A milestone! For the first time, I removed a friend from Facebook.
I have 373 friends on Facebook. I’m reasonably discerning about who I accept as friends. At minimum, I need to have had a face-to-face conversation with a person for at least five minutes. I need to have enjoyed the conversation. I don’t generally request friends, I only accept them.
I have the general irritations from Facebook friends: people who fill in quizzes and want me to compare how much more of princess I am than they are; requests to join some online game; requests to join an irrelevant group.
However, one person has been a serial offender. Every week, he would send me (and probably everyone in his friend list) invitations to events that I can’t physically get to and in which I have never expressed interest. He sends political statements and links.
He’s one of those people that I’ve spoken five minutes with and who requested my friendship. I have now withdrawn my friendship because of his spamming behaviour.
I’m sure he won’t even notice my absence. He has 500+ ‘friends’.
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
… Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right†direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
There is a man who wails in the evening. He wails for hours at a time. It’s not every night but it’s often enough that I started thinking that he must be doing a kind of ritual.
At first, I was curious. Then it got a bit annoying. Even though he lives in another building, I could clearly hear him from the kitchen and the bathroom. I wondered what would happen if I shouted, ‘Shut up! Some of us are trying to relax here!’
It wasn’t the way to go, though. In London, people have been verbally abused and physically attacked for telling others off. And at least this wailing man has a decent voice. It would have been really grating otherwise.
I eventually asked my flat mate Aoife about it. She smiled knowingly.
‘The wailing man? Yes, I hear him. I think he has a mental problem and his mother looks after him. Last year, they had the window open and I could hear him all the time.’
‘Oh, your room is on that side of the building!’ I exclaimed. ‘It would have driven you nuts.’
Aoife said, ‘I went over twice to ask them to close the window. I’m sorry about the kid but all I wanted was for them to close the window. Eventually, I called the Council and someone came to speak to the family. Since then, the window has been closed.’
I have been dreaming about riding a bike. In my dreams, I can feel my legs working at the peddles and my hair flying back as I tear through Regent’s Park.
I blame the dreams on the warm weather. And even though I know this springtime sunshine won’t last, I can’t get the cycling dreams out of my head.
Well, then. Maybe it’s time to buy a bike.
Because I live in a flat with no garden or storage space, this bike would need to be a folding bike.
The premier folding bike is the Brompton. Ah, the Brompton — so cute yet elegant! So compact yet functional! So desirable… yet expensive. A new Brompton would set me back at least £570.
(I also discovered that there is a good chance that a second-hand Brompton bought via Gumtree would be stolen goods. I can’t bear the idea of profiting from the heartbreak of a former Brompton owner out there.)
‘Damjan,’ I said. ‘I think I want to buy a Brompton.’
‘Great idea!’ Damjan said supportively. ‘You’ve been thinking about it for ages.’
I was taken aback. ‘No, I haven’t! I just thought of it yesterday!’
Damjan hmphed knowingly. ‘I’ve seen you perving at them. Every time one goes past, you stare.’
I conceded that, yes, I do indeed perve at Bromptons.
After days of obsessing over folding bikes, I eventually convinced myself that I didn’t need one. I walk to work. I’m away most weekends. When would I have time to ride a £600 bike?
Just as I had made my decision, I spotted this online: the Dahon Mu XL Sport. I had read about this bike and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Normally £800+, a sports shop in Devon was selling the 2008 model for £450.
Dahon folding bikes aren’t as elegant as Bromptons but they have other advantages. This bike has 20 inch wheels, bigger than the 16 inch Brompton wheels. The parts are standard components compared to Brompton’s specialised ones. This means that when I take the Dahon to Australia, I can repair and replace parts easily. The Mu XL is around a kilogram heavier than the standard Brompton but for the extra weight I get not only bigger wheels, but also eight gears instead of three.
I agonised for all of twenty minutes.
Then I clicked ‘Buy it now’.
Dahon Mu XL Sport
Isn’t it beautiful? It arrived within two days. All I had to do was take it out of the box, unfold it and pump up the tyres.
