Where we've been. No internet access at home means no regular updates. We'll have it hooked up soon, though, I hope.

We're just trying to set up house at the moment. It'll be another two months before our stuff arrives from the states, but in the meanwhile, we have to make the place more livable. It's a great house in a great neighborhood.

Job is going exceedingly well. I've managed to solve some problems that had been plaguing them for weeks, and it looks like there's every chance I'll be hired on at the end of it. We're building an application that ambulance drivers ("ambos", in the local parlance) will run on their tablet computers to enter all the information about the vital signs, treatments, and procedures followed for each case.

I had a good Friday night happy hour last week with about thirty people from work, and chatted with just about everybody. Good buncha folk.

Today the AFL (footy) Grand Final is going on, which is the equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday back home. Strange, but they only had about an hour of pre-game shows. Still, it is quite obvious a HUGE deal here. The town was overrun with people from Adelaide and Brisbane, all wearing their colors. I suppose we should have watched, just as part of our cultural indoctrination.

Spent last night in the new place. It was BITTER COLD.

Of course, it was (I think) the coldest night of the year. I couldn't get the main heater to work, so I only had a small little space heater. And I'm sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. I woke up at about 2:30am, just from the cold. I draped my blankets over the heater, so it was blowing directly underneath, and after five minutes, the heater STOPPED. Panic. Luckily, it came back on after five minutes. But I was still cold. I thrashed around and cocooned myself for a bit, then began to realize that whatever part of me was against the bed was what was getting cold. So if I was lying on my left hip, my left hip would get cold. Strange. I finally figured it out, that, being on (hardwood) floor, my left hip was basically three inches from the bitter-cold crawlspace. I made an effort to spread out my weight, and everything was okay. I need to lay down a layer of insulation or something though.

Today I bought a fridge and a washing machine, all by myself. I'm a big boy!

Frances. The family is okay, apparently, but no word yet on how the houses in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral fared.

Was glad to see that they have Six Feet Under here on regular TV. Totally unedited, too. I am still wigging from last night's episode.

The bulk of our packages mailed from Singapore have arrive, after nine weeks. They promised five to seven, but we're more relieved than angry. Still three more on the way. There are now twenty-seven boxes in this little studio rathole apartment I'm staying in until the end of the week. Then I get to move them all myself. What fun.

A different world.

In the US, there are commercials imploring adolescents who've turned 18 that they are now adults, and they have a civic duty, required by law, and it is to sign up for the draft.

In Australia, there are commercials imploring adolescents who've turned 18 that they are now adults, and they have a civic duty, required by law, and it is to sign up to vote.

Yikes! Hurricane Frances is bearing down on my family. It looks like it going to hit land right between where my brother's family lives and my parents and grandmother lives. Then it moves on towards my sister's family and my aunt and uncle on the west coast. My parents are in the process of evacuating. They're veteran hurricane dodgers, but there are others in Florida who aren't so smart. This thing is going to be nasty.

An 'A' for originality. Or maybe a 'B' as in 'Blaine'.

We're definitely not in Singapore anymore. In Federation Square, the busiest square in the heart of town, a band (the Regurgitators) have set up a bubble where they will live for three weeks, writing and recording an album.

On September 21, they will emerge and immediately play a concert of their new album, start to finish.

I don't know if they're any good or not. I haven't been by yet either, but I probably will go check it out this weekend.

An Australia moment. I'm helping to build a website at work. The computer keeps telling me it can't find one of the pages down a certain directly. I look, and the page is there. I stare at it in frustration for at least ten minutes before realizing -- nay, realising -- that the file is in a directory called "notrecognised", while in the configuration file I typed "notrecognized".

Language issues aside, work is going quite well. I start my new project next week.

WOO HOO! So I'm browsing Slashdot, and I notice that the new IOCCC winners have been announced. "Bummer," I think, because they always email the winners before announcing, and I hadn't heard anything. Then, I read the winners list, and lo and behold, there's my name. GEEK BLISS! That's win number six for me, but it still feels pretty good.

