Wed, 31 Oct 2007
We had a friend of ours pull out of our planned birthday party for next month. He was kind enough to send through a lotto ticket since he couldn't make it. Unfortunately, neither Kathleen nor I have ever bought a lotto ticket, and we looked at it for about a minute before realising that we had no idea how it actually worked.
I'm not sure whether that's a good thing - the fact that we obviously realise lotto is a tax on the mathematically illiterate - or a bad thing - with the ticket so complicated that you actually have to give it to a newsagent to work out whether you've won anything.
Today at work I managed to drop the electronic access keycard in the small gap between the floor and the elevator door. I could hear it bounce down to the bottom of the elevator shaft.
Whoops.
Luckily the building maintenance guys were able to get it out after hours, saving me a bit of embarrassment in organising to get a replacement keycard. That'll teach me not to flick it around carelessly on its attached retractable cord like a yo-yo.
Fri, 26 Oct 2007
Japan is to fingerprint and photograph foreigners entering the country from next month in an anti-terrorism policy that is stirring anger among foreign residents and human rights activists.
Anyone considered to be a terrorist - or refusing to cooperate - will be denied entry and deported.
...
The checks are similar to the "US Visit" system introduced in the United States after the attacks on September 11, 2001.
But Japan, unlike the United States, will require resident foreigners as well as visitors to be fingerprinted and photographed every time they re-enter the country.
In the year that we spent living in Japan, reading the newspapers and magazines, following the fairly arbitrary immigration rules, we were never in any doubt that Japanese officialdom never quite trusted any of the foreigners living there, and would like nothing better than to be done with the hassle and kick them all out.
The Japanese people on the other hand were lovely and kind and pleasant.
This measure seems pretty petty, and more just a way for Japanese officials to assert their attitude of grudging tolerance for visitors and foreign residents alike.
Sat, 20 Oct 2007
Yesterday, Kathleen bought herself a belated birthday present - a pair of microphones and a copy of the PS2 karaoke game Singstar. We then found ourselves on the couch singing away... all those times Kathleen had been at Eva's karaoke parties, wanting to take control of the mikes and the game, and now she can sing 24-7!
Our neighbours downstairs invited us to their daughter's 2nd birthday party. It was so cute to start receiving birthday invites featuring kids' TV characters, in this case Dora the Explorer - surprise! No Wiggles!. Luckily, the invite gave us a clue to the type of present and we got her a Dora bath toy.
The present was a hit, luckily, and the little girl loved it. She ended up hiding away in her parents' bedroom most of the day playing with her new toys!
And of course, we were the only childless couple in attendance ;).
Thu, 18 Oct 2007
So, at 11pm on Tuesday night we decided to load up the brand new iPod Classic that Kathleen got for her birthday up with songs so she could listen to it at work.
We plugged it in to the computer, and iTunes starts up.
Then, an error message:
"The iPod will not play because it requires iTunes 7.4"
OK, no probs, just download it from the website. 50Mb later, 6 minutes, and some delayed gratification, I go to install the new version.
"iTunes 7.4 requires Windows XP or Vista"
I'm running Win 2K.
Oh no.
All of a sudden, it's feeling like Christmas morning when you have a kid who gets a whizz-bang present that requires batteries, and there are no batteries in the house, and your kid is looking up at you expectantly, with wide innocent eyes...
We go to bed at midnight, me more upset by the frustrations of working with computers than she is by not having the iPod ready. The not-quite-synchronous ticking of both our bedside clocks makes a nice accompaniant to the grinding of my teeth. Gah!
Anyway, a quick look on the web finds that the new iPod Classics (released only a few months ago) Will Not Work with iTunes on Win2K, but that WinAmp (with a latest release build of one of the plugins) can synchronise without any problems.
I surreptitiously copy some of the songs over while Kathleen is not looking, and place it on the table while she's asleep.
Next morning, I casually ask "So, taking the iPod in to work today?"
Her eyes widen, a smile appears on her face, and it felt like Christmas morning again.
Sun, 14 Oct 2007
We went down to Malaya on King St Wharf for dinner with family and close friends last night. Eva and Steph and Lu and Denzil came up with an amazing gift - a PS2 - just perfect for Kathleen's Singstar addiction!
Then, today, we went over to Cremorne Point for a sunny afternoon of jazz with friends on blankets under the shade of the Moreton Bay Figs with a view over Sydney Harbour.
We saw Kevin, who we hadn't seen for months, Vi and Tina K.O. and ate and drank all afternoon.
Wed, 10 Oct 2007
Today, I had my last coffee ever.
I'm going caffeine free due to a bit of an incident at work today. I'd call it an 'overdose', but that sounds a little too melodramatic, so instead I'll just say that I had too much caffeine in the course of one day.
