August 2003 Archives

Mars is at its closest to the Earth ever (within the last 56 000 years or so, at least) today, so look up at that sky and take a picture for me! Why? Because it's cloudy; a summer of no rain, no clouds, and then a planetary event comes along - BOOM! Clouds! Grrrr.

For those who care - it's passing through Aquarius; to Northern hemispherons, it will appear toward the south, being higher in the sky the further south you are. You should be able to see surface details with a low power telescope, or high end binocs. In the vain hope that our skies clear, I may dig out my telescope and have a peek this weekend; the planet should still be pretty hefty for the next few weeks.

London again; the cats need watering, and my plants need feeding - or something like that - in my mum's absence, so I'm home for the weekend. I was in town during the afternoon with one of my favourite ladeez from University days (undergraduate, that is), and as always, since leaving to live in Cambridge for my Ph.D., I was just struck by the number of people about.

At over 6 million people, London really isn't that populous a place compared to some, but go to even more crowded a metropolis as New York, or LA, or Mexico City, you'll never see crowds like the ones you do here, except on their special occasions. You either love it or hate it. Delhi and Bombay, on the other hand, trump London hands down, but for different reasons. I certainly miss it, though the peace and solitude of my University town is pretty good too; I'm just glad that home is such a short journey away for when I need that fix.

My lungs are black already; amen. I'll head for a swim in the morning (I used to be able to see our pool from my window, but the trees have grown significantly this Spring), tickle the kitties one last time, and turn tail back toward Cambridge. I really feel like I should take a wee bit of holiday at home for once; put my feet up, get in my mother's way, and actually learn to relax again. Have a great weekend!

I work in a very amiable environment of skilled and intelligent people, all of whom are very different, and each of whom has their own "-isms" - like the chap down the end who is permanently cute and into scaring people out of their skins, the loud New Zealander who never interprets any social-context comments correctly and irks people in the process, the delightful South African down the other end who speaks five African languages in addition to English and whose laugh is so 'chipmunk' and free that you can only laugh with her, even if you don't know what she's laughing about.

There's also one who I love to bits, but whose irrational temper makes her, at times, very difficult to be around. We're all desperately complex beings, so who can say what different elements interact to give rise to the net product that is, ultimately, our own personality?

My friends think of me as frank, easy going, reassuringly optimistic, irritatingly pragmatic, and very patient. They accept that an inevitable corollary of my patience is an explosive temper, but since my boundaries can be stretched quite a ways (not so much with loved-ones perhaps - they get special treatment), this has only been seen by one or two of my closest, and certainly not by people I work with.

I recognise, of course, that this is just me, and yet it is still hard to fathom how it is that people can be so tempestuous, so very emotionally self-indulgent, around those who really shouldn't be expected to put up with it. It really isn't fair for people to have to repeatedly tip-toe around another person's volatile moods - we're not family. Yesterday was great; we all went about practically silent for half the working day because a volcano was quietly seething on the bench behind me. Sigh. Kids.

As an aside, I mentioned to TEFL the other day that I was thinking about putting up some travel-related pages - such pages abound on the net, I suppose, but I've taken in a few places, here and there, and would quite enjoy writing about them, bit by bit. Best of all, were I to use MT, other people could contribute too. How would you present it? Good idea/bad idea? Answers on a virtual postcard!

In about an hour, my mum will be landing at Sepang International Airport, the principal airport serving my favourite country, and erstwhile home. I wanted to paste in a couple of pictures of the airport, because this place has to be seen to be believed - it's architect designed Denver International, and this is quite obvious to anyone who has visited them both, except that they left virgin rainforest standing in the various atriums of the Malaysian version; it's like being inside a giant airconditioned greenhouse and looking out into a stand of jungle, complete with wildlife.
It doesn't forgive the fact that they destroyed an area of forest the size of San Francisco to build the airport, but the deed is done, so it's a little late to protest. I first landed here on the day the airport opened; convinced it would be a nightmare shambles of disorganisation, I was greeted with the most efficient and impressive airport I've ever seen. Total waste of money, naturally, but the investment shows.

Anyhow, no proper pictures of the airport at hand, but I did find a page, complete with really cheesy soundtrack, that shows many views of the city where I grew up, and some of the places we used to visit. Nostalgia.

