Voyages

CK arrived in HK on the 7th, and this Saturday we're off to Jakarta. The return flight is a little under two weeks later, but it'll only be me on the plane on the way back. Well, I presume there'll be other passengers, but CK won't be there, is what I'm saying. Shouldn't be for too long, I hope. However, she's moved out of her Beijing flat and all the stuff has to go somewhere.

We went out shopping in Kowloon on Saturday, and found the main branch of Tom Lee music. I got myself a music stand, so now I don't have to stoop over the desk when I'm practising my violin (which, incidentally, I totally suck at after two years away, unsurprisingly). We also picked up a brass guitar slide, a new harmonica for me, and for her a tiny keyring harmonica and a castanet shaped like a koala. As you do.

Now we just need to get CK's niece a present (I'm still pushing for the swanee whistle), and pick up some mooncakes for the family in Jakarta. I'm glad I'm not in Beijing at the moment. Right now I'd be avoiding mooncakes like crazy.

Publishing is fun

So, today I'm sorting out the manuscript for the teachers' guide to our graded reader version of King Solomon's Mines.

I realised this was not going to be the best MS ever when the introduction began "In the book of First Kings in the Old Testament, there is a story of King Solomon, who was said to be very rich and very wise."

Yes, I think you mean 'the first book of Kings'.
Anyway, a scant two sentences later is this gem:

"The story of King Solomon has since gained popularity with the 1885 publication of the best-selling novel, King Solomon’s Mines."

Firstly, saying "has since gained popularity" implies that the event occurred in the recent past. Even allowing for the maxim 'the British think 100 miles is a long way, the Americans think 100 years is a long time', 1885 is not the recent past.

Secondly, and more importantly, I'm fairly sure King Solomon's Mines is not more popular than the Bible.

Not sure why I'm surprised. This is the second edition of the reader we're doing. The first edition, which has been in print since 1992, has the main character's name spelled incorrectly all the way through, and don't even get me started on the artwork errors.

Triolet

The days have passed us by and so
The time is all but at an end,
When we must stay from what we know.
The days have passed us by, and so
We are now free to stay or go -
But sooner than we might intend
The days have passed us by. And so
The time is all but at an end.


These are harder than they look.
(Triolet Wikipedia entry)

Even more Jakarta-bound

Got my confirmation of my days off today. When I handed the leave card over to my supervisor, she said "oh my, six days?"

.....why so surprised? Come on, that's half my annual leave entitlement anyway, and HK's not exactly over endowed with public holidays.

I can't help but feel that if one employee going on holiday for a week is a big problem, maybe you don't have enough staff for whatever it is your company does.

Still, I've got the days off, so it doesn't much matter. I have cunningly straddled the gap between two public holidays as well, making the actual time in Indonesia about a week and a half.

Jakarta-bound

Hooray, I'm going to Indonesia. Although not for a while.
I paid for CK and my tickets to Jakarta in September yesterday, so that's all sorted out, then. Time to brush up on the lingo - "terima kasih", "selamat malam", etc.
With Lastminute.com.hk, it was just over HK$3000 for the both of us on China Airlines (not Air China, but the Taiwanese one), which isn't bad going.

I paid in cash at their office. In fact, it was the option to do this rather than use a credit card that made me choose Lastminute rather than buy direct from China Airlines online. Debt, eh? It's terrible. Actually, mine is pretty bad. But I'm keeping up with the credit card repayments and I'm due to renegotiate my contract at the end of this year, so no cause for alarm.

Even better, on the way back down to the Star Ferry, I got myself a Firewire cable. I'd never bothered in Beijing as the laptop I had then could capture digital video. But my new one does, so I went to Fortress - they don't sell cables for any of the products they sell, which is weird - who pointed me to "computer shops near the Star Ferry". So, thanks, Fortress staff.

In the Star City Computer World or whatever it's called (it's something like that), there was a Firewire cable right there in the first shop I walked into. This was a classic moment of post-Mainland tension anti-climax. I'd been steeling myself for a search for at least half an hour and then some sort of ludicrous price and having to compare shops and so on. But here I just walked in, enquired as to the price, paid and left. Brilliant.

On the subject of Firewire cables, I had thought of getting one from the Apple Store. Good thing I didn't. Let's see, $240 from Apple, or $38 from the shop?

So in summary, I'll be able to make and edit films on video now. Which is nice for me if not for the people that eventually end up watching them.

More stupid Mac ads

From the Apple website:

"A PC comes stuffed with software you’d never want to use. A new Mac comes with the stuff you want."

Says the company that sells a laptop bundled with a program for organising your ideas into bullet points. Mmm, useful.

Simpsonsified

Me and CK in Simpsons format: