Spam

The other day, a message in my spam box was entitled,

"i videotaped my mom while she was masturbating"

Seriously, who the hell would be enticed by that title?? Nasty.

Hello?

Just wondering, how do you answer your phone (be it work or home or mobile)?

People in my company are all BlackBerried, so their work/personal mobile phones are basically one and the same. And they seem to answer their phones as one of:

"Hello, this is [name]."
"[name]" (without anything else)

Me, I go pretty casual:

"Hello?"

How about you?

Best Valentine's Day conversation overheard (by me)

I step into a random restaurant on rue Mouffetard in Paris on Valentine's Day evening, and am seated beside an American couple. I make eye contact perhaps just once (and unintentionally), but I have the pleasure of eavesdropping on their chat.

"Oh, this [escargots bourgogne] is so delicious. I love this sauce."
"You wanna marry it?", she asks without much emotion.
"No, honey, I'm going to marry you. You got dibs."

I thought it was over, but he gave it a brief afterthought and added:

"I'm going to have an affair with this sauce, though."

French Neighbours

I got home about 30 minutes ago, and found an envelope taped to my door, with "EN URGENT" handwritten on it. I opened it up and saw a letter:

Je suis Fabienne Xxx, votre voisine "en dessous". Ce matin at 6h30, j'ai trouve une fuite au dessous de l'evier. Le symdec est prevenu et le plombier m'a signale que la fuite, en partie, venait de chez vous. Auriez-vous l'amabilite de me telephoner au 01xx62xx34 pour prevoir une visite du plombier et eviter que les degats ne persistent. D'avance, je vous en remercie.

Had to get Google to translate it for me (after I deciphered some of the words because the penmanship is just horrible):

I'm Fabienne Xxx, your neighbor "below". This morning at 6:30 am, I found a leak below the sink. The [symdec] is accused and the plumber has said that the leak, in part, came from your place. Would you please call me at 01xx62xx34 to predict a visit by the plumber and avoid the damage that can persist. Thank you in advance."

I left her a message on the answering machine and left my number, and on Monday I'll get the rental service people to handle it.

Hi

Hi.

It's been a while since I've blogged about anything. And it's not for lack of anything to write about. Rather, it's a lack of motivation to write about that stuff.

Sorry.
It's not you, it's me.
Really.

I'll get around to blogging again, when I finally sort out everything in my head. In the meantime, know that I do still keep up with yours.

Nuri

I'm in Hong Kong right now.
See that furry white ball there?
That's a typhoon, Typhoon Nuri.
It has decided to park its ass directly on HK.

My head is in the windy wet ass of a typhoon.

Up in the Air

Travel plans all amuck.

I'm applying for a Chinese entry visa (again), so that means my passport and everything is sitting in some visa processing office. ETA is tomorrow afternoon, so then I can hop on my flight tomorrow night and go home for the weekend (before hitting Shanghai on Monday morning).

The Hong Kong weather folks have issued a T1 signal because of Typhoon Nuri. According to Hong Kong's Tropical Cyclone warning signals, a T1 signal apparently means that it can still be sunny outside and completely devoid of any resemblance to a breeze. But it also means everyone should be on standby for a real doozy of a typhoon.

It also means that, if the typhoon gets really bad tomorrow, I can't get my visa (and passport) back by tomorrow -- it would then be processed by Monday instead. And that means I can't go anywhere for the weekend: if I get my visa after the weekend, I have to stay in HK this weekend and fly straight out to Shanghai again on Monday.

This is not good.
I want to go home!