They make up the categories every year, but they often get re-used. My category, "Best Non-Use of Curses", is a new one -- in explanation, "curses" is a C package that lets you do animation. My program simulates character animation without it -- by generating a string which you then paste into the "vi" editor. The act of pasting is what actually starts the animation.

The source code won't be posted there until mid-October.

That Best of Show winner sounds pretty sick -- someone implemented a whole operating system (such as Windows) in 4096 bytes (about a page of code). Now that's some serious geeking.

R-U-N-N-O-F-T. She's gone not even two days, and I miss her. How will I last 23? I'm so married.

Today was a day that was not beautiful, it was be-YOO-ti-ful. Sidewalk cafes were packed with folk enjoying the warmest day of spring thus far. I myself spent the day out-of-doors, working at a booth in the central business district doling out absentee ballot request forms to US citizens. (You can get yours on-line if you haven't already done so.) It was an interesting experience. I was even spat upon, but it was by a shabby British nutter with brown teeth who occasionally spat as he rambled on to me about the monarchy. Either in favor of it or against it, I'm not sure. But we got a good small handful of people signed up.

In the late afternoon I got a couple of new library books and had a pizza around the corner from the house we're about to move into. Quite good. Then I walked down to the beach and sat on a bench to read while the sun set over the bay. There were about a hundred seagulls in attendance, and two penguins.

Fish are jumpin', and the cotton is high.

You betcha. Interesting concert experience tonight -- strangely, our first real concert since coming here. We went and saw Betchadupa at The Tote. This is the band fronted by Liam Finn, son of musical legend Niel Finn. We saw him playing backup guitar for his father about six years ago, when he was maybe 13. Now he's trying to make it on his own. From the sounds of things, he's inherited a lot of talent. Just about the tightest band I'd ever seen, and they use lots of interesting time signatures and such. Not as hook-laden as I had hoped though. But they could fill out a bill with Sloan and Superdrag nicely. I felt old, though; there were maybe two or three guys there that were older than me. Sigh.

Apropos of nothing. Back in 1982 I attend the Governor's School for Excellence, "a one-week summer program bringing together academically and artistically talented sophomores from Delaware high schools." I remember lots of things about that week, but one really odd memory came back to me the other day.

We did a "meet and greet" sort of exercise, where you had to write down something about yourself that you hadn't told anyone about yet. The list was compiled, and you had go around and figure out who everybody was, based on their personal factoid.

One guy wrote, I throw rocks at my cat while it's going to the bathroom.

You read that right. I don't find it memorable so much in the fact that somebody would do that (bad enough as it is), but that he would choose that tidbit about himself as the one he wanted to first reveal. I throw rocks at my cat while it's going to the bathroom.

When I found the guy who wrote it, he explained, "It's funny. The cat won't move, because he's going to the bathroom, and you can just sit there and throw rocks at it."

I wonder what happened to that guy.

He's probably a senator or something.

Another check for the checklist over on the right. We've put down the deposit on a house we'll be renting in Albert Park. Nice little two bedroom place, hardwood floors, big kitchen. Location, location, location -- we have a nice little cafe that's spitting distance away, plus a pizzeria, video store, convenience store, etc. etc. About three blocks up the road is another nice row of stores and restaurants, and a library. Eight blocks from the beach too, and a half a block from the tram. Sweet!

First day. At some point today at my new job I looked around and thought, wow, I work with a bunch of Australians.

Actually, there's two irish women (both named Joan), a Sri Lankan, and a Chinese guy, who I'll be working closely with for three weeks. And he lived in Singapore for five years. The more things change, ...

It seems like it'll be a fun place to work. Everyone seems cool. I'm right in the middle of the CBD (Central Business District), twenty-two floors up, with views out in every direction, if I get up from my desk and walk a bit. I'm in a room with four other developers and testers. For three weeks I'll be helping develop a website, then moving onto another project that sounds really cool, involving Bluetooth and tablet computers.

