Year: 2003

Singapore

Nothing, I think, could quite have made me hurry through terminal one of Singapore’s Chiangi airport like the words “free” and “internet” being prominently displayed together. Sadly, the long line of people who’d got there before me, combined with the approaching take-off slot for my flight on to Melbourne meant that it was all in vain, and I was denied the chance to make my first weblog post from Asia. Oh well, I suppose I will just have to write this the old fashioned way and fake the timestamp later…

The first (and longest) leg of my journey turned out to be surprisingly painless. My feeling of can’t-believe-my-luck smugness at being switched at the gate to an exit row masses-of-legroom seat [turns out the power of smiling sweetly at the check-in girl and pointing out how tall you are is not to be underestimated after all] was slightly diminished by the arrival of a large chap in his England rugby shirt ready to spill over from the seat next to me into mine for the next 13 hours.

But they turned out to be pleasant enough. At any rate, they left the flight in Singapore, for their onward journey to Sydney, the semi-finals, and Jonny Wilkinson’s kicking, to be replaced by an affable and chatty Melbourne businessman who was returning home, and, in the seat next to me, a reassuringly slim bloke from Singapore off on his holidays.

Two things amused me on my journey. One was the the following statement in the in-flight menu: “The cutlery on today’s flight is in accorance with government safety and security regulations. Qantas appreciates your understanding”. Which is fine, but rather odd considering that we had all plastic implements from London to Singapore, but metal forks and spoons from Singapore onwards. Evidently fork/spoon-related terrorism is strictly an ex-London phenomenon.

Also, there was the following PA announcement shortly before we landed: “ladies and gentlemen, this is a lost and found announcement: While the aircraft was being cleaned in Singapore we found a pair of earrings. If anybody has lost a pair of earrings, please describe them to the cabin crew, and we’ll return them to you…
That’s a silver pair of pierced earrings. If anybody’s lost them, do let us know.”

New look

Oh, just wanted to say that (as hopefully you will have noticed) I’ve been making some minor changes to the weblog recently. Hope people like the new (slightly tweaked) look.

Let me know in the comments if you have any major objections and/or thoughts.

Cheers!

You Need A Holiday! Somewhere In The Sun…

What with Rob’s recent posts from his secondment in Hong Kong, and my counter having finally reached zero (meaning I am now allowed to go on holiday), the Paste weblogs are about to become truly global.

Assuming that the crew of my BA flight this evening haven’t had a few too many pints before take off, [the headline on today’s Daily Mirror said: “Too Drunk To Fly”–how drunk is too drunk to fly? Is just a little bit drunk ok?] I shall be arriving in Melbourne on Friday (I thought I just wouldn’t bother with Thursday this week) for a much-needed break.

I can’t wait.

Messenger. The. Shoot. Don’t.

McDonald’s is apparently really very cross that a new edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary includes the definition for the term “McJob” as “low-paying and dead-end work” (and this is reported as “news” despite the fact that this meaning for the term was coined by Douglas Coupland over 10 years ago–frankly I’m surprised it hasn’t made it into the dictionary more quickly).

Some people never learn. Just as the ill-thought out legal action of the McLibel case backfired spectacularly resulting in years of negative publicity, so the effect of issuing this press release has been not only to promote someone else’s product, but also to paint themselves as the bad guy oppressive multinational trying to censor the English language in the name of trademark dilution. Did they really expect anyone reading this to take McDonald’s side? Of course it’s those dictionary-compiling jerks that are really at fault, not the poor little multinational conglomerate.

So. Prince Charles, then.

WARNING: If you’re waiting to see this story in the British media, and you don’t want to know the score, please look away now… (and if you do want to know the score, you can find it here).

So, as I’m sure everybody knows by now, even if they don’t get Popbitch, a “senior Royal” might have been caught in a compromising (homo)sexual situation with a close aide. Allegedly. Or he might not. Well, so what if he was? I’m not sure I can really work out what the fuss is about, to be honest. The last time I checked it was the 21st century, where homosexuality isn’t actually illegal, and I’m fairly sure that most people (at least outside the Church of England) think that what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own palace is a matter for them alone. That said, if one of those consenting adults happened to be next-in-line to be head of the Church of England, that might potentially cause a problem for these people (link is to the “Newsday” website story purely for the childish amusement value of the headline: “Split Widens Over Gay Bishop”. Sorry.) However, the question remains whether the rest of us could really care less if the allegation turned out to be true.

An allegation of homosexuality, valid or otherwise, shouldn’t necessarily “destroy the monarchy” ((c) The Daily Mail) any more than infidelity and divorce have done–fodder for the tabloids, yes, but accepting that the monarchy are human beings, rather than God’s representatives bestowed with the divine right of Kings, as I think most of us did several hundred years ago, what, ultimately, is the problem?

Perhaps something that would be a problem, if it were true, would be if the Royal Family could be proven to have perverted the course of justice to prevent their secrets from coming out (if you’ll pardon the pun)? If “a(nother) senior royal” were to remember suddenly a conversation about “dark forces” and the safe-keeping of possessions that was enough to end a court case, it might, perhaps, highlight the absurdity of the Royal Family being, to all intents and purposes, above the law (and in a position to manipulate that law to achieve their own objectives).

I tell you what, though, the Queen’s speech this year should make for interesting viewing. Although I think I might choke on my turkey if she mentions an annus horribilis.

In other news, I did rather enjoy the LNR’s caption competition.

