes pass.]

[I write and erase several nastier versions before finally sending:]

Mark: Are you multitasking or something? I'd like some help with this.

Daniel: I apologize for the delay in my response. It was because of some system problem that I was facing.

[Ah, the dreaded "some system problem". The kind that keeps you connected to the chat servlet but also keeps you from responding. I'm sure it's not because you're playing EverQuest or anything.]

Daniel: Please let me know the complete error message you get as stated by the system.
Mark: No error message. It just hangs up when it first tries to write to the disk

[...like I said already, you prat.]

[Ten minutes pass.]

Mark: Is your system problem something I can help you with?

[Five minutes pass.]

Mark: disconnected
Daniel: disconnected

I'm going to deal with them on the phone Monday. I can't wait.

Excellent. Just got off the phone with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. Seems as though I was taxed at a much higher rate when I left my teaching job in June, and now that I've been in Singapore more than 183 days, will qualify for a refund. This is amazing news! Taxes here are incredibly reasonable - especially given that public transportation and the postal services are both completely reliable, and civil service workers are actually helpful and polite.

Bike no more. Took the train back to the station yesterday where I had left my bike in the morning, and it was gone. Someone cut through the lock in broad daylight in the middle of a heavy pedestrian area, and in Singapore no less. I can't remember what brand it was, so I haven't reported it to the police. It was only S$35, but it was nice to have. Someone needs a caning.

Esch. I somehow ended up sharing my politics at a staff meeting today. I think it's okay, most of the people I know are fairly like minded politically, but still, I really need to learn to censor myself during some discussions.

Tax mystery solved. I complained earlier about the Singapore tax form not having any place to fill in how much you actually owe in taxes. I called their hotline today, and found out why: you just give them the numbers, and they send a form back telling you how much you owe. Now that I think about it, it makes more sense that way.

Frustrating. Last night I spent at least an hour typing up a big long screed to post to a mailing list I'm on. When finished, I clicked "Post", and poof, it just went away. I'm usually good about backups, auto-saves, and archiving of outgoing messages so this doesn't happen. But I was typing it through a web interface this time, and now it all vanished into the mists of time.

I know I'm not the only person this has ever happened to. Why isn't there an operating-system-level feature that just records your last 10000 or so keystrokes? It could save you, regardless of your application. Something you could turn on and off, obviously, for security reasons.

My personal theory is that aliens monitor us by stealing every fiftieth email and tenth printout, which explains why some things just never make it through when you click on "send" or "print".

A little off the top, please. Inspired by the recent Foxtrot comic strips, tonight we gave ourselves virtual makeovers just for grins. It's a pretty cool program they have to do it, but a lot of hairstyle choices look unreal, and there aren't a lot of choices for dudes. Still, we may have found me a new look.

Sunday's match report from the coach. (Hey, you know I only post these things when I score! That's happening probably more than it should lately, considering I'm supposed to be playing defense. And actually, their first goal was an own goal by me that I had to redeem myself for...)

Ventz PM were caught in a mixup as our game was rained off at the last minute. We shifted fields but there was now 3 teams in 1 game! Therefore it was decided we play a half against each teams and I decided to let the other two teams play first. In the first halve/game against Poser Utd , we went down early when they broke thru to slot pass pur keeper. We took control after that and pressurised them for the equalizer. Close to the end , after much presure , Mark S cut in from the left to unleash an unstoppable shot pass the keeper.

In the 2nd half/game , over confidence and fatigue allowed our opponents to take the lead. We huffed and puffed to bring the game back and scored thru a Steven A volley from 20m at the stroke of full time!

Ah ahhhh, Mr. Heath. You'd think a one page tax form, when we have no extra income or reliefs (deductions) would be a piece of cake. But it has confounded us utterly. After big sections for listing your income and reliefs, there seems to be no place AT ALL to list how much you actually owe. The formula for computing the tax is hidden away on a separate worksheet, but what do we do with the numbers?

From what we can tell, though, we don't have a lot to complain about, amount-wise; tax rate seems VERY low here, at least comparatively.

Chicken Surprise: This afternoon I bought a whole chicken from the supermarket, thinking that I'd cut the chicken into two breasts, and save a little money as the whole chicken is $5 and two chicken breasts would be $6. So, I get the chicken home and I'm expecting it to be a little gross; I'm expecting a bag of guts as you'd find in a turkey. But instead, it's much, much grosser -- the chicken still has it's head, and yuk, yuk, yuk, it's feet! There was no bag of guts however. So, I see the head and the feet and I think "okay you're a big girl, if you eat meat you need to deal with this" and I get out my scissors and start to work. But, ew, yuk, shudder... Dinner was tasty, but would have been much better if I'd just purchased the pre-cut chicken breast.

