Where?

I'm idling away a few hours near here: N1 degree 16.8812 minutes, E103 degrees 50.3366 minutes ±13 metres according to the eight satellites my phone talked to.

That was at 13:35 local time. It's 15:39 now.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Google Maps

I just installed Google Maps on my mobile and, being a bit like that, I was excited to find that the little flashing blue dot on a point of the map EXACTLY where I am in the world, is spot on!

In the same way, I was excited t night to learn that by formatting a cell in an Excel spreadsheet like this,

#0 “This will be in the cell too”

you will see 20 This will be in the cell too if you just enter the number 20 in that cell.

DW

The Banana Leaf Apolo Singapore

Another winning meal in Singapore. I have just eaten an excellent curry at the Banana Leaf Apolo in Little India. Old fashioned in lots of respects, busy, big kitchen and loads of choice even for a veggie like me.

I have some veggie samosas to start with then black dal, paneer in a spinach sauce and steamed rice. Really good quality and brilliant value for money.

In addition to telling you about the restaurant, I want you to know about an award they have won. Take a look at this page to see the certificate you will find at the front of their menu: http://www.thebananaleafapolo.com/award.htm Don’t you just love it? Not only have they won the award but who else would have thought of serving 1,101 fish head curry dishes at one sitting? Isn’t it handy they had 1,101 fish heads lying around?!!

More than that, the fish heads in question are BIG: they’re not gold fish or sprats, they are big fish heads!

Little India is all dressed up for the Festival of Lights, Deepavali, too; and here is some proof of that, taken just before I got to the restaurant.

Uniquely Singapore as they say!

DW

Chinese Restaurants in Singapore

After many indifferent quality vegetarian meals in a variety of restaurants in the UK, it is a real pleasure to be here in Singapore to taste some excellent quality restaurant vegetarian food.

In the last 24 hours I have been to two Chinese restaurants here and whilst they were in different locations, they were both top quality. They were not expensive either: I ate lone at the first one and paid the equivalent of around GBP10 whereas tonight I ate with a friend and we spent the princely sum of around GBP20 for the two of us.

Good quality, tasty, well served and in nice surroundings. Not your chipboard, plastic fork and spoon jobs either.

DW

New Computer … Gates will get on your nerves

I am not alone but I am constantly astonished at the ineptitude of the Microsoft set of offerings.

My HP laptop has severely let me down for the the THIRD time in its short 10 month history. HP customer service is shockingly appallingly bad in the UK too. Given the work that I do, I have had to buy yet another computer: this time I went for a brand I know, Acer; and bought a good spec laptop in Singapore at a low price.

So I found a bit of time just before leaving my hotel in Bangkok to do some setting up work. That’s when I fell foul of Microsoft’s latest:

Outlook started by crashing

Then it wanted me to update some software that has so far taken me over an hour to download.

I also wanted to install Windows Live Writer (this MS offering SEEMS good!). I downloaded and installed from the relevant MS page. Then when I used it I was told that the software had expired and that I should download the latest version. I believed them so I did that. More wasted time. Then I started the software again to be told that it had expired and I should download it again. FFS as my nephew said the other day!!

I am now at the stage where I want to start suing these people for wasting my time and my money.

DW