Via Terry, a story on a study of monkeys who will ‘pay’ to look at pictures of female monkey butts. If the world was ruled by monkeys and not humans, it wouldn’t be that different, then. We’d still have Playboy and Hustler, strip joints and Internet porn — but with monkeys.

The interesting thing is that the monkeys paid extra to look at pictures of higher-ranking primates, but had to be paid (given more juice, I mean fruit juice, you perverts) to look at lower-ranking ones. So in my imaginary, Planet of the Apes earth, we’d still have Tatler, too.

Do monkeys try to keep up with the Joneses? Would we feel better about ourselves if we found out that other species are as plagued with vanity and insecurity as we are?

• had dinner at Bellagio (mmm, chicken with garlic and ginger)
• had a sangria at Havana
• spent the morning translating (my translation and interpretation skills have improved by leaps and bounds, I tell you)
• had all you can eat Japanese at Tokyoto (this is the best one we’ve had in Xiamen, I think)
• had a hot chocolate at Javaromas
• watched Alexander (*yawn*)
• spent the morning working
• had lunch at a Chinese teppanyaki
• spent the afternoon working
• had dinner at Little Chilli
• had dessert and hot chocolate at Javaromas (I really don’t think the boss would approve of his staff telling me they always make their hot chocolate with cold milk, which they then stick in the microwave)

Cats With Hands reveals The Cat Credo to us puny humans.

Hello, everybody. You know, weblogs did exist before the whole political weblog thing exploded, vomited, and landed all over our laps. I remember the days when Kottke.org was the one to emulate — these days it’s (would you have thought of any other) Glenn Reynolds. I know two people in real life (other than I) who know who the Instapundit is (Glenn is forever guilty for inspiring others, who are clearly not more or less pundit-like than you or I, into affixing the word ‘-pundit’ to weblog names). More surprisingly, I have met them in China. Less surprisingly, because Glenn is super-famous and all that among the keyboard warrior set, they all ask me how I managed to catch the prolific professor’s attention.

I did not, okay, okay okay?! He caught my attention when I was still using Blogger on Geocities. He was Instapundit then, but he wasn’t the Instapundit you hit (’refresh’) on, with many thousands of readers, a more-than-respectable second income through Blogads, ‘Instalanches’, and fawning fans. Look up 20 August 2001, and there it is:

On the ‘must (er, should) read’ list today:
InstaPundit.Com. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s still good.

(I can’t link to the individual post because I can’t actually access Geocities directly, thanks to the Great Firewall of China. I’ve also whinged about being ignored as a Singapore blogger recently. Being really stressed out and busy, I’m all about the complaining at the moment — more so than usual, anyway.)

Please ignore any references I made to a boyfriend at that time. He was a prick. Also, I find the stuff I wrote about back then kind of cringingly embarrassing now.

Heehee. If you don’t have it, don’t try to flaunt it. Via mrbrown.

The Blog’s new Role in Crisis Communication. Is there anything weblogs can’t do?

The Cyclist Lifestyle is (at a glance) a pretty interesting site about, surprise, surprise, cycling and cyclists.

Via Canuckflack, a piece about copy editing the letters pages at a porno magazine. I could do that job.

Da flava at Sarong Party Frens writes about volunteering for SPACES, a non-profit, non-official community group for the GLBT community in Singapore.

Dear Audrey,

You started life as a tribute to that classy lady, Audrey Hepburn — my take on Loobylu’s A Month of Softies Vintage Catwalk theme. As you can see, you are clad in a black turtleneck and leggings, vintage classics. I could have made you black capris, but frankly, I didn’t think of it at the time. Unfortunately, making a sock doll look like one of the world’s most beautiful women was hampered by the fact that I can’t really sew, and yarn is damn hard to attach to make a cute little ponytail.

What a mess you were! I was about to throw in the towel!

So, my solution was to revert to my first idea that never made it beyond planning stage — you are a beatnik kitty. Note the beret. You look so surprised and excited because you have just met your hero, the father of the Beat generation as we know it, Jack Purr-oac.

You are not only a craft project, Audrey. You are, most especially, a farewell present for my friend Lydia, who is leaving Xiamen this weekend for home in Toronto. I know she will take care of you and she says you’re cute. In fact, my colleagues have asked me to make more beatnik kitties for them.

I’ll miss you, Audrey. Remember to dress warmly in Toronto, and don’t drink too many Bloody Caesars!

Love,
Mum

So *cough* I’m 29 today.

Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me
Happy Birthday to me-eeeeeee (and kway teow and bee hoon, too)
Happy Birthday to me!

