Discovery of a new element! Ooh, how exciting

Current mood: Googly-eyed (must... stop... surfing... the... Net...)
Current music: No music, but there's a couple of noisy folks with megaphones outside

Recently I spotted a sign on the side of a truck, which said: "Education for International Mindedness". I suppose this is the exciting New School of thought, in contrast with the Old School, which preferred "Education for International Bloody-Mindedness". Presumably, some of the world's political leaders of past and present - for some reason, Hitler springs foremost to mind - must have studied at that Old School, and graduated summa cum laude. Yes, we could certainly do with more considerate and tactful politicians...

Continuing in a political vein, I came across an interesting article in the paper last week. From the sound of it, the guy who wrote the column, Jake van der Kamp, got the story from someone else (a David Coates, it would appear), but it's only fair to mention the name of the last person to pass on the tale...

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Elementum, dear Watson. It’s just Governmentium ad absurdium

Did you know that researchers have just discovered the heaviest chemical element yet known to science? They have named it Governmentium.

Governmentium has no pros to its credit and, therefore obviously, no protons. It also has no electrons and is therefore inert. It consists of one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons and any number of assistant deputy neutrons. These particles are held together by forces called morons and are supported in turn by vast quantities of insignificant particles called peons.

Although inert, Governmentium can easily be detected as it impedes everything with which it comes in contact. A minute amount can cause a reaction to take more than a year where it would normally take less than a second.

Governmentium is not radioactive or active in any other way but does have a normal half-life of five years, at the end of which period a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

Rather than lose mass through this process of decay, Governmentium actually gains mass over time as each reorganisation causes some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion has led scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain level of concentration, which is referred to as Critical Morass.

Governmentium is the research team’s second discovery of an inert element. Its first, Academium, induces those who come in contact with it to tell the rest of us what we already know.

Extract from the column, ‘Monitor’, by Jake van der Kamp. South China Morning Post, Thursday, September 22, 2005.

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Now, boys and girls, do these findings have international significance in the field of 'science' or in 'social science'? Discuss and give a short talk on your conclusions. Extra points for those able to keep a straight face...

The Scientist

Current mood: Pedantic
Current music: Coldplay - true Rainy Day Music

I've been listening to the Coldplay song, 'Speed of Sound', and being of a scientific turn of mind I have naturally started to ponder on the speed of sound and the speed of light (which is a phrase that also pops up in the song). I think Coldplay might have exaggerated slightly when they claim that "birds go flying at the speed of sound" and that "planets are moving at the speed of light". First things first. The fastest flying (i.e. flying horizontally) bird is the swift, recorded flying at 47 m/s, while the fastest diving bird is the peregrine falcon, a bird of prey that can swoop through the air at around 80-100 m/s. This is pretty darn impressive. However, the speed of sound is 340.29 m/s, so until birds feel the need to fly that fast, only planes like Concorde can break the sound barrier. Then there's the speed at which the planets are whizzing around the Sun. The Earth moves around the Sun at an average speed of 29,780 m/s; Mercury, which is the planet closest to the Sun, moves the fastest at 47,900 m/s. This isn't a patch on the speed of light, which is a smug 299,792,458 m/s in space. So - no points for accuracy, guys, though I guess it's artistic license...

Incidentally, the line "birds came flying from the underground" always makes me think of pigeons hanging around in the London Underground, so out of curiosity I looked up the top pigeon speeds to see how they compared. According to the BBC, the Royal Air Force experimented with pigeons during World War II and the fastest pigeon travelled at an average of 26.2 m/s. This is the same as 94.5 km/h or 58.7 mph, which means that you could well be overtaken by this grey-feathered rocket whilst driving along in your car. Unfortunately, the London pigeons that do wander around tube stations are probably not of the same calibre as these trained and speedy birds. One time on the tube, I saw a pigeon fly into the underground train by mistake. It fluttered around in a panic for a bit, then it finally settled down and simply got off calmly at the next stop. Perhaps I could suggest to Chris Martin that "birds were riding on the Underground" might be a suitable (if bizarre) alternative line.

I was talking about the speed of light earlier, and I would like to ask any physicists out there if they can explain to me, using very simple English wherever possible, just why the speed of light is the "speed limit" of the universe. It seems a bit arbitrary to say that nothing can go faster than the speed of, hmm, what shall we choose, how about light? Yeah, speed of light, that's the ticket...

