Zombie Thumb Drive....

Just spent a little of my quiet night in tinkering... Made myself a USB memory stick. Figured I'd take a picture of this one, I also made one as a birthday present for my brother.... Didn't take long, now have an 8Gb memory stick which looks like someone has ripped something of my computer....


The little grey stick next to it is what one of the drives looks like (there's one stuck in the plug)

Got the idea here...

and then I failed to find my soulmate....

So, spent a good portion of today sitting at my computer, pretending I can code. While I was doing this I felt like music, so ended up checking out one of the few iTunes libraries being shared on our network (there are about 3). By chance found one which had a really high overlap with my music tastes, as well as a whole bunch of things I didn't have/had lost/though might be cool... Was getting all geared up to track down my musical soul mate....

Minna thoughtfully pointed out with a smile that it was the lab computer, and that most of the music was probably mine, George's or Juliette's...

Am left with a strange feeling, like I've just fallen for an imaginary person... feel somewhat cheated... (and quite stupid)

As a consolation, I'm now listening to Metallica being played on 4 cellos... a very surreal, but not unpleasant experience. (From Minna's library)

New Lab members

Wei-Ning Sung,
Born 6pm 28/7/8
2.786kg

Mother and baby fine, father very very happy
Pictures to follow

iPathy

iPathy: The feeling of having an iPod full of music, none of which you feel any enthusiasm more.

kids...

sometime I think I need to develop better ways of telling the kids in the lab that I don't feel like answering their questions right now....

I love them really....

wandering

Hauled my coughing wheezing ass out of my apartment a bit this weekend. Wandered around a bit in an attempt to shake my cabin fever (probably didn't help my cold).

sniffles....

Have manfluenza at the moment, so I'm sitting around at home, sniffing lots and using more tissues than a teenage boy who's just got cable porn....

Conditioning, habituation, reflex or something...

1 minute.

That's about the time between me putting my headphones into my ears at work and realising that there isn't any music playing.

Don't get old. It isn't fun.

Loosing my Durian cherry....

So, having been here for nearly a year (shit). I have finally tried Durian.

I got the shuttle bus home last night and ended up talking to Fred on the way to Holland V, he was showing me a great fruit store, and was shocked to hear that I'd never tried the fruit. So he insisted on buying one and having the auntie open it on the spot. (apparently you should only eat them freshly opened, otherwise they tend to ferment).

I have to admit it wasn't anywhere near as smelly as I was expecting. The part you eat is actually quite small, (the yellow part on the picture), which is a 1cm layer around a big seed. The texture is the first strange thing, which is something like mouse... The taste is impossible to describe. Totally unlike anything I've ever eaten. Not unpleasant, just very unusual. I can't say I'm hooked yet. This durian was fairly sweet (they range from sweet to bitter). Fred also told me (after) that, like asparagus, if you eat enough it will make your urine smell. The smell also sticks to your hands amazingly, resisting all soaps. You also keep tasting it for several hours afterwards....

So I'm not totally put off, I'd be prepared to try it again. But at least I've tried it now....

Lab based fun....

This is my life.... in a game....

(from Mirana via Kat)

Eating, eating, eating

Kat's visit, unusually involved quite a bit of eating out... Here are the noteworthy places we found/revisited....

Blue Ginger
A very good Peranakan restaurant, near Tanjong Pagar. This place takes my prize for easily the best service I have ever had in Singapore. To the point where we ordered a bottle of wine, tasted it, thought it was ok, if slightly unusual, drank a bit before the maitre d' insisted on giving us a different bottle simply because it looked a bit darker than usual (in hindsight we both agreed it did taste unusual, not corked, but a bit more like sherry than a white wine usually does). The food was excellent, especially the otak otak and mackerel curry. Slightly more expensive than usual, but worth it for the service alone....

Da Paolo Pizza Bar
Still my favourite place for pizza in Singapore. Really good crispy base, good range of toppings. This is balanced/offset by the service, which has been consistently dreadful every time I've been. Ranging from being very slow (30 minutes just to order) to the waitress forgetting to order our pizzas. Still, your pizza will come eventually, it will be excellent when it comes, but perhaps order a bottle of Prosecco or two beers each (even these are slow) as the waiter is seating you...

Sun Japanese Restaurant

In an attempt to satisfy my woman's need for sushi, we went to Sun at Chijmes (near City Hall MRT). I love the sushi here, as it extends much further than the standard, salmon sashimi, tuna sashimi, rolls and wraps of most places. The california rolls with deep fryed oyster were wonderful, as well as the rolls with prawn and smoked eel. My favourite was the plate with three pieces of imported Japanese tuna, each a different cut, each visibly different colour, taste and texture. Ok, so I have never eaten sushi in Japan, but by the western approximations I've grown up with, this was far better...

Finding Nemo....

Just spent a few days diving in Pulau Tioman in Malaysia. Managed to do our PADI Advanced Open Water Diving thing, which involved very fun night diving (with cool phosphorescent algae in the water) and very fun deep dive (30m) to a couple of wrecks, where we saw several very poisonous Lion fish (see picture). We also had to do a few mental tests on the surface and at depth to see if we were affected by nitrogen narcosis. I managed to do mental arithmetic underwater but got totally lost on a simple hand game... then started to giggle. Kat wasn't at all affected, but was very amused by my behaviour.... Kind of like getting mildly stoned underwater.

We also learned more buoyancy skills (I can now float/hover upside down, which is fun). Plus a slightly tedious navigation skills dive (swim in a line, a square, a triangle)

One of the best bits was spotting a sea snake, which swam past us, dived, then did a few cool loops before falling asleep under some coral....

Again! Again!

coveting....

If I lived in a country where the climate made cycling plausible I'd probably ride something like this wonderful vintage bike remake....