We are once again blessed with the modern miracle of running hot water; that was the hardest ten minutes of my entire life today, though I did get a bit of a steam burn while handling some culture media in the laboratory. Ouch. I think I enjoyed it.

Be happy, but how, when I have taken receipt of the disheartening application forms for the London Marathon? You see, the space to applicant ratio is terrible - only 1 out of 4 applicants is successful, which means the likelihood of getting a place is truly abysmal. That's not to say that all the training you put in is for nought, as it contributes aplenty to your good health, but it's such a shame that something so momentous should be so easily removed from reach. I'll put my piece in tomorrow, all the same, and hope for the best.

Mmm, chicken kievs are the bomb. Food... drool. It might be an idea to shove some great recipes on here for the good of mankind. Especially if those recipes include the most orgasmic, rich and mightily scrummy of chocolate crèmes in all the oxygen-breathing regions of the galaxy. I love cooking; Nigella can eat my scraps.

Over the last few days, the hot water pump to our 1820s house has been failing; it's dead now. This morning, I was pleasantly jarred awake by an ice cold shower. I mean crazily jumping in and out of the water-stream cold, 'til my skin was numb enough to take the rush of soul destroying iciness full-on. Not to say that I don't enjoy the occasional ice-bath, but you really do have to be in the mood - or at least used to it, as I was for a time at boarding school - and not, as today, feeling all cosy and comfortable on what is the first chilly morning I've experienced in weeks. City-wide goose-bumps can be somewhat sexy though.

What's to envy about the loss of power across what may as well have been an entire seabord? That people who've never really seen a starry sky should suddenly realise that there's a lot to be said about looking up? That there are a thousand and two things that you can do, and enjoy, no less, without the intervention of electronics? That the perennial tele-addict should come blinkingly out of a his unnatural stupour to see that there is so much more to his own neighbourhood than the rooms and Café that those Friends never leave?

All that I've read about the power outages in Canada and the US, via the blogiverse, has been, bar the tragic loss of many a tasty food item, largely positive; people, seemingly surprised, coming to notice that communities can really pull together and have fun, that there's something to be said (other than "nuts") about those who choose to live without the 'luxuries' of the modern world. No, it's not convenient, but it's refreshing.

I've only experienced two power outs in the UK in ten years; they lasted less than an hour. Where's the fun in that?

My fortnightly Apple eNews flopped - albeit metaphorically - through my inbox this morning, announcing the popular release of the G5 in the United States. It is released in the civilised world a little later in August, but that's pretty fair, as European and Japanese technology can be withheld from the Americas for suspiciously long periods - one-upmanship against the super-power? Who knows, but doubt it; the greater market economies are too complex for something that petty*.

In any case, if any of you wins the lottery and feels like buying someone less-well-off something really stunning, souped up and generally kickass, then buy them one of these. I really want one too, but am probably too proud to accept your charity. What? No! You've really offended me now. Take your sleekly designed powerhouse of data-crunching, metasexually-charged, ohmygoodness, stone-me-now-with-slaked-pigiron piece of voluptuousness-incarnate and go away!

Sigh. A 64-bit processor based on IBMs server-grade 64-bit POWER4 lies at the heart of this new desktop range; it's a first for the home user, the architecture of which allows for a tremendous leap in memory capacity, bus-speed, and sex appeal. I don't really care whether the machine is the fastest PC out there, as is claimed, though for it's price, it probably is - my 733 Mhz G4 is faster than a 3 GHz Pentium on some fronts, so I'd not be hard pressed to accept that the G5 is, in practice - the point is that Apple have finally come up with a new flagship range more in keeping with what people expect of them, and one which is more readily expandable.

Some saw the company's announcement of the G5 as a pyrrhic event, but not everything need be based on outdoing the competition; more deserved attention seems to be garnered by serving the needs of a faithful clientele, and I am more than happy with the quiet confidence that they impart through the development of a fine product range. Just release Panther already.

*Ack! The Germans and French didn't support our bid for a legitimate attack on Iraq - trade embargo! Trade embargo!

