Singapore is a different city when you're behind the wheel. We rented a car today, to drive around and look at neighborhoods where we might want to live. It was really strange, having not driven for almost six months, to suddenly have to do it from the wrong side of the road. It wasn't too horrible, but I did get to remember a lot of things I hated about owning a car. Had to blunder our way around a bit. It's quite easy to get lost, even on familiar roads, if you've never actually DRIVEN on them before. I had to come back home and zonk out for a few hours after a while; the concentration and tension involved in driving in this unfamiliar environment can be pretty exhausting. Anyway, we found some pretty nice areas, and didn't run over anyone or anything, so that's good.

Goooooooaaaaal! Today is a national holiday (Vesak Day) in Singapore, so we had a soccer game scheduled for 9 this morning. I was supposed to be playing defense, but at one point I snuck up... and scored! Collected the ball on the 18 yard line, beat a man inside and launched a beautiful curling shot into the far side of the net. I've been playing better and better with each passing week, and having more and more fun. I could do without these 9 a.m. games though. That nasty equatorial sun made the second half brutal...

We're thinking of renting a car this weekend, to drive around and look at apartments. I haven't driven in nearly six months; should be interesting.

We're also considering a trip to Japan in August, to coincide with the Summer Sonic 2003 music festival. Looks like a fantastic line-up. I don't know if I'll be able to swing this, work-wise, though.

Your quote of the day:

"You know the world is off-tilt when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest basketball player is Chinese, and Germany doesn't want to go to war." --Charles Barkley

Joke of the day.

Jason has a conversation with his new neighbour Pete:

J: So what do you do?
P: I teach deducive logic.
J: Huh?
P: Let me demonstrate. Do you have a dog?
J: Yes.
P: From this I deduce that you have a family?
J: Yeah.
P: And a wife?
J: Yeah.
P: And if you have a wife, I deduce that you are heterosexual.
J: That's amazing!

After this Jason visits his friend Chris:
J: I just found out this awesome field called deducive logic.
C: Say what?
J: Let me demonstrate. Do you have a dog?
C: No.
J: Fag!

Blast from the past. Dug this up recently -- something I posted on the internet on 22 December 1992, when I was going to school in Orlando, and working at Kennedy Space Center. Was this really more than ten years ago? I refuse to believe it.

WHY MY DRIVE TO WORK IS MORE INTERESTING THAN YOURS

Mile 7: Leave civilization, enter Bithlo. Home of more junkyards per capita than any other city. I don't mean to imply that the place is "redneck", but I live in morbid fear that my foreign car will break down here some day. If you're black, forget it.

Mile 12: Pass a local baptist church bent on ridding the nation of the evil scourge of evolutionary theory. They have a road sign with replacable letters -- past signs have read "FOSSILS -- WHAT DO THEY MEAN?", "DINOSAUR MYSTERY EXPLAINED", and "MYTHS OF EVOLUTION".

Mile 15: Enter the city of Christmas, famous only for it's post office (you can guess why, and you can guess when).

Mile 17: The chicken mailbox. Papier mache monstrosity of a chicken, that lasted about 3 days before a drunken redneck took a Louisville Slugger to it and knocked off its head.

Mile 20: Pass Gator Jungle, a tourist attraction. Basically an alligator zoo, remarkable in that the entire building facing the road is shaped like a huge gator. Tourists enter through the mouth, which is open to reveal sparkling white fiberglass teeth.

Just last week there was an accident immediately opposite Gator Jungle where a guy in a Cordoba plowed dead-on into a cow that had wandered into the road. They guy's car was totalled, and the cow was reduced to a steaming heap of beef.

Miles 22-27: Swampland -- airboat rides, poor people fishing, and a boiled peanut stand.

Mile 29: A gas station called "Space Shuttle Fuels". I resist the urge daily to pull in and ask the guy to fill it up with liquid hydrogen.

Mile 32: Space Camp, featuring a life-size mockup of the space shuttle overlooking the road. One day there was smoke coming out of the engines, but it turned out it was just a fire.

Mile 33: Cross the Indian River, replete with manatees (sea cows), dolphins and guys in clamming boats (who are out there at sunup, regardless of the weather).

Miles 35-40: During mating season, alligators can be regularly be seen haunting the canals on the side of the road. Once saw a tourist (or "touron" as they are known) who had pulled over and was taunting a gator, with his young son behind him. He was apparently oblivious to the fact that gators can move much faster than humans. Natural selection will swiftly weed out this sort of stupidity, I hope.

Mile 41: Spaceport USA. Features the multi-million dollar Astronaut Memorial, a black monolith with the names of dead astronauts engraved in it, which is supposed to continually rotate to face the sun, so that the astronauts names are continually emblazoned. It has never worked right.

Mile 43: Work: sit down, telnet back 43 miles to UCF, and bring up Usenet.

It's not a toomuh. The blotch on my gammy leg is nothing more than pigmented purpuric dermatitis (please note that the picture of the guy with the hairy ass on that page is NOT ME).

Rare, but harmless. Amputation will not be necessary.

Dig this crazy diagnosis:

Skin shows orthokeratosis, acanthosis and spaced out elongated rete ridges. Dermal papillae and upper dermis has perivascular lymphocytic infiltrate. Red cell extravasate is present. Numerous siderophages are seen.

The steroid ointment I'm to put on it cost S$1.70, or about a buck U.S. What sort of crazy health care system are they running here?

I've been meaning to do something like this; the May Day Project, where you document a day in your life with pictures. Soon, I promise. In the meanwhile, it's a fun site to poke around. A surprising number of Singaporeans participated.

Happy Mother's Day to me mum!