This is how a typical weekday of mine can be like...
5:50 the alarm on the mobile rang. S***, I don't want to get out of bed. Gone are the days when I woke up at five and did a bit of running. Now I still do sports in the evening though.
6:00 The BBC World Service radio is on while I have cereal with milk for breakfast. Top news are more than 150,000 Iraqi have died since the American(-led) war there began. That's more than 100 a day. Bush is still in the Middle East and he's going to West Bank today for talks aimed at securing peace between Israel and Palestine. A company in India (Tata) debuts its US$2,500 cars...
6:15 Prepare my 'lunch box'.
6:30 Leave for the station to catch the 6:45 train
7:25 Arrive at Charing Cross station
7:35 Arrive at Bush, logging on to read news from news agencies and different BBC outlets on an in-house system, ENPS. Scan news websites, read emails.
8:15 Decide on which stories about Vietnam to 'chase' and run in a 30 minutes programme some hours later. In the news are:
- A Vietnamese man in Alabama threw four children off a bridge after a row with his wife. The children aged from four months to three years are missing, presumed dead.
- A zoo in Vietnam admitted selling dead tigers on an auction to raise $US8000.
- A jailed dissident laywer is said to have gone on hunger strike. The authority allegedly also did not allow her to bring a bible given to her by a senior US religious freedom committee official to a new prison. An email sent to the BBC also said no bathrooms are available in the new jail and prisoners just have to make do with standing next to a well and have a natural bath. But this has been denied by people in charge of the prison.
8:30 Go to a regional meeting to get the news from other services including the Chinese and Indonesian.
9:00 Back to the office and decide on who will be doing what ...
10:00 A brief meeting in the service to report back on the day's news agenda.
10:30 Feel a bit low. It's strange as this is supposedly the time your body and brain are at their best. Solution? A walk around the office munching an apple.
11:55 It's almost lunch time. Two interviews are in the bag, one more is coming, several stories have been translated. See lots of emails from bbcvietnamese.com readers on a story about a singer who decided to settle in California and got into trouble with the government for a while but now is allowed back into the country. Another story about the US government invented the Gulf of Tonkin event to get an excuse to bring more troops to Vietnam in the 1960s. Made me question the American version of what happened recently between their ships and the Iranian ones.
20:15 Sit in front of the computer and wonder how quickly my last eight hours on Earth have gone. Did not even have time to think about blogging when the 14:30 deadline for the radio transmission approached. When it finishes at 15:00, it was time to rush to the station as I had to pick up the kids today. Then came shopping, preparing dinner, telling the rabbits off, being kissed by one, hugged by the other, reading them bed time stories... May actually brought home a book with only pictures and she invented a story around them. I was impressed.
As I had to pick the kids today, I missed my Karate class. Could have taken both of them with me but none said they were interested. Too bad.
Back to work related things, I am offered a chance to go to the States for the Super Tuesday in Febuary when 22 States will select candidates for the upcoming election. Only 30 per cent of me wan to go. Febuary 5 is just two days before the Vietnamese New Year and I really don't like being away from my kids. Should I go or should I stay?
This is probably the song with the shortest name. Well, on the face of it only ... But it's a very nice song sung by an irrestible singer, Katherine Jenkins.
I (Who Have Nothing)
And here're a few others...
Everything I Do
Rejoice - I love this one the most
Kiss From A Rose
One of her TV interviews
Okie, enough about I and now it's about me. My head is so packed with thoughts these days that I can see a Big Bang coming. Or rather a big bump :) Is it because I have started reading the thickest book I've ever bought, the Bible? Dunno. But I support someone who said that they love God but they just didn't like the middlemen between God and the people. And I am sorry but I just can't bring myself to believe that God created our universe in seven days (he worked much harder than us Monday to Sunday). I know this is a minefield so I won't go into it any more.
Back to all things ordinary, today I took Dan and May to play tennis and May just broke down and cried when she lost the ball collecting game to Dan. It took quite a bit of explaining that winning was not everything and that you just had to keep going until you finally win. She seemed to take on board quite a lot. Then she decided to race with me because it was easier for her to win. Boy, I can see that she's very competitive.
Dan did not embrace failure either. He just threw his racket when he failed to hit the ball too many times. And going to play tennis was not voluntary any more. He said he did not want to but I said you need at least half an hour of excercise every day. He then corrected me ''Not half an hour. An hour. It's said on the cereal box.'' OK, then, the cereal box knows better. But at the end of the day, he still said I was the best daddy in the whole world so it's Cereal Box 1 - 1 Daddy .