I rode it for the first time today and I felt giddy. I was so excited I could feel my heart pounding. Riding this bike today felt exactly how it was like when I was riding my dreams.
(I have already bought a ‘f*** off, thieves’ lock. Everyone I know has had a bike stolen and there’s no way any Gumtree or Brick Lane merchant is going to get their hands on this one!)
I was proud of myself. Even though I was late for work, I still managed to make my own lunch by throwing together tuna, sweetcorn and yoghurt. I had this mixture for the first time last week and it was very tasty.
Only as I closed the door to my flat behind me did I realise I had forgotten a vital ingredient. Without lemon juice, my lunch would taste pretty uninspiring.
So at 12:30 , I went to the local Tesco. Of course, there was a long lunch time queue. Finally, I reached the check out to hand over my lone lemon.
The check out lady scanned the lemon and said, ‘That’s 32 pence, please.’
I looked in my purse. ‘Oh no!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve only got 30 pence.’ Indeed, in the coin compartment there was a small heptagonal 20 pence coin and the larger round 10 pence coin.
‘Oh well…’ I began, pulling out a £10 note.
The check out lady held up her hand to stop me. ‘Why don’t you bring the 2 pence next time,’ she said slowly. I could almost see her mentally winking at me.
‘Oh…! Okay. Yes,’ I stuttered.
She smiled as she took my coins. ‘I’m not allowed to do this,’ she confided softly.
Back in the office, I told my colleagues about my 2 pence windfall. They laughed and said, ‘Well, you shouldn’t feel bad about taking advantage of Tesco. Did you see the news today?’
Tesco achieves £3bn annual profit
Supermarket chain Tesco has reported underlying annual pre-tax profits of £3.13bn, an improvement of 10% on the previous year… The profits are the highest on record for a UK retailer.
I said, ‘Yes, well, you know what they say. Every little helps.’
from Jason to Joan date 23 March 2009 22:00 subject Hey
Hey Joan,
You know that short story we read ages ago?
It had to do with the evolution of God.
Starting off with humans wanting to calculate entropy (or something like that) – and they built a computer, and the computer couldn’t do it, so it built a successor. Computer after computer, until eventually the computer was smart enough to figure it out – but existed only as pure energy. Unfortunately by the time it figured it out, there were no humans to tell, so it said “Let there be light..” and the process started again.
That short story – remember that? I’m trying to find it, any clues?
Ta
[Then…]
from Joan to Jason date 23 March 2009 22:11 subject Re: Hey
Hi Jason,
I was thinking about this story a while ago and I couldn’t remember where it had come from. I think it was by a famous science fiction author.
I thought it might be by Arthur C Clarke or Isaac Asimov. I searched in Google and ‘arthur c clarke humans build computer that becomes god short story’ and ‘isaac asimov humans build computer that becomes god short story’. The second search got it!
I read a frightening article in the Observer’s Food Monthly magazine. It was frightening to me, even though I probably have a relatively good diet. But I can see how people could very easily fall into the trap of eating badly even with the best intentions.
I’m a fruit fiend. Every day, I typically eat a banana, two oranges and an apple. I’ve known for a while that each orange has the same calories as a small chocolate bar. The article confirms this:
‘Even fresh fruit… is a highly calorific food that should be treated with caution. “One consequence of the government’s Five-a-Day campaign is that children are eating fruit rather than vegetables to meet their target… If you are consuming an extra five pieces of fruit a day and changing nothing else, it will give you more calories because fruit is very sugary.” ‘
There are other depressing revelations (or reminders) about mashed potato, chorizo sausages, apple juice, Rice Krispies (like Rice Bubbles in Australia), muesli bars, dried apricots, bread and crumpets.
Why is it so hard? Why is it much easier to get it wrong than to get it right?
I’m trying to find ways of increasing the protein in my diet but I don’t have the skills or knowledge. It’s also expensive. What can I snack on, if not fruit, rice cakes, muesli bars or salted almonds? Am I meant to keep cans of tuna and boiled eggs on my desk?
