I finally moved.

Please come and visit at my new home http://krisalis.org. It's pretty much the same as the old home, but I'm going to renovate and revamp soon. Well, that's the plan anyway.

If you have this page bookmarked, please update it to the new address.

If you don't have this page bookmarked, why not add one? Go on....

And to the wonderful people who have links to Krisalis on their weblogs, please update them to point to my new location.

Thanks!

-Kristen
xxx

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Heh heh he!

Geek Mystique has some Doggie questions for God...

Dear God:
Are there mailmen in Heaven? If there are, will I have to apologize?

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Hi there. I'm in the process of moving from Geocites over to my new place. I hope to have everything more or less up and running over there by Monday. Maybe sooner if Mark works late tonight and Andrea gives me a hand!

I could have done a bunch of stuff last night, but instead, we went bowling.

I suck at bowling, and I hadn't been for over 3 years. Maybe watching Ed has inspired us. We had a look for any Phil Stubbs-esqe characters, but sadly there weren't any. Anyway, after a spectacularly lousy start (my first two balls went straight down the gutter), I managed to recoup with a couple of spares, and ended up scoring 95.

I discovered that I bowl backhanded. Instead of pointing my palm towards the pins when I release the ball like everyone else, I have the back of my hand facing the pins, and release the ball with a sort of backwards spin. If that sounds strange, it's probably because it is.

Andrea's technique is just as strange. She wanders forward, stops abruptly and then releases the ball with a thud and bit of forward momentum. She then turns around, and wanders back to her seat as the ball meanders down the lane, not paying the slightest bit of attention as to whether her ball is going to hit anything. Everyone else in the whole bowling alley stands and watches their ball, but not Andrea. Though unconventional, it was clearly effective - she got the second highest score of the night.

The guy in the next lane over had his post-bowl ball-watching ritual down to a fine art. The aim appeared to be to hold his final bowling pose as still as possible from the moment the ball left his hand until it reached the pins. Given that his post-bowl pose was quite spectacular, this was highly amusing to watch.

I lead such an exciting life.

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Got Sixty million bucks to spare? Why not throw it all away!

Stranded in Vegas after the terrorist attacks grounded planes in the US, Kerry Packer spent $60 million gambling.

I don't care how rich he is, that is disgusting.

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Calibration: The meaning of words

OK
Singaporean: quite good
British: OK
American: not very good

Good
Singaporean: really very good
British: good
American: OK

Excellent
Singaporean: incredibly, outstandingly, amazing
British: excellent
American: pretty good

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I just visited ickle.org, and guess what their ickle article of the day is about?

Hair.

I must disagree. Hair is not ickle. Especially not my hair. Sure, each individual strand is quite slender, but gather a bunch together, and you've got a massive mop of madness. There's nothing ickle about it.

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I had my hair cut at the weekend. As usual, no one noticed. Well, Mark said he did, but then he sort of has to say that, being the boyfriend and all. Anyway, I had about 3 inches cut off the length, and some layers cut in to give my style some more body or lift or whatever the hairdresser lady said that sounded so yummy in the salon.

I left the salon with a silky mane of swishing blondness. This lasted all day Sunday and Monday. Then I washed it. Of couse, salon hair can never be reproduced at home. I know this. I expect this. Anyway, I washed it and loaded on the conditioner, and even used the hair dryer to try tame some of my hair's natural exuberance. It seemed to work ok, and I left for work feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Roll on 10am.

colleague: "Wow. Bad hair day." (one of the less endearing characteristics of the average Singaporean is their brutal directness when it comes to personal comments. They have no qualms about telling you that you look fat, or tired, or spotty, or are having a bad hair day)
me:"Huh? What's wrong with my hair?"

A quick trip to the ladies confirmed my fears. The 3 inches of hair cut off the length combined with the layers have indeed given my hair "lift". Without the additional weight to keep my natural wave under control, I have gone from "bedraggled Afghan hound" to "wild'n'wavy Lion's mane". The Singaporean humidity contributes to the overall poofiness.

Mark came by the office to take me out for lunch. I had not mentioned the hair crisis to him.

He greeted me: "Hello! You're looking very fluffy."
me: *dirty look from beneath mad hair*
Mark: "No! It looks nice! I like it." etc. etc. as he tried to backtrack over the inital faux pas of mentioning the fluffiness.

*Sigh*

If 80's hairstyles come back, I'll be so trendy. I have perfect 80's hair. Give me some massive shouldour pads and I could be on Dynasty, or in a Wham video. I don't even need the mousse and hairspray, just a little humidity and voila!

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I'm sad.

One of the puppies was run over and killed this evening.

Mark and I stopped off at the puppy field to take them some leftovers this evening on our way home from dinner. As we approached, it looked like one of the puppies was sleeping. As we got closer we could see it was a bit more serious than that. Someone had obviously moved the pup from the middle of the road to the verge.

Mark borrowed a shovel from the construction site next to the field, and dug a little grave. I got a bunch of newspaper from the flat, and we wrapped the pup up and buried him. It seemed kinder than leaving him by the side of the road.

Sleep tight little puppy. God speed.

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Yahoo! is driving me crazy.

I've been trying to change the nameserver domain thingy from Geocities to Adfreewebhosting for this site now since last Wednesday. I cannot figure out how to do it. This is partially because silly me originally registered for a Yahoo! personal email address, which comes with a domain name, instead of registering directly for the domain name through Yahoo!, which comes with the personalised email address. Yes, these services are essentially the same. But the way they are set up is different, and now things are all screwy - so really it's also Yahoo!'s fault. (or something along those twisted lines of logic).

I've emailed Yahoo! Help 3 times now. Once on Thursay, once on Sunday, and again this morning. No response.

Meanwhile my week's free trial at Adfreewebhosting expires this afternoon (I have written to them and asked for an extension....no answer from them yet either).

I want off of Geocities ASAP, because the pop-under ads are driving me nuts, I don't like the little advert in the top right corner, I want to have CGI scripts and I want to try Moveable Type, and it's all incredibly frustrating. I want my page to actually reside at http://krisalis.org. There has to be a way to fix this. If you happen to know of a way, please, please, let me know.

Grrrrrr.

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Not exactly a breaking news story, but one that I feel is worth mentioning anyway...United pilot dishes out advice on how to combat hijackers.

If someone were to stand up, brandish something such as a plastic knife and say 'This is a hijacking' or words to that effect here is what you should do: Every one of you should stand up and immediately throw things at that person — pillows, books, magazines, eyeglasses, shoes —anything that will throw him off balance and distract his attention. If he has a confederate or two, do the same with them. Most important: get a blanket over him, then wrestle him to floor and keep him there. We'll land the plane at the nearest airport and the authorities will take it from there."

And for the skeptics out there, apparently this is not an urban legend.

It's all very well in theory, but I'm not at all sure that I would have the guts to follow through with his advice. I'm a big scaredy cat. I'm a big scaredy cat who is meant to be flying to the US next month. *Shudder*

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Wouldn't it be wonderful to log onto the BBC news website and see this very page as the days headlines around the world?

some exerpts:
AFRICA - Nothing wrong here either
EUROPE - Slough to be rebuilt
ASIA-PACIFIC - Japan to build 300ft Pokemon
SOUTH ASIA - Really, really great beaches

[link via Vaughan at whereveryouare]

More feel-good stuff here at Kevin's Homepage. Kevin is a Black Labrador. He lives in Japan. Kevin's skills include "Sigh, Tail-chop, Head-butt" .

There are some cute pictures and some very enjoyable Engrish (or Japlish if you prefer).

Example: He used be a always-loser. These days he wins over some flower pots with "Tail-chop".

[link via my Mum, who knows I'm a soft touch for anything to do with labradogs]

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Seems that President Bush's latest speech has hit the mark. The overwhelming majority of comments I have heard from US-based friends who saw the speech live were very positive. BBC readers are giving it the thumbs up, and even the critical MeFi members seem to be supportive. I was at work while the whole thing was going on, so will probably only get to see edited highlights of Bush's speech on the evening news.

I keep thinking that in 20 years time, kids will be studying this stuff at school. I keep seeing parallels between the articles I'm reading and the speeches I hear and the political cartoons I see with the material I studied in school when we covered WWII. This is all history in the making. I wonder what people will see when they look back?

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Note to self:

Milo will not fix a chocolate craving. Nor will strawberry Freddo frogs. The sickly sweet strawberry filling detracts enormously from the chocolatey goodness.

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