I started the day with a regular in the morning, reading the papers on my way in to work. Then, a second with my boss just before meeting a new client at 9am. So, before I'd set foot in the door, I had two strong ones under my belt.
Then, around lunch time, I took up the offer of a third from the client's whiz-bang coffee machine, just noticing the LED display as it displayed "strong espresso". And it's a bright sunny cloudless day outside, the client is on a floor in the upper 30s in North Sydney, covering the entire floor and almost floor to ceiling windows right the way around. So it's a very bright, glary environment.
Half an hour later, I'm feeling a little - ok, a lot - nauseous. Clammy skin, hot and cold flushes and a thumping headache. Can hardly concentrate on the work I'm doing, giving a quick tutorial of a software product to two people.
At 3pm, I'm splashing cold water on my face, thinking quite seriously about having to throw up. Should I go home? I'd only have to come back and fill in a further couple of hours at this site, and given my schedule over the next week, that's probably not an option. I persist for a further hour, as the symptoms slowly abate, before heading home a little earlier than usual.
So, that's it for me and the caffeine. Sorry, Eva, next Rocks Coffee Festival, I'll be with Kathleen looking at tea :(
Mon, 08 Oct 2007
Some of Japan's Agriculture Ministry officials got busted making edits to Wikipedia recently. In most other countries, Wikipedia edits by officials are generally to remove politically embarrassing entries, or to smear rivals. Not so in Japan.
In Japan, they do things slightly differently, and so the edits (206 in all) were largely limited to pages about Gundam, the Japanese fighting mecha robots that are incredibly popular with otaku there.
Thu, 04 Oct 2007
Poor Kathleen was very upset by the now almost weekly almost appearance of "Chinese" chef Kylie Kwong in one of the SMH's liftout sections. Today's was a feature article on KK's new book, describing her 'homecoming' to her 'home province' in China. Now, I don't want to be picky, but surely if you've never actually lived in China, and your family has been in Australia since the 1800s, then you can't really go around calling a region of China your 'home province'. Maybe 'ancestral home' or something.
That just sums up the whole SMH approach to food porn, and their instinctive urge to give Kylie a call whenever they do a feature on Chinese food. There are a million places in this city that are doing great, authentic Chinese cooking. Perhaps not many, though, that do the whole $40 a head, too-cool-for-school food that the SMH goes nuts about. Same people in their food guide, every week.
Tue, 02 Oct 2007
Mon, 01 Oct 2007
Watched the Grand Final at Steph's place. A magnificent game. Most people wanted a close win, but also for Geelong to win for the first time since 1963. I didn't care that the result was the biggest thumping in Grand Final history. The last two years have been as close as you could get, and watching the Cats play such great football was fun.
The 119-point win, in front of a crowd of 97,302, dwarfed Hawthorn's 96-point win over Melbourne in 1988 as the greatest margin in an AFL/VFL premiership decider.
It ended a 44-year premiership doubt for the Cats, whose last flag came in 1963, the club suffering through five losing Grand Finals in between.
It was the culmination of a run of 19 wins in 20 matches with which the Cats finished the season, their only loss in that time coming against the Power at Kardinia Park in round 21.
The Cats dominated from the outset, outscoring the Power 5.7 to 2.2 in the opening term, before kicking five goals in the first 12 minutes of the second quarter to build a 52-point lead and have the game wrapped up.
Geelong were on top in every aspect of the contest, with their defence - which has been the best in the competition all season - keeping the Power to their lowest score of the year.
Sunday
We caught the bus out to Manly, since it was such a beautiful day, and since the Manly Jazz Festival was on. Lu and Denzil caught the ferry out with their UK friend Irfan. He'd been keen to get down to a Sydney beach, and we convinced him that Manly was a much nicer beach than Coogee or Bondi. "Nicer atmosphere, nicer sand, nicer grass patch in the shade under the trees..." Plus, the ferry ride from CQ out to Manly has got to be one of the world's most scenic ferry trips.
We even waded out knee deep into the water. The water was freezing cold as we stepped across the wet sand, but we gradually got used to it, with our feet sinking into the soft sea bottom, sand between our toes.
Irfan was hooked. After a week of sightseeing in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, with brilliant sunshine, blue skies, and warm weather, he's a little sad at having to return back to England... but he did promise to come out soon on a working holiday visa!
Monday
Kathleen and I inspected the venue for the combined birthday party we'll be holding in November. Looks good - the outdoor area should be good in a late Spring evening (it was good on the sunny Sunday afternoon that we were there!), and the hire was pretty reasonable. Now we just have to get on to organising the invite list!
Over the last week, two of our friends have had their first babies.
Dinh and Gregor welcomed baby Jasmine last Sunday.
Then, last Wednesday, Winnie and Michael in Hong Kong brought little Andrew into the world.
Add to that a few other couple friends who are expecting over the next six months...
