You'll find me about 11,000 miles away.

I saw this scene on Friday night in Sydney. I was standing at an intersection, a really busy intersection near China Town, waiting to meet some friends,...but they were late. So I had lots of time to stand around and wait for a break in the stream of pedestrians to take this picture. It still came out a little blurry, but I can describe it. On the left, a table of water bottles with a metal tin and a sign saying that the water bottles are $1, and then another sign saying it is unattended and that you should be honest and pay if you take a bottle. On the right of the picture is a guy kneeling on the pavement, possibly homeless, with a sign asking for money. Almost immediately this struck me as some sort of strange social experiment. Embrace your inner philanthropist by giving money to a homeless guy, buy yourself water for $1 and give no money to the homeless guy, steal a bottle of water, steal a bottle of water and give it to the homeless guy, or even buy a bottle for $1 and ...

A few weeks ago I came back from a trip to China, and I've mentioned previously about how incredibly pleasing it is to see that China retains its craziness. I'll explain. I first visited China 9 years ago. At this time there were motorbike taxis, everywhere. Really cheap, convenient and quick, but really, really dangerous. Having big legs and being generally bigger and fatter than most Chinese, each time I tried to get a motorbike taxi I would be sized up and you could see an instant of doubtful mirth flash across the eyes of the rider of the bike.  Most times you would wear no helmet and have to literally cling onto any crevice deeper than your finger nail would fit (if you were lucky, there would be a small luggage rack at the back of the bike). The driver would then proceed to hurtle in between cars and along highways and undertake huge buses and drive the wrong way across a busy intersection into oncoming traffic. And the adventure wasn't over when you reached your...

Yesterday, I received an email from what I guess is Füri's Australian distributor,  McPherson's Consumer Products Ltd . They said they were sorry to hear about what happened they kindly offered to send out a replacement or closest possible replacement product for the knife. I hope they send me out a paring knife that cuts vegetables. You can read the full story here .

In one of my old jobs I somehow was given the position of Fire Warden for the building floor that my office was on. This wasn't a posting that I had any particular interest in, but no one else volunteered, there weren't too many responsibilities, it would mean I get out of the office for Fire Warden training and I thought I would get some sort of qualification.  Only 2 of those 4 were true in the end. Fire? Fire! FIRE!!.....RUN A few meetings for Fire Warden Training were scheduled over the next few months, unfortunately on our level too, so I didn't get to go anywhere. After the first meeting had begun, it became clear that there wasn't going to be any qualification (like a First Aider qualification which is slightly more useful). Just some pretty obvious fire safety and organisation procedures to remember, and some droll training meetings. These were made slightly more bearable by the fact that a few of the other prospective Fire Wardens were quite hot (haha.....

Around a year ago I bought a knife set made by an American company called Füri. They were nice knives I thought. Notice the "were". They're no longer nice knives. Below is an email that I wrote to them a few weeks ago. An email that they as yet, haven't answered. So I thought I'd post my letter online. The email was entitled "Füri-ous at knife breaking". I hope they understood the pun of their company's name. Hi Füri, Just over a year ago (March or April 2012), I purchased a 9cm (3.5 inch) Pairing knife. It was in a set along with an 20cm Cook's Knife. I decided to buy Füri brand knives as I was looking for some good quality kitchen knives; knives that enhance my enjoyment of cooking. However, last week I was cutting through a potato (chopping it into cubes for a soup) with the 9cm Pairing Knife, when the knife just snapped! I've attached some pictures. A clean break in the knife - no twisting or bending. A clean bre...

I saw a news story today on Yahoo, of a gay marriage in China . I was like "oh that's unusual in China; a gay marriage" and usually these things don't interest me a great deal, but then as I was skimming over the article I saw a line about "old men", the word "sex" and something in inverted commas ( 两名老年男同性恋者在支持者的见证下举行“婚礼 ...) Well,...things just got interesting. Screenshot taken from Yahoo.cn News website. Isn't his dress lovely... When I translated the sentence I was shocked. I laughed to myself. Translated, that sentence means Supporters witnessed, two elderly men who have sex with men, held a "wedding".  I asked my girlfriend if there was no such thing as the word "gay" or "homosexual" in China as it seems quite a strange and slightly disturbing and overly descriptive choice of words. No beating about the bush here. No friendly sounding words like "gay" or "homo" but just short of dec...

Intro About 7 weeks ago, I got made redundant. 29 years old and facing redundancy. I guess it could be much worse. I could be twice as old, have little savings, kids and wife and these feelings of desolation and sadness would be compounded, and I guess that's why lots of people decide that only an extreme, fanatical immersion in religion or alcohol or even suicide is the answer. I like to think I would take a very positive attitude towards it, and hopefully have a lot of helpful friends and relatives to turn to. I decided that instead of weeping into my semi-naked lap and enhancing the ambidextrous skills of moving the mouse and typing one handed (with my left hand), not washing, alcoholism and eating instant noodles, I would do something productive enough like writing a diary. Take Anne Frank; she managed living in an attic for the most part of World War 2, I bet keeping a diary helped her deal with the pain. If someone could get through the suffering and emotional ...