i promise not to build a nuclear weapon using my iphone

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i had never spotted this before - the EULA (end user license agreement) that flashes up before you update your iphone software.  it makes me promise that i won't use it to make nuclear missiles or chemical or biological weapons.  that's right, nuclear missiles or chemical or biological weapons.  seriously, it's a great phone - but what the hell is inside it?  and to think i was once concerned with radiation from cellphones. click on the pic to see it bigger:

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just a quiet saturday.  i just had the afro trimmed, we walked down to the post office to pick up another birthday present for rachel, and we're heading to mark and boo's tonight for dinner (that's 5 floors down in the same building we live in, so it's a nice easy commute in the elevator)

financial bailout of the automotive industry in usa

this whole financial bailout thing is quite interesting to watch, especially from the point of view of someone who is fiscally and economically clueless (that would be me). things that don't really make sense to me include GWB's systematic removal of any incentive for these car makers to develop more fuel-efficient vehicles (surely nothing to do with his oil buddies, nooooo), and the fact that they've made the same sh*tty gas guzzlers for years and years and years - and didn't think to change things when oil was a whopping US$140 per barrel. and now they act surprised as they find themselves in a financial poopoo.

still, the new obama-led presidency has said that any bailout will require a commitment to invest a considerable amount of money into fuel-efficiency and alternative fuel technologies, which appears to be a very sensible strategy.

anyway, something popped up on the internet tubes this morning that made me wonder whether the bozos in charge of the auto industries actually have any clue at all about anything.

the three ceos of ford, GM and chrysler had to go begging to washington for a bit of moolah. ford pointed out that they had closed 17 plants and had made made 51,000 people redundant over the last three years. money was tight and they are struggling.

in these tough times, how did each of these three ceos get from detroit to washington?  by private jets of course.  US$288 on economy, US$837 on first class, but us$20,000 by private jet. unbelievable.

the sad thing is, if these morons don't get the money, they're not the ones who get stung. they all have lovely redundancy and bonus packages, pensions and golden handshakes.  and if they do get the money... well, the private jets continue to fly.

morons having children

no, not us! if antenatal classes have taught me anything, it's that some hong kong expats are so mind numbingly self centred and clueless that it makes me want to throw furniture at them.

last night was the return of annoying bint (henceforth referred to as "bint"). some of the gems that she came out with last night:

midwife: "there are shared rooms, private rooms and there are vip rooms as well" bint: "is there a price list for each of them?" midwife: "yes. the private rooms and vip rooms are very expensive though" bint: [without a trace of self awareness or humour] "i'm worth it"

she then proceeded to head over to the wall mirror and pick her zits. seriously.

then during the maternity ward tour, we were shown a shared recuperation room (4 beds with separating curtains). As bint walked in, she uttered a very loud "not interested."

And as she walked out: "i'm not sharing with anyone."

question time with the doctor was equally fun: "i don't want any pain. on a pain scale of 1 to 10, i'm a minus 1". closely followed by: "if i can only get an epidural when i'm 5cm dilated, how am i going to get from 1cm to 5cm without pain?"

i was tempted to ask her if she had considered adoption - although lack of pain aside, i really don't think it's fair to introduce more of her moronic gene pool to the world.

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on a cheerier note - it's rachel's birthday today! 30 years old!

for this auspicious occasion, she's getting an eternity ring (named as such because that's how long it takes to pay the thing off). I'll admit it's shiny and sparkly  but from what i can tell it can't check email or surf the net, so i'm not really sure what it actually does.  also, we are heading to bangkok tomorrow for a nice long weekend "final solo holiday" and 30th celebration.

she also got an album of photos from our time in hong kong (from me) and some lovely pyjamas (from patrick and barbara). there are other presents which are reportedly somewhere between here and various nz post offices.

i must get off the computer now, as rachel wants to conduct her morning "sky showbiz" check and see what the celebrities are wearing, who is shagging who, and which of them has adopted an african child this week.

sunday night

aaah, almost the end of the weekend.  damn.  had a busy day today - i played golf with john in the morning:

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then we headed to kennedy town to sort out some cushions for a chair in cracker's room (cracker = all rachel ate in the first trimester = baby's nickname), shot over to kowloon to investigate rachel's 30th birthday present (i'm not telling - rachel picked it out, but you'll have to ask her if you want to know...), then i headed to fuel espresso for a coffee with sanjay, chantel and co while rach got her toenails painted (or whatever they do to toes and feet at a pedicure).  had a quiet night at home and watched the movie "run fat boy run" - which was quite hilarious.

took a few photos of el rats this weekend as well - rachel and poppy, ben looking at me on the balcony wondering how i got out there, and ben reclining on the floor:

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not much else - oh, there was this effort in the gym last week after my run on friday.  too sexy for my shirt:

busy week this week - we have an appointment with the unbornbabydoctor on tuesday, then i have work website profile photos on wednesday, then thursday is rachel's 30th birthday - and then on friday we take off to bangkok for a long weekend (partly for rachel's birthday and partly for the "last holiday" for a long, long, long time...

