You will be shocked to learn that I failed Art in school

Kristine asked me what the "Valley of Death" was, and in the absence of photographic evidence, I turned to the wonders of MS Paint to show her: .

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I know, I know - I am a supremely talented artist.  Signed copies are available on request (they'll be worth a lot one day, especially after I'm dead... which could be sooner than you think, in view of the subject matter of the artwork).

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Gordon and the Breakdancer

For someone who understands virtually nothing about politics (I still get policies of the Left and Right confused), I have a morbid fascination for elections.  Maybe I just like bashing the "refresh" button on webpages - who knows. Anyway, as I was following the running tallies of the UK elections on the internet (as I type this, the Conservative Party needs 40 of the last 49 seats in order to get a simple majority), I came across this photo of Gordon Brown:

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What the hell is the guy behind him doing? My money is on the robot dance, but I couldn't be sure.

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Shazam! I am a geek.

A few years ago I stumbled across an unknown album in my laptop's music library.  I was searching for an album (I can't actually remember what, perhaps it was Missy Elliot) and found an album by a random lady called Missy Higgins. I assume that one of our visitors dropped it onto my hard drive as they topped up their iPod in anticipation of the next leg of their journey, and as it was a quiet afternoon I turned it on and had a listen.

It was a pretty good album, and after a few plays both Rachel and I were quite happy to listen to more.  When her next album came out, we bought it online through iTunes - I don't actually have a physical copy.  This is what it looks like:

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It's a great album (clicking on the picture should take you to her official website where you can listen to a few of her songs), and her followup EP "More Than This" (yup - A Bryan Ferry cover) was pretty cool too.

Anyway, what was I getting to?  Ah yes - this weekend we were out in Ap Lei Chau getting a few things for his lordship and a few things for his lordship's court jesters (the cats).  As we walked into the pet store, they were playing what we thought was Missy Higgins. I hadn't heard the song, so I did what any ubergeek would do - I fired up a song recognition application on my iPhone and held it next to the speakers for 10 seconds:

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...and 20 seconds later:

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The clever old application (Shazam) identified the song, the artist, the album it came from, and even presented me with a link to buy an electronic version of the song.  So, this morning I downloaded the entire album from iTunes and have been listening to it today - it's a bit lighter and more "poppy" than Missy Higgins, but it's extremely catchy.

And there ends the celebration of how much of a geek I am. (Really, I'm the only person who finds this stuff interesting - I could have started this post with "Dear Diary...")

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Bathtime, Digger

One of George's favourite books is the Little Yellow Digger.  Needless to say, the word "Digger" features about a thousand times, and George absolutely loves it: .

Yesterday, munchkin grabbed the book, then started crawlthrowing towards Rachel (he can't hold a book and crawl at the same time, so he crawlthrows - crawl a bit, throw the book a bit, crawl a bit more, throw the book a bit further...)  The crawlthrow culminated in one last book fling and him proudly yelling "DIGGA!" to Rachel.  So we can now add "Digger" to the list of words he sort of understands (the others being "cheese", "yay!", "cats" and "uh-oh").  I know it doesn't sound like much of an achievement, but knowing that he's associating words with actions and objects is pretty cool (given that he calls anything and everything "mummy" or "daddy"...)

Anyway, to celebrate the new (rather manly) word, his very proud daddy bought this for him at lunchtime yesterday:

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It's not yellow, but it is little

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Other than that, the only real news is that George's first haircut is tomorrow.  I'll take photos, I promise.

Ending the working week with a few photos of his lordship in the bath last night:

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Morning shenanigans | The Poochess Bride

. Just a few photos of Little Mr Curlytop from this morning:

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The local English language newspaper prints Pooch Cafe - it's a great little comic strip that I only discovered when I arrived in Hong Kong in 2004.   Anyway, the latest comic was brilliant...

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...particularly if you realised where the dialogue came from:

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Inigo: I do not suppose you could a-speed things up?

Dread Pirate Roberts: If you're in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do.

Inigo: I could do that. I still got some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you.

Dread Pirate Roberts: That does put a damper on our relationship.

Inigo: I swear, on the soul of my father, Domingo Montoya, you will reach the top alive.