Sure to start neighborhood fights. Been playing around with this site which lets you see which US candidate your neighbors have contributed to. You can even look people up by name. Apparently, you have to be pretty up front about contributing, because even famous people are listed (along with their addresses, which I wont post here). My comments in brackets:

Former pols:

Barbara P. Bush (Retired):
George W. Bush $2,000

Michael S. Dukakis (Professor Northeastern University):
John Kerry $2,000

Walter F Mondale (IR IR):
Bob Graham $500

Henry A. Kissinger (Chairman Kissinger Associates):
George W. Bush $1,000
George W. Bush $1,000

H. Ross Perot (President Perot Systems Corporation):
George W. Bush $2,000

Big money dudes:

George Soros (Investor SOROS FUNDS MANAGEMENT):
John Kerry $2,000
Bob Graham $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000
Howard Dean $1,000 <-- interesting, he gets less

Donald J. Trump (President The Trump Organization):
John Kerry $2,000
George W. Bush $2,000
[That's a head-scratcher. No, I guess not. Trump just wants
to be on the winning team.]

William H. Gates (CEO Microsoft Corp.):
George W. Bush $2,000

S. ROBSON WALTON (CHAIRMAN WALMART):
George W. Bush $2,000

Big money entertainers:

Jerry Seinfeld (Entertainer Self-employed):
John Kerry $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000

Jessica Seinfeld (his wife):
Wesley Clark $2,000

[None of the Friends cast, those rich indolent bastards.]

[None of the big shot hosts: Leno, Letterman, Oprah, Colin O'Brien, Kilby, Jon Stewart.]

Barbra Streisand (Actress/ Musician Self employed):
Howard Dean $1,000
John Kerry $1,000
John Edwards $1,000
Dick Gephardt $1,000
Al Sharpton $1,000
Bob Graham $1,000
Wesley Clark $1,000

Susan Sarandon (Actress Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

[Pundits: no Michael Moore, Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ollie North, Ann Coulter.]

Stephen King (Writer Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

Tabitha King (writer Self employed [his wife]):
Howard Dean $2,000

Robert Deniro (Filmmaker Tribeca Productions):
Howard Dean $2,000
Dick Gephardt $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000

Ben Affleck (["]Actor["]):
Wesley Clark $2,000

Edward Norton (Actor Self-employed):
John Kerry $2,000
Dennis Kucinich $2,000

Michael Douglas (Actor and Producer Furtler files):
Howard Dean $2,000

Meg Ryan (Information Requested):
Wesley Clark $2,000

Helen Hunt (Actress Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

Steven Buscemi (Information Requested):
Wesley Clark $1,000

The national and city maps are very interesting too.

Quitters Inc. I was talking to Marjorie the other day about my tendency to crack my knuckles, and my neck. I said, since I'm sharing an office, that these are probably not the most endearing qualities in an office mate. She replied, "Or a spouse."

So I hereby give them up. While I'm at it, I'll throw in biting my nails.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it's easy to quit, I've done it hundreds of times. I actually quit nail-biting before, for a good long time, by wearing a rubber band around my wrist, and snapping it whenever I caught myself mano-a-boca. But then, five years later, I started up again. I tried the rubber band trick again a few years later, and it didn't work at all; I snapped it several times daily for a good long month, but never stopped the biting.

I generally have pretty good will power, though, so this time I'm going to quit these habits just by trying really hard, and by the old public shame method -- letting others around me know I'm trying to quit. Hence this post.

If you're not scared to find out about all the horrible lies our president is telling on a daily basis, and all the hundreds of ways in which what you hold sacred is being violated, then check out Move On a site dedicated to democracy in action and getting Bush out of office. Especially worthwhile are the Bush in 30 Seconds Ads, I think the most powerful ones are "In My Country" and "What are we teaching our children?". Go Kerry go!

Just about the most depressing thing ever. When my job sent me to an Air Force base in Germany for a month, and then a Nato base in Italy for a month, it used to boggle my mind that there were so many people in both places that had been stationed there for years but had never ventured off the base, or learned a word of the native language. A few -- just a few -- of the military guys there shared my frustration, and these were the guys I befriended, and went out exploring with when I could.