...And while you're at it, I've another question for you. Did the Big Bang that started off the universe actually make a big bang, or in fact any sound at all? Space is a vacuum, so sound doesn't really propagate through it. Besides which, there probably wasn't any space, because the whole point (as far as my meagre understanding goes) is that the Big Bang made space, and time. Was there any time for a loud explosion to exist in?

Aaagh, thinking about all this can really do one's head in. Physics can be very interesting indeed, right up to the point when my head starts to hurt...

Speaking of physicists, here's a piece of bovine guano (based on REAL FACT) which I wrote a little while ago. My apologies if you’ve already seen this before, but if you haven’t, you might find it mildly amusing if you know anything about physicists. Please be aware that this is merely a play on the stereotype of the physicist's working process and should not be interpreted as being offensive to physicists, as I know several and they are all Wonderful People - and yes, they deserve the capital letters!

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I saw on a poster at work that there was a talk entitled 'Finding Needles in Haystacks: The Physicist's Way' (that was the REAL FACT, folks). Being a humble chemist by trade (though I often wonder why), I suppose the Chemist's Way might not be sufficiently 'advanced' to be worth giving a talk on, as it would merely be to set the haystack on fire by first dousing it with flammable solvents, lighting it with a thrown box of lit matches, eventually putting the fire out with a CO2 extinguisher, and sifting through the remains for slivers that react with acid.

I imagine that the Physicist's Way would be to first formulate a theory that you cannot simultaneously know where and how many needles exist within the boundary of the haystack universe. This leads to the conclusion that the haystack must cease to exist in order for the needles to be found, so the theory of relativity is discovered and, after a lot of mathematical wrangling and quite a bit of elbow grease, an atomic bomb is subsequently invented. This bomb is dropped directly on the haystack, plus or minus several kilometres on either side. The haystack instantly vanishes, so the number and location of the needles must necessarily become known.

However, to the Physicist's surprise, this does not appear to be the case as not only has the haystack disappeared, but so have all the needles and about 99.9999% of the surrounding scenery. This leads to yet another conclusion that there has been a trans-dimensional shift caused by the force of the atomic bomb explosion, and the needles now exist in a hitherto undiscovered dimension, leaving behind a few sub-atomic particles called 'needelons' as an indicator of their former existence. The number of needelons produced is thought to be directly proportional to the number of needles there once were in the haystack. The truth of all this cannot unfortunately be shown by experimental results, as there is no longer anything to measure apart from the deadly level of radiation. Happily, the presence of needelons are absolutely and undoubtedly proven by the complex and imaginary mathematical equations which the Physicist came up with after his 17th pint of lager at the local pub.

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Are you smiling yet? I don't know about you, but I think that's cured my headache!

La fille invisible

Humeur courante: Néant
Musique courante: Rien

Je suis une fille invisible. Personne ne peut me voir; je suis transparent, comme le verre. Je n'ai aucune voix; je suis silencieux dans un monde sans air. Personne ne peut m'entendre dans ce vide. Je n'ai aucun lien, je n'ai aucun raccordement. Je flotte dans ce ciel sans étoiles. Je suis ignoré, je suis oublié, mais c'est normal, parce que je suis néant. Je ne suis rien mais des pensées, des pensées d'un autre pays, d'un autre temps.

How to alleviate boredom

Current mood: In the mood for fun
Current music: Lemon Jelly - 'Ramblin' Man' (oh, the joys of travelling!)

*POP*

During a lull this afternoon at work, there was a delivery of some equipment that was packed in bubble-wrap. Not being particularly busy at that point, a couple of us started popping the bubbles, which were probably Super-Duper Sized because each bubble was nearly 3 cm in diameter, which doesn't sound like much until you measure it. They made very satisfactory popping sounds and it was a fun kind of thing to do in the usually sensible workplace...

*POP*

...But not as fun as skimming stones (which, unfortunately, I can't do at work). If you've ever seen the brilliant French film, 'Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain', you'll know that the character Joseph likes nothing but popping bubble-wrap (and possibly, stalking his ex-girlfriends), but the heroine Amélie prefers skimming stones whenever she can. I never used to be able to do this, until a wonderful friend of mine showed me how when I visited him in La Rochelle, and now I can manage to get two skips before the stone plunges into the water.

*Flick*... *Whoosh*... *Skip*... *Skip*... *Sploosh!*

One day I'll be able to get five skips, like my friend does. It all comes down to practice.