The weather with you. We rented a car again today to drive around and look at apartments. They do things kind of weird here -- there's a window, sometimes as small as twenty minutes, where you (and about a dozen other people, typically) can go view the apartment. We saw a few near misses, and one that we liked a lot. But our suspicion is that we will have trouble competing for a place against native Australians with lots of local landlord references.

Complicating our search was the worst weather that Melbourne has seen, apparently, in six years. Rainy, cold, and windy all day. This is not my beautiful August. Still, it's better than dodging hurricanes like my relatives just had to do in Florida. Luckily, everyone's safe.

Woop. Notice a new check mark on the To Do list over to the right?

Company 2 came through. The contract will be for a little over three months. Even better, they want me to start this coming Monday.

We celebrated for about a minute before thoughts of the remaining To Do list items started peeing in our Cheerios.

Still, the plan is a step closer to fruition.

Quite a weekend. As I said, we rented a car on Friday. On Saturday we got up (relatively) early and headed down to the Great Ocean Road. An amazing drive. Here are some pictures: Marjorie / me / Bells Beach (world famous surfing destination). The only real wildlife we saw was on these signs.

Today we drove up to Warrandyte State Park (more specifically, the Pound Bend Reserve) hoping to find some wildlife. This time we had better luck, as Marjorie spotted a koala before we had even parked the car. We ended up seeing six total -- all just lumps of fur up high up in the trees. Still, very neat. (The latest in a growing list of animals that we can snobbishly bypass the next time we're at the zoo: "Pish, seen it.") There were supposedly wombats and platypuses (platypi?) there as well, but none spotted.

On the way back we stopped by Yarra Bend Park for another gander at the flying foxes.

So now, to our future visitors, we can pretty much guarantee you sightings of 1) koalas, 2) flying foxes, 3) kookaburras, 4) brush-tail possums, and 5) penguins.

Well! First interview, with Company 2, seemed to go okay. There was a stretch in the middle where the tech guy hammered me a little on proper design methodologies, of which my experience has been a little skimpy in regards to. But overall it seemed to be nice and friendly and I hope it works out. I'll know more on Monday.

The second interview, though, with Company 1 was a little more... interesting... The company, he said, didn't have a contract right now for me to work on, but if I would be willing to work on some in-house stuff for a few months, without pay, then they could start me working right now. To my credit, I didn't go "Ha!". I just explained that I couldn't. They promised to contact me if they get the contract that I can work on. But obviously, I have to wonder about a place like that.

In other news -- our mailed stuff from Singapore started arriving. Seven boxes today. So, we decided to rent a car for a few days, just to save the pain of lugging stuff. Honest, there were no ulterior motives.

Tonight we went back to the park to take possum pictures. Here's the only one that turned out.

In other news: now it looks like there's two companies that are interested in me. This is certainly good news on some level, but it's only added to the stress. The reason:

Company 1 will want me to start straight away. I didn't ask for as much from them, so my salary will probably be lower. But they have some good perks like bonuses based on my professional development (which they'll pay for).

Company 2, I won't start until 10 September, but the work looks like it will be cooler. And it's only a three-month contract, with the chance of staying on afterwards if they like me. I'm convinced I can turn it into a full-time job, but can we last another month without income?

Neither job is confirmed yet. Tomorrow I go in for a followup interview with Company 2 in the morning. In the afternoon, I meet with Company 1 and I think they'll make an offer.

This is good news, I guess, but that doesn't mean I'll sleep well tonight.

Brighter days. Job search prospects are improving. I had a good interview the other day, and a different interview tomorrow that sounds promising.

As a diarist, and because I like to look back on things that make me feel smart, the techie question I nailed in the interview last week was:

If I define a Java class with an "equals()" method, what other method should I define?

For yesterday's interview, I nailed these:

What is a Java VM?

What is inheritance?

What is data hiding?

What is polymorphism?

What are some issues involved with multi-threading?