So today I when I stumbled across this blog on Blogdex, I thought, here's a guy who feels like I do. He was even better than me at befriending locals and taking the sorts of photos that I never had the guts to take, especially given that he's stationed in Iraq. And it sounded like he was truly trying to help the locals. He's a guy I would like to hang out with if I ever found myself stationed there. I went back and read half his archive, and planned to add his blog to my list of blogs I check routinely.

Then, reading further down in Blogdex, I discovered another link that explained why his blog was rated so high in Blogdex. With a sick feeling I found that he was just killed in an ambush while making a foray out of the safe zone.

Just, so senseless.

I pieced together this panorama from Tioman Island. I'm not sure if the variations in lighting from frame to frame are the camera's fault or the weather's. We holed up in the little shacks to the left of the picture.

Monthly geek-out! Bear with me. A tenth planet has been discovered. "Sedna" is actually not really a planet, but it's the biggest thing that's been discovered since Pluto.

Someday I'm going to start a website that's all about trying to give a sense of size and scale to our universe, especially our solar system, with splashy diagrams and descriptive text. (And of course I would have to call it the Total Perspective Vortex, in honor of Douglas Adams.) In the meanwhile, here's some decidedly non-splashy graphics I whipped up that'll give you a sense of how far away this new object they've discovered is:

Se---j----s--------u----------n--------p-------------------------------
--q-@--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------!--

where
S is the sun
e is the earth
j is jupiter
s is saturn
u is uranus
n is neptune
p is pluto (on average)
q is quaoar
@ is Sedna, at its CLOSEST
! is Sedna, at its FURTHEST

Just how far away is that?

Have you ever seen a car with 186000 miles (300000 kilometers) on it? Imagine traveling all that distance -- every side street, vacation trip, work commute, whatever -- in a single second. That's how fast light travels. A (say) radio message traveling that fast would take over ten hours to reach Sedna at its closest point, and it would be another ten hours before you got a response. At its FURTHEST point, your message would take 117 hours (almost five days!) to reach Sedna.

Picture our moon; Sedna's about half as big, best guess. And at the distance it is out there, it's not going to be reflecting a lot of sunlight. It's amazing that they could spot this thing. The article doesn't say, but I'm sure it found near it's closest point in orbit, which it makes the rounds to every 10000 years or so. So, its last visit this close was around the time that agriculture and the bow and arrow were novel concepts.

Commericals. Some of my favorite commercials here in Singapore:

1. Two guys are looking out a hotel window, wide-eyed. They gleefully run out of the room to the elevator, then down and through the lobby (slowing down to try to appear calm when passing the reception desk) and out into the street, where it is snowing. It is obviously their first time seeing snow, and they look up to feel it on their faces, and start throwing snowballs at each other. The commercial is for Emirates (the airline out of Dubai) and features their slogan, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Sure, it's a feel-good commercial, but it makes me feel good.

2. Travel commericals for Malaysia, New Zealand (featuring, unsurprisingly, "Don't Dream It's Over"), and lately, some island off the coast of South Korea, just because they remind me there's a lot of places left to visit.

3. A young Singaporean couple, very much in love, are consulting their auntie about the most fortuitous day to get married. The auntie is taking the dates they suggest and looking them up in her book of astrology. Or so it seems; actually, inside the astrology book she has a TV schedule. So for each date, she's actually looking up what's going to be on TV that day, and responds "Saturday the 6th, hmmmm, not auspicious", or "No, Friday the 12th, doesn't look good..." (because there is so much good on TV, you see). Nicely captures a lot about Singapore and their melding of the modern and the traditional.

Tioman. Last weekend Mom and Dad acquiesced to our need to getout of town, and agreed to our suggestion to go to Tioman Island, up north in Malaysia. The package we booked involved a bus ride over the border and three hours north to the coastal town of Mersing, where we would catch a ferry out to the island. Things started bad as I realized I forgot my Singapore work permit just before we boarded the bus. We decided to just go anyway and hope that the stamp in my passport would suffice. It did; we were able to leave without too much hassle.

The bus ride was a white-knuckle adventure, with a driver who didn't dawdle on the turns or let little things like no-passing zones prevent him from overtaking other vehicles. At a rest stop we spotted a pair of Oriental Pied Hornbills -- very cool. Our driver's hurry paid off as we managed to just catch our ferry out to the island. Actually, it was less of a ferry than a state's fair carnival ride; hot, cramped, bumpy, and poorly maintained. It didn't help that our driver smoked. Quite a change from our last visit here, where we had a two-story ferry with a snack bar over calm seas. Fortunately my mom had enough bonine for everyone.