They've always been rather dull, but a glance through my logs now reveals a couple of strange referrals coming from Googleville:

"unpatriotic englishmen quotes" (pfft, wrong person, dude)
"the longest nipples of great britain" (the above, with greater emphasis on 'wrong')
"can rattlesnakes live in britain" (no, at least not comfortably; too damp in winter)
"canada a little part of britain" (if you insist)
"i am weasel cereal" (I don't doubt it)
"ichat underwear" (I might actually wear these if I was sure no-one was going to undress me)
"the mushrooms and italian sausage are rough but the sauce is deliciously soothing" (I am clearly not alone in my pseudosexual love of food)
"stairs naked" (often, but not on the internet... et ce n'est pas beau)
"viggo mortensen naked" (Viggo is very charming in person, but I don't want to see him naked, nor do you).

I can see how certain parties are concerned that blogs, with their generally wide ranging vocabularies, may be clogging up search engines. Fair point, but I maintain that when I need to find something online, I invariably do, and with no apparent delays. If anything, it has become even faster than it was when I first got online from home in '94... I can't even remember, as an aside, if there were any search engines around at the time. If people can't refine their searches so as to maximise appropriate hits, it is their own problem; they may come to deal through experience, and if not, not. It isn't on par with natural selection, but making people think about what they're looking for will certainly sharpen a few extraordinarily dull minds.

It's a gorgeous Saturday morning out and it looks set to stay this way - like you'd expect anything else from the British global-warming-era summer. So off to London 'til Sunday; have a good weekend!

I stepped out into brilliant sunshine this morning - surprisingly warm given the early hour - yet it's heat was tempered by a strong, chilly breeze; a perfect contrast making for a perfect balance. It was an instant mood lifter, reminding me all-at-once of an evening spent by the Skybar at the Mondrian, Los Angeles, following a great meal at Asia de Cuba; of the disarmingly cold winds that sweep the tops of even the sunniest tropical moutains; of Sausolito and Marin, my unlikely birthplace, awash with the onshore breezes of the Pacific.

For a moment, I was on some grand holiday all over again.
Course, my freezer is full of fruit now (of the plant kind, I'm not stockpiling gay men's body parts) - nice suggestions people - who'd want to be anywhere else?  Ha.

EDIT: The heading text is in Russian (UTF-8 encoded); all OS X browsers should display it correctly, as should IE Win XP and 2000, but if your browser is culturally inept and doesn't support it, it'll probably come up looking like Klingon. If that is the case, I'd love to know about it.

Reintegrating yourself into the working Universe after a timeout can sometimes seem terribly difficult; it was hard enough to string a sentence today, let alone discuss, think and plan science. Forget that the weather outside is the stuff of miracles, that there are a thousand and two things outside of work that you enjoy doing (more); today, coming back feels like a curtailment of my civil liberties. Except that I came back voluntarily, so I can't really complain.

While in Edinburgh - which was utterly super-extremo-wiki-fantasticamundo, by the way - I managed to find myself the requisite haggis at a chippie (a British institution); this one came deep fried in batter, and was totally gorgeous, perhaps better than many I've tried in the past. The guys running the chippie were pretty special too; a bunch of really funny Iraqis, their good humours accentuated by their strong Scottish accents - even their "Alaikum assalam"s came in a deep brogue, which was a nice variation on most Arabic I've ever heard.

During our stay, it was suggested to me that freezing white grapes - and consuming them - might be a very refreshing way to deal with the kind of terrible heat we're enduring down south (terrible? hee hee hee, more!). So I did that this evening. It's like natural sorbet; pretty good. Good enough for me to stick half of my remaining grapes in the freezer, at any rate. 'Course, I don't think they'd do much to cool me down, unless I used them as suppositories, but that's just wrong. Mmm, sleepiness is getting the better of me; time to head.

Off to Edinburgh come the morning; apparently it's much cooler up there - around 21-25 C - which sounds very comfortable. A good weekend to you all; haggis, here I come!

I had a conversation with one of my closest schoolfriends on iChat just now - after a few minutes, he offered, "Have you heard about Andy?" My flippant response, "He's dead?" His reply, "Yes..."

Switching to my mobile, I learned that a former classmate and member of my dorm died last week as a result of heart failure; he was buried yesterday. We didn't much care for one another, but he was a decent bloke, by many accounts, and I'm sorry to have learned of this awful news.

This amounts to the third death from the leavers of 1998 - my year group - which is a pretty high number, considering it has only been five years since we left Harrow. Max, who used to make me laugh my guts out in maths lessons, was killed when he crashed his Land Rover into a tree, and David, who was mild-mannered and truly genuine a man, died a violent death that would seem more believable were it part of an adventure film. The impotence that death affords us is humbling.

