is it fast enough to fly you out of here.

you gotta make a decision.

leave tonight or live and die this way.

There comes a time every 6 weeks or so when either myself or a member of my family has a problem/query with their Mac. It is at this time that an email gets sent to Bert Han – the Taiwanese Yoda of all things Mac.
I recall the old days when visiting the Hans in Sheffield and Birmingham, half the time would be spent playing guitars and the rest would be laughing over cups of tea with Macs fire-wired up, like a quivering umbilical cord between a mother and her newborn child.
I always feel at ease just knowing Bert’s there to rescue us from our inadequacy around the latest in Apple technology, and am always so grateful that he will try to find the time to help us if he can, God bless you Bert.
But saying that, I was actually thinking today that Bert HAD BETTER help us, darn it – it was him that got us all into this mess in the first place!
Mac vs PC blahblahblah…I was suckered in 6 years ago to go for a G3 iBook (basically sold on Bert’s pitch of “Lookit, when you nearly close the iBook a tiny magnet sucks a mini latch out to lock the screen down secure!”), and ended up dragging my family and friends down with me – now, I need to email Berthan every time I forget how to print screen or ask about mp3 player compatibility issues or how to get an iSight to work with AOL etc etc etc…
You have a lot to answer to Mr. Han.

But of course, my mum loves her Powerbook and using photoshop, Sheyee would tuck her iBook and iSight into bed every night, Hoyee went for a MacBook as her weapon of choice, Jacqui has been through two iPods, finally grabbed a MacBook and has mastered iMovie, even Joy brought her little kooBi into her care…

and me? I put apple stickers on lights and CD storage cases so they surround me wherever I am, so i feel secure.

Christmas and New Years was spent in Hong Kong with Sheyee's family.
it was a very groovy 3 weeks ...away from work... in a city which i now realise i never ever really quite appreciated and understood.
In the past we would arrive for a week and do a tourist smash and grab of sights and sounds, never really soaking any real life up. but HK is a great place. the atmosphere, sites, urban culture, types of people, shameless commercialism, consumerism, the querks, both extremes of hygiene, mountains, seas, lights, and the food, oh the cheap gorgeous food... fuggedaboudit.

we were at a restaurant which served a big bowl of rice with meat and veg for 1 HKD = 60 pence.
this is the same city that sells a pint of lager across the water, for over 5 quid.

anyway, i could go on, but the truth is, as i began to discover on my last week, although i have a habit of reacting too soon before the dust truly settles - i like Hong Kong.
whats more, i find it a bit mesmerising and even hypnotic ---it lures you in. in the words of the Boosh, its like a membrane --once you go in you can't get out. i mean i'm writing this on Sheyee's iBook and a canto-pop song came up on the iTunes (she only has one or two, i'm sure..) and i mean, where i would normally reflex and involuntarily throw the source of such evil greasy junk across the room in a spasm of disgust, i found myself kind of liking it and got through the whole song no problem.

i would consider going back. maybe for a bit more than three weeks next time - suitcase in one hand, meat cleaver in the other.
worth saying though, NY remains my no.1 disease.


on another note, i got back a couple of days ago to a text message from Fitz that the T Wives have been offered a gig in manchester to support Bonehead from Oasis's new band... well it made me laugh anyway...
and someone actually came to scout our pre-Christmas acoustic set we did at a pub in Oldham - looking for unsigned bands to support the Doves acoustic tour this summer...!
NY and HK has their international credentials, but I tell you the manchester music scene is alive and well, and loyal to its own...

the Trophy Wives have finally recorded a demo disk, so we can try to get proper manchester gigs or even sell at the HMV showcase… I’ve not heard the final cut yet but I’ve seen the CD cover design by the guitarist…it features a photo of a smiling, full, thai, ladyboy, transvestite in sequins and a red mini-skirt, taken by one of Boothy's mates on holiday, with the album title “Look but don’t love” emblazoned on the front. I have to say I normally have quite an open mind and strong stomach for these things, but that photo is just wrong. The problem is everybody else likes it, citing the fact that the most lucrative demographics to target in the music industry are young girls and gays.
I like the title, but am gonna have to try and veto the picture...since, contrary to popular belief, i just don't think i'll be able to personify that message on stage.

take back everything i've ever said about bjork. her and goldie made some stunning stuff.
....Hyperballad -wow-wa-wee-wa-wa! ...as Borat would say.