Arrived two hours later ready to kiss the ground. Our rooms at the Salang Beach Resort were a little more -- shall we say 'rustic' -- than I was expecting. But they kept the rain off our heads. (Fortunately we only got a little rain.) The AC in my parents room was so loud it would have kept them awake, so they had to switch rooms. In their next room the AC was nice and quiet, but didn't blow cold air. Third room was the charm.

Did a little snorkeling, then had a nice fish dinner and drinks. That night we were woken from our slumber at 4 am by the guest in the next room who was VERY drunk and wouldn't stop trying to get in our room. (Note to self: Add "pepper spray" to travel packing list.) We eventually went down to the "police station" (a one room white bungalo) and managed to convince the guy there to put on shirt and follow us, but he didn't speak English well enough to even understand what was going on. When we got back our neighbor had gone inside his room (apparently our "We'll see how you like it in a Malaysian prison" threat struck a chord), and our barefoot officer seemed reluctant to pursue anything, or even come up off the sidewalk. He disappeared back into the night a minute later. We shrugged and went back in to try to sleep, once the adreneline wore off. We complained to the management the next morning. Others complained about this guy too, but they didn't kick him out. Instead it was our turn to switch rooms.

After a breakfast of banana pancakes (the traditional backpacker brekkie), we decided to do a little hiking. Now, we were at just about the northernmost resort on the island, so the only direction to hike was south. There are no real roads on Tioman (except for a short one near the middle); instead, there is only a footpath that skirts the edge of the island. This suffices because pretty much all the development on the island is within 100m of water, since the interior is mountainous. So we decided to just walk south to the next water-taxi stop south of us, or at least to "Monkey Beach", a supposedly nice place in between. Following the signs led us up the hills into the jungle, but we only made it a short way before deciding it was just too steep and too muddy. We were going to go on anyway until I posed the question of just how many hours we were from any sort of decent medical care, should somebody fall. I wish I had taken a picture of my retired parents scrambling down a muddy path through the jungle on a Malaysian island with their hands down in the mud.

Plan B was more snorkeling from the beach. Though the day was cloudier and the water was more choppy, it was still pretty good. My favorite sightings were several so-called "cleaning stations", which are fixed places on the reef that fish visit to have their parasites picked off by cleaner wrasses. I saw a big parrot fish even let a cleaner wrasse swim into its mouth. Also spotted were giant clams, blue and black angelfish that swam up to my fingers, file fish, nudibranches, and a clown fish and its parent in an anemone.

That night we spotted eery lights from under the water just off the beach from our huts; it was a night-diving expedition, which I don't know if we'd have the guts to try. Maybe someday. Still need to get certified first.

We were hoping for calmer seas on the return trip, but it was not to be. I think it was a bit rougher, but at least we were going with the waves this time. Still, the little kid behind me got sick, and I had to keep going to the back of the boat to splash water on my face.

The bus ride back was somewhat less intense, as there wasn't a ferry to catch. My Dad sat opposite a Malaysian guy -- Jules? -- and struck up an interesting conversation, which I only heard snippets of. The guy worked for Peace Cola, the Malaysian alternative to Coca Cola, which donates part of their proceeds to peace causes. He had lots of other interesting information about Malaysia and their relationship with Singapore, that I wish I could remember more of.

All in all, a very interesting trip. Given the difficulty of the commute, it would have been nice to spend more time, but it was still nice to get away. And hopefully we gave my parents some good stories to relate to the folks back home.

Mark and I spent our first, and so far most memorable New Year's eve celebrating with the masses in Plaza Mayor, Madrid. We found the people of Spain to be amazingly warm and fun loving, and enjoyed pretty much every second we were in Spain. We've even entertained the idea of moving there, we loved it so much. That said, we were both deeply saddened to hear about the bombings yesterday, and our sympathies go out to the people of Madrid.

I ate lunch today at a hawker center stall that offered "Claypot Vinegar Pig's Trotter".

I opted for the red wine chicken instead.

Now it can be said: our guests were my parents, who didn't want to announce to any unfriendlies that their house was going to be unoccupied for two weeks. They've now arrived safely home. Here are some of the things we showed (or inflicted upon) them:

Sungei Buloh Nature Preserve. Our tour guide Rhea showed us many interesting things we missed on previous visits. No snakes this time, but we did see mudskippers, weaver ants, cross spiders, archer fish, and a giant monitor lizard.

