Things I love

The mini “build your dream car” configurator

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Decisions, decisions

One of the nice things about Fuzzy working for a US based company is that he travels there a lot.

This means I have access to cool consumer electronics I can’t get here.

His next trip is in January - co-incidentally just before my birthday - which means I can ask for a toy….

But I don’t know which I want

the iPhone (which is a seriously cool piece of kit)

or the Sony Reader Digital Book

See - Although the iPhone has serious cool on its side, the fact of the matter is - I spend *way* more time reading ebooks on the train than I do listening to music - and given most of my journey doesn’t get phone reception I’m not going to be doing a lot of web surfing either.

And my Blackberry 8800 actually does all the things an iPhone does - just not in such an ubercool way…

But it’s an *iPhone* - if I had an iPhone people will look at me with envy. I could use it to pick up girls, everyone will want to know how I got it.

No-one has ever thought you were cool because you were reading on the train - even if you have disguised what book it is. So I don’t think I’d get that kind of street cred with an e-book reader… in fact I can imagine to conversation now…

“What’s that?”
“It’s an e-book reader. It let’s me read electronic books.”
“Oh, so it’s interactive right - you can like play games.”
“Umm no - just read regular books - like now I’m reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens.”
“OK - why don’t you just carry a regular book?”
“Ahh but this lets me carry lots of books in a lighter package. Right now I have 160 books loaded on it.”
“Wow! How many are you reading?”
“well - just the one…”
“….”
“But when I finish it - I’ll immediately have another book available”
“So - you spent a lot of money to avoid the risk that you might have to go more than 10 minutes without something to read.”
“yes”
<<thinks>> what a nerd <</thinks>> “oh”

See - just doesn’t have the street cred.

But the thing is… I would spend a lot of money to avoid the risk I might have to go more than 10 minutes without something to read…

So what do I do?

Go for the apotheosis of cool?
Or embrace my inner nerd?

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We’re back

We actually got back last Thursday - but I’ve been a bit busy for blogging. However I have loaded  some of the photos from the trip are here.

Short summary of the trip.
Christmas lights and markets in Edinburgh are beautiful
A vast ugly soulless shopping mall can be an improvement to a place. Particularly if that place is Birmingham
If you act like Monkey on Monkey Island people treat you very oddly

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You see the strangest things

It turns out you can get anything in Hong Kong - even redemption.

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On the road again

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Brussels, listening to Jeremy Clarkson do a really very good impression of an Australian on Top Gear. We’ve been on the road since last Monday. In that time we’ve been to Edinburgh, where we caught up with my godparents - which was both good and bad. My godfather has been diagnosed with terminal cancer of the bile duct, an incredibly rare cancer - only about 60 people a year in the UK are diagnosed with it, so on the one hand, it was pretty rough seeing him that unwell, but on the other hand, I’m really glad I had the chance to see him before it’s too late.

After Edinburgh, we came to Belgium. I pretty much grew up in Brussels, so coming here is a lot like visiting home. We’ve eaten a lot of comfort food, visited some old haunts, done some shopping, eaten a lot more food, done the tourist thing, eaten some food, visited some of the major towns in Flanders, Gent and Brugge, eaten some more food…

We fly out to Birmingham tomorrow (don’t ask - I’d rather spend a week in Sudan naming teddy bears Muhammed than spend time in Birmingham) and after that London, before Hong Kong, and finally home.

I was going to include some pictures with this post - but foolishly left the camera cable at home - so no go until we get back to Sydney