Bad news for Arsenal fans!

Here in Bangkok there is an Arsenal shop and they are ALREADY having their END of SEASON sale.

DW


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The BBC in America and Hard Talk

BBC in America

The BBC has put Matt Frei in charge of BBC News America and I have to wonder why. Probably some kind of trained journalist but is his forte language or journalism? Does Frei have any skills other than his abilty to speak English and German?

I am watching a programme at the moment where already he has made three insensitive remarks about two separate people. I suppose he would defend himself by saying he was asking Hard Talk style questions ... pshaw!

What about Frei's Nazi question, currently being heavily advertised? "Here is a question that really bothers me, am I allowed to like a building designed by a regime like the Nazis" (My wording, might not be perfect).

Hard Talk

Hard Talk used to be very interesting: Tim Sebastian asked awkward questions of a wide variety of people.

Hard Talk has become a travel opportunity as they now go to the USA, South Africa, Hong Kong and to many other places, currently Trinidad and Tobago.

Moreover, they have replaced the word Hard with Rough. Sebastian got it right: well researched, hard, awkward, searching, incisive. Stepehan Sackur and Zeinab Badawi, current presenters, think hard means rough: often ill informed and downright rude rather than hard.

Back to Frei: he began yesterday's report with an introduction that his guest was able to over turn immediately as factually incorrect.

The BBC's standards are slipping everywhere.

DW

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Merry Christmas

Ho! Ho! Ho! As they say.

1st December and my Xmas season starts today. All my Xmas music is at home though; from the medieval Thys Yool all the way to Slade!!! What to do??

Merry Xmas everyone.

DW
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The 20 Year Rule

I might not necessarily be immune from the following.

You are 20 years late in coming to Bangkok/Thailand when

That grubby, home made head band around your head is the ONLY one in SE Asia
The tee shirt you insist on wearing is half the size it ought to be
You think your short longs/long shorts are trendy
The girl on your arm COULD be your grand daughter, possibly your great grand daughter
You think thongs and stubbies are a chick magnet
You are a man who thinks his pony tail looks as good on him as a pony tail does on a Thai girl/lady
You sit in a hotel lobby staring wide eyed and open mouthed at the young local ladies going about their every day normal business with your lovely wife of many years tolerantly and lovingly sitting next to you

All true!

DW
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What did I get?

Hotel in Bangkok and the waitress repeated my order:

"Spry with eye?"

What did she bring me?

Answers on a postcard please.

DW
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International Football Cheats … sorry Ireland!

Not only in England but international now. France have qualified for the World Cup Finals in South Africa as a result of a cheat having handled the ball that allowed France to get the ball in the back of the net and thus beat Ireland to the finals.

Thierry Henri has admitted handling the ball that allowed his colleague to score a goal. It was as clear as it can be to everyone on the pitch and in the video playback. Still, Ireland have been eliminated because Henri cheated and even though it was in his power to tell the referee what he had done when he had done it, he chose to remain silent and cheat his way through to the finals.

It’s really a disgrace now as every game that France plays will be soiled by this one event.

How can you not feel sorry for Ireland who grace these finals whenever they attend?

DW

A380 Model … so classy!

I took this photo in the Emirates lounge at LHR on Friday. Just love this plane. Hoping to go on it again soon!!

DW

Have you got a light Mac?

That tag line is the first part of an old joke … anyone know the second line?

Anyway, young Master W brought along his Mac laptop to our rendezvous the other day and for the first time ever I was able to appreciate what all of these Appl Mac wallahs have been chuntering on about.

How about speed and design? Nothing looks or feels complicated on a Mac. You want to open iTunes on a Mac, you’ll have to wait all of less than a second for it to load AND run. Yes, so long! I just opened iTunes on my Acer Extensa as an experiment and it took 7 seconds to start. On this laptop, HP TouchSmart, it took 33 seconds to load and run: this included having to agree to the terms and conditions AGAIN, the file list being rebuilt AGAIN and being asked if I want iTunes to be my default player AGAIN.

I was shown a video demonstration and could hear nothing so I asked, “When will the screaming cooling fan start to operate as the system becomes overheated?” That didn’t happen. As I type this, the fan on the HP laptop is working overtime even though I am only using this software, Windows Live Writer, gmail is on in the background, Outlook is open and there is a file downloading from the internet. This is a 64 bit machine with a huge disc drive and 3Gb of RAM … and still it struggles to cope.

Ease of use, sleek lines, Steve Jobs probably doesn’t have anywhere near as many people taking his name in vain as that Gates has, reliability …

We then went to the Apple Store in Regent’s Street in London and took a look at a few things, including their new magic mouse. A magic mouse would be wasted on a Windows machine: far too clever and smart, it would be the highlight of your computing day!!