As is traditional, last night we celebrated the failure of a terrorist plot 400 years ago by blowing up a whole pile of stuff in the back garden. Because there’s nothing quite like a really, really, loud rocket for encapsulating 17th century Catholic disenfranchisement.

The standard of our fireworks this year was generally pretty good, but the rubbish ones were given an extra edge by the prospect that something could go horribly wrong at any moment. Perhaps this was connected to the small fire at the back of the garden started by an errant projectile early in the evening. (Which reminds me, I must go and inspect our next door neighbour’s vegetable patch at some point at the weekend. Oh, and our other neighbour’s greenhouse, the recipient of one firework that had fallen due to the force of its first couple of firings, sending the last one horizontally out to the side of the garden.)

I think it was Chris who pointed out at one point that none of us were actually looking at the explosions–instead we were all watching the wobbling tube from which the firework was actually firing itself, thus gaining those precious few extra seconds we’d need to dive inside the house if it turned out to be heading straight for us.

Same time next year then? Absolutely.

Last night was something of a lesson in asking questions first. It might, for example, be a good idea to find out which part of the venue your friends are going to be in before buying an overpriced last-minute ticket (er, then spending more money to get another one, also for the wrong part of the venue). Luckily it was all sorted out and I eventually managed to change that for a ticket that let me in to sit with everyone else, without spending any more.

And it was a cracking gig. I’ve only got two Powderfinger albums, but I knew every song they played. I’m not used to sitting down, though. Watching a gig from one of the upper levels of the Shepherd’s Bush Empire is an odd experience. It feels like the band are playing to the people down on the floor and your just observing from above–a sort of out-of-body gig experience.

The other thing about sitting down is that you can keep going back to the bar all night without having to worry about finding your way back into the crowd. That seemed like a good thing last night, but this morning I’m not so sure.

I’ve also never seen a support band I’ve never heard of go down as well as Jebediah did, but then I suppose their generic aussie guitar rock was slightly more familiar to the rest of the audience than it was to me.

Oh, and Powderfinger will be back in the UK in February, apparently. Maybe this time I’ll get tickets when they go on sale, like everybody else.

Today, I will be wasting time browsing the excellent Group Hug online confessional website (links from the Guardian Online section and the lnr journal). It’s a bit like the man who fell asleep website (which is full of things supposedly overheard on the tube, sample: “I spoke to God and he told me that he hates you”).

Only better.

If RiverSoft made e-voting machines

These leaked emails from Diebold, reported widely on the web, but strangely not in the traditional media, make pretty scary reading. Diebold manufacture electronic voting apparatus (used widely in the US, including the 2000 presidential elections).

Read the excerpts to get a taster:

“Elections are not rocket science. Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss [sic] managed.”

“…They need this, to prove to the media, as well as, any candidates & lawyers, that they did not view or print any Election Results before the Polls closed. However, if there is a way that we can disable the reporting functionality, that would be even better.”

The tone of a lot of the emails sounds rather familiar, and reminds me very much of the sort of correspondence that used to go round at a certain, now-defunct, software company that I used to work for. As Ben says:

“The tone of the “managers” reminds me of companies I’ve worked for. They’ve inherited a ramshackle system of desperate, last-minute hacks, and take pride in their knowledge of how to work around all the problems. Look at how any problem report is answered by a long, rambling explanation of how the system works, followed by another improvised fix.”

Doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence for the democratic process, really, now does it.

Take my wife, no please, take her…

Today (and much of yesterday for that matter) I have been spending far too much time hitting “refresh” on the tickets-for-sale page of the aussie-in-London listings website gumtree, in a vain attempt to get myself a last-minute ticket for tonight’s Powderfinger gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. (Entirely my own fault, of course, since I passed up a number of opportunities to (a) buy one when they weren’t sold out or (b) grab one of the ones my friends picked up, but it was only at the weekend that I decided that I actually wanted to go after all).

While looking through the site, though, I was highly amused to read this posting:

“Radiohead – Dublin 4th December Free Ticket!!!

So if anyone wants to come over and see the gig with my girlfriend then please mail me, you will obviously have to pay your own travel and accommodation but the ticket is free. Let me know if your interested.”

What kind of a relationship do these people have that he would rather drink on his own (while some random stranger off the interwebnet takes his girlfriend to a gig by the band she loves) than suffer the indignity of having to listen to an hour or so of Thom Yorke? Would you put up with this if your partner did it to you?

I notice he says that “we are both planning to go to Dublin”, but that “my plan is for her to go…”. Do you think she even knows about this?

Classic Newsnight: Did You Threaten To Overrule Him? (links to Real Player video)

Tom Watson has more on Michael Howard here. It’s worth a read, in case you need your memory jogging about the nasty little man who will be leader of the opposition (but, god help us, hopefully never the country). The man introduced the poll tax and clause 28. He’s pro-war, anti-abortion, against a woman’s right to statutory maternity leave, opposes the Human Rights Act…

“AND – remember Michael Howard sat through 14 years of Tory Government (from his election in 1983) loyally voting to privatise the railways, water, electricity and gas, sell off School Playing Fields, cut benefits, install the internal market into the NHS, run down public services and destroy local democracy not to mention presiding over the worst recession for decades, the spectacular failures over economic policy starting with Sterling’s ejection from the ERM and the spectre of negative equity… And in opposition this is the man who has voted against the London Mayor, National Minimum Wage, the New Deal, against devolution to Scotland and Wales, against all of Labour’s budgets and against paid holidays for all workers, full time rights for all workers and the vast majority of all the Government’s achievements over the last 6 years.”

Oh, and he also said last year that he’d never stand for Tory leader again.