So the other day, when I went to the beach with my visiting London friends, practising my skimming technique was high on the list (or should I say, "J'ai pratiqué à faire le ricochet!"). The trick is in finding the right kind of pebble - not too big and heavy, and also fairly flat. The other trick is in *flicking* your wrist and aiming the stone at a low angle. Anyway, I was afraid I'd be out of practice, but I haven't lost the touch! I'm so pleased!

*Flick*... *Whoosh*... *Skip*... *Skip*... *Sploosh!*

The other thing I did on the glorious sunshiny beach was to sculpt myself a sand-turtle. A sand castle would have been too difficult to do on my own without a sand bucket, sand spade, sand cement-mixer, sand pneumatic drill and sand crane, but a turtle was easy. All you need is a mound of sand for the shell... then a smaller mound next to it, for the head... then some flattish, pointier mounds for the flippers... then a little bit more for the tail. Voilà. Turtle. I made my turtle head towards the water, accompanied by a little sign saying 'Save the Turtles'.

My friends thought that the ephemeral sand-turtle should have a name, and all sorts of silly suggestions cropped up (including names of various potatoes - no, I don't know why either). I came up with the name 'Penguin the Turtle', which would be interestingly confusing, though the turtle might face a certain amount of existential angst ("Should I swim north for the winter? Should I be black and white? Have I got too many flippers?"). This means that sometime in the future I shall have to sculpt a sand-penguin and call it 'Turtle the Penguin'.

What with all that stone-skimming and turtle-sculpting and having a good laugh with my friends, I had a thoroughly fantastic day. I hope it's one of those Golden Moments I can happily store and playback on my mental hard drive, forever and ever and ever. Like my trip to France, where I strolled along the beaches of La Rochelle and cruised the Seine in Paris. Bliss.

I had a Moment recently, though only time will tell if it's Golden or merely Silver. On my way to work I saw, not too far away, a large bird of prey - probably a black kite - soaring on the air currents of a thermal. Round and round it went, swooping back to the rising column of air again and again, always gaining more height, spreading its wings wide in the sheer joy of effortless flight. It would be so much fun to be able to fly like that. I just stopped and stared at the kite until it eventually flew out of sight. Absolute magic. It's such a shame that life has no soundtrack - the melody that played in my head, from the musical 'The Woman in White', was:

"Can you get a dizzy thrill, while the earth is standing still?"

You can if you fly.

Kiwis really do grow on trees!

Current mood: Fruity
Current music: Peter Cincotti (jazz singer-songwriter-pianist) - 'On the Moon'

My friend sent me a couple of pictures after reading my earlier blog entry with the 'How to Prepare Kiwi' cartoon (see 'Darwin and the brown fluffy things', 9 September 2005). I thought it only fair that her contribution should be included! (Merci beaucoup, "Alice"!) I particularly liked this one:


If kiwi birds really did grow on trees, perhaps they wouldn't be so endangered. Oh well. Incidentally, kiwi fruit grow on vines, not trees. Just thought I ought to be scientifically correct...

Blue, harvest or strawberry

Current mood: Drifting
Current music: There ain't no music on the _ _ _ _ (Guess the word)

Have you guessed today's topic from the title? Yep, it's the 'Moon', though I'm darned if I know why one would call a particular full moon a 'Strawberry Moon'. Apparently it's a Native American term for a full moon in June... Maybe that's when you get strawberries?

Sunday was the Mid-Autumn Festival - the fifteenth day of the eighth month, according to the lunar calendar. The moon is supposed to be at its roundest and fullest (well, it did look strangely bigger), and Chinese people celebrate by giving and receiving and eating mooncakes (not unlike the passing around of Christmas presents, only mooncakes are generally edible, whereas you can never tell with presents). This is an old, old custom - in fact, many dynasties ago in ancient China, there was a rebellion against the Mongols who'd taken over at that point, and mooncakes were used to hide the secret message signalling the uprising. These days there isn't that much rebellion associated with mooncakes, but there are loads of different kinds you can buy because the Hong Kong populace likes novelty. Well, let's start by explaining the traditional ones. They're usually chunky, round or square in shape, with the manufacturer's company name stamped on it. The outside layer is golden-brown and sort of cakey; the inside contains sweet lotus-seed paste and one or two salted egg-yolks to offset the extreme sweetness. These mooncakes can be quite nice, though only in small doses - they're very rich. Then you get the 'snowy' mooncakes, which have a similar appearance to traditional mooncakes except that they're white, and they have to be eaten cold. I'm not sure what the outside is made of but it might have something to do with glutinous rice. The filling probably uses a sweet green-bean paste as a base, though they add all sorts of exotic flavours these days, just so they sell to a curious public - sesame, red-bean, blueberry and wasabi (!) to name but a few. (Wasabi is that green 'mustard' made out of horse-radish, which you usually find accompanying Japanese sushi. It's very spicy. Which crazy cook decided to put it in a sweet dish?) Finally you get ice-cream mooncakes - mmm! They're basically an excuse to sell a few scoops of ice-cream in pretty packaging for an extortionate price, but what the heck. The outside's chocolate, the inside's ice-cream or sorbet... What more can one ask for?