"I bought myself a liarbird..." As planned, we took the train out to the Blue Dandenong hills today with a mind to go hiking.

It was about an hour ride out to the Belgrave station in the hills. Portents were good as we saw a number of species directly from the train station -- three galahs (which are known for riding on children's merry-go-rounds and sliding down slides), a few cockatoos, and, sitting right on a station lamp post, a kookaburra.

After a thigh-burning tramp up a hill on surface roads, we met up with the trail (Avard Track?) and hiked in. The forest itself was quite stunning; lush ferns down low and eucalypts towering very high. They are rather like thinner sequoias.

First spotted were a dozen more kookaburras. As we got deeper in, we were passed over by a flock of at least a hundred squawking cockatoos. Then, there were scores of crimson rosellas, like we first spotted one of yesterday.

We hiked up and down a bit, and finally met up with a trail closed to bikes because it was a "Sensitive Lyerbird Habitat". We had seen lyerbirds on Life Of Birds -- they are quite amazing. They are probably the best mimics in the bird kingdom; as part of their mating display, they have been known to imitate chain saws, car alarms, dogs, and camera shutters. It would be bird geek heaven to spot one, so we charged in.

We didn't have high hopes, but after a half kilometer or so, we started to hear strange, loud calls from the low brush. We wandered carefully off the trail but the noise moved away. So we moved on, and minute later Marjorie stopped and said, "There's one!" And it was. He crossed the path right in front of us, then disappeared into the ferns as Marjorie gave chase. Very cool!

"Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed; they don't mean quite so much." But still, we went today out to Maranoa Gardens. Definitely worthwhile on the birdwatching front; we saw two new species -- the Crimson rosella and the Eastern Spinebill. We also saw two cuckoos fighting so intensely that they fell to the ground in a tangled mess from twenty meters up.

Tomorrow we're going to head out to the Dandenongs for more of the same. Parks and gardens and mountains, oh my! That's the way to explore your new home when you're on a budget.

Interview number two was today. It was good and bad. I punted on a few questions, but nailed some others, including one that they said that no interviewee ever gets. I'll find out next week, but my inclination is that I didn't get it. We'll see. I have other nibbles I'm pursuing. Deep breaths. Must'nt panic.

The local pub. Last night we played trivia at the pub across the street from our new abode. We thought we were doing well but we ended up in last place. Phooey. It was a close game though.

I learned an interesting thing about the pub after the game while chatting with some locals. Earlier this year, a sports legend was killed by a bouncer there. Yikes. There's still a lot of controversy raging about the incident, and the proper response to it.

Fish. After lunch today we visited the Melbourne Aquarium. It was really quite well done, with just about all my favorite sea creatures featured.

Afterwards we took a walk through the casino. We played a $1 slot, and immediately lost our money. A lady came up and offered us a free casino money card worth with a free $5 credit on it. We declined. We're just not gamblers at heart, I guess.

Tooting own horn. I seem to be getting a lot more action on the job front. The turnabout seemed to come after I was informed by one recruiter that while the American way is to limit your resume/CV to one or two pages, the way to get a job here is to expound. So now I'm sending out a four and a half pager that details everything. Fifteen seconds after I was off the phone with one recruiter this morning, another called. It's a little early to start predicting rampant success, though.

I have to relearn how to spell my name out loud again. I had gotten used to saying "zed" instead of "zee" in Singapore, but now I've discovered that "aitch" is actually pronounced "haitch" in Australia.

We had an epic first night of bar trivia the other night. Not because we did so well (we did all right until falling apart at the end) but because we met a bunch of people afterwards. There was another team there (two people from Scotland and one Brit/Australian) that we hooked up with after the game and ended up closing the place down. Towards the end we joined up with another guy and girl who were flight attendants for Emirates Airlines on a layover (they were Brits living in Dubai). We ended up partying with them at another bar (Frostbite?) up the street until 3 a.m.

A new location, a new look and feel for the blog. Let me know what you think.

Things that I forgot about cold weather:

The feeling of a cold toilet seat.

