Twas the morning before the night flight to Thailand...

Okay, am now in pre-departure buzzing mode. I always do this - staying awake til early morning on the day that I leave. Did it when I went to the Philippines in 2001, did it before we went to Wellington, NZ in 2003, when we went to Europe for the honeymoon in Oct last year, and now before going to Thailand. Why? It's usually that fear of forgetting something extremely important. Like the bloody passport or the plane tickets. Or some electronic thingo that to buy overseas would cost twice as much. But then again, we're going to somewhere much much cheaper than Australia, so we can always take comfort in knowing we can buy almost everything we need over there!

Except maybe for my imaginary iPod, cos it seems to be more expensive over there than in HK or here. Yeah, that one, the 40Gb one that I'm proabably never going to buy. It's disturbing really. Remember in Mean Girls, where Lindsay Lohan's character realises she simply cannot stop talking about Regina George? It's the same with me and the iPod. A friend has already noticed the increasing frequency of mentions in our daily emails. At the moment, I've actually found the best deal is from buystation in HK, where a 40Gb iPod is on offer for around A$400. In Australia, that won't even get you the 20Gb one at most retailers.

But this again raises the question, why don't I just get the Shuffle? I've already concluded that I only need 512 as the only time I need that city soundtrack is when I'm commuting home, which should be sufficiently covered by 512 mins. of music. But it's so small, and I can't rate the music, and what if I need to have alternative storage media to transport my feature films, like they did on Lord of the Rings? Hmmm..

So what did I do today?

1. Got a haircut. Was thinking of just getting it in Thailand, cos it'd be much cheaper, but wifey reminds me, "Remember,we're going to my brother's wedding immediately after we arrive in Sydney!" [code for: Please on't embarrass me with a shitty 'do. And don't you dare shave your head and say you became a fucking Buddhist.]

2. Passed by one of the local Asian stores and almost spent too much money on food items. Bought siomai, vietnamese rice cake (the green one, with white layers), Knorr "chinese soup" mix, and 3 vietnamese Pork rolls from the shop beside it. Mmmm...

3. Watched this HK flick from the early 90s called New Dragon Inn, starring Donnie Yen, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin and Tony Leung. God, Maggie C is so cute! And the fight scenes were just awesome. The highlight for me is this scene at the end where the butcher llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk God, that was me falling asleep and pressing down on the keyboard. Am so totally screwed. Gotta go to bed.

Lemme finish that thought -- the fight is near the end, where Donnie Y's character has managed to defeat or at least seriously puncture with a sword the other three lead characters. Then to their rescue comes the Dragon Inn's in-house butcher, who was shown earlier in the movie to be seriously adept at carving away strips of human flesh from a carcass hanging in the basement. He collides and does battle with Donnie, and there is a blur showing the results of battle. Camera moves away and we see that butcher-guy's managed to strip all flesh from his left hand up to his forearm, and also from his left foot! Donnie tries to walk and his left leg breaks and he comes crashing down. He's eventually slain by Tony L's character, but Brigitte's body has already sunk into the sand.

4. Oh, and Iron Chef French (Sakai) lost to a challenger for the first time! Secret ingredient was Homard lobster, which is apparently a variety found mostly in Europe. A bit shocked to see the live lobsters being skewered and getting their shells taken off while still alive. I wish they'd hurry up and release the show on DVD already! Warning: just checked on Amazon and found an American version called Iron Chef USA, but apparently it was so awful that only two episodes got made.

I'm really going to bed now. It's 5.21 am. Do you know where your children are?

God.. just spent half an hour browsing. Bloody hell. Wanted to place a pic of Robert Patrick in that scene from Terminator 2 where he's asking "Have you seen this boy?" Couldn't find one. Then somehow ended up on a co-worker's blog. Then onward to a few of his links, one of which is Alterslash - a slashdot digest, then found a link to Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system. And found an interesting article about the early Internet, and a reporter getting in touch with Bill.

I'm really going now.

Han Solo-related thought for the day

star wars 013
Originally uploaded by tamura.

Whoever you are, whatever you do, anytime you think the pressure's too great, that things are just crashing down on you, just remind yourself: it sure beats being encased in carbonite.