I woke up quite early this morning because I needed to go to the loo, the best place for a quiet muse and to plan my day. And that, as usual, gave me the theme for this little post.
You see, yesterday was quite busy. It was the day for Our Kid's monthly jaunt with me up to Jalan Jaksa for his burger fix and to Mangga Dua for my computer fix. This time a couple of wires had come loose in my external hard drive, the one I keep my digitalised sounds on. Now that's fixed there's still the problem of not having the proper Codecs, which is something to do with actually playing all the 75 gigabytes of music I've got stored.
It turns out that with my Indosat dial up connection it's going to take something like an hour to download all 12.7mb of files, which, of course, is time enough to get this post together, especially if the 'time remaining' sticks at 45 minutes.
This should be time enough to read and answer all those emails I've got sitting in my Inbox - all 777 of them. Or maybe I should sort out the 2,876 emails in my Sent folder.
I'm regularly asked why I don't have a handphone. I now realise that I've got another excuse: if I can't find the time to edit, file or erase properly written missives, how would I cope with semi-literate notes which I'd have to ask Our Kid to decipher?
SMSs?
I 8 em & U?
(37:59 remaining)
I do have problems with emails too. For example, Son No.1 has a business problem which he doesn't want blogged. However, as it concerns Indonesia I've emailed fellow expat bloggers here seeking advice, much of which has been very sound and for which thanks have been expressed.
Back in Blighty, he has consulted various friends and now knows how to proceed through legal channels if he so wishes. Again, the support and advice he has received has been tremendous, all supported by weighty emails which took an increasing amount of time to read as each successive one was an additional burden.
(20:17 remaining)
When snail mail was the norm, it would have been very strange to repeat verbatim the letter being responded to. So why do folk do it with emails? Surely it makes better sense, and easier readability to "quote" the section being responded to. Or better yet, given that one message was "You owe us all a beer - or three" to send just that.
(16:43 remaining)
Obviously emails are a valuable tool for communication, but so are blogs. And this post has certainly not added to my burden of unanswered mail, even if I have procrastinated and not opened Outlook Express.
(14:17 remaining)
What I really wanted to post today, it being a Sunday, a very hot Sunday, a day for sundaes, is this link to 101 Frightening Ice Cream Flavours .
Durian is, surprisingly, only in the list at 96.
I'm not sure if I need Viagra, but like Rachel, age 8 - “It tastes like poop. How could you live with yourself if you made that ice cream?” - I certainly don't want to try Chocolate Garlic Ice Cream.
(Download complete)
(This post is dedicated to Jeremy Wagstaffe who has a regular Sunday column in the Jakarta Post writing about those computer problems which we are all frustrated with. I'll be writing to him directly if his recommended Registry Cleaner doesn't work, nor the codecