Category: ranting

I wasn’t like Linus [wikipedia.org] when I was a kid. I never really carried my blanket around with me. And it was a good blanket, soft, quilted, hand made by my great grandmother. I still have it, probably because I did not carry it everywhere. I just chewed on the corners while I slept.

What I did carry around as a kid was a stuffed kangaroo—called Kabby, that my mother got with Betty Crocker [wikipedia.org] points. I carried that thing everywhere. I left it out in the rain on night and was totally distraught because I didn’t know where Kabby was. I still have Kabby, missing one eye and there is a hole in the tail where the stuffing is coming out, but I still have it.

Kabby was the last toy I got that has not been subsequently and quickly supplanted by the next, newer, toy. Growing up a geek enshrined this as I am always on the lookout for newer and better toys. A new computer, new video games, new stereo, PDA, cell phone.

Cell phones are particularly bad. My first phone, after moving up from a pager, was the Motorola MicroTAC 550, of which I can’t even find a decent picture. I then got a Nokia 252n which I used and loved for several years. When I was in Europe I got a Nokia 3300—which I still think was the best 2G phone ever and possibly the best mobile phone ever. When I returned to the US I got a 3395 specifically because it had the same interface. My cell phone revolving door really got going after I started working for a company in the mobile services space several years ago. Since then I have had a Samsung 715e, a Sony Ericsson T610 (which is the best 2.5G phone I have ever used), a Trio 650, a Nokia N-Gage, LG 6000, a Motorola v600 and lately a Sony Ericsson k700i.

Last night I feed the need to have the latest and greatest by spending an inordinate amount of money on a new toy: the Sony Ericsson z800i [sonyericsson.com]. Oh, behold! Shiney!

I seem to have misplaced my keys—somewhere in Vietnam. Yes; Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City to be more precise. I jaunted off for a weekend in Ho Chi Minh City. Not as romantic as spending the weekend in Paris I guess. But then I’m in Singapore now, not London. I’ll try to write more about Vietnam when I get a chance to go through the photos I took. Thought I don’t expect too many good ones.

Anyway back to my keys. I had them when I was in Vietnam, but not when I got back. I suspect they were actually lost on the plane. They were in the outside pocket of my duffle bag, which in retrospect might not have been the best place to put them. There was nothing really important on the key chain. The key to the flat here in Singapore for which there are a number of spares. The key to my desk at work, which there should be a spare ‘on file’ with the office manger and a strange old-style key I found in London.

I found the strange key in Leicester Square on my first trip to London, which was actually only a single day/night. C██████ and I were on the way to Paris and we had a stopover in London. While wondering around I found this key in the cobblestones around Leicester Square. The key was like an old clock key. I have absolutely no use for the key but I though it was cool. Sucks that I lost it.

the other thing that sucks to lose is the metal chain and lobster clasp that was attached to the key ring. Very hard to find this kind of key chain with no leather on it. Oh well. Maybe I should call Singapore Airlines and see if it fell out in the cargo hold.

mena : Beggs!
*** Auto-response sent to mena : For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. –H. L. Mencken
mena : or a solution that takes longer than it should
mena : but free ice cream at ben & jerry’s today made things easier
beggs: I bet
beggs: why did they give you free icecream?
mena : it was free cone day
mena : I told a lady on the shuttle bus coming home last night that today would be free cone day
mena : she said she won’t eat their ice cream because they support communism
beggs: haha
mena : and that they go to cuba and give money to fidel castro
mena : but if you’re not buying the ice cream, then what’s the harm?

About 6:30 Sunday evening I was sitting in the office and suddenly I felt the sensation that I was at the top of the Sears tower. The top of the Sears tower sways back and forth from the wind, it’s a very disconcerting feeling the first time you feel it. Kind of like being on a ship for the first time. This a bit more subtle but I defiantly felt like I was shaking back and forth. We half joked it was another earthquake around Sumatra. A few minutes later Reuters (story link [reouter.com]) confirmed that in fact it was a magnitude 6.8 earthquake off the West coast of Sumatra. You can find info on it from the USGS here [usgs.gov].

Singapore is fairly safe from earthquakes, but damn, that earthquake was 500 miles away and the buildings here were shaking. I slept through the past two big ones, the 9.5 in December and 8.7 in March. Between the earthquakes and the terrorist blowing shit up in Southeast Asia it would appear to be a good time to be somewhere else. Although you can’t really get away from things like earthquakes. Even C’ville—on the East coast has a little earth shakin’ now and then.

The first earthquake I felt was when I was about 7. It was in the summer and I was in the basement of a neighbor’s house with a bunch of other kids. I was bouncing up and down on one of those oversized playground balls with the big circular handle that were (kind of) popular when I was 7. The ground shook and I bounced funny, I guess more because I was shocked than anything else, but I bounced right into one of the solid steel poles and knocked myself out. I was only out for a second or two but got a concussion.

There was no house cleaning of old animal un-friendly products when I became a Vegetarian. No ritualistic ceremony to cleanse myself of all past wrongs committed against animals. No, I’m not an evangelizing vegetarian, I’m not an asshole about others lack of morals. I was much more subdued about becoming a vegetarian. It probably helped that most of my close friends and co-workers at the time were already or became vegetarians along with me at the time.

I did not cut all animal based products out of my life: I ate eggs and drank milk (and aside from a shot time when I drank Soya and ate no cheese or eggs I still partake of milk products and eggs. Because it is simply too hard not to unless you live across the street from a Whole Foods [wholefoods.com]—which I did for a time, but now I’m just making excuses,) I had leather good; gloves, a coat, wallet, etc. and over the year I have continued to accumulate leather goods. Both goods I purchased and goods that were given to me.

Last summer I re-read Animal Liberation [amazon.com]. It was the first time I have re-read the ‘book that started it all’ since I became a vegetarian. Just afterwards I read Fast Food Nation [amazon.com] which may sound like it has nothing to do with animal rights, utilitarian ethics or being a vegetarian but if you suspect that I suspect you have not read Fast Food Nation. After reading these two books and thinking about it for a while I decided that I would make a concerted effort to replace all my leather goods (not ready to call a 100% moratorium on eggs and dairy yet—thought soy milk is easy to get over here so we’ll see, protein might be hard to come buy with out some dairy)

I started my long delayed house cleaning some time ago. I purchased a new totally synthetic wallet from The Wallet Shop [thewalletshop.com] here in Singapore where I also purchased a business card holder—now I just need to replace my passport/travel wallet anyone got any leads? I also went ahead and replaced my leather dress shoes and my Birkenstocks with new ones from Moo Shoes [mooshoes.com]. I replaced my light leather jacket (which I bought in Italy only a few years ago—bad, bad, vegetarian!) with a black PVC one from the Human Rights Campaign, and it only cost me $5.00! Non-leather goods tend to be cheaper that the ‘real’ thing.

I guess now I can count myself as a good vegetarian, thought not a vegan (still debating that egg and dairy thing.) I still have some leather in my possession—the handle on my otherwise nylon business bag is leather. So maybe the transformation is not yet totally complete but I’m much closer to being leather, and wool, free than I was a few months ago. Now if I could just convince my girlfriend to give up those high priced leather purses and handbags!