Anyway, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the kids get to play with lanterns and lights. Sadly, I did not have a paper lantern, a funky flashing light or a glow-stick to wave about - I didn't have so much as a dead glow-worm lying around - so I went to see a display of lanterns in the park instead. There was a rather impressive "landscape" where a Chinese garden - complete with flowers, pagoda, lake, boat, people, and a whole bunch of animals - was represented using nothing but carefully crafted lanterns. Nice.

Also I set off a wish-light, where you write a wish on a piece of paper, fold the paper into a boat, place a lit candle into the paper boat and set the boat on water. It's not a traditional Chinese custom - I heard it's actually Thai - but nevertheless it was good fun and the lights shining over the water were very pretty indeed. It took forever to get my candle lit though. It was windy that evening and the candle flame kept blowing out. Maybe the wind thought it was its birthday candle, and kept making wishes of its own...

There's a Chinese myth that there's a lady on the moon. She didn't originate from the moon though. Her name is Shang-Er in Mandarin, and it's said that her husband was a hero who then became corrupt when he got into a position of power. He'd obtained the elixir of life, in order for him and his wife to become immortal - why do all these evil power-hungry blokes want to live forever? Anyway, Shang-Er didn't think it was a good idea for a corrupt man to be a ruthless ruler for all time, so she sneaked off with the precious elixir and drank it all, so that he wouldn't get any. I suppose she must have neglected to look at the label on the bottle ("Do not overdose! May cause light-bodiedness"), because she started floating up, higher and higher and higher, until she wound up on the moon. She's got to live there forever, because she's immortal now. It must get pretty dull up there - where are all the people and the places to go on Saturday night and the songs (no air, no sound!) and the birds and flowers? Oh well, at least she has the Jade Rabbit to keep her company.

Don't ask me how the Rabbit got there.

All you need is loaf

Current mood: Breaded
Current music: The Beatles - All You Need Is Love

Ahahahaha! Success! I haf discoverrred zat by konnecting ze lightning generrrator to a coil wrrrapped arrround ze dough, I kann use ze elektrik kurrrrrrent to invigorrrate ze brrread und make it rrrise up out of its metal cell...

Riiight, that's enough Dr Frankenstein and fake European accent for today. But the latest experiment with the bread machine really has worked. Where once we had stodgy round bun-type thing, we have now achieved loaf. (The trick is to keep the dough nice and warm, and leave it plenty of time to rest. If the yeast is not relaxed, but stressed and edgy, it will refuse to work for you.)

So lunch today was a chunky sandwich made from the selfsame bread loaf. The filling was thrown together using the random odds and ends found loitering in the fridge, and I was worried that the ingredients might be mutually incompatible, but it all worked out. Mm-mm, I'm really rather pleased with the scrummy bread. Peace, loaf, and happiness, dudes. Make loaf, not war...

OK, OK, I'll stop the bad puns now.

...Y'know, I find it a real pain being a Shy Person. Sometimes I have to deliberate for ages before I steel myself to say hi to a complete stranger, say at a party or something. (You don't believe me, do you? I'm more loquacious in writing.) Then I miss the chance and spend the next few days kicking myself for being a coward. Aaaarrrgh! I wonder what it'd be like if you could buy bottles of Self Confidence, Charisma and Eloquence in the shops. Hey presto - Instant Likeability! At only £9.99 a bottle! And if you buy all three, we'll even throw in a box of Sparkling Sunshine Smiles, absolutely free!

That'll be the day.

Well, as the Beatles say, all I need is love - but if I haven't found it yet, I suppose I'll settle for loaf in the meantime...

Oh Mr Bell, what have you wrought?