Hawker centers. Not a lot of success here as we seemed to always suggest the wrong item, either too spicy or too weird, while they were already overdosing on strangeness.

Little India. On a Sunday night, when the throngs descend. Topped off with another too-spicy but tasty meal.

Tioman Island, as I mentioned before; I'll post details from this interesting side trip tonight, hopefully.

Also: Comfort food at Brewerkz on Clarke Quay. Orchard Road. The wet market and bird-singing place at Ghim Moh. Catholic Mass -- the "sign of peace" involved mostly bowing instead of handshaking. Brunch at Cellar Door. China Town. The Merlion. Games of bridge in the evenings (they're teaching us). Pricy Mexican at Margarita's.

On their own they checked out the Changi(?) Yacht Club, the Asian Civilizations Museum, Body Worlds, and Sentosa Island.

A wonderful visit! With each passing year I am more and more grateful to be able to call such wonderful and adventuresome people my parents.

Happy Second Birthday Katie! I wish I could be there with you.

Our guests have left us, but not before both picking up the lovely cold I've been carrying around for over a month now (and still have, at full force). So far I've given colds to 3 out of the 3 guests we've had here.

Rain. For our guests' last day here, it rained. And rained. And rained. I've never seen quite this much rain here. Rainy season was supposed to be over.

While I gather my notes for the full report on our visitors, I can report on something we snuck off and did on our own last Thursday night: the David Bowie concert, at Singapore Indoor Stadium. Buying nosebleed seats paid off as didn't sell enough tickets, and closed the upper level of the stadium. So we ended up with much better seats, and even improved on them by wandering up to maybe 15 meters from stage right. (Not quite as good as seeing him from about three meters away last year in Brooklyn, but still.) Sound was pretty bad for the first half of the show until somebody plugged in a loose cord or something and the stack of speakers pointed our way turned on. David was in fine form and chatty. The set list was the tried and true formula of a familiar opening, a mix of old and new, and a finish of old favorites. Highlights for me were Five Years and I'm Afraid of Americans (which he graciously prefaced by saying was about just a few Americans that he was afraid of).

At one point I happily pointed out to Marjorie that David Bowie has no butt! This is a beacon of hope for me, that a man can not only exist but actually thrive without one.

As the show ended we bolted for the taxi stand, and were first in the queue. Of course, no taxis came by, preferring to cruise around until called (for the bonus $3 surcharge). So eventually we had to call one, as did everyone else who was waiting. While they all disappeared one by one into their summoned cabs, we waited and waited for our guy who never showed. He eventually called us but couldn't figure out how to get to where we were, and wanted us to walk around the stadium and find him. Yeah right. We ended up walking out through the now-deserted parking lots until we got out on the main road a flagged another one down. Sometimes I really miss having a car.

Lots to report, no time to report it. Got back yesterday from visiting Pulau Tioman with our out-of-town guests. It was adventuresome; stories to follow. Back to work.

It's Monday morning, and my software has gone on strike.

The program that I'm writing has suddenly decided to lay things out differently.

To modify the program, I need to check the appropriate file out of WinCVS, but WinCVS is crashing as soon as I open it.

I'm trying to upgrade it, but whenever I download a zip file using IE it comes up as an empty zip.

And to top it off, Mozilla mail is crashing every time I switch folders.

Sorry about the lack of updates... Our guests have been here since late Thursday and we've been busy running them ragged. Clarke Quay (Brewerkz), hawker centers, wet markets, Sungei Buloh nature preserve, Colbar, Cellar Door, lots of other stuff.

Still managed to sneak off and play soccer today; just a friendly intersquad game, and only enough for seven a side. Afterwards a guy on our team was giving me a lift home, and ran out of gas on the TPE (expressway). A small misadventure ensued involving some policemen and a couple of cabs. After finally getting home an hour and a half later, we took our guests to Little India for their Sunday night craziness, when the area gets inundated with young Indian men for their traditional night on the town. Had an overly spicy but very tasty meal at the [I forget the name], a subsidiary of the Apolo Banana Leaf restaurant.

I was feeling adventurous at lunch today, so I had my first ever bowl of Fish Ball Noodle. It was really quite good, and not at all fishy. Somehow they make the fish balls have the consistency and uniformity of hard-boiled egg whites. There are lots of other dishes that come in ball form that I'll have to try.

