tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67016172008-08-04T20:44:45.753+08:00Adriannoreply@blogger.comBlogger254125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-86257525615958478562008-08-04T20:38:00.002+08:002008-08-04T20:43:50.192+08:00

So recently my wife and I had a little boy - I don't really want to say too much about that here, except to say that being a father leads you to some surprising things. For example, this Japanese device which you can use to remove the snot from your infant's nasal passage. Hint: you have to suck it out with your mouth using a tube... This device was prescribed by our paediatrician!!!

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-74369726229436831202008-06-24T22:04:00.002+08:002008-06-24T22:09:56.423+08:00

Fengshen was supposed to miss us, but now it looks like it will get close enough for the Observatory to hoist signal number 8.

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-10194299761007891472008-06-17T16:13:00.002+08:002008-06-17T16:28:34.102+08:00

June 8th was Dragon Boat day in Hong Kong (and in many other places around Asia) - and for the first time I participated in the Dragon Boat races at Stanley. A friend asked me to be on the Bloomberg team and we started training a couple of months before the Festival. Training mostly consisted of getting into a boat, paddling around off Stanley Main Beach for about two hours and then hitting the

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-88530663368491752912008-05-16T16:57:00.003+08:002008-05-16T17:00:13.188+08:00

It's not a working abattoir - but it's now being torn down and well, the noise is a little draining. To take my mind off it I wrote this ridiculous song and spliced together a video.

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-73816088951919202692008-05-08T17:37:00.003+08:002008-05-08T17:49:15.447+08:00

It's been a while, but I thought I'd better summarise a few things. 1) In about 8 weeks (maybe one or two more) our son will arrive. We're attending antenatal classes at the moment, which are going very well except for the fact that I have to keep on leaving the room owing to an inherited condition known as "being a fainter". I actually inadvertently swore at the midwife conducting the sessions

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-25853874216853960232008-04-21T16:24:00.002+08:002008-04-21T16:35:39.486+08:00

Sham Shui Po in general, and Ap Liu Street in particular is a place that I always enjoy visiting. Here are some of the reasons why (in no particular order):Very pedestrian-friendly, which means it's a bit quieter than other similar places, such as Mong Kok;The stalls selling lighting are so ridiculously bright that you can't look at them even in daylight!If you really need some, you can buy used

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-926176247108452452008-04-15T10:54:00.003+08:002008-04-15T11:02:46.444+08:00

On the weekend the South China Morning Post revealed the secret of the missing vegemite (which I can't link to because the SCMP is still living in the Dark Ages). Apparently, Japanese foodies have discovered that the taste of Vegemite has the flavour profile of something like miso - it has the "fifth taste" - umami, which is kind of the taste of kelp. It's a lot more complicated than that - read

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-83174134496649827262008-04-06T20:09:00.002+08:002008-04-06T20:20:40.551+08:00

Those of you who read the Age might have come across this story about the Great Hong Kong Vegemite Shortage of 2008. Fear not - I realised this was happening about 6 weeks ago when I saw that in my local supermarket the Vegemite wasn't being restocked. I immediately sprang into action and every time I passed a supermarket would go and in and assess the situation. Eventually I managed to snag the

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-28218158167957376252008-03-12T11:33:00.002+08:002008-03-12T11:53:20.189+08:00

Due to crazy rent increases where we used to live, we've now moved to an apartment in Kennedy Town. Kennedy Town is on the north-western corner of Hong Kong island. It's bit further away from Central, but when the smog clears we'll have a nice view of Lantau, the Tsing Yi bridge, ferries making their way to Macua and the Outlying Islands, and the Old Abbatoir (actually not that nice to look at).

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-22867099075021076082008-02-12T17:45:00.001+08:002008-02-12T17:45:46.416+08:00

Sorry.

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-89161371251322335192008-01-29T10:39:00.000+08:002008-01-29T11:28:13.541+08:00

We've been here just over 2 years, and so the lease on our apartment in Mid-Levels has expired. Which means of course the landlord took the opportunity to increase the rent (19%!). Initially he was thinking of going after the market rate, which would have been an increase of 57%. Insane. However, even at the lower increase this place has become too expensive, so we are now looking for another

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-5735623596585384912008-01-09T09:45:00.000+08:002008-01-09T09:51:12.505+08:00

After three weeks of clear blue skies it's quite a shock to be back in Hong Kong - dull grey smog everywhere. Still, in some ways it's also good to be back to begin what will be quite a busy year, not least because we're now expecting a baby (sometime in July). We've been working on names but so far we've really only narrowed it down to Buscopan (for a boy obviously), and Cinnamon (for a girl).