How hard it is to get out of bed in the morning.

How good it feels to take a long inhale of cold morning air through your nostrils.

The feeling of standing in the shower with warm water flowing on your back, while the rest of your body is shivering.

How good I look in winter clothes.

Birthday.  My birthday was Friday -- the big three-eight, which means I can no longer claim "middle thirties" -- I'm now solidly in my "late thirties".
 
Marjorie got me some CDs to start with -- the new PJ Harvey, and two by Australian bands: Hunters and Collectors, and Something For Kate.  Then it was on to the St. Kilda Baths for some west and welaxation.  First a soak in a salt water bath, in front of a big window looking out over the white-capped bay, with seagulls flying by.  Then a much-needed massage.
 
Afterwards we had an awesome lunch at the Sheherezade Cafe -- I had goulash with potato balls, rice, carrots, spinach, and cole slaw.  Best I've had since Europe.  Then we scored scored some chocolate eclairs and other yummies from a nearby bakery, and some bagels from Glick's.  Home for a nap, then a quiet evening at home watching Donnie Brasco.
 
Saturday was part two.  I wanted to see a footy (Australian Rules Football) game, so we went off to the Telstra Dome to see the St. Kilda Saints wallop the Richmond Tigers.  It was quite a spectacle.  I used to think the game was pretty much just anarchy, but as I start to understand the game more, I'm beginning to appreciate it, even if some of the rules are still a mystery.  There's some serious athleticism involved.  The fan base was amazing -- the two teams are just based in suburbs (or urbs, I guess) of Melbourne, but there were 40-50,000 people there, evenly divided.  (It was as if Virginia Highlands was playing Buckhead back in Atlanta.)  Everyone, even the old ladies, were into it, yelling, waving banners, wearing team scarves, etc.  Other interesting things:

There were machines where you could place bets on the game beforehand.  Actually, you could bet on anything, or play the pokies (poker machines).

 We got food beforehand in the restaurant there, and it was served on real plates with real silverware.  And it was reasonably priced.

 You could also bring your own food, or hot drinks in Thermoses.
What a crazy idea!  Don't gouge your fans -- let them come to the games at a reasonable price.  No wonder they draw crowds.

Still in limbo. Job search continues. Some leads, but I think there is a lot of competition right now.

Last night we rented a movie but we couldn't get the VCR in our short-term apartment to work. Maybe it's just because we're used to western VCRs. Do you have to plug in the tapes upside down or something?

I'm still having to use internet cafes. I bought a wireless card so I can access the internet from the various hotspots around here but I'm having trouble finding the right pre-paid cards to buy to use.

We're going to play trivia tonight, which should be fun.

Spend spend spend, spend, spend, spend. Being Americans at heart, and with a free license to start accumulating goods, we've been dropping scads of jing-wah since arriving. Marjorie's up in Target right now, while I'm next door in a Japanese-style internet cafe. We found a extended stay apartment off Toorak St. which we're moving into on Monday. My interview on Friday went -- okay, I guess. They'll call me back for a technical interview and a test later on, if all went well, which it may or may not have. I have other leads to follow up on, and now that I have a local phone, I think I'll get more action.

Yesterday we took the train down to Williamstown ("Willie") which was a nice, quiet suburb, on the water. Spotted several new birds, including the superb fairy wren, which is what they prefer to be called, as I understand it.

A quick list of some little differences about this place:

The first floor is the ground floor, and the second floor is the first floor. I keep getting into elevators and hitting "1" by mistake.

"Entrees" in a restaurant are actually what they call appetizers.

A big sign in the park reads "Dogs allowed off leash". That's really amazing to me. Not that they allow dogs off the leash, but that the big sign tells you so. Advertising a freedom, not a restriction.

Similarly, you're allowed to eat and drink on the trams. It's kind of courageous, I think, to allow these simple freedoms that may cost a little as far as maintainance and clean-up but have a positive effect on the quality of life.