I've been clicking every few days on the link to my journal, for some reason expecting to see a new post on mine up here...I've been a slacker, but so hectic is life in the rat race. but of course its not a race, we're just rats.

Holiday in Spain was super, photos on flickr. Followed by a couple of trips to Birmingham, including Phan's 30th at the Saigon Club, but in reality it meant two lots of quality all u can eat sushi. Dad turned 54. oh and I've my belated present to Hoyee's happy birthday too.

my last few weeks and months have been up and down like George W's dancing feet at the prospect of invading Iran. But I'm still here.

It was good seeing the Han's and their infectious spiritual strength definitely rubs off on you, and I was glad to see my lonely Tegan & Sara Appreciation Soceity has doubled its subsrcibers to now two...
just remember their secret is to get to the chorus really REALLY fast.

with the events, news of loved ones, and floods of thoughts and frustrations over the summer and september, I can only conclude that sometimes change brings new feelings and sometimes new feelings bring change.

either way, ultimately, perhaps inertia can be the deadliest addiction.

time, there's always time.

It was my granma’s 1st anniversary on Friday, and so Jacqui flew back and I drove to Liverpool and spent the weekend home. We were remembering the love, laughs, wisdom and songs she gave us, but it didn’t feel different to any other weekend, I’ve just not been able to stop thinking about her nearly every single day for the last year.

We thought it would be a good way to spend the Saturday doing what she would do, and so we parked the car by her old place and walked to her favourite hang-out - the Anglican Cathedral, stretched our arms along the way by doing slow arm windmill exercises, smiled hellos at fellow walkers-by, paused to stretch our eyes over the Liverpool skyline, wandered into the Cathedral shop and looked at keyrings and bookmarks, sat and listened to the choir practice, prayed to our Father, and went for an early lunch in the Cathedral refectory that serves the best butter sponge cake with custard. The plan was then to go catch the ferry cross the Mersey, but in the end time wasn’t on our side and my folks had to get back to work.

With the hole in the ozone layer unrelentlessly baking this UK heat wave on and on, Jacqui, Stella, and I then spent the rest of Saturday clearing out my mum’s garage, well into the night. She’s wanted to do it for ages but since her fall lifting things ain’t so easy now. The objective was to chuck out the rubbish, but mainly to pick out everything that can be taken to a car boot sale the next morning to sell to raise enough money (about 60 quid) to replace the old phone for the house.
It was knackering but, we managed to clear the whole place up; and after a long filtering process with everyone randomly taking momentary comfort breaks to read old birthday cards, photos, or sift through old Leon Lai 12” records, or check if the dust engulfed SNES still works; finally loaded the car with all the non-sentimental, un-needed junk we could find that could go for 10pence to 10pounds.

Well, long story short, the big busy popular car boot venue we originally drove to had shut down, as we discovered to our frustration at 7am, so we ended up in a much smaller and much lower populated venue, but still did ok, considering, and ended up with 67quid in the bank.
(much aided by the sale of the two scooters I bought in Birmingham with Phan, at a bargain basement cut down price of 4quid a piece).

The rest of Sunday was spent relaxing with my ah gung and ah por, we bought frozen dim sum stuff and my dad cooked for us to eat together.

It was a good couple of days, and I’m glad, though she’s gone, my granma still pulls this family together and helps us remember the good things in life.

er, maybe this is the best interweb link in the world ever ever, for this week.

http://www.11football.com/coupedumonde2006/

Instructions:

1. Click on above link
2. Click on a game (any game that has been played that is).
3. Click on a goal scored in that game (football next to the goal scorers name)
4. Watch every goal from the world cup so far.
5. Praise the man that invented this - as he is a complete genius.