Current mood: Telephonic
Current music: Ringin'

Let us take a moment to mentally salute Alexander Graham Bell. While he wasn't the actual 'first inventor' of the telephone - so many people had a hand in developing this miraculous invention, that it's hard to say who should really get the credit - he certainly made quite a large contribution in creating the telephone system. If you want to know more, here's a useful link for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone

Anyway, I think the telephone is one of the greatest modern inventions. For me, it's up there with computers & the Internet, cars, trains and planes. I have friends scattered around the globe and it's nice to think that despite the intervening distance, I can still have real-time conversations with them and hear their voices, just because of this wonderfully cunning device (aided by some satellites, of course).

However, I'm sure that when Bell created his version of the telephone, he wouldn't have foreseen the coming of the Mobile Phone Culture.

It took me ever so long to get around to buying a mobile phone; admittedly, more through procrastination than through being a Luddite (I do know someone who is... I had to buy a phone for him). I find mobile phones incredibly useful. There are times, though, when I feel that they might be somewhat overused. I remember one occasion where I was sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of Hong Kongers, and feeling thoroughly amused. All around the table, every single person was engaged in telephonic conversation with some unseen person on the other end. None of the people actually present were speaking to each other... Now what is the point of that?

Then you have the people with the hands-free sets, who pick out conversations out of thin air. I always find it somewhat confusing when some passer-by says 'Hello!' and I have to stop myself from replying when I realise that they weren't friendly folks talking to me...

Just the other day I started hallucinating that my mobile phone was ringing, even when it wasn't. This may seem slightly disturbing, but it is what happens to you when your mother starts calling you up every few minutes to say: "Where are you? Are you coming home yet?" (I happened to be staying late at the office - the only place where I get an Internet connection - trying to set up this blog. I've told my folks time and again that in order to stop this nasty Staying Late habit, they need to get a nice broadband connection at home. So far this has failed to materialise.)

Similarly, I find that when I'm in the bath, I keep imagining that the phone is ringing, even when my ears swear they can't hear a thing. Perhaps my conscious is saying, "Mmm, let's just relax in this lovely warm water" while my subconscious keeps insisting, "OK, but what are we missing?" What's particularly annoying is that the phones in my home don't ring like ordinary phones; they have annoying ring-tones. The one that gets my goat in particular plays the opening of 'Für Elise'. As if turning Beethoven's charming piece into whiney electronic Muzak isn't bad enough, the manufacturers of this particular phone compound their mistake by getting the notes wrong. It plays, "Dee-duh-dee-duh-dee-duh-ding-duh-dum" and the ding is a semitone too high. For someone with a musical ear, this seriously grates on the nerves; much in the same way that the sound of a cat's claws down a blackboard would affect any listener. When we first got the phone, I used to wince every time the darn thing rang. It didn't help that the phone in the other room wailed 'Hungarian Dance No. 5 in F# minor' by Brahms, which clashes horribly.

Despite my ranting on the use of electronic squeals in phones of all kinds, I still think the telephone is pretty great. I shall leave you to cogitate on my wittering. And remember:

"Das Pferd frißt keinen Gurkensalat." (The horse eats no cucumber salad.)

(To understand why I said that, you'll have to look up the Wikipedia entry I mentioned, under the section entitled 'Johann Philipp Reis'...)

Breaking the bread

Current mood: Garrulous
Current music: Sondre Lerche (Norwegian retro-pop-rocker)

Howdy folks!

I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend. I spent part of mine trying out the new bread machine with my mother. We were expecting a complete disaster ("Oh no, there's not enough water!" "Aaaagh! It's not going to have enough time to rise!") but the final result was miraculously edible, though admittedly a bit on the crusty and stodgy side (nope, it didn't have quite enough time to rise. Apparently the yeast got scared). Actually, I thought the bread turned out to be rather satisfying, unlike the usual lighter-than-air kind of white bread you get in supermarkets. Very more-ish. I love freshly baked bread.

While I was doing some of the extremely boring household chores yesterday, I was singing to myself, just to lighten the mood. The melody of the hymn, 'Morning has Broken' rose unbidden through the murky depths of my mind, although the words must have become somewhat scrambled en route to my mouth because what actually came out was this:

Morning has broken!
All right, who broke it?
We'll get the sack, men - what shall we do?
We'd better fix it
Can we still mend it?
I'll try to stick it... with superglue.

This version sounds like a conversation between some of the Creator's sub-contracted builders, running into problems as they're trying to construct the world. I'm sure the original was a bit more poetic.

I just found out the other day that 'blog' comes from 'web log'. This is not something that would have occurred to me as I thought 'blog' was just a funny, albeit not very beautiful-sounding word (unlike, say, 'mellifluous', 'effervescent', 'susurrus', or 'eviscerate'. Mind you, 'eviscerate' might sound nice but it means something nasty). So... WEB LOG = WE BLOG. Well, that makes sense...