This is me in my brand new hand-knit scarf, courtesy of Kristen and Mark, though I’m sure it was Kris who did the knitting. They also sent me a card featuring a donkey.

Hee-haw!

Today Paul Newman was born. Australia was declared Australia (Happy Australia Day!). Eartha Kitt was born. I was born!

Terry sent me a weblog entry about having a web page render almost identically across today’s popular browsers, Mac and Win browser comparison. I have to admit I was fascinated by how alike the screenshots looked. I remember checking out my website on my cousin’s IE5 for Mac back in 2002, and was stunned that it rendered my site exactly as I’d intended it, which my Windows browsers did not (and I’d never seen it on a Mac before).

Anyway, it’s true, you don’t have to stick like mad to standards if you need your site to work across browsers — you see browser hacks everywhere. A fact of life for us Internets geeks, I reckon.

Here’s the catch. Nakfull Propaganda, the weblog in question, still uses tables, which makes cross-browser compatibility much, much easier. If I was still open to using tables to position my site elements, I’d really have nothing much to say. However, I am anal retentive, and I switched to table-less positioning a long time ago. I’m not looking back; I spent too much time learning CSS2 positioning. I’d be buggered (quite soundly with the world’s largest rubber band ball) if I went back to tables now.

Two of my favourite topics — food and Scotland — come together with the upcoming launch of EatScotland, a guide to Scottish eateries around the country:

The EatScotland scheme has been designed by the tourist body VisitScotland to promote excellence wherever food is served. It will be launched this afternoon in Glasgow as part of the International Food Fair.

Offering the pass-or-fail assessment rather than the one-to-five medallion grading system used by its predecessor, Taste of Scotland, the scheme was devised with the help of wide industry and consumer consultation.

I’m guessing it won’t yield the same results as Singapore’s ABC system, where the C establishments (the dirtiest) are the most popular.

(Point of interest: when I tried to find EatScotland, I first typed www.eatscotland.co.uk, then www.eatscotland.gov.uk, before doing a Google search to locate it at www.eatscotland.com.)

Paris Hilton goes to newsstand and gets pissed off that her sex tape is for sale. Paris Hilton swears at store clerk, takes tape, rips up advertising poster. Surveillance video captures it all. The video is sold to stupid voyeurism television programme. Store clerk hires an agent in response. Store clerk is an imbecile.

Torture Still Routine in Iraqi Jails, Report Says. This time it’s the Iraqi jailers who are beating the prisoners. Go with what you know, I suppose.

Superstar is a song by S.H.E, a Taiwanese pop group. It’s a big hit in China, and if you don’t understand Chinese but have seen the music video, you’d think these girls were really, really pissed off about something. But the song is actually a simpering, lame arse tribute to someone they are hopelessly in love with. Ooh, orgy.

As I explained to TuTu over the weekend (isn’t it great when there is a reader you know in real life, who started reading your website after meeting you, and does so regularly?), my site’s looking a little messy but it’ll be fixed. Let me ’splain.

I like to play around with the layout and design of this weblog. Almost as soon as I complete a re-design, I start thinking about what the next look will be. Sometimes I change things quickly and don’t put much effort into it, sometimes I want to do something special and ’slave’ over it for a number of days or weeks after work. This month it’s been the latter. So that explains why the Asides hack has been implemented so poorly from an aesthetic point of view — I’ve just put it there to make sure it’s there and working — I swear it’ll be prettier when I eventually declare myself happy with the new design.

But, of course, I’ve currently got plenty of responsibilities occupying what free time I have after work (more on that later), so it’s going to stay kinda fugly for a while as I attend to more pressing matters.

I can’t understand someone who can use a page design and stick to it for months / years. I really can’t. It’s such a wonderful thing, using CSS to separate style from content. Other people talk about blogger ethics and get all grave and moral, I talk about what colour scheme and layout makes me bounce around the flat in satisfaction. At least I have my priorities straight!

• spent hours at the hot springs spa
• had lunch at Sun Dance Cafe
• attended the Printemps annual dinner (a lot of karaoke)
• had dessert at Tutto Bene
• had a few drinks at The Londoner
• had a few drinks at Park Latin
• had a boogie at Why Not, a new bar / club
• winced a lot at the loud Chinese techno in Suntory (never again while I am reasonably sober and can hear)
• had lunch at The Coffee Club
• spent a few hours at the beach watching a few blokes kite surf
• had dinner at a new Thai restaurant (not bad at all)
• watched The Incredibles (that was so awesome!)

Re-posted after a server move kinda… deleted it. If any comments got deleted, sorry, I can’t bring them back.

Via my sister, presenting the Miss Georgia Sex Offenders 2004 Pageant. Nice.