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-76087692458735653622007-12-18T11:35:00.000+08:002007-12-18T12:07:17.682+08:00

Last Friday night, before our regular Bone Table gig, we had mini-gig as a Count of Three debut. We played three songs that we felt we had brought to some level of readiness. The funny thing for me was that I felt neither nervous nor excited about it. We set up the stage, put the sampler on a stool so I could reach it properly and away we went. There were a few rough edges, but that's the kind

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-68497540209488869292007-12-10T10:20:00.000+08:002007-12-10T10:20:46.917+08:00

Interactive map of carbon emissions - look at the big cloud over China; Carmack (make of Doom, Quake) talks about mobile gaming; Ah - the dangers of machine translation.

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-70460692798564223382007-12-03T10:05:00.000+08:002007-12-03T10:32:12.878+08:00

We've been in Hong Kong for 21 months now, and despite the fact that a mere 40 minutes away is the Rest of China, I still haven't been there since we got here. The easiest part of China to get to from here is Shenzhen, which snuggles up to the Hong Kong border. So on Saturday we hopped on the train and sped off to Shenzhen. After the minor inconvenience of not having a visa, we were finally let

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-23110160386537012412007-11-21T15:35:00.000+08:002007-11-21T15:41:35.351+08:00

Today we went down to the Australian Consulate and voted! The Federal Election is on Saturday, but if you are overseas you can vote ahead of time (a "pre-poll" vote). The consulate was pretty busy - even on a Wednesday morning there were a lot of people there all making their mark on the ballot papers. I was quite impressed, as if you live overseas you don't actually have to vote (voting is

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-50354229937240883572007-11-19T18:02:00.000+08:002007-11-19T18:06:36.407+08:00

Today I booked some internal flights in Australia via Virgin Blue - I was interested to see that they have a carbon offset program. It's very easy - once you've booked and paid for your tickets you get sent to a page that shows how much you could pay (if you want) to offset the amount of your carbon emissions. In my case it was about $2.79 (plus GST). Huh. So I paid the amount - I hope it's a

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-38281602790404808232007-10-17T18:13:00.000+08:002007-10-17T18:17:19.620+08:00

We had our first instrumental rehearsal yesterday - it really went well. We were a bit worried that it would be a train wreck. There was the potential to get severely out of time with the machine, or that there wouldn't be much development of the musical ideas. If anything we found that there were so many nice little musical ideas that we will have trouble remembering them all. I think this

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-35324951483666746042007-10-10T15:41:00.000+08:002007-10-10T16:10:52.940+08:00

A couple of points today - first of all I'm sitting here listening to Radiohead's new album In Rainbows, which is not that exciting if you don't like Radiohead, except for the fact they let me choose how much I wanted to pay for it. Very refreshing. Actually I quite like it, so that's lucky. If you are interested in Radiohead and you also like the feeling of participating in the destruction of

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-77679298107255567902007-08-29T21:02:00.000+08:002007-08-29T21:03:00.448+08:00

"This will make vegetarians out of the whole table!" - Gordon Ramsay's attempt to open a restaurant in New York (and other interesting stuff); Password fatigue - I've basically given up, and I'm hoping that OpenID will be a solution; Driving cars makes you hungry - ever wondered what using corn for biofuel is doing to the price of food?

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-3366620279881045252007-08-28T12:33:00.000+08:002007-08-28T12:42:14.317+08:00

Today I stumbled across a nice website that turns any other website into a site formatted for mobile devices. Simply go to Mowser and type in the URL of the site you want to view and it will reformat the site and make it nicer for your mobile device (e.g. phone, PSP etc). Here's a shot of this blog, mowsered:

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-4121574219693537762007-08-11T23:25:00.000+08:002007-08-12T11:50:22.621+08:00

Yesterday at about 2.30pm, the Hong Kong Observatory raised the Number 8 signal, which meant that Typhoon Pabuk was going to pass very very close to Hong Kong. Number 8 means everyone should go home immediately - which of course caused chaos, and "Taxi drivers were quick to exploit the situation, with some demanding as much as HK$50 above the meter reading." Didn't bother me too much - the only

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-76580712114711294122007-08-10T12:21:00.000+08:002007-08-12T11:52:48.933+08:00

Typhoon Pabuk passed about 50km south of the island early yesterday morning - BUT - apparently it has now turned around and is heading back this way again! (The red asterisk is the position of Hong Kong, the black line is the path the typhoon has already taken, the red line is the path they think it will take.)

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-2539578031999840892007-08-08T16:20:00.000+08:002007-08-12T11:48:21.878+08:00

Finally! After an entire typhoon season of no typhoons, Typhoon Pabuk, fresh from a successful tour of Taiwan is heading straight towards us. The T1 warning is in force, and it should hit us some time tomorrow.

Adriannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6701617.post-29544891718405350552007-07-03T11:32:00.000+08:002007-08-12T12:04:40.413+08:00

10 years ago the British gave Hong Kong back to China. We missed the 10th anniversary celebrations as we were in Thailand, but probably the only really interesting thing we missed was the fireworks display. Oh, and seeing the People's Liberation Army actually outside their barracks (they tend to stay out of sight so as to not disturb the sensibilities of the local population who all remember the

Adriannoreply@blogger.com