Both of them absolutelly love the Nintendo Wii. Now they play all sorts of things including golf and baseball. The game is at their mum so they have one more reason to want to go back there when they're bored at mine. I have no TV so the best I can offer is just Snake and Ladder. Dan now also plays Ludo and Draughts.
... and I just lost track of what I was about to write next after a chat with a friend. Hope you all have been keeping well and all the best.
You can probably see that the tittle of my next post will be '2009' so until then I don't think I can wait that long but one thing is for sure I will blog much less this year. I am not good at remembering anything but if my memory does not fail me, I did a calculation the other day and was surprised to know that if I spend an hour a day blogging for the next 35 years, I'll have spent about three years doing it. So an hour a week or a month will likely be the norm for this year.
My new year resolution this year if I can call it one is TTRM. That is Things That Really Matter. I will be thinking, doing, spending my time doing just that - Things That Really Matter.
I can think of a few already. I have two business exams that I'll have to finish by the end of the year. Hopefully, I'll be able to persuade my boss to release me for two weeks to do that. Then there's that trip to Russia that I'll need to prepare for. I can go on but I'll leave the 'going on' bit for later.
Back to present, I was startled to see some of the streets in London full of rubbish after last night's celebrations. They burnt more than 2,5 million dollar worth of fireworks in more than 10 minutes and will spend some more cleaning the mess. A colleague of mine went out and said they waited four hours to have an enjoyment that lasted 10 minutes. Having said that, I'll possibly go in 2010.
And this year is the Year of the Rat, that 'soft, charming and clean and do not need a great deal of care'. I was born in the year of that charming animal Let's be honest, I don't think rats are charming. I wish I had been born in the year of the elephant but there's no such year in the lunar calendar. Remember I said 'lunar' not 'Chinese'. The Vietnamese Lunar Years include (in order) Years of the Rat, Buffalo, Tiger, Cat, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. If I rank them in orders of my liking, it'll be Monkey, Goat, Buffalo, Rooster, Pig, Horse, Dragon, Tiger, Dog, Rat, Snake and Cat. The reason I put Cat at the bottom is the amount of money I spent on buying cat chasers including believe it or not lions dung. But at the end of the day, I'll still have to spend time dealing with cats' poo
So that's it, the first blog of the year. I pray for this one to be a peaceful one and for people to be sensible and sensitive to each other.
So 360 days have gone. But where have they?! This year I had the pleasure of working both Christmas and Boxing day. And the icing on the cake was the flu that made all my joints feel like the one of the oldest man in the world. Next year I know that I want to spend Xmas in the sun. Hello Tenerife, bring on Siesta. I am going to La Isla Bonita all the way there.
There have been years during which I grew and there have been years that just made me one of the same. 2007 seems to have been a cornerstone year. After all, I turned 35, buying house number 53, still being crazy from time to time but in much calmer manner. I've learnt to just let it go, let it be, trying to look at things in perspective. I've learnt to make greed and fear something you can control. All in all, it's been a year of learning, calming, refining, searching, experimenting but above all loving. I love myself, my kids, life around me. The only love that I wish I had much less was the love for spending. I won't go there and next year will be a year of saving. Should I cancel the plan to go to Tenerife then.
When you have children, there'll be a span of time when you grow and they grow up. Then comes they keep growing up and you keep growing old. I probably have about 15 years of the former and I'll try to make the most of it. Going back into martial arts and other sports has had a rejuvenating effect on me and I'll keep doing that. Among others, it was the effect that a national Karate coach in the UK recently put into words ''it gives people a chance to say 'no' and have means to back it up'. I woundn't deliberately get into any fight but if someone needs my help, I surely would give it to them.
My kids, of course I would say this, have grown more and more independent, confident, smart, handsome, beautiful, caring, loving, inquisitive and so much more. They're very special. This is how Dan welcomed his Nintendo Wii game that Santa gave him this Xmas.
And this one with a clue that Wii was coming.