One day when my PCs have all died I’ll buy a Mac!

DW

Mushrooms, Beautiful Mushrooms

I love mushrooms and if ever you find yourself in the Emirates lounge at LHR, see if they still do canneloni with mushroom sauce.

Simply divine dahling!!

DW

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Give him a Break will ya?

I had lunch with someone the other day, let's call him D! A propos some business and a bit of chitter chat, I wrote to D's mother and said this: that and D's body building exploits have given him a 52 inch chest.

Thinking that would generate a bit of pride and so on, I was shocked and somewhat amused at her response:

"... well, good for him but i just wonder whether he spends all of his time in the gym now rather than studying hard ... have you talked  about his studies?"

There was a conversation earlier in the year between me and the mother in question to the effect that these comments are counter productive. I got a promise that she knew and that she would never make them again!!

DW

Fran BA (Hons) and her Papa

Had this photo taken outside the Corn Exchange Theatre, Cambridge yesterday just before Fran was admitted to the degree of BA ...

Who is that suave gentleman with Fran?

DW

Is this the World's Smallest Hotel Room?

The title asks the question!

DW

Sideways Look at an Hotel Room

Just for the record, here is my room in the Al Khafji Beach Hotel.

DW

Dali, my Emirates Heroine

Dali, my Emirates heroine!

I flew from Dubai to Heathrow yesterday and Dali was virtually my personal stewardess for parts of the flight. As I got onto the plane she spotted that I am a frequent flyer (they don't all spot that!) and made my stay a warm and inviting one.

Dali is from Japan, spent five years in New Zealand where she picked up their accent and learned perfect English.

We found that we have pies and Cadbury's chocolate in common. We chatted for a long time at the start, middle and end of the flight and she made me feel wanted.

Isn't that nice?

Well done Dali, my Emirates stewardess of the year!

DW

Backup Solution

That's Backup, not to be confused with Bacup which is a town in Lancashire.

I did lose a lot of data the other week when HP and Microsoft decided that all of my work should be in vain. Recent work, work for up and coming seminars and ALL of the one year's work that I did for Abingdon and Witney College ... gone or not entirely recoverable.

I was playing with the quick start button on my Acer Extensa laptop yesterday and came across a utility which I had not previously seen, in spite of owning the machine for almost exactly one year: acer NTI Shadow.

At the time of writing I have just backed up all of my main working files to a separate disk to the one the originals are on. Let's see what Gates can do now and OF COURSE I will backup to another computer AND another hard drive today/tomorrow.

Trust no one.

DW

Time to Replay the Games

I have just seen yet another blatant dive that turned into a penalty from one of England's supposed premier teams. A Liverpool player, surprisingly not SG, dived heinously badly to have a penalty awarded to them. The conversion of that penalty was taken by SG and it enable Liverpool to draw 2 : 2 against Birmingham City.

These cheats are driving me away from football.

Following simple/complex analysis by the Football League powers that be, points can be deducted, games replayed, wins awarded to the opposing team, players fined ... all of these things should happen because it's a disgrace and an embarrassment now.

DW

Fadge of the Berlin Wall!

No surprise the likes of Sarkozy are trying elbow their way into the celebrations. The PEOPLE of East Germany rose up against their nonsense leaders along with their brothers and sisters across the former Soviet Union. THEY drove their nonsense politicians out of office. THEY bravely faced their police forces and solders. THEY won.

I was sick the other day when I saw former politicians like Gorbachev and Bush Senior with the ailing Kohl being lauded for their contribution to the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was also an apology for the non appearance of the woman Thatcher: too ill to attend ... good.

No doubt history has firmly been rewritten so that these here today gone tomorrow politicians will get most of the credit.

Let's have another fanfare for the common man: it was them wot done it!

DW

Fabulous Sight

There were just two things missing from the equation:

• my good camera
• a clean window

On approach to Dubai International Airport this morning, just before 10 am local time, we came in from the North, over the Gulf and there to meet us was a prize winning photograph of a sight. The taller buildings of Dubai shrouded up to around one third of their average height with mist and the Burj Dubai rising skywards right in the middle. Fabulous!

If only I'd had my good camera with me and if only my window had been clean you'd all be swooning at the sight now.

DW

Next in Sequence

What is the missing number in this sequence:

1. 2. ? 32

DW


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Breakfast with Tom Jones

You know Tom Jones, the old Welsh warbler of course. Well, who woulld have thought you'd find him here on the Gulf singing Deliliah and several other hits. Let alone be with me for breakfast.

OK, not in person. But given the complete lack of anyone from anywhere near Europe let alone Wales, apart from me, I was surprised at the choice of today's music. Better than the rap music they played the other day though!!

DW

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