Dread Pirate Roberts: Throw me the rope.

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Indeed - today's strip was a wonderful little tribute to the awesome 1987 movie, The Princess Bride.

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Narcissism Pt 2 | Why people pirate movies

Rachel took this photo of the little man this morning - it seems he has developed a bit of a crush... on himself: .

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And on a completely unrelated note, I stumbled across this graphic this morning.  Having sat through annoying unskippable (loud) movie previews and pointless FBI warnings many, many times over the last few years, this is a nice reminder of why people are reluctant to fork out for DVDs these days:

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Poppy is cold | Every photo needs a cat

It got a bit cold today - there's a cold snap that will apparently last until early next week.  Just how cold was it? You should have asked Poppycat this morning: .

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And on a completely different subject (one that annoys Rachel), I discovered an application for my phone that does something absolutely unique and awesome to photos. It adds cats.

Seriously, I can't count the number of times I've looked at a photo and thought to myself "That photo really needs a cat".  Now, thanks to the folks at CatPaint, I can add cats to any photo on my phone.  Seriously, it's the best cat-based photo editing program I've ever seen. Some examples of my work this evening:

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Catpaint.

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I know what you're thinking: "Awesome."

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Random photos from Chez Bunky this morning

A few photos from the morning routine of the Bunkmeister.  Firstly, his mummy decided that his eating was getting a little bit... how do we say... "animated", and his clothes were coming off pretty badly after mealtimes (especially mealtimes involving sauces).  An afternoon trip to Ikea yielded a number of new mass-produced and flatpacked Swedish goods, one of which was some sort of overcoat which was bound to make Bunky look like either an air traffic controller or a construction worker.  The aim of the bright green jacket was of course to protect his blessed-by-Nepalese-monks-pure-merino clothing underneath. I guess it worked, but someone was less than impressed with its first outing: .

DSC_2892Ok, looking a bit too much like a Grandpa Paddy cycling jacket, but so far so good...

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DSC_2894...and not enjoying it as much.

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And here are a few random ones from crawling time - he's just discovered the gate between the lounge and the kitchen (we have an open pantry in there, so to minimise the risk of him ending up under a pile of tinned tomatoes and blending appliances, he's not allowed in the kichen.  Like his Daddy.)

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DSC_2900Note the puppy dog eyes on the bottom right. It didn't work (it was a close one though)

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And I leave you with one of Osama Ben-Jamin.  Discovered this week that despite him treating May like his mortal enemy, whenever George cries, Ben comes running and miaowing. It's quite sweet (but he's still a little brat).

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A few random phone photos and a pre-breakfast window stare

A few completely random photos from my phone: .

IMG_0127I took this in near darkness - it's Ben and Poppy on the back of our couch.  Surely this can't be comfortable for poor little squashed Pop?

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IMG_0121I couldn't resist - this is from one of the toilets of the Cathay Pacific plane we flew on over the weekend.  Is "choke" really the word they were looking for?

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DSC_2728This is from this morning - it looks posed, but I promise it wasn't.  I just wanted Rachel to hold still, and for some reason they both ended up looking out the window.  It doesn't take much to get George's attention (birds, ships, pieces of toast and random dust particles are all rather exciting to him), but I'm not entirely sure what Rachel was looking at...

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George eats hair

We had a lovely afternoon - after George's sleep and video Skype session with his grandmother, we went to the South side of the island and walked from Deepwater Bay to Repulse Bay (a pretty easy 25 minute stroll along the waterfront).  On the way back we stopped at the wonderful Coco Thai Restaurant, where Mummy and Daddy enjoyed some spring rolls and some chicken wrapped in pandan leaf, while George enjoyed some rice crackers (he seemed to enjoy them).  I didn't take my camera, but got this one of George eating his Mummy's hair just after we came home in the afternoon (I took it on my phone). .

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I did however have my camera when we got home, and managed to take this photo of a rather gorgeous sunset.  Sunsets are coming a lot earlier these days - winter is almost upon us (for me that's a good thing, but Rachel doesn't like it as much).  That said, it was a mid 20 degree Celsius day to day - doesn't feel like winter at all...

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