i want a bit of a newer, fresher, easier-to-update look for this blog — and i also want to learn more HTML, some CSS and get more up to date with wordpress.

all of which is my excuse for the fact that this blog may go through a funny-looking, awkward stage (or two). bear with me - i’ll keep on blogging, and things should get good-looking again one day.

and if not, well - change keeps life interesting, doesn’t it?!

some unrelated ways you can maybe help me (well, it *is* my blog…):

1. i’m doing a project kinda thing (you know you love it when i get specific!) about women, men, gender, technology and the internet. if you have any relevant info or see any sites i should know about relating to any/all of the above, please email me a link. i’m collating everything here, so you can see what i have so far.

2. i’m putting together another secret project to do with blogging, and i also need help with that: i need you to recommend great blog posts (specific posts if possible, rather than just great blogs - and they can be your own posts!) one proviso: they need to be relatively clean. i haven’t set up a place to collate these yet, but i will in due course. (don’t you love the saying “in due course”? it sounds official yet could mean anything. i use it to mean “soon… probably”.)

3. and in non-tech related news… on my way back from america last year, i had a fantastic meal on the plane (i know!) of chicken and sweet potatoes in a chipotle sauce. which was serendipitous as i’d just watched rachel ray cook with chipotles… but i can’t find them in the UK. do we have a different name for them, or are they just not available? i have the recipe, i just need the chipotles… help!

*hey, that’s my second beatles-lyric title this week. will i make it three?

no, i will not.

right, where were we?

11 april 2008 (continued…)

so we walk, and walk, and walk, and walk. and eventually (after “just a few minutes” in my dad’s parlance and “absolutely bloody forever” in mine) we reach our bus stop. my feet are on fire. i get the same (attractive!) effect i got in new york, from loadsa flying plus loadsa walking: ankles like watermelons. i do not want to walk any more.

luckily, i did not have to. we sat at the bus stop and studied our timetable and map. our singapore airlines-provided hop-on, hop-off bus would arrive in twenty-five minutes. okay. we sat, and we watched the traffic: cars, buses, and the occasional rickshaw. my favourite was the man on his bike… smoking a pipe.

finally, our bus came.

here my memory has a major lapse, and my notes fail me: i’m not sure where we went first, or what we did when we got there. presumably, it was something good, as everything was running smoothly (at this point). but after we had been to this mysterious place, we hopped back on our bus to go to chinatown. and came into contact with the rudest bus driver ev-ah (singapore airlines ruining their reputation, again!)

this bus is supposed to be free for people on stopovers with singapore airlines, or $3 if you’re on holiday with singapore airlines. despite my being on a stopover, our new driver decided arbitrarily that i had to pay $3. because i had an electronic ticket, i think. (i wondered afterwards if he could read?) he was quite hysterical, grabbing my arm and shouting, “ma’am you are not on a stopover just ‘cos you come to singapore! holiday is not a stopover!” he stopped the bus and showed me a green boarding pass some other people had - i did not have one, therefore i was a dirty liar, was the implication. not wanting to cause any further commotion over a $3 fare, we paid, but seethed a bit. then we went to chinatown.  

in chinatown, we walked through the outdoor markets, looked at some of the ornate temples, were blasted by the incredible heat (and rained on a bit as well) and i saw the biggest/scariest terodactyl-sized bug in the world, which made me scream and run around and shriek “it’s not on me, is it?!” which is always fun.

then went to a “hawker centre”, a kind of pre-food court food court, with the tables crammed in and around the stalls. hectic, cramped, not the cleanest place in the world… but cheap. i had something called hainanese chicken: plain boiled chicken with rice, basically, plus a coke to pep me up. then i used the toilet, which i had to pay for. there were big red flies in my stall with me, and i ‘went’ as quickly as i ever have in my life. *shudder*

i know some people love authenticity and realness when they travel but i love posh hotels, starbucks and homogeneity. what can i say? i’m culturally corrupt and morally bereft, and i like it that way.

we then walked to a shopping centre and looked at some technology (they had lots of littletiny notebook computers, and i wanted one), before catching our bus back. or trying to.

it was twenty minutes late (or ten minutes early, and the previous one was missing), and guess who the driver was? this time, with our $3 tickets, we were free from persecution. but not to worry: some other tourists were being persecuted instead! the driver from hades stopped the bus again to have an argument with an older english couple, who he said weren’t on a stopover either (and yet they were). unlike us, they just refused to pay. “sue me,” the older man said, “you’ll lose.” we bonded with them and their friends about how none of us wanted to fly singapore airlines ever again.

thankful at least that we could relax for a while, we sank back into our seats, planning on staying on until the place we got on, and having a nice look round singapore on the way. but when we got to the botanical gardens, the driver announced “everyone alight and wait for next bus! EVERYONE ALIGHT!”

so we had to alight and join the people who were already waiting for the next bus - which equalled more than one busful in total. everyone looked unimpressed. we got a taxi back to the hotel in the end. i checked in, napped, we had a meal at the hotel and we both had an early night. it had been a heck of a 24 hours.