Anyhoo, I shall have to toddle off soon, and maybe make some more bread. Maybe this time we can make the yeast rise up against the tyranny of sticky dough and revolutionise the Loaf Civilisation...

Darwin and the brown fluffy things

Current mood: Friday-night-happy (whole weekend stretching out ahead... aah!)
Current music: What The Funk, aka 'WTF' - the best jazz/funk band in the world

I'm currently listening to some fantabulously cool jazz/funk by my friend's band, WTF. They're a bunch of 6 incredibly talented guys who are, to my mind, the Next Big Thing in the jazz genre. If you're in London you should go to their gigs, because they're amazing when performing live. Check out these websites:

http://www.wtfmusic.com/
http://www.garageband.com/artist/wtfjazzfunk

I was pondering at work today (seeing as I have nothing much else going through my brain whilst performing the more mechanical tasks in my job) on the oft-heard complaint by women that there are more beautiful women than good-looking men about. Outside of Hollywood, there does seem to be some truth to this. The question is, why? I suppose there are several approaches one can take:

(1) The perhaps-you're-mistaken approach: Maybe we only get the impression that there are more attractive women than men, because female models are used in advertising a lot more than male models. Just as there seem to be far more paintings and sculptures of female nudes in art galleries than males. This might have something to do with the fact that most of the artists are male... hrrrmmmph.

(2) The cynical approach: Women have make-up. Applied correctly and with care, this stuff can work wonders (though never as much as the make-up companies would have you believe!).

(3) The Darwinistic approach: It is possible that when a guy chooses a girl, he places more emphasis on her looks as part of his selection criteria, so in terms of 'natural selection', more beautiful women get married and have kids. A girl choosing a guy, on the other hand, considers other factors such as wealth, status, potential ability to look after her kids, etc in addition to his attractiveness, which means that guys who aren't handsome can try to make up for it by being handsomely rich. Hence you end up with more lovely ladies and fewer gorgeous guys...

Well, you can discuss this interesting question amongst yourselves, and write me a dissertation on the subject, if you so choose...

Speaking of natural selection, I recently found out why kiwis are such a highly endangered species. It would appear that their primary predators are humans, who are well known for having insatiable appetites. Kiwis are sold in almost every supermarket across the globe, so our consumption of the juicy little furry things is decimating the kiwi population in New Zealand...

How to Prepare Kiwi

Wonderful cartoon, isn't it? I found this on a website featuring lots of random things:

http://www.geocities.com/david_charles_curran/

By the way, the paragraph on the kiwis was a joke. I say this for the benefit of any humourless or gullible people who might wander across my blog. I don't want supermarkets around the globe suing me when hundreds of thousands of people start campaigning to "Boycott the Kiwi". Let me say this loud and clear: Kiwi birds are not the same as kiwi fruit.

Kiwi birds really are endangered, though. Mainly because we keep destroying the lovely forests where they live. Aww, the poor things.

Anyway, I shall go home and have some dinner. And try out the new bread-machine (yet another little-used cookery gadget to loaf around the kitchen, gathering dust on the counter). I might let you know how my experiment goes, provided I don't get swallowed up by expanding dough...

Have a great day!

Brand shiny new blog! Ooooh...

Current mood: Anticipatory
Current music: The song being broadcast from the little radio station inside my head

Hello everyone!

This is my wonderful new blog, isn't this just lovely? It's a place where I can write down all my utterly random thoughts and opinions and observations, for the amusement and learning of my readers. How fantastic!

I sound like a complete newbie. Which wouldn't be quite correct, as I have had a fling with blogging previously, but what with moving abroad and so forth, I couldn't be bothered to keep it up. So it would seem appropriate that with a new start, I should have a new blog...

What am I going on about?! New start, indeed. When you end up back on Square One where you started, it doesn't feel like a new start at all - more like a re-start. Ugh. (More rants about that later.)

I was originally going to call my blog page 'Written in the Stars', but I thought 'Intergalactic Rigamarole' would be more original and certainly more fun. Although if you knew me, you might point out that 'Written by the Stars' might've been more appropriate. If you have no idea what I'm on about, don't worry. You'll find me in an astronomy book...

Anyway, now that I've started a blog I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I put more rants and raves and random tidbits on here. In the meantime I have an appointment to keep... A dear friend of mine came all the way from London town to see me! How privileged I am.

Well, must dash! Ta-ta for now!