Friday, October 29, 2004

...ps - and don't forget World Toilet Day on November 19!
I asked Google for "something new" and it gave me Improbable Research - your one-stop shop for research on cats in zero gravity (with video), nipple piercing and lactation, and the World Toilet Summit in Beijing.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

good thing about being back in Melbourne: fresh air, a warm spring day, being able to chat to people in English.
bad thing: being able to understand inane radio chitchat and advertising (in the taxi). like garish neon signs, it all seems so much more aesthetically pleasing (and ignorable) in Chinese.

Friday, October 22, 2004

am I wrong, or is there something deeply twisted about even watching the videos of British hostages begging for their lives, knowing that the followup will probably be a snuff video of their deaths? and no, I'm not posting a link to the latest.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

ps: hey Randall, what's with the photo at the top of your blog? You know the view from the Peak walking track only looks like that one day out of 20. the rest of the time, it's varying degrees of smog.
ps: hey Randall, what's with the photo at the top of your blog. You know the view from the Peak walking track only looks like that one day out of 20. the rest of the time, it's varying degrees of smog.
Blogging begets blogging, it seems.

If I could draw like Jorge Colombo, my HK experiences might come to life. Because one of the most striking things about this place is the way the people dress. There are plenty of jeans-and-T-shirt types, but just as many middleaged women in pink party frocks, Japanese tourists in head-to-toe Gucci, teenage girls in 1960s convent girl school uniforms (carrying mobile phones with up to 10 dingledangles hanging off them), Chinese punks in tartan and combat boots on 35 degree-plus days, young women combining 15 styles and accessories (think Madonna's early days, through a Vogue mixmaster), and, just sometimes, a big white guy (sorry, BWG) who towers above the subway crowds in his tailored suit, big nose leading him along.
the nice thing about the Internet is that you can find 18-month-old flame parties in someone else's comments when you're innocently surfing for an article you wrote once.

in this case, I'm accused of being lame and a few ethical misdemeanours. my employer is (wrongly) castigated for sending me to a blogging conference. I wish. paid for that one myself.

Bloggety Blog, however, has got increasingly lame as time has gone on. I have a couple of other, topic-specific blogs kicking about that do get updated when stuff happens - eg, the pub is benefiting from the best growing season for yonks.. but my life in general is very baby-focussed now and it doesn't always make the most scintillating reading (yesterday was a six-poopy day, does that push your buttons? thought not.) And I was always careful not to make this blog a work blog or anything other than a personal blathering place, so I could care less about criticisms of my style etc. It does nark me when people have a problem with me but don't let me know about it - and the person accusing me of that isn't the person I quoted, whom I interviewed and did fact checking with and appeared quite happy about things.

as for the Rebecca Blood stuff, I don't get it. she was in fact blogging before the term "blog" was commonly used. no one said she was the only one.

where is this going? nowhere, really. I don't feel ready to just close this blog down. nor am I in the mood to reinvigorate it with the effort it would take to say something interesting about Hong Kong, motherhood etc. I'm not actively studying blogs or writing about them right now (resounding cheer from the peanut gallery, I suppose). those few people who do drop by are either friends whom I'm too slack to email (Hi, M&M!) or poor dears who've followed a Google link. the flamethrowers in question won't read this, because I'm not feeling provocative enough to link to them in this post. and here my lame post peters out...

(edit: I'm well pleased to find that my blog, and various other lame sites I have, are now on at least the third page of Google results for a search on my name. sinking merrily into obscurity, me!)

Monday, October 18, 2004

probably more amusing than the actual books: vidlit (broadband only)

Thursday, October 14, 2004

enjoy mashing words with Babelfish but can't be bothered with all the busson pushing. someone has saved you the trouble (via William Gibson)