Hi, Jack!
I know I’ve mentioned my old junior college schoolmate Jack, who plays with a band at Wala Wala on Friday nights. Turns out EIC has a website, made with a Mac, no less. It’s nothing to look at, but if you’re one of those swooning fans (and I know you’re out there), you might find the gig guide and photos useful.
I got the link from SarongPartyFrens.
I cried when I read The Stank Prank:
I’m done! Time to shut the lights off, lock up, dash home and shower, because after all the running around the office I smell like a Frenchman. And after handling all those fruity air fresheners, I smell like a Frenchman gigolo who spent a weekend servicing the Care Bears.
The only reason Neil hasn’t been pranked yet is that I live in the same flat. Otherwise…!
I got the link from lies.com.
Tomorrow marks National Day in China, and everyone is supposed to get seven days off work. Good, eh?
But. The actual number of holidays the government has thoughtfully provided is three — five, when you include the weekend. In order to encourage domestic tourism, they bump up the break to seven days, but do not actually give anyone extra days off. We have to work Saturday and Sunday next week to make up for the extra days they have thoughtfully forced on me to stay home. That means eight days of work without a break, two weeks after my trip when I worked for 15 consecutive days.
I’m lucky, though, other people have been instructed to report for work for 12 straight days through this Golden Week. And I’ve heard of others who’ve worked every day for a month.
The WHO says that human-to-human transmission of bird flu (H5N1 avian influenza) is now a real possibility, the last two cases being part of a family cluster.
Another book I scored in Shenzhen is Adorable Sock Dolls to Make & Love, picked up ostensibly because, “My sock puppets never looked that good.” Neil put up with my ooh’ing and aah’ing over the baby buddies, farmyard chicken, and moose all weekend (the baby rabbits look like peanut M&Ms with ears, and are cute in their own dismembered way).
You wouldn’t know it to look a me these days, but I was quite crafty in my Before-I-Discovered-I-Was-Deathly-Allergic-To-Glue time. One of my favourite books at my grandfather’s was a Fifties publication of activities and things to make for boys (I think I’ve mentioned this book in an old post that has since been assigned to languish in my private archives). I was itching to make myself a soapbox racer and terrorise the neighbourhood, but Singapore doesn’t make soapboxes easily available to seven-year old children (hell, they don’t make soapboxes easily available to grown adults, but that’s another post).
I made a castle out of cardboard once. It kind of fell apart after a day or so, since I used the wrong kind of cardboard, but the sense of achievement is still keenly felt.
I knitted (a little), I crocheted, I cross-stitched, I hooked rugs, I made paper flowers (this was a forced project at school, but I came to like it), I made friendship bracelets out of embroidery thread, I did all sorts of things known as ‘handicraft’. And those sock puppets made of outgrown school socks, of course.
(Sewing for Home Economics is an entirely different matter. It’s not craft, it’s Torture for the Clumsy.)
These days, I consider myself crafty if I hand write a postcard.
So, I’d like to revive my old penchant for making stuff and try to make sock dolls. I, however, have a few questions.
China Slams Taiwan Threat to Attack Shanghai:
Thousands of protesters marched through Taipei on Saturday, urging the government to scrap the planned weapons package that they said would trigger an arms race with China and squeeze social welfare.
“If you attack me with 100 missiles, I will at least attack you with 50. If you attack Taipei and Kaohsiung, I will attack Shanghai,” Yu said in a speech before the protest.
“If we have such counter-strike capability today, Taiwan is safe,” he said in comments broadcast on cable news networks.
I reckon it’ll be time to plan a holiday outside China pretty damn soon. No one wants an arms race. Taiwan and China are so much better off preserving the status quo, but no, political leaders have to play this game of chicken.
Triple J‘s Jay and The Doctor are broadcasting the remainder of their show, right now, from the pub. This is a result of a dice game they’ve been playing all afternoon.
Internet radio rocks.
Neil will breathe easy as long as they don’t reduce the serving size of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.