This year Dan has taken recorder classes and been chosen as one of only two eco warriors in his 28 kid class. I bought him the '1000 ways to save the planet' booklet for Xmas and he'll bring it to his next eco warrior meeting. His mum said he said that the reason he was chosen to be an eco warrior was being sensible. Sounds easy but being sensible is not that easy. Imagine how this world would glow if everyone is being just that, sensible and they don't do to others including the environment what they don't want others to do to themselves.
May has proved her ability to adapt to a new environment. It was all easy for her to go from kidergarten to school. It looks like on the first day that she stayed back for lunch, she told the dinner lady that she was 'school dinner' instead of 'packed lunch' and she ended up having both. Apart from that all has been so well. Her teacher is the best one in the world one day and a 'I don't like her' the other but she's been looked after quite well. She had scratches from battles with some of the boys and headlice from mingling with some of the girls but then what can you expect from a 30 strong group of four years old. The other day Dan told his mum that there're only two most beautiful girls in his school, one is May and another one is in Year 6. May is also very athletic. She can even beat Dan in running. And she's strong-minded. When she goes to tennis classes, she only wants to do what she wants, not want the coach wants. And then there's that problem with language. I don't know how but she seems to be using 'stupid', 'bottom', ... quite a lot recently. Is there a cure or will she just grow out of it???
Workwise, it's been a good year as well. I did a lot of things that I felt proud and some of them were recognised. But as I said, I've learnt a lot and I am not seeking approval all the time of what I do. Sometimes you just have to do what you think is the right thing though almost everyone else says that you're on the wrong track. The majority are not always right. My next plan is a trip to Russia, to Moscow and Putin's hometown of St Petersburg. I spent many years learning Russian but have forgotten most of them over the last decade during which I switched to English. But my love of Russian was love at first sight and it's still there. So Russian baby, come on light my fire! Bring me bread and salt!
Today I am going to take the kids to see the newly renovated and now one of Europe's most luxurious and beautiful station, St Pancras. Of course, we'll give out vouchers to homeless people along the way as planned. It will be a lazy day around town.
And before I go to bed yet again, the last word of wisdom. Don't spend money in December, more precisely from 1-25 of December. The Wii console that Santa, yes Santa, gave Dan was around US$500 before Xmas, it's now US$400. Money obviously doesn't go very far in December then.
Until my next update, have a Happy Holiday and a Great 2008!
It meant to be a blog about nothing but that would have been a waste of virtual web space, time, energy ... so it's going to be a blog about something. That's something is just that. I am writing for people who I know can't read this.
They're people who probably don't give a damn that Xmas is coming. They are people, children and adults who are exploited during the day and who may sleep on the street at night. They're people who're much less fortunate than us all or people mentioned in one of Eve's blogs.
This holiday season I plan to take my kids to London and give presents to people to whom the notion of home is just a sleeping bag in front of a shop. I'll probably give them some vouchers to buy food or anything that they want to. It will make their misery a bit Christmasy and my children a different view of life around them.
I've lost the ability to write. Or to be more precise, the ability to set aside time to do it. If you stop counting the beans for a while you'll probably find that you don't have to do it that often .
So life goes on. I am sorry if I dissappointed anyone who wanted to read the blog that I promised I would write. I actually did and my Vaio amazingly freezed right at the moment I clicked 'publish'. I then spent hours trying to give it kisses of life. It's almost back to normal now but Internet Explorer still closes whenever it wants and I still have the habit of writing it online rather than off.
I spent the last few weeks on making my new (well, newish) house a home. It's still a bit messy now but I already love the way it looks, the way it smells, the sound and the light of the water feature, the perfume that Lucy wears, the sexy look of Sarah. Hopefully, I'll be able to introduce them to you in the New Year. Can you believe it, we're less than three weeks away from 2008.
Tomorrow is Dan and May's big day. May will be the Princess and Dan will be the Musician in their school's Christmas show. I love the way the Princess sings and does the action for 'I am a little teapot, short and stout..; . Luckily, I am on leave so I'll be able to come and see the two of them entertaining themselves and the audience. Will have to remember to book leave for the same week in Dec next year. Up to now, I haven't missed any of their show be it Easter or Xmas.
May is now attending school full time. She only stayed till noon up until Nov 19 when she stayed for lunch and then for the whole day since Nov 26.
Apart from school, the little rabbits still play tennis or go for a swim once or twice a week. I still do Karate once a week at a not so demanding center. I'll probably move to a more challenging one in the New Year.
Hope you all have been keeping well and wish you all the best.
