Tonight, Neil and I are doing something to celebrate. Neither of us are sure what activity is going to define our celebration — a good movie (I read Hellboy is now out on DVD), a big spread for dinner (I’m leaning towards another all-you-can-eat or Little Chilli), a night out… something.

On Monday morning, I start my new job, the first real job I’ve had since moving to Xiamen. I sent in a CV, went for an interview, a position was proffered, and I accepted. Then I went home and jumped up and down a lot.

It’s not The Economist or like anything I’ve ever done, there is no obsessive keeping up with the news and regional issues as with my previous job (which also provided great fodder for this website), but I think there will be a lot of writing and talking, challenges, unglamorous trudging around, and travel. I know there will be days when I’ll be pissed off, effing and blinding at everything that moves. The hours will be long, but I’ll be doing something with visible results.

I’ll need to start throwing good parties.

Thrilled doesn’t cover it. Ecstatic doesn’t cover it. I’ve been given a chance to get involved in something that some others would deem as pretty bloody cool, and although it’s not an industry I ever thought I’d join (in any way, shape, or form), I think I’m up to it.

No words can really describe how fucking great I feel.

I envy those who can, and do, spend the time to write smart, witty things on the Internet.

Serving country in armed forces: good.
Not fighting in war you oppose: also good.
Fighting in war you oppose: complex.
Serving country in armed forces and then fighting to end war you oppose: doubleplus good.
Not fighting in war you support: deeply hypocritical.
Not fighting in war you support and then blaming black people for not letting you serve (known to ethicists as “the DeLay conundrum”): hypocrisy so deep it cannot be plumbed by known moral instruments.
Having “other priorities” during war you support: vacuous.
Enlisting in National Guard: good.
Using one’s father’s connections to jump the line waiting to enlist in National Guard, in order to avoid service in Vietnam: bad, but widely practiced and considered merely venial in some cultures.
Using one’s father’s connections etc. and then not fulfilling obligations to National Guard after all: unambiguously bad.
Using one’s father’s connections etc., not fulfilling obligations etc., then serving as commander-in-chief, waging war under false pretenses, and extending reservists’ terms of service in war while cutting veterans’ benefits: kind of like being on Tom DeLay’s moral level, only worse.

I envy them, but then their existence means I don’t feel like I have to try, and then fail, at being smart and witty.

‘Most wanted’al Qaeda bomber held in Pakistan:

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national is wanted for synchronised bombings that killed more than 200 people at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

…

Ghailani was among seven people about whom the United States said in May it was seeking information amid fears of a possible attack in the near future.

Remember The New Republic’s story about alleged US government pressure to deliver High Value Targets during the Democratic National Convention? Here’s their update:

[Editor's Note: This afternoon, Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, announced that Pakistani forces had captured Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian Al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The timing of this announcement should be of particular interest to readers of The New Republic. Earlier this month, John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari broke the story of how the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistani officials to apprehend high-value targets (HVTs) in time for the November elections--and in particular, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. Although the capture took place in central Pakistan "a few days back," the announcement came just hours before John Kerry will give his acceptance speech in Boston.]

The story claimed the US government wanted any announcements of arrests to be made during the first three days of the convention (26-28 July). John Kerry made his speech on 29 July — obviously, this allegation of the US government trying to pressure other governments for domestic political purposes is a complete fabrication.

Coincidence or not, the timing sure is incredibly convenient.

Update: You know, I was only kidding about the difference in dates proving the non-political value the timing of this capture has. Some people clearly aren’t.

Yo, what gives? It’s the 29th of July today, right? We wanted the ISI to turn UBL over on the first three days of the convention–not the last–the better to get the full news cycle…what happened?

You’d think that all we needed to do on our first night in our new apartment was to unpack as much as possible, and settle into a well-deserved night’s sleep. Well, you’d think wrong.

I’ll remind all that it’s summer, and a Xiamen summer isn’t balmy. If it’s a clear day, it’s boiling hot. If it’s overcast, it’s hot and extremely humid. Air conditioning is a must for all spoiled foreigners in the city. Needless to say, the real estate agent, H (who, by the way, has earned his commission, no question), informed us that he couldn’t get a hold of the person who is in possession of the air conditioner remote controls.

“Just suffer tonight with the fan and I’ll get you the remotes tomorrow,” he said.

We do have a fan, so I figured it we could deal and not be too warm and uncomfortable.

There were a few more small items we needed to move, and we required a food fix, so off we went to accomplish those missions.

Home we came, laden with three laptops and assorted electrical items, sweaty and ready to have a shower in our new apartment, when we realised that the main breaker had tripped. And we couldn’t turn it back on. We weren’t in darkness, we had power, just an inability to use anything that required plugging into a socket, which included our water heater and fan. One of the guards came up and found that the breaker in the bathroom was causing the trip, so our fan came back on, but hot water was unavailable (and we could also hear water from the heater leaking inside the walls, which certainly made me feel safer).