For the group stages, click on "Poules"


......
when you step back it is pretty surreal. the team of 11 men you're following aren't saving the world, destroying evil, risking their lives, or even on the verge of inventing the next source of global free energy or the cure for cancer. all they're doing is for 90 minutes trying to put a small leather ball into a big string net more times than the other side....but with that comes a complete euphoria that sweeps the whole world, and joins every person together with a pulsating adrenalin that just stops you in your tracks.
it's so cliche now, for the benefit of those who aren't blessed with the knowledge of Liverpool's greatest ever manager Bill Shankly, he said: "Some people think football is a matter of life and death, well I can assure you it's much more important than that."

so i got my first wrong match prediction, France beat Spain. noone will believe me if i say it, but in my heart France was going to win due to their much much deeper experience compared to the young Spaniards, but my head made the choice of Spain due to recent results.

still, the England v Germany final still stands, and if i was a betting man, which I'm not, I would make a million bucks by betting Crouchy scores in it.

bert, dick, and sheyee....its close. and maybe i should stop giving you guys a head start now.
crespo recorded a dubious 6points, and klose just looks too hot to handle.

can honestly say this has been the best World Cup in my lifetime, wonder goals and sending-offs galore...and i'm sure the new ball designs have something to do with the former.

England v Germany final is shaping up nicely...as long as Brazil play nice and lie down for us in the semi-s.

my match predictions are:

England 2 v 0 Ecuador
Portugal 0 v 0 Holland (Portugal go through on pens)
Italy 1 v 0 Australia
Switzerland 1 v 1 Ukraine (Ukraine win on pens)
Brazil 3 v 1 Ghana
Spain 2 v 2 France (Spain win on pens)

Germany beat Argentina on pens
England beat Portugal
Italy beat Ukraine
Brazil beat Spain

Germany beat defensive Italy
England come from behind and hold on to win on pens against Brazil

England thrash Germany 3-0 in World Cup final in Berlin.

oh, then the Liverpool lads come home and win the Quadruple next season.

yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

A new project landed on my desk. It’s a new mosque in Manchester. My first religious building. I didn’t think much of it at first, just talked through with the architect as I would normally, but now I am pondering somewhat.
I don’t think there are any conflicts or contradictions in me helping with the building of a muslim mosque...right? to help create a place where masses of people can gather to worship and pray to a god that's false? Am I (yet again) over analyzing. Sheyee wondered what would happen if I prayed for the building while I was working on it...I said, yeah, maybe God will end up turning it into a Christian place and our poor MCCC can move into it.
There are bits of the mosque building itself that are kind of interesting. The main prayer room or Masjid and Sehen, have to be touching the earth, so we lost a lot of good basement plant space. The men all congregate in the ground floor where the preacher does his bit, the women and children are on the first floor above and have to view down over a balcony and glazed floor, and the second floor is occupied by visitors and (seriously) women having their periods at the time [insert gross jokes here] and they only get to listen to someone at the front who peers down through a small glass square in the floor and communicates the goings on below...probably so words and sermons can be edited for attending visitors? Or am I just being cynical.
Other things are like, everyone has to wash their hands and feet before entering, praying, and eating; and have to do so only in running water – so there are tons of specially designed ‘ablution’ rooms; and they eat on the floor using giant silver trays; there is a funeral room where they thoroughly clean dead bodies; also we’re looking at about 100,000 pounds worth of (gold and tacky) chandeliers for them.
It all impacts on my usual design process, I need to consider how their specific requirements fit with the Building Regulations, good practice and even sustainability.
The client has a renewable energy agenda and I’m considering using the project to test out a new ‘geothermal’ system for heating and cooling, which involves running pipework 25metres into the ground by attaching to the reinforcement cages of supporting structural foundation piles.