I've been spending too much time sleeping lately and have started to feel guilty My blogging appetite for better or worse has not been good. If it takes a night in the office with only four hours of sleep to have my appetite back then I wonder if I should have it at all .
But to any one who's reading, God bless you. Xmas is coming and it's that time to sing 'so this is Xmas and what have you done?' And yes, Merry Xmas! I am surely the first one to say this to you 'I hope you have fun' my friends.
As for all things mundane, work has become a real drag. Everyone seems to be unhappy and everything seems to stay the same. But as it can't get any worse so the light is there at the end of the tunnel.
I've been thinking long and hard about if and when to rent out a room in my house. The when is easy. After Xmas of course. The if is really hard. Sharing your own house with a stranger is obviously not everyone's cup of tea. But then who would give you US$500 a month to waste Still, I can't decide.
As for my rabbits, they had their first tennis lesson on Saturday. Mind you it costs US$60 an hour and at this rate I'll be bankcrupt if they ever become someone in tennis. The first question the coach asked was 'do you know any tennis player' and the answer? You guess.
Dan seemed to really enjoy it and the session was over too soon for his liking. Now when the coach says ONE he would hold his racquet, TWO he would raise his left hand to keep good balance and THREE he would brush and hit the ball hopefully over the net. Sounds easy but it's not. Can't wait till the day he and I can play. May be next summer.
May is left handed and it will be interesting to see how she will develop. Her hand is still too small so we'll have to get a new racquet for her. She loves running around and pick the balls more than hitting them. Well, it will be handy for Dan then
Will stop here for now. Give me all your news. I won't be able to blog as mad but I'll try to be here once in a while so be I beg your PATIENCE.
My little one is so cross that people at his school keep telling him that he's Chinese. He said he told them he was Vietnamese but they could not care less. I told my rabbit that next time they insisted on him being Chinese, ask them if they're English or French, or Scottish, or American.
And as if people at school called my rabbit Chinese was not enough, someone at the park called him Chinese as well. The little one understandably furious. He could have Karate chopped the fellow human being
I know there're more than 1 billion Chinese on the face of earth but this does not mean that anyone who looks a bit like Chinese is Chinese. And the Vietnamese love the Chinese the way the English love the French.
Well, nothing really when I write. But I have problem shouting F*** you. And this allergy cost me $400 dollar. The offer was I would be paid the amount if I was happy shouting all the dirty words in Vietnamese, probably for a fantasy game that had something to do with Vietnam. Some other nice exchanges are 'I'll send you to hell, filthy animal', 'Skin them, put them in the dirt', 'wave goodbye bast***'
And there's a long list of things that I am tired of:
- Seeing naked men at the gym
- Seeing odd things staying the same at work
- Hearing people shouting at their kids (not that I don't do it from time to time)
- Seeing people put their feet on seats on the train
- Hearing about lack of discipline at schools in the UK (is there such thing as discipline any more?)
- Listening to health officials in Vietnam refering to the cholera outbreak as 'acute diarrhea' for fear of being shun by foreign tourists
So I have settled down at Multiply and just want to say to you guys that Multiply can be the next big thing in the social networking world. Let me list some reason that you should move there.
2. You can import your 360 contacts to Multiply (more HERE)
3. It's a one stop shop for blogs, photos, videos, calendars...
4. You have the option of making an entry accessible only to yourself, your close network (friends), to all or to a selected few... Good when you want to bitch about someone in your friends' list . To turn this feature on, go to 'setting' under your nick name, click on 'Posting Options' then tick the 'Yes' box next to 'Enable advanced posting'.
5. You can cross post your blog on Blogger or LiveJournal. If you have an account with Google already, you only need to enable the blog option to have a page on Blogger. It can serve as your archive in case something goes wrong with Multiply, something that I doubt will ever happen. To do this, go to 'Post', choose 'Blog' then scroll down to the very end to see 'Add blogs from'... You'll see Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Window Live Spaces, Yahoo 360 listed there. Choose the one you want to cross post to, sign in and tick the box 'Enable cross posting to...'
6. You can change the title of almost everything in there. 'Blog' can be changed to 'Rubbish', 'Photo' can be changed to 'Gems', 'Contacts' can be changed to 'Time wasters'
7. You can rearrange boxes in there so if you want your beautiful 'Photos' to be on top of your silly 'Blogs' just click on 'My site' then choose 'Customize My Site' near the top, just above the date. If you want to move a box click on 'Move', want to rename it, click 'Edit', want to ditch it, click 'Hide'. How simple is it?!