12 april 2008

today we did something really cool: went on the singapore flyer. it was excellent - much better organised than the london eye, and 30 metres taller, too. we saw pretty much the whole of singapore, including a new ‘floating’ football pitch - not sure how that will work, but fun all the same - and all the construction for a massive new casino/hotel complex. apparently the chinese are mad-keen gamblers. who knew?

the sky was bright blue, the sun was out, it was a gorgeous day, hardly a cloud in the sky… perfect weather to see the city. and then five minutes after we got off the flyer, there was thunder, lightning and torrential rain for the next two hours. we sat around and waited for the weather to abate a bit, but it didn’t, so we headed off to the legendary raffles hotel, my grandad’s stomping ground just after world war two. and the home of the singapore sling cocktail.

as our taxi pulled up, a man in ornate indian (colonial esque, very un-pc) costume came forward with a huge umbrella, and ushered us inside. i could get used to that! the interior is so gorgeous, with chandeliers and plush carpets and really lovely architecture. then you walk around the back and there are loads of shops. pretty, pretty shops.

we went to an upstairs bar and had singapore slings (let’s not mention the price) and an intense heart-to-heart. as ya do. then we trolled around the complex a bit more (was still raining) and headed to orchard road, the main shopping district: one long, long, longlong row of high-street shops, designer shops, and huge mall after huge mall. it’s a shoppers paradise, but not a place to find bargains. i went into a tiffany shop for the first time, but didn’t/couldn’t indulge.

we had hot chocolates outside a cafe and watched the frenetic world go by, and i didn’t want to leave.

13 april 2008

no rain today, for the first time this trip. hotter than hell, though. we went to jurong bird park, which was fab.

there are some birds (varieties of toucan mostly), who make a nest and then the woman barricades herself in until the eggs hatch - for months on end, she never leaves and the man has to bring her food. but if anything (like death) happens to him, she is is faithful and will never accept food from another suitor… and then she and her babies die. plus, there’s a bird called “mad woman bird” because it behaves erratically. erm, patriarchy much?

we saw some non-sexist displays too, like beautiful flamingos, and we fed the lorikeets, which snatched a feeding bowl right out of my dad’s hands, to my amusement.

we had something to eat and i had much fun in the gift shop (my dad, not so much) before heading back to the hotel to soak my book and read my feet. or something like that.

for most features writers, the glossies - those monthly women’s mags printed on paper as shiny as their nickname implies - are a holy grail. we all want to write for them, for the cash and the employment but most of all for that lovely feeling you get from seeing your name in something with such a huge circulation that you actually read.

while i have been lucky enough in the past to snag an eighth of a page in essentials, and a half page in company, i hadn’t really “cracked” the glossies. i’d never got a page of my own.

until i left the country.

ironically, the month my first full-page feature appears in a monthly women’s mag… i’m on the other side of the world. if you are not, i encourage you to pick up a copy of this month’s easy living (the one with marriella frostrup on). anyone else who is interested, can read this lovely scan (thanks, mum!) instead: get to grips with your iPod. (click with your mouse to bring up a magnifying glass icon, which will let you enlarge it).

next month: i make my prima debut - and won’t be around to see that, either…

this week i wrote a post for popgadget which i’m a bit proud of: celebrating women in tech. and cali lewis is following me on twitter as a result! i feel under pressure to be interesting now… (oh - no-one tell her about the stalkerish homage i wrote, will you?)

it’s been a technoriffic few days:

my piece for the telegraph about the internet’s role in the resurgence of traditional crafts is out today, in the paper and also online. yay!

i’ve also been writing about all manner of things at popgadget, from feline false teeth to twitter proposals (aww) to subverting the patriarchy (yeah, the product’s PR loooooooved that one).

and i’m in woman’s weekly talking wifi (until wednesday).  

* i like the way that sounds like “tick tock”, which is apt, as it’s clocks forward this weekend!

i had some trouble with my desktop PC.

my alphasmart portable word-processing device decided to stop transferring files to my PC.

i started craving the convenience and flexibility of a laptop.

i earned some money.

i found out laptops were tax deductible.

i saw some special offers on laptops.

i started reading martha beck’s 4-day win (thanks for the tip, keris - it’s great!) and bought into her concept of small and large rewards.

i set myself a goal: to do an awareness meditation for 5 minutes every day, for 4 days straight.

i successfully completed my goal.

can you guess what i bought last night?

if you can’t, you must be even more dazed and confused than i feel after working almost all weekend… when i can think in paragraphs again i’ll fill you in on my university interview: hopefully soon.

oh, this is truly exciting! remember that really exciting and mysterious new tech blogging gig i told you about, ooh… four days ago?

well today i make my debut *squee!* on fabulous american site popgadget. i’ll be contributing 4-5 posts a week, so i hope you’ll stop by regularly. (i’m not just saying that because i write for it now: it’s one of those sites that’s so cool i’d get a lump of jealousy in my throat when reading it. it’s a great site with or without me… but i’m glad it’s with. hee).

anyway, see me talk about the cutest magnets ev-ah here.

*squee!*

i know i was (am?) having a hiatus (i’m still feeling a bit rough to be honest, also: grumpy) but the site wasn’t supposed to totally freaking disappear!

after two days, i got in touch with my blog host, and it transpired they had changed some of their settings (why? why?) and made my blog go ‘way as a result.

so i had to go and change my settings with the company i bought dianeshipley.com from, where it was a dark world of ‘nameserver this’ and ‘DNS settings that’ and ‘this is not the email address you registered with’ and ‘please log in again’ until i nearly tore my hair out.

but i made it back!

and if you missed it, while the site was down i got another blasting in wrote another piece for the guardian: don’t bite the hand that feeds the inner you.

is there a good self-help book for dealing with criticism and blog disappearances, do you know?