Weekend wrap-up. Friday night: Went to see Something's Gotta Give, and enjoyed it muchly. Saturday: Grocery shopped, hung by the pool. Reminisced about "wing night", so we showered up and went to Brewerkz and got wings and (very cheap) pitchers. Yum. Sunday: Soccer game for me at Turf City; tied 2-2. Almost scored on a header, but it was our own goal. Cooked up green mole chicken with tortillas, refried bean, Mexican rice, and chips; yum again. Watched a rental DVD, "Whale Rider" about a Maori village; very good. More exciting updates as events warrant.

Addendum: Oh, and we got buzzed by our second flying lizard, right as we were walking out of our apartment complex. We chased him up a tree.

[Oops, this is actually Mark, but if I change it now, I lose the comments.]

How ready is Marjorie to move to Australia and own a dog? While we don't even know what kind of dog we're getting or what we're going to name it, she already has plans to refer to it as "the dingo" when it's bad. As in, "The dingo ate moy shoe!".

There's a line in a Crowded House song "Every night about six o'clock the birds come back to the palm to talk". This seems especially true here. Tonight my taxi driver and I had a brief conversation about the Mynahs at Ghim Moh, how they always meet in the same trees, same time. I said it's Happy Hour for the birds, he said they were discussing the bird flu in Thailand counting their blessings here.
The birds here bring us so much pleasure. We're turning into serious bird geeks anyway, but the predictable antics of our regulars are so pleasing. I see ravens flying in packs past our windows from the hour of 5pm on, heading to their meeting place, I feel a need to hassle the stragglers, to remind them that they're late after 6pm.

There are a hundred more examples of Australian speechies ( I made that up but it's appropriate). Mozzies for mosquitos, Chrissie for Xmas, bikey for biker, esky for a cooler, the list goes on and on..... I wonder if that will be at all annoying when we get there? IF we get there. There is, after all, the chance that we could still be rejected for migration. I suppose if that happened we'd cry, then move to California.
We're spending this weekend readying the house for visitors next week. Very exciting. It's always good to see people from home.

Weirdie. Until the conversation with our dinner guests last night, it never dawned on me how often Australians shorten their words. We all know they're Aussies, not Australians, and cook on barbies, not barbecue -- but they also go to unis, not universities; they're from Tazzie, not Tasmania, and they eat brekkie, not breakfast. Any others I'm forgetting?

I've also noticed a Britishism from the Brit who sometimes drives me home from soccer. The "n't" contractions are used as little as possible, in favor of combining the to be and to have verbs with the subject. So it's "we've not..." instead of "we haven't...", and "Joe's not..." instead of "Joe isn't...". That's a subtler thing. Usually, he'll drop one or two of the wackier Britishisms every trip, like something being "sixes and sevens". (I wish I had written them all down.) The other day he made a wrong turn and said, "Woops, I think I dropped a bollock here..."

On a more disappointing note, they replaced the crazy Mandarin lady's voice on the MRT line that warns you to stand behind the yellow line. Of the four languages they speak it in, hers was the only one that was replaced, so they must've had complaints.

OZ. We've got two out of the three tasks completed that are required for our last steps towards migration. I'm so ready to have those stamps in our passports I practically have our bags packed already. I'm contemplating changing my blog icon to something more Australian, maybe a Tasmanian devil or a platypus. Mark's sea dragon is totally appropriate as they are only found in the sea directly south of mainland Australia, near Adelaide I believe.
We're planning a trip to Melbourne soon, which will hopefully coincide with a work contract for Mark in Tasmania (the same one he's been hoping for since last August).
We're also having dinner tonight with some work colleagues of mine who've both lived in Melbourne, to suss out which neighbourhoods might be the most interesting for us.
Melbourne sounds perfect for us on paper, hopefully the reality lives up to our expectations. Time will tell.

Yay us! Our limerick was selected as one of three winners in the Metamorphosism Valentine's Day Limerick Contest. For our encore we're working on a cure for cancer.

Valentine's Day was very nice. A quiet dinner followed by (as Marjorie mentioned) a quiet evening at home with chocolate-covered strawberries, and champagne.

In other news... Goooooooaaaaaallll! Scored again today, despite playing defense, on a decent shot from 25 yards out. Of course, it helped that the team we were playing weren't very good -- it was 4-nil at the half, and my goal made it six. At halftime our coach said he'd buy us ten pitchers later in the month if we reached 10 goals. We made it, on a penalty kick in injury time, for a final score of 10-2.

We've submitted our entry to the Metamorphosism limerick contest. Ours certainly isn't the best but at least it scans.