8. There's already a Yahoo 360 Refugee Camp there to help you with your move. Any question you have, there'll be somebody there to answer, otherwise, ask me .
9. If you have lots of nice photos and want them all to be your background, it's easy to do it on Multiply too. First though, you have to upload all your pictures to Flickr, into an album. Copy the link of that album and paste it to the box here. Then click 'Build it' and the job is 50 per cent done. Click on the image and save it to your computer, make a note where it's saved.
Then go back to Multiply, go to 'My Site', click on 'Customize My Site', click on 'Choose a theme' on the top of the page to see all the themes available. Once there, choose 'Custom Theme' and upload your image along with selecting a colour scheme. Sounds complicated but it's easy peasy lemon squeazy
10. Otherwise, there're tons of ready-made theme to choose from HERE.
12. You can save your unfinished 'novel' as a draft and can even spellcheck it. How lovely.
13. You can make do with the lack of 'highlight this post' option by doing one of the followings.
A - Use Multiply's 'Favourites'. To do this, click on 'My Site' - 'Customize My Site' - scroll down to 'Blog' and click 'Edit', then tick the boxes next to the blogs you want to highlight.
B. - Rename the 'Review' box by clicking on 'Edit' to the right of it in 'Customize My Site' and past your favourite blogs' urls there.
C. - In 'Customize My Site' mode, click on 'Add Tagged Content Box' near the top of the page (next to the 'done' button). A box will pop up and you can select the tags you want and save them. A number of blogs with the selected tags will appear in a box for you to drag around.
14. Inserting photos or videos is easy too. Grab the code from Flickr or Youtube then paste them into wherever you like in your Multiply blog After ticking the box 'Edit HTML' (the equipvalent of 360's 'View HTML Source') when you're in 'Blog'.
15. You'll have me there I am missing you guys so much ...
And hey, do you know who we all are working for?! All these greedy social networking sites. At the end of the day, they're in the business of selling eyeballs. The more people they can get, the more they can milk their advertisers. Without 40 million people using Facebook, it would have been worth nothing. Now it's a 15 billion dollar business. Why should we all work for them be it 360 or Multiply. It's high time that we set up a group and bargain with them.
Hope you guys have been keeping well. For the time being let's fly! Let's Multiply! And Let's 'Rule The World'
Hooray! I did it Well, actually it just proved that I could not see beyond my nose. The 'add blogs from' funtion is just at the bottom of any 'compose blog entry' page here on Multiply. As I already have a blog (an empty one that is) with Google, I have selected the 'add blogs from' options to get the 'enable cross post to Blogger so that I have a place to archive Multiply blogs. I feed my facebook with stuff from here as well, but having one extra is always nice.
At the moment, I feel a bit lonely here as many of my 360 friends haven't moved. I plan to help them by writing an entry on how to move later this week.
As for my real life, things have been going well. I still take guitar and tennis lessons twice a month. My kids are also interested in playing tennis so I'll take them with me when I get their shoes delivered. My work on the garden is temporarily stopped as it's winter. I absolutely overjoyed now that all the cats that came to poo poo in my garden have stopped coming thanks to the 'jet spray repeller' I just installed. It senses anything that moves and makes a loud noise and sprays water at the moving thingy. Lovely. I was so fed up with all the cats that got diarrhea
By the way, I am still learning on this site. Now let's try embed ding two songs from Youtube. Have a great day!
Well, it's going to take several updates to finish this post but I'd better start.
I always love any place that has a rich history, nice food, good and hospitable residents, places for kids to to. Bruges offers all of this and more.
The Eurostar ride to Brussels took two hours and a half and from then on we used the same tickets to travel to Bruges. You really have to pronounce that 'GE' sound for people to know which town you're talking about when asking for direction.
Travelling with kids means that there would always be unexpected things happening on the way and of course it's not 100 per cent relaxation. On our journey to Waterloo East, May made a comment which left me almost speechless while the man it was intended to sticked out his tongue and managed a smile. Try to guess what she said...
Well, it was 'Dad, who's that man? - He's a passenger. 'Why does he have an angry face?'
Then on the Eurostar train, the little rabbit again looked at another person. It looked like she did not get a smile from them so the question was repeated again. ''What is he angry about?'' Go and answer that, will you?!