Did I mention that I’d picked up a chest cold that weekend?

The next morning was known as weary. H despatched a plumber and air conditioner service man, both of whom had an opinion on our breaker / electricity problem. The plumber’s electrician friend arrived and also gave his opinion. Tools were bared, switches were flicked, breakers were turned off and on in an attempt to troubleshoot the issue.

Every time one of them claimed to have isolated the offending circuit (socket?), they would disconnect it and turn everything back on. The main breaker would trip all over again. Back to the drawing board. This went on all afternoon, until the air conditioner service man gave up and went home. The plumber and electrician bypassed the main breaker (they’d decided the main breaker was faulty), said they’d come back with a new one the next day, and went home.

Hell, at least we had air conditioning that night.

To cut the long story short, the main breaker was not faulty (cue and repeat the entire afternoon of fix and trip, fix and trip), water is still leaking inside the bathroom walls, one air conditioner is not working, and the flat is not so clean. All in good time, and a good time will be had at the flatwarming and things will need to be cleaned again.

Boffins find secret to attracting women:

Research published in the journal Nature suggests some men might be born seducers and others born blunderers - just like fruit flies.

It explains why some blokes I know are — as Neil terms — top shaggers. Since they’ve never tried their l33t fruit fly skillz on me, I have no idea if it’s true.

Why athletes get injured (to be published in the New Scientist on July 31):

A new mathematical model of the body shows that these athletes rely on a fixed combination of movements that they cannot easily modify. The discovery might help in spotting injury-prone athletes early on.

The study was on cricket bowlers, but it may help to explain why I’m so prone to injury (aside from being clumsy).

Electablog is just about my favourite site covering the Democratic National Convention. I’ve been a fan since I signed up for his NextDraft newsletter (ages ago).

He’s worth reading every day.

Holy shit. Terry sent along a link (”Some troll posted this in a forum and I thought you might get a laugh out of it.”) extolling the virtues of Asian teenagers with breasts so huge no surgeon could seriously manage to claim any as their handiwork (no nudity, but I don’t think it’s safe for work).

These girls were big, much bigger than I expected even in my wildest dreams! They confirmed that during their late childhood in the jungle, priests were called to rub certain tinctures on their body — and especially on their chests. Nobody told them why they were receiving this treatment, but soon afterwards, their breasts started to grow, very fast and very big.

They look really, really… off-balance.

(And yes, I’m well aware that this is possibly / probably a hoax. But geez.)

TuTu alerted me to this story in the Telegraph: US bomber misses target for flypast at air show.

To the consternation of the announcer and spectators at the Hampshire airfield the US bomber could be seen over Blackbushe, five miles to the north-west.

…

The B52 is known for its range - it can fly 8,800 miles without refuelling. It played a key role in the 2001 attack on Afghanistan and during the Iraq War.

Did they sometimes miss their targets in Afghanistan and Iraq by that much, too?

(There’s nothing on the Farnborough website about this. Neither is there any news of this slightly amusing stuff-up on the Society of British Aerospace Companies site.)

Channel NewsAsia reports that Singapore and Malaysia have agreed (with no real timeline) to cooperate more in fighting piracy and terrorism in the Straits of Malacca.

[Singapore's deputy prime minister] Dr Tan said: “The field of security and defence keeps on changing, we face new threats, fighting against radical terrorism where cooperation between Singapore and Malaysia indeed helped in curbing the threat of radical terrorism.”

Related news:

• Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore agree on joint Malacca Straits patrols
• Malaysia, Indonesia rule out joint patrols in Malacca Straits
• S’pore, Malaysia, Indonesia start coordinated Malacca Straits patrols

(In any other country, this would be called a flip flop!)

No word on cooperating to solve outstanding issues that are the cause for much Malaysia- and Singapore-bashing in their respective media. Apparently they’re confident “to resolve outstanding bilateral issues in a fair and amicable manner”.

What, after all these years, they’ve finally seen the light?

No, not the Nicole Kidman remake. The original, starring Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss. Independent, non-bra-wearing women become silicone-boobed, Victorian-dressing androids. Ugly, middle-aged men get told they’re sex gods. Man whose nickname is ‘Dis’ (after Disneyland) runs the show.

The husbands are pretty lousy people for preferring to trade in their wives for robotic slaves. Completely insecure in their own skin, I would say.

On a slightly freaky note, The Herald today tells us the Proper way to do prim. Fifties fashion is great!

Norway’s hotel workers want to ban pay-teevee porn in their places of work.

A typical trick by guests, mostly businessmen, is to call the front desk for extras, such as fresh towels, to get female company, said the Norwegian Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union, reporting a rising number of complaints.