We've arrived. A fairly hectic day, but in only a few hours we got me a suit, a shirt, socks, haircut, and a cell phone. Had the best damn burger ever for dinner.

It's cold! Why did Melbournians schedule winter in the middle of their summer?

Such sweet sorrow. Everything is packed, thrown away, given away, or mailed. We just had the final inspection of apartment and got the full deposit back (yay!). At the airport now, waiting for our flight out. Hooray for free internet. I'm feeling an odd combination of melancholy and excitement.

Bye, Singapore, it's been interesting and fun.

Another list of the top 100 wonders of the modern world. I've only seen 11 from this list. Only three from the top 50. Life is short.

While Nirvana is usually my music of choice when cleaning house, a day of cleaning AND packing required something a little different. I credit Marjorie for cuing up the right thing. For future reference, The Modern Lovers is the proper choice for such an occasion.

The great Singapore black-out. Last night, right in the middle of Six Feet Under, the power goes out. This is a first during our time here. The blackout seemed to stretch a long way -- I climbed to the top of our building, and there were lights in the distance, but mostly dark for several miles in every direction. For 45 minutes or so, we got to experience what it was like here before electricity. Damn hot. How did people sleep?

Tonight was my last soccer game. They let me play striker for the last twenty minutes, which was fun. I had no goals, but got an assist after committing a flagrant foul that was not called. Afterwards, beers at Turf City. Then goodbyes, which I've really come to hate.

I'll find a team in Melbourne, but will it be as fun? Doubtful.

Turns out the Chinese opera we heard the other night from our window might have had another interesting twist to it. On opening nights, apparently, Chinese opera troupes play their first performance to an empty theater. It's for the ghosts, you see. We couldn't tell if there was a crowd there or not but this might have been what was going on.

My coworkers Hong I and Meng Wah told me this today during lunch, which was interesting in itself. We went to a dim sum restaurant on the seventh floor of a public housing project. It was rather like a banquet hall. But the food was really tasty. We had three kinds of dumplings, pork ribs with yams, glutinous rice, porridge, spongy meat-filled rolls, tea, and chestnut(?) cakes for dessert.

Got another ping on the job front today. A recruiter called me from Australia about a CV I posted on a job site. He asked me if I had any experience with HAV. Sorry, I said, as I had never even heard of it. Later he mentioned it again, and I asked (so I could look it up later), "Are you saying H-A-V or H-A-B?"

"No," he said. "E-J-B. Echo, Juliet, Bravo".

I thought language issues weren't going to be a problem. But "E-J-B" in an Australian accent sounds an awful lot like "H-A-V" to my ears.

Violent streak? Me? Frustrating game today. The team we played against had a player who was the biggest cheater I had ever seen. You breathe on him, and he falls down and cries out like he's in agony. The problem was, the ref fell for it almost every time.

I was covering him. I'm usually a pacifist, but I can't stand that sort of crap. So I tried to rile him up by calling him every name in the book whenever he was near me. At one point he ran through my space, so a grabbed his shirt, and of course he fell down and cried for the ref. The ref missed this one, so I said, "Awww, what's the matter? You fall down there?" It was all I could do not to at least step on him. He was just ignoring my taunts, so I figure, as long as he's falling anyway, and the ref's letting it happen, I might as well get my licks in. He was subbed out before I could do much. But he came back later, and then worst thing happened, which was that he scored the go-ahead goal. While I was covering someone else, but still.

Even now, the big dumb jock in me wishes I had left him with some scars. Sports are primal sometimes.

Anyway, the coach announced that this would be my last Sunday game (though there's a Wednesday night one that I'm still playing) and everyone applauded me. At least I hope they were applauding me, and not the fact that I'm leaving. It was nice.