Anyway, I’m sure its all fascinating. Well, I’m coming to accept how boring my job can get, and relatively speaking apart from designing an acoustic baffle slightly too much to the left, this is as controversial as it gets.

So is it ok to work on this building? If they’re worshipping a false allah, then what about all the offices and shopping centres I’ve worked on where even more people are worshipping money daily.

Ok, so I don't have the emails of some of you (Neil, Carolyn, I'm looking at you)...I'm posting this for your benefit:

I would like to invite you to the World Cup of LOVE, fantasy football league! It’s on t'internet, and its FREE. Its also pretty good because for the World Cup one you don't have to worry about the cost of players - just pick you best World XI. (although you can only have 2players max. from each country...so you can't have Peter Crouch plus the rest of Brazil. I know thats what you want)

Go to:

http://channel4.fantasyleague.com/Index.aspx

And click on ‘Register’ to set up your team following the on-screen instructions then once this is done go to “My Team” page and click “Friends League”.

Here you just have to enter the pin number 12170 then that’s it!

I am the chairman of the league by the way so no funny business…and once you register and apply for entering the Friends League let me know asap and I will verify you.

BUT QUICK!! The best players of the best sport in the world kicks off this Saturday 10th June!!!


Anybody else fancy having a go at the league just register and let me know.

The summer is FINALLY rearing its pretty head, on this drunken island soaked to the bone from 9 months of biting rain, now ready to dry-off a little in the next 3.

And with the summer, comes music festivals in the UK. And again, Manchester is on the top of every band’s touring calendar, in particular Old Trafford Cricket Ground next to which I live precariously close to. It transforms its lush green bowling pasture into a stomping ground for thousands of music fans over sun stricken weekend evenings.

Can’t wait to come home to the sound of anthem after classic stirring echoing euphoria in the masses, while tune after tune gets belted out in the Cricket Ground next door. June 17th – Richard Ashcroft headlines with Feeder warming up; June 18th – Foo Fighters supported by The Strokes and The Subways, just to name a couple.

picked Gill up with her folks early this morning from the airport. She'd been in the Phillipines for a whole year already, its just flown by. It was so good to see her and have her back! albeit for just 2 months, before she has to go back to save the children over there from the clutches of over-zealous misguided ex-patriot americans with seperate agendas and who try to ram "proms" and the need to have a "prom-queen" or the cliquey competitiveness in what is a supposed to be a Christian international school taught by overseas missionaries, well thats what she laments anyway.

also have a gig this saturday in Warrington, of all places. our first 45minute set. we're just gonna play all the songs we know and then repeat them 3 times, that oughta do it. the gig is actually in aid of a friend of the band who's converted an old army ambulance and is going to drive to Australia, and stay there.

Tegan and Sarah, So Jealous album is essential listening. as singles go, try "i know i know" or "speak slow".

so its a bit of a long story, but Lloyds TSB Home Contents Insurance absolutely rocks my socks off!!!

after the breakage of my 6yr old iBook, the insurance company basically offered me a brand new iBook, as it was economically unviable to repair it.

but, with a bit of haggling, i managed to swing their original offer to a new 13" MacBook Superdrive...by adding an 'upgrade fee'.

and to top it off it took them only 3working days from when i sent the iBook off to get checked out til today when the new MacBook was delivered, and is sitting quietly in front of me right now.

it truly is stunning. no honestly. and the packaging. oh bert, the packaging....!

I wrote this novel-esque chapter and verse on the NY trip, but my inability to finish things lately has meant it's still saved as a draft...and goes something like:
"It was a buzz taking the train through Brooklyn, excitement was further augmented when I saw ‘Jackson Heights’ on maps and sign posts. Though I did feel like someone was gonna randomly pop a cap in my ass, and suppose eventually was glad I was INSIDE the train and moving quickly. But I’m sure those mental images were all down to exaggerated film and news driven misguided preconceptions, and the place is actually no harder than Trafford or Anfield and my scally days would have stood me in good stead amongst the homies. The urban myth that is ‘amazing New York pizza’ is urban truth, found at the foot of Dumbo. The one about New York hotdogs however, is still just a myth to my experience. But Burgers from Burger Joint, lasagne from East Village, sushi & katsu curry from Kenka, and Cuban corn-on-cobs were all just too good and fantastically cheap(-er than here by far, at least) in a dirty street chic urban cuisine kind of way."