Today was a tremendously busy day at work. So I went swimming. Though it was done under duress, I really enjoyed myself, much to the expectation of the evil work-day-interruptor from the other end of the laboratory. Alien scum, grr!
The outdoor pool, properly called a lido, was massive; at 100 yards, it is the longest in the country, a record which once belonged, funnily enough, to the old pool of my former school, Harrow (founded 1572, under charter from Queen Elizabeth I). It is also unheated and colder than Margaret Thatcher's... stare, which made for much refreshment on a day that has been the warmest in recorded history for Britain. Very happy indeed am I.

In other news, we have ourselves a cloned horse, or at least, the Italians do. Quest'italiani sono pazzi, ma che buona scienza! It is remarkable how quickly such advances are made, though success rates remain low, and I remain hopeful that such knowledge will be put to proper use as it is intended, in medicine, and not for personal gratification. I'm sure it will happen, here and there, even with laws in place; few laws go unbroken.

I was diverted by this example of a learning software; a programme which plays 20 questions, and which adapts its database to address inaccuracies in its guessing. It guessed my first item incorrectly, but came close, and got the second quite easily; don't try to be a smartass, or in fact, do.

I saw T3 on Sunday; this software doesn't worry me, but it's amusing to draw the comparison. The Vingean singularity (a theoretical point after which man's technology will outgrow the need for intervention by its creator, being able to exist and replicate itself independently) is probably a ways away, though who knows what the military are playing with...

This week was going to be warm, according to the forecasts. As of this evening, the forecast has changed for the better; we'll be warmer than Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Kinshasa, Addis Ababa, and Miami, with four days scheduled for 34 C (93 F), but cooler than Rome (40 C, 104 F) Paris (39 C, 102 F), Riyadh (45 C, 113 F), and Beijing (35 C, 95 F).

Crikey, we need to buy thongs and string vests people. Unfortunately my djellabya (long, loose, hooded garment with full sleeves, worn especially in Muslim countries) is tucked away at the family home - those things really are cooler than Western attempts at airy clothing, but I don't think the fashion will likely catch on. Brace yourselves.

Like the moths with which I share greatest physiological resemblance, my attraction to light is tremendous. We differ in that my tendency to flutter around lightbulbs in darkened rooms is considerably diminished, nor do I tend to fly headlong into panes of glass, having trained myself out of this particular pursuit, so ill befitting of humankind, a number of years ago.

I do, however, get desperately frustrated when sitting in the shady, sterile confines of my laboratory, cooled, as it is, to the ambient temeratures of the Antarctic summer - which, let's face it, is still pretty icy - when through its enormous picture windows I can see a cityscape bathed in brilliant sunshine, signs of intense heat apparent everywhere, none so obvious as the shimmering air above the sunbaked rooftops. I should be outside, reading a book beneath a shady tree, scribbling ActionScript, php and html in a notebook like the closet geek that I am, fishing in the tall grasses that line the riverbank, or lying half-naked and smothered in suncream on a blanket, roasting on one of the greens like all those who live lives of leisure.

I want to be outside. My aim is to get halfway there through procrastination, daydreaming, and the need to run important errands into town. Well, maybe not the last, but it would be nice; staying in on a day like this is criminal.

When your mind is of a kind that isn't easily phased by many things at all, it can only come as a point of significant irritation to note how easily one is moved by the trivial. You come to expect certain things from the people around you, at least, from those that you count among your friends, and then they act in ways that make you wonder at how it was you came to think of them as dependable in the first place.

It is one thing to assert ones good intentions, but another entirely to act upon them. It hardly seems fair that someone should be dearly prized as reliable among his friends when that same dependability is only reciprocated by some. Or rather, when the offending minority expect consideration equivalent to that of the people who don't repeatedly disappoint you.

It can ultimately be simplified to a matter of tit-for-tat; utterly trivial, but very much the common mechanism by which people interact, whatever the degree to which it plays its part. It can be as minor as someone always turning up late, regular as clockwork, agreeing to things when they haven't even heard, or understood, what you've said, closing a door on you when they think the conversation is over and it isn't; general disregard. My pride is the only thing that you can really fuck with, and mark me, it isn't readily forgotten.

G'night