But when we left the land of the English patient behind, they struck a conversation with a Belgian gentleman and we ended up having a meal together two days later. We then had tea and a walk about Bruges.
Back to the main story, I haven't been so comfortable in any other town that I've visited. I felt totally at home in Bruges. It was small, cosy, lots of interesting places to see, the food was good be it in the hotel we stayed or in restaurants away from Market Square where rubbish was served to tourists. I LOVE BRUGES. Remember I said I loved Phantom of the Opera and I went to see it again after not so long. I can forsee that I'll be back to Bruges in no time.
More a bit later, but in the mean time, you can see all eight video clips taken when we were on the horse tour in the video section. I have some more from the boat tours but it will take a while for me to load them up. If you're into window shopping, go see the photo gallery of shop windows or if you're into chocolate, there're tens of pictures about its history and if it can make you fat or sick. They're all in the 'must see' box.
When I 'showed' the pictures I took in Bruges to a friend of mine, he said the town looked like Burlington in Vermont in the States. I haven't been there myself but if it's so much like Bruges, I'll surely want to visit. Bruges is very friendly, peaceful, cosy and everything was just easy peasy. It's amazing how the town has changed over the years. It was once one of Europe's most important cities thanks to its access to the sea. That was in the 14th century. Some 500 years later, half of the town's population relied on begging for food as a way of living. Now it's just a small and pretty town with a glorious past that has its presence in many sites.
When I first booked the tour thru Eurostar, I chose a hotel that I then decided to cancel after some googling. Lots of people said they were unhappy with their stays at the hotel. I decided to pay a bit more and stayed at Hotel Portinari, a four star one. It's the best hotel I've ever stayed. And it was just some 60 Euros a night. I've stayed at some 300 Euros a night hotel but it was not much better than Portinari. In fact, I felt more comfortable at Hotel Portinari. The kids absolutely love it. If we ever come back there, that would be our natural choice and we surely will try to stay at room 41 again. It's always lovely to have a shower with the sun shining above your head. Room 41 is on the top foor and is full of sunshine. When I woke up at night, it was full of moonlight as well.
Another plus of staying at Hotel Portinari was that right in front of it was a square with a lovely fountain and when you cross it to the other side, there were lovely tea rooms, shops and restaurants. Narai Thai was the restaurant we had been to the most. It was a nice surprise when I ate there for the last time to know that there were tanks with beatiful and rare fishes on the first floor. All the other times we were there, we stayed on the ground one. If you order food to take away, be carefull when ordering soup. Your understanding of 'soup' and theirs would very likely to be not the same. I thought I was ordering two small bowls of soup when two giant ones, the size of large pop corn pots at cinemas were brought out. I was staggered both by the pots and by the bills.
The best way to explore the city is either on foot or on bicycle. As I had two small kids, I took them on the bust tour, the horse tour and the boat tour. It would have been too much for them to walk or cycle for long. But they actually did a lot of walking apart from the time on the bus, horse or boat.
There're lots of guide books around in different places in Bruges. I just got one from the hotel 'Bruges on foot'. And our new friends Philippe and Hilde took us around on a walking tour to the lake of love, Begijnhof, Church of Our Lady and other places.
All in all, a lovely trip. Bruges is just too Beautiful, Romantic, Unique, Gorgeous, so European and so Splendid :))
- Saw a 20 year old lad at my guitar tutor's office this evening. He looked bright and dreamt of becoming a professional musician. The trouble is he can't read or write so he can't even start to learn to read music yet. My tutor said 'You're still very young and if you want to do it you can.' I said 'If you love doing something you'll find time to do it. Unless you have too many lovers.' I am still amazed that I have run into someone who can't read or write just an hour away from London by train. How come?!
- Another young girl (she is 19 I believe) in Vietnam had a week from hell this week. A famous TV series in which she played the main role was axed after a mobile fone video clip of her hot moments with her 'boyfriend' somehow appeared on the internet. To me, it's a non-story but it's huge in Vietnam.
- And another 20 something I knew just lost a 'job' just because he was not punctual enough. He himself seemed to lack motivation because the pay was rubbish and no one gave a damn about what he did anyway. What a strange world!