Asian moment. Sometimes we forget we're living in Asia. We've gotten used to things, and often take the comfortable route as far as food, transportation, and shopping. But last night, we came home after dinner, and there was a Chinese opera going on at the little temple that we can see out our window, just down the street. This was about 10pm. They have a new open stage back behind it, and a tent set up for onlookers. We can see just a tiny bit of stage through binoculars. When the wind was from the right direction, we could hear the music, which is really strange to Western ears. Minimalist, with plinking noises and occasional cymbal crashes; the singing is kind of shrill. The closest Western equivalent from pop culture I can think of is that "We are Siamese if you please" song from the Disney movie.

Steal a poll: I stole this off Krisalis's blog.
Where Were You When...
The Questions:
1. Where were you when you heard that Ronald Reagan died?

It was only a week ago, but oddly, I don't remember where. I think it was at work, and I saw it on the Yahoo home page.

2. Where were you on September 11, 2001?

Atlanta. Marjorie called and woke me up and told me to go turn on the TV.

3. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana died?

Lulu's Bait Shack in Buckhead, in Atlanta.

4. Do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had died?

At work. That very night, I went and saw Frank Black with the Ramones. Frank Black, when he was with the Pixies, was a huge influence on Kurt Cobain, and their album Surfer Rosa is usually quoted as the inspiration behind Nevermind. So I thought he would say something about it, but he didn't. All Joey Ramone said was something like, "Too bad about Kurt Cobain. Still, he did go out in the true punk style."

5. Take one for The Gipper: What'?s your favorite flavor of jelly bean?

Once you go black, you never go back.

6. Where were you when Magic Johnson announced he was retiring from the NBA due to AIDS?

I remember first hearing about it after coming back from a work trip to Italy.

7. Where were you when Reagan was shot?

Don't remember.

8. Where were you when the Challenger exploded?

I was witness! I was going to school in Orlando, and had worked at the space center the summer before. I actually came out to watch the launch, despite the fact that it was 9 a.m. and freezing. I was maybe 50 miles away. I watched the smoke trail rise, and when it started to bend the wrong way, someone else who was standing nearby said, "Is it supposed to do that?" And I said, "No, it's not supposed to do that..." I ran back to my dorm room to catch what was happening on TV.

9. Where were you when the 0J verdict was announced?

In Vicenza, Italy, working on the NATO base. I watched the verdict with pretty much a whole platoon of soldiers, of mixed race. There wasn't much a reaction from anyone, beyond a collective sort of "Huh".

Mr. Nutty. The last time I had a night off from Marjorie, I ended up going to the library. Last night, though, I didn't even make it that far. I stayed at work until 11:15, writing. I'm a wild man!

I did manage to knock out 1350 words of a story idea I've been bouncing around. That's still short of the daily average that's required (1667) for completing a 50,000-word novel in a month, but I still felt pretty good about myself afterwards. I'd say the story is about two thirds done.

I'm still going to workshop it before any of you all will ever see it. I found a pretty good on-line SF workshop that I've joined. They require you to critique other's works if you want yours critiqued, and so I've written up a few. Let me just say that I won't be the worst writer there. I won't be the best either, but I think I'll improve a lot.

Quitters Inc, part II. Moving is a good time for new beginnings. It's also a good time for endings. The following are things that I've resolved to give up once we get to Australia:

Packaged ramen-style noodle soups. I love them; I never outgrew them after college. But they're just too artery-clogging.

Polo shirts. I've always been indifferent about them but Marjorie hates them so away they go.

On line "Boggle"-type games. I've played Playsite's TangleWord and Yahoo's Word Racer for about eight years. Playsite tells you how many games you've played, total, and based on that I computed that I've spent scores of days playing. I don't regret it; as leisure-time activities go, you could do worse than one that increases your vocabulary. But it's time to move on.

Ellipses (...), emoticons (;-), and leaving the subject off sentences, as if I'm writing a postcard (e.g. "Woke up late today. Went to the store."). None of these are particularly bad, I don't think. But by damming up some of my usual forms of expression I hope to rechannel some of it down other paths.

Soda.

Crap TV. I'm not opposed to TV; one can learn a lot from it. Or, just be entertained by it. But I could stand to be a little more selective.

