Reasons Why I Miss Home ...

Driver straps in beer, leaves kid loose
Tues 13th May 2008
ABC NEWS WEBSITE

Police in Alice Springs say they were appalled to find a driver put a seatbelt around a carton of beer - but left a five-year-old child unrestrained.

Officers stopped the unregistered sedan on the Ross Highway south of Alice Springs on the weekend.

They found the child sitting in the back seat without a seatbelt, but the driver had put a belt around a slab of beer.

Well, I hope this finally lays to rest the accusations from my Malaysian friends that I come from a nation of beer swilling alcoholics ...

Moral Pickle

So, you really want to know inane details of my life? Okay, if you insist ...

Whilst in Singa (as we 'locals' like to call it), I went to a museum and had my first latter since leaving Australia. *gasp* Like I said, rather inane. HOWEVER, anyone who has ever worked with me at home will know the rate at which I can skol espresso coffee. Standing in front of a coffee machine usually seems to result in drinking shite-loads of the stuff.

HOWEVER in Malaysia my espresso options consist of Starbucks, well, pretty much Starbucks. Sure there are your occasional 'Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf' or whatever else they are called, but in the end, they all kind of blur into one giant multi-national shitting-on-the poor corporation to me. I could go on about the reasons why I hate Starbucks for about 10 years, but most of the key reasons can be found here if you want a good summary of Starbucks evil activities. Oh, in addition, as someone who has made and drunk a feckload of coffee in various awesome coffee shops, I also object to their shitty "ambiance" and the quality of their coffee. Anyway, I digress - the point is I no longer drink 8 latte's a day in honour of my highly distinguished morals and my hatred of stupid coffee chains.

However, I have replaced my latte addiction with an worse one, in terms of both morals and taste - Nescafe 3in1. It's a horrid but strangely addictive combination of pissy "coffee", "creamer" and "sweetener", all of which deserve liberal use of inverted commas. Any self-righteous wanker such as myself knows that Nestle is EVIL beyond a doubt, mainly due to their deeply unethical practises in third-world countries resulting in the unnecessary deaths of babies, which can possibly be considered the worst of their evil-doings.

So - what with drinking this pissy swill every morning, and living in a country where the word 'nescafe' is pretty much always substituted for the word 'coffee', I'm not doing so well ethics-wise. I KNOW the answer to my predicament is to stop drinking coffee, but the effects of that could be human rights violations in themselves. So as you can see, I am in quite the moral pickle, so to speak ...

Singapura ...

I'll not hear a bad word about it!

People that talk down Singapore as boring CLEARLY are clueless as the joys this little nation-state has. I have returned from the future ... or so it feels. Singapore seems a little like Malaysia in the future, which was a little weird. It was also a rocking place. The public transport made me want to shed tears of joy ... and then tears of frustration that other places in the world don't take a leaf out of Singapore's public transport book. Hopefully its something that governments will be aspired to in the future.

The Shezdog and I were lucky enough to arrive in town just before a public holiday, which means an open-house at Istana, the mega-palatial digs of President SR Nathan. After a quick whip around a shopping centre to find some shoes acceptable to His Highness (who apparently doesn't approve of 'slippers' aka 'thongs'), we wandered round the huge grounds and whatnot for a couple of hours. The gardens were AMAZING, and that guy sure has it pretty sweet.

Exhibit A: So sweet it won't even fit in a photo

The Merloin(s) lived up to expectations ... definitely new favourite animal. Other various cool animals were to be found at the Singapore Zoo, which certainly lived up to its 'world class' reputation. Orangutans pretty much roam free around the grounds - how cool is that!?!

"Sudah makan?" "Ya, baru makan"
A common conversation amoungst the People of the Forest

And yes, I can hear you say 'pray tell, dear jax, what has brought about this sudden influx of happysnaps?' Well, fear not poorly speaker of ye-olde-english, for the answer is another new favourite things in my life; my brand-spanking new Canon IXUS 80IS camera in the ultra-retro colour of poo-brown. Takes a cracking snap, even though it has to contend with my altogether dodgy snapping skills. Hoorah!