saturday morning laziness

ola!  what a week - barack obama voted president-elect of the united states of whatever george bush left behind, and i managed four lunchtime gym visits (i skipped the day of the us elections - i might have been watching coverage at my desk). we are cruising along in the runup to xmas.  xmas day we have the challis clan here for dinner - and that means ALL of them:  robin, kirstie, paddy, arabella, kate and aurora.  it'll be a busy day, but it will be fantastic - funnily enough the challis clan came for xmas lunch in 2005, and at that time it was just robin, kirstie and 'bump'!

today we've got cam, carolin and little sam coming down for some coffee and pastries - we haven't seen them for ages, and then we're heading out to discovery bay to sort out some employment papers for charise. a quiet night tonight - sweet.

tomorrow john s and i are heading out early morning to nine eagles golf course by the airport for a cheeky 9 holes.  after that, not sure what the day holds.  i have my eye on a new camera lens...  of course it's absolutely necessary to buy this lens in order to photograph brand new baby. not buying it effectively means that i don't love the child.  so i have to buy it, see?

next week is rachel's 30th birthday (thursday, in case you've forgotten), and we're heading to bangkok for 4 days on friday (it's not very far away).

time to go and clean myself up and get the coffee ready.  a few photos which i may or may not have uploaded before (click on them to enlarge...)

bloody airlines

just looking at the cost of getting home with mini-narly next march, and it annoys me greatly to see that air new zealand can get me to london for HK$2050 HK$4080 plus various taxes, but the best offer i can get to go to new zealand is HK$6500 plus (loads of) taxes.  it's amazing what a complete lack of competition can do for the price of flying. there are more than 15 airlines flying from hong kong to london direct.  and how many fly directly to new zealand? two - air new zealand and cathay pacific.

NB - Corrected the numbers. The Air NZ site had a one way deal of HK$2040, but still - $2000+ per person extra to get back to New Zealand is completely kumara-sucking.

***

us elections this week.  is it possible for them to screw things up for the third time in a row? probably.

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post-bledisloe

great night last night - the all blacks won 19-14 (although in fairness that pass that led to mccaw's try was painfully forward, so 14-14 would have been a fair ending).  we had a fun time in the stands, with great seats - other than the plonker australian a few seats behind us who simply could not shut up the whole night with his painfully ignorant take on the ref's multitudes of crap decisions. met up with mark pearce (margot's husband) and his work colleague andrew and heading to TOTT (the humbly named restaurant "talk of the town") in causeway bay to meet one of their clients. turns out that TOTT was in the hotel where the all blacks were staying, so on the way out, mark managed to shake Keven Mealamu's hand and congratulate him on a great result!  had a great meal and then called it a night fairly early, as mark and andrew were pretty jetlagged.

lazy day today, we read the paper and mucked around this morning and then mark popped over for an afternoon bbq (and to drop off our basinet that he had kindly dragged over from new zealand). had a nice relaxing afternoon with sausages, steak and beers.

and now i have to go back to work tomorrow.  bah.

here is a shot of our sunset, taken about an hour ago from our little balcony:

hedge fund fight night

although i was feeling a tad stomachey, i headed along to the 2nd annual hedge fund fight night in causeway bay last night.  alex was one of the 12 fighters and was second to last fight - the business end of the evening. ended up having a great time - we had a good bunch of people on our table and although i'm not really into boxing or fighting or anything like martial arts, i did enjoy myself. the food was crackingly good and i took much pleasure in destroying a plate of lamb shank and garlic mash in record time.

alex's fight went the full three rounds and in the end he lost on points.  it was a great fight - i thought he took the second and lost the first and third, but the other guy did land a few more blows on alex and the result seemed to be fair.

the evening ended up finishing around midnight, and after dropping alex off at a pub, i scuttled home to see rach and the cats.  ben kindly woke me at 6:30am demanding a pat and fresh bowl of food.  brat.

some photos from the evening (click for bigger size):

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weirdly, a handful of visitors crashed our function - recognise any of them?

an expat onboard smoothes the ride

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a real conversation with a coworker about an hour ago:

her: "are you catching the bus again tonight?" me: "no, i only caught it last week as i had to pick some tickets up from kowloon" her: "oh. it is good when an expat gets on the work bus. the driver drives more slowly and carefully if there is an expat on the bus."

crikey.

lazy saturday

had a lovely afternoon in hammersmith at a pub, where we caught up with kirsty, her hubby james, anna moo, nic, steve & emma, dale, ricky and fen. gorgeous day, great food and great company. perfect way to catch up. bbq at jonathan and laura's last night, j's parents were in town, and it was a nice chance to catch up with them. delicious feed of burgers, snags and chucken - I could hardly move by the end of the evening...

heading to covent garden today to meet up with john and jane pascoe, and then am going to kill a bit of time with the camera while rach has her baby shower at tim and sarah's place.

balham! (london part 2)

made it to balham and are now hanging with sarah, charlie and penny. after a bit of yelling (at me) penny is now asleep and charlie is doing jigsaw puzzles with rachel. charlie is hilarious - he says "uh oh" and "cup of tea!" constantly! here's a photo of feeding time at the zoo:

edinburgh

just back from edinburgh and we're looking out at a wet and gloomy tuesday morning in london.  had an amazing time in edinburgh and the wedding was fantastic - a spot of rain during the day, but the ceremony was lovely, the reception was absolutely marvellous, and we met - and reunited with - some awesome people.  i took a load of film photos which won't be ready for a few weeks, but we did take a few with rachel's camera. damon and lynn looked fantastic (damon was in a kilt!) and everything went beautifully.  i was actually playing music with paul (the best man) when he met damon and so after dinner when they were bashing out a few tunes on the guitar, they invited me up on stage for a few kiwi songs - great fun.  thankfully i had tanked up on red wine so wasn't nervous at all...

sunday we wandered around edinburgh and went to a lovely michelin star restaurant "number 1" in the balmoral hotel.  loved it - great food and great staff in a beautiful old building. a bit of an indulgence, but hey - it's not a regular occurrence  :-)

monday we saw the castle (photos are on my other camera sorry)  and then caught manju and sunethra for lunch at a small organic cafe in downtown edinburgh (urbanangel).  took a bus trip around the sights to kill a bit of time and then we had a cheeky wine in a beautiful old bank building called "the dome" before heading to the airport.

a few photos from the wedding are below, but i've got plenty more from the weekend on the other camera - but i'll sort those out when we head to sarah and tim's place today (we're staying with them for the rest of the week).

london part 1

landed safely in london after an uberlong flight - 12.5 hours. thankfully we managed to upgrade to premium economy using points, which put us upstairs in the nice quiet bit. i ate a monster amount of food and watched a ridiculous amount of tv - all good. the crew were awesome and i even managed a bit of sleep despite it being a daytime flight. had a great dinner with katy, sam, anna and kieran at a local bar / restaurant "the duke" and today we had a lazy day, with a coffee in richmond, a 1.5 mile walk down the river, and then a great pasta lunch in a little italian-style cafe. i had forgotten how good gnocchi is...

currently chilling out at sam and katy's place and tonight it's dinner in covent garden.

off to edinburgh tomorrow afternoon from gatwick and then back monday. sorry, this isn't very thrilling but here are a few photos from the morning walk. click on them to make them bigger:

a few photos from last week

we spent most of this weekend eating.  dinner with the binningtons on friday night, dinner with cam and carolin and the wadhams on saturday, and then lunch with the hoffman clan today (featuring the ridiculously cute evie).  today was a quiet one, i got the curls chopped before we took off for lunch and after helping kylie and alex with their new iMac, i ended up doing a bit of work and just schmoozing around the house while madam got a pedicure. three more sleeps until london and edinburgh - can't wait, and it'll be especially awesome because sarah (robinson) isn't working at the moment and we'll be able to keep her company and get some quality time in with charlie and penny.

we head to edinburgh on friday afternoon and then we're back on monday night.  the week is pretty much free, and on saturday we'll have a pub lunch somewhere to see everyone and then on sunday rachel has a baby shower which she insists is not a baby shower (the official name is "afternoon tea"...)

here are a few photos from the roll of film i took last week (for the technically curious - pentax k1000 with ilford 400 b&w).  i'm still learning the limitations of the camera (it's 30+ years old after all), but it looks like it does need to be slightly undercooked (so when i'm using a 400ISO film, i set the camera to make it think that it's a 800ISO speed film - hence giving it a bit less light than it really needs).

click on one of the thumbnails to see bigger shots, and use the arrows on the sides of the picture to move to the next photo.

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from left to right: lucy (john and kate's second schnauzer), rachel (my first wife...) and nick and rachel at isola last weekend during nick's whirlwind 5 hour visit to hong kong.

redesigned... AGAIN?

sorry team - I had to do a little overhaul of the site, as you can see.  this should be permanent (well, at least until we leave hong kong one day).  i'm busy putting some of the photo pages back together, but if you're curious, here's why i've had to do this (again).

i've use apple's dotmac site hosting service for a few years - it's pretty good and generally reliable, but the main weakness is that i can only publish stuff from a single computer and i can't edit anything online.  not very useful at all, especially when i want to post stuff when travelling or if rachel calls me from work to demand that i remove the latest embarrassing photo of her from public view.

another problem is that the dotmac service has recently been overhauled and is no longer working as well as it used to.  apart from stability issues and weird dodgy behaviour, i can only access some of the control panels from firefox and safari (not internet explorer).  that's no problem when i'm not at home, but on the road it's a pain in the kapootie.

the new site can be edited from home, from any computer hooked up to the internet, and even from my phone.  plus, uploading new stuff is a lot quicker and a lot easier. this of course means that i'll update the thing more often, although quantity doesn't mean quality...

i'm still tweaking bits and pieces here and there, and i'll be adding old photos as the days go on - but in the meantime if you see any problems, just head to the Contact page and let me know.