Poker face. Ben Affleck has apparently just won $356,000 in a poker tournament.

This makes sense to me. To be good at poker, you must not let your face betray your emotions. KIND OF LIKE AFFLECK DOES IN HIS FILMS.

A banner game. Who is the man? I ask again, WHO IS THE MAN?

Ventz PM beat Kuay's Team 2-0. Mark S scored both our goals
[...]
PM also played well in taking the lead with Mark scoring with a Maradona-ish (v England in Mexico WC) run from midfield. He doubled our lead with a header from a corner. We did well to contain them in the 2nd half as our oppoents raised their game and in the end no more goals were scored.

Everyone was pulling for me to get a hat-trick. I didn't have a chance until the very last play of the game, when a corner kick came straight to my foot. Caught it on the full volley and shanked it wide, and the ref blew the whistle.

An injured teammate was taking pictures too, and said he got both my goals. Soon, I will bore you not just with words, but with pictures!

Boxing day. We're starting to pack boxes in preparation for mailing them down. Well, okay, Marjorie's started the packing, but I'm offering helpful critiques. Somehow we managed to accumulate quite a load of stuff, without ever buying much here. It's going to be at least 15 good-sized boxes to mail, in addition to our big suitcases and carry-ons.

Happily, while packing, Marjorie came across the pair of glasses I bought in Barcelona that disappeared during our last move and that we thought were gone forever. Hooray!

Yesterday we visited Jurong Bird Park for the last time. They have a new Lorikeet exhibit that's very cool. It's a huge aviary with hanging walkways connect five towers a hundred feet off the ground. Although, these birds won't be as exciting to us soon; they seem to be everywhere down in Melbourne.

Look at this sorry lot. A photo of my soccer team. This is obviously a pre-game photo, as there is no sweat, blood, or wheezing. We put all the young 'uns in the front row because it would take ten minutes for us geezers to straighten out our legs again after squatting like that.

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.

Last night we saw the the Tiger Lilies. I spent the 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.

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

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. 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).

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.

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.

Yeah, we watch, so what? We've both decided that if Fantasia gets voted off American Idol, we're never watching the show again. The girl's got some pipes.

Singapore Idol starts in two weeks or so. I'm all aquiver. No, really, it's going to be the biggest thing here, ever. I think it will be a hoot, in a train-wreck sort of way. A friend describes Singapore as the worst music town on the planet, and it's hard to argue. But they do love their karaoke, and that's right up Idol's alley. People are already camping out for the audition, I think.

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.

I've always had issues with how a certain word can be consided obscene,
while another word which means the exact same thing is considered acceptable.
Most times, it's just due to an accident of history, and it makes no sense to
me at all.

Why, then, did I blush for the Singapore newscasters the other day when,
while introducing a story about the tenth anniversary of Viagra being
available in Singapore, they put up a graphic reading "Helping Singaporean
men get it up for ten years"? And then, a second later, when the reporter
started the story with "Are you hard up without a hard on?"

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.

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.

News. Moving. July. Australia. Melbourne, probably. Sydney, maybe. Woop.

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.

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.

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?

"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?

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".

We're back. Gee it's hot here.

I'm not much of a photographer, but I really like this photo I took at the wildlife park.

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.

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.

It's always interesting to me what constitutes a "joke" in other cultures. My Malaysian cow orker told me a joke today, which he was told back in school. It's a bit off-color, which makes it even funnier to me, since he's really kind of straight-laced. It's sort of a joke you play on someone else, and it requires a little modification to translate into English. But, it goes something like this:

Person 1: Use the words "Bob", "Mary", "Elephant", and "fucks" to make a complete sentence, without adding any other words.
Person 2 (the victim): Hmmm... I can't seem to do it. How do you do it?
Person 1: "Bob fucks Mary."
Person 2: But what about the elephant?
Person 1: The elephant fucks you.

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, and you my nigga.

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.

Crime free, my ass. 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.

Oh, and "Nice, Jim."

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.

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.