“Most room service personnel work alone. It can be very unpleasant to get called to a room to be met by a naked man,” union leader Eli Ljunggren told Reuters. She said the complaints ranged from sleazy remarks to physical assaults.

That’s because they aren’t like Chinese hotels, whose staff call your room to offer ’special’ massages. The mountain comes to Mohammed in China.

From Danwei and The Australian (thanks, TuTu), we learn that China will soon hold the first plastic surgery beauty pageant. In TuTu’s words,

I can see the headline “China Heat Wave Melts Beauty Pageant - Unidentifiable Blob Declared Winner”

Neil offered his thoughts last night — does the surgeon win a ‘manufacturing prize’ if X number of his patients enter?

The other thing is, who is the actual winner, the surgeon or the patient? Surely the surgeon’s skill is what is at stake here. Will there be lawsuits? What if someone’s nose, or ears, or cheekbones fall off? Do they get extra points for collagen and / or botox injections?

And most importantly, will there be a humour section, with surgeries gone wrong? I’d watch that.

A poster with a masked gunman was found on a wall outside the Chinatown MRT station on Saturday morning.

The unusual poster and some graffiti next to it drew a crowd of curious onlookers.

Police cordoned off the area around the poster and dusted it for fingerprints, before removing it for further investigations.

Oh! My! God! A poster of a masked gunman! Strange writing and graffiti!

We’re coming under attack! Today they’re using graffiti, tomorrow they’ll be using bombs!

Thanks, Kristen, for the link to the Yahoo! story (which led me to find the Channel NewsAsia original).

New in the photo album section: our bike trip to Longhai.

• had dinner and drinks at The House
• went to the inappropriately-named Jazz Bar
• went to The Londoner for those final, few drinks none of us could miss
• ate Japanese eat-all-you-can at City Mark (we were the last to leave!)
• saw JAWS 3 (wasn’t my idea)
• went to Trust-Mart (which will never be as good as Metro)
• got distracted looking at cool furniture on the way home
• had dinner at Havana

Mr. O’Reilly, please just stop.

I’m sure I’m not the only person to notice this, but has anyone ever realised how similar the phrases blog roll and bog roll are? And that it might not just be a coincidence?

Think about it.

(The cardboard bit of the bog roll can do magic, apparently.)

(I’ve found The Bog Roll Diaries.)

Given the prevalence of trolling and flame wars since the days of newsgroups, I’m absolutely positive someone decided that these opinions were just about worth their weight in toilet paper — the bog roll — and set about creating conditions suited to those inclined to use these products.

In a figurative sense, that is.

Hence the word ‘weblog’. There are probably millions of people with weblogs, whether they be personals journals or raving political diatribes over whatever’s the topic of the day. Us weblog authors spend lots of time on other people’s weblogs, it’s all a community, innit?!

My personal usage of weblogs is much like bog roll, and those of you who disagree, are only afraid of facing up to the truth: you read their site (toilet analogy: sitting on the loo and pre-emptively taking a square or two in preparation), maybe leave a comment or two (toilet analogy: do a number one or a number two, sometimes people manage a combination, but that’s usually when they’ve eaten something not quite right, but much bog roll is consumed in the process, so maybe that’s equivalent to a day off work), then off you go (toilet analogy: the wipe and flush; God, I hope you wipe and flush).

See? Our blog rolls are just like bog rolls. Aliens up there are laughing because we’re so proud of our toilet paper we’ve named our favourite websites after it.

(Writer’s block is when you’ve sat down and discovered you’re out of bog roll.)

… hm. Anyone notice that the phrases writer’s block and weblog both have w’s and b’s in them, and sort of rhyme?

THE SCENE. NEIL, BEN, and JEFF at dinner. Pretend I’m the WINGED INSECT buzzing around the tea. Pretend this conversation is verbatim, but it’s actually paraphrased from memory. I stand by the punchline.

BEN: Jeff, I looked up stuff about nuts and fat, and you’re right, it’s the healthiest fat you can get.

JEFF: (Goes off about fat and cholesterol and health, while the WINGED INSECT zones out — healthy eating is not part of a bug’s life. The WINGED INSECT wants some of that peanut smoothie.)

NEIL (smirking): I can hear it now, “But baby, it’s okay! It’s nut fat!”

WINGED INSECT hides in the shame that she started dating NEIL because he seemed like such a decent, clean cut boy at the time.

Via Vantan.org, I’ve discovered a small group of Singaporeans who are advocates of Web standards. There are currently ten codemonkeys (of varying degrees, and I know this because they let me join), and I just know there are more out there.

If you’re Singaporean or in Singapore and are interested in joining this community, send Jaime an e-mail.

Let standards rule, or something. I’m sure I’d get all their undying respect if I come up with a super-smart tagline. Yes.