"There is nothing more desperate than an Englishman frantically trying to scrape enough Marmite out of an empty jar to cover the other half of his slice of toast."

Me, just now

Just thought I'd share that

Round 3

The last one, I promise....

Round 2

Just me getting my ass kicked some more....

Very British....

Just got my passport renewed... Only the British could charge S$450 for a passport then only accept payment it cash (had to wander around trying to find a cash machine). Still it was much easier than renewing my passport in England. I was the only person there and the nice woman who took my form seemed glad of the company. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd offered me tea and biscuits...

More strange photo fun....

Had another play around with HDR photography. This time I remembered to take a 'before' picture just using the regular night settings of my camera. I kind of like the results (full size pics here). I had to do a little photoshopping to get rid of the window frame which make a nasty line on the left side. I like the way the yellow safety screen is picked out in the HDR photo. I would like to darken the sky a bit, but I haven't worked out how to do that in Photoshop yet. Ok, so I also need to haul my ass outside and work on my composition, but still... I had a lot of fun taking them and playing with Photoshop.

Orchid fun....

I'm definitely getting old, I'm taking an interest in gardening.... I bought an orchid when I went to the Orchid Garden with Kat. They are pretty cool, they come as little babies (probably not the correct term), in little sterile tubes of food (looks a bit like a tube of fly food). I didn't get around to doing anything with it for about a month, but I finally found a pot for it at the weekend. I got a strange hydroponic type pot, which just has gravel in it (orchids don't need much food). There's a resevoir for water in the bottom (less chance of me forgetting to water it) and a string wick which draws water up into the gravel.











Not a great final pic, but the orchid doesn't really poke over the top yet....
I'm curious to know if/how long the orchid survives....

Safety advice?

I noticed this by the lift at work today... Admittedly the top part is pretty standard, but with the wheelchair picture I'm taking it to mean one of the following:

1. In the event of fire, handicapped people are screwed

2. In the event of fire, handicapped people should fling themselves down the stairs in their wheelchairs.... not sure if that's better or worse than then fire....

Facebook...

Read this on BoingBoing and thought I'd link to it as we were talking about Facebook and why I refuse to join which go along the lines of: I am not a 14 year old girl, I waste enough time already, hugging someone on Facebook doesn't do anything for me, I don't care what most of the people I have ever met in my life are doing right now (except my friends, who I prefer to exchange real communications with, even if it is infrequently).

Facebook will sink under the weight of socially obligated "friendships"

Didn't get to do any sparing today, not enough time. But what I did get was the movies which Marcus recorded of my fighting (getting my ass kicked) by Yang (a guy who I swear can fly)... I also discovered from watching the movies that the rounds are only one minute long... You can tell how knackered I was by then end of the first round because I'm wandering off to the wrong corner...

Round 1



Will try and upload the other two rounds tomorrow, this one took ages...

Gladiator...

Had great fun at Arnis last night. Went to both classes again (in a fairly suicidal way), but I was allowed to try sparing for the first time, which was lots of fun... Got dressed up in a huge helmet with a cage on the front an lots of neck padding, also got a groin guard and I was given a 'padded' stick. I have discovered the following:
1. The term 'padded' is relative, it still hurts when you get hit, although I was too knackered to notice.

2. Fighting is really hard work. We did 3x2 min rounds with 30 seconds break in between. I now have much more respect for boxers... It was one of the most tiring things I've done, much harder that the 45 min workout which we had to do before it (which probably didn't help).

3. Most of what I have learned during the lessons vanishes in the first 15 seconds and the whole thing rapidly degenerates into two 6 year olds with sticks (at least in my case).

4. It is surprisingly fun. I'm looking forward to doing it again. (once the bruises have gone down and my muscles have recovered).

5. Its really hard to take pictures of yourself to illustrate bruises...