since then there's been, Birmingham, Easter, Leeds, Bristol, winning the FA Cup, mother’s day, Jaq’s 30th, Vox valve amps, the spring, MacBook bonus, presentations, reports, bid documents, midnight oils, global warming, the Apprentice, Vodafone actually being nice, dentist, Sean’s visit, service charges, oh service charges, ground rent, mum’s leg, the summer, sheyee goes home, horrible canoe cough, Rooney’s foot, that Gerrard goal, RAF bases, MOT bombshells, and the Wives are actually writing a new song together! It’s a morbid one too...well, I was in charge of lyrics so I made sure it wasn’t another song about a girl.

If it wasn’t for my sister’s birthday bonansa at the end of April, I had spent more time with more Han’s than Chan’s since Christmas.

i've been pining to write about the NY trip...so much to cover, so little time.
in the meantime the NY set on Flickr should tell a bit of a story....just add rowdy-homies-and-drunk-korean-girl background noise to the Kenka photos.

by the way do any of you LJ/flickr experts know how to put a permanent on this LJ to flickr account?

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

so some early photos fmessing around on the new camera:

www.flickr.com/photos/henoir

there's some taken tonight during my first (cold) night in uber-cool NY.

...watch this space for a bit of a photo diary this week.

two days til i get to finally see whether the hype was real all these years.
i'm having a feeling like when i'm there its going to feel as though i've already walked down this street before, this carousel is so familar, the smell is what i've known for so long, and the night lights will flicker deja-vu's to the sounds of beastie boys and simon & garfunkel.

i finally got a digital camera the other day, and can't wait to use it on street corners and take my own thousands of shots of cliche new yorker life stills...yellow cab in snow; graffiti on the subway; business man buying greasy hot dog; NYPD on horses in the park; 200 different nationalities crossing Times Sq., Brooklyn bridge by night

i think i'll have to set up an account on a photo site...bert, is flickr good to use?






hope everyone is doing happy.

Now, as most should know I’m not generally a music-snob. I like almost anything from Lionel Richie to System of the Down. But James blunt? James bloody blunt?!?!?! I don’t think there’s ever been such a blatant gratuitous farce of a not-actually-singing mainstream pop act since the squealing Bee Gees. Doesn’t anybody notice all he does is put on a weird chipmunk high pitch false voice and calls it singing?? Doesn’t anyone care?? Oh no, his voice is “unique”. Or maybe I’m the only one.
I was reading Music Week last Monday –a weekly rag of UK’s music publishing statistics for industry business & A&R people; and it did a review of 2005, including performance listings for all albums, singles, air-time, downloads, etc. etc….and basically every page started with a heading like “James Blunt brings hope” “Blunt statement” “Blunt mops it up” “Blunt’s year” “Blunt the saviour”. My goodness. Am I taking crazy pills??!?!
Is this really the soundtrack to the world right now? This, and a severely over-rated Coldplay who used to be cool with Spies and Shiver now taking themselves WAY too seriously?
I wouldn’t mind so much if his (two) songs weren’t so damn addictive. Like an annoying bit of rice in the back of your nose when you sneezed with a mouthful and some went the wrong way and you can’t reach nor flush it out.
What made it worse was, while sat in covent garden enjoying a nice open air meal on a pleasant relaxing Friday evening, a street performer delighting the crowd with renditions of David Gray and Pink Floyd acoustic numbers, starts up a gentle riff to which both sheyee and I perk up and say almost simultaneously “that’s September Mornings” - right before the young misguided busker bleats out in a contorted whiny voice: “my life is brilliant… …you’re beautiful blah larlarlarlar dardar oh shut up”.