- What about me? I indeed have too many lovers at the moment and I don't want to ditch any. I adore tennis, I love going to guitar lessons, I love swimming, I absolutely love blogging. Other things on the waiting list is a business qualification, stock trading and developing my own website. Are there 42 hours in a day?
- Lastly, I think I have to learn to say 'I am sorry but I don't want to have this conversation right now'. Lately I found myself getting into nonsense conversations or arguments with silly people who just wanted to waste my time and tested my ability to resist using the F word. So sad. By the way, I just discovered that my son knew there was such a thing as an 'F' word. He said:
- Dad, I know a word that's even ruder than poo'
- What is it?
- The F word.
- When did you know it?
- A long time ago. Someone in my class told me last year.
There you go. Hope you guys and gals have been keeping well. The weekend is coming and my trip to Bruges is on Monday. Hooray!!
Hope you all have been enjoying your weekend. I took the two rabbits and a friend's son to a local park yesterday. The rest is here. All pix are 'heavy duty' so sorry if it takes a long time to load.
''What's the worst thing to lose when you're getting old? Your hair? Your teeth? Or your curiosity?'' This is an ad for The Economist. I saw it the other day at a station down the London Underground.
As someone in the news business, curiosity is of course very important. But equally important is the ability to change. So I would change the last part of the question to... Or your ability to refresh?
People's surprising ability to cling to their lousy selves has made me surprise and dismay. I've heard countless of times that 'time passes, things change, people change' or 'the only unchanging fact about life is it will change'. Not always true. There're people who want to blame everyone and everything for their failures. There're people who want to change everything and everyone but themselves. How sad! How sad to see so many of them. I cut short my son's play at the park yesterday because he used the word 'stupid' when he told a boy to stop shaking the climing frame he was holding on but the boy just kept doing it. But there've been so many instances in recent days that I wanted to say it myself So many stupid cows
Then the question is why silly people keep doing/saying silly things? It seems like they don't even know what they want or what they want is so meager that it's not even worth mentioning And no one bothers to tell this to their face. It's like a beggar who wants money from passers-by but doesn't get any. He does not say/do the right thing but nobody gives a damn about both him and what he's doing. Of course the beggar doesn't know this himself. Otherwise he would not have been one.
Just some heavy thoughts... they're off my chest now so that I can enjoy my weekend! Have a good one yourself!
I just want you to affectionately say 'I LOVE YAHOO! 360' in my comment box. 360 has become a black sheep of the Yahoo family. Bugs are around and updates are absent. At this rate, it will soon just be a graveyard.
I want to show them that it matters so much to so many. So go on, say it, copy it, paste it, tell your friends to do the same.
Wow wow wow. What a great night! Happy Birthday to Phantom. Of the Opera. Millions and millions of people have seen you growing up and living your life to the full.
I did not realise that I set the resolution so low for video capturing so the clips below aren't perfect. But it will bring you right to London, to that theatre and you'll experience the emotion that ran so high.
Here's Phantom talking about the show turning 21
And here's the birthday song sung by everyone
Here's the one and only Hero
Here're the two balloons I got from the show
Want to see more of my living room? Come on in
Back to the theatre, I got a unlucky seat. No 13 and it's right behind that post. After the break, I moved to seat No 10 by the stairway though.
Wow wow wow. What a great night! Happy Birthday to Phantom. Of the Opera. Millions and millions of people have seen you growing up and living your life to the full.
I did not realise that I set the resolution so low for video capturing so the clips below aren't perfect. But it will bring you right to London, to that theatre and you'll experience the emotion that ran so high.
Here's Phantom talking about the show turning 21
And here's the birthday song sung by everyone
Here's the one and only Hero
Here're the two balloons I got from the show
Want to see more of my living room? Come on in
Back to the theatre, I got a unlucky seat. No 13 and it's right behind that post. After the break, I moved to seat No 10 by the stairway though.
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. To turn this feature on, go to 'setting' under your nick name, click on 'Posting Options' then tick the 'Yes' box next to 'Enable advanced posting'. 
Well, actually it just proved that I could not see beyond my nose. The 'add blogs from' funtion is just at the bottom of any 'compose blog entry' page here on Multiply. As I already have a blog (an empty one that is) with Google, I have selected the 'add blogs from' options to get the 'enable cross post to Blogger so that I have a place to archive Multiply blogs. I feed my facebook with stuff from here as well, but having one extra is always nice.
Saw them on facebook. Have a great day!
So many stupid cows 
