Space! Our new pad has space! We spent our first night there last night, and slept well. Apart from no hot water in the kitchen (it has a separate heater, which doesn't work), all seems fine. There's a convenience store, a butcher shop, a cafe, and a small restaurant as part of the complex, which will be nice.

Transportation will be the continuing headache, though. It took me 45-50 minutes to get into work today -- a longish walk, a long wait for a bus, a short bus ride, and a long subway ride. We're going to have to figure something out.

Funny exchange of emails with people on my soccer team.

Yesterday the coach sent out this game report, from Sunday's game (which I didn't play):

Yesterday's results'
Ventz 3pm beat Shanghai Flowers 2-1. Stephen and Mark scored the goals

3pm played a good game and avoided a repeat of the game 2 weeks back by
having the better play and still ended losing. We scored all 3 goals (one
spectacular own goal!)

Since I didn't play, I had to ask --

Is there a new Mark on the 3pm team, or is "Mark" just what you call people when they score an own goal these days?

And someone responded:

Mark - you wouldn't believe this but from the new 2003 Oxford dictionary -

mark, verb 1a. : to make or leave a mark; b: to follow an opponent closely
(see also "David"), c: to label as to indicate.
defender "pulled a Mark" to put us 3-0 up>

I guess this is my own fault!

Today was for packing. We're moving over the next few days, and it's amazing how much junk we were able to accumulate in six months here. Later in the week we're off to Sydney, as the third leg of Marjorie's whirlwind tour of the continents.

Don't know what the deal with the comments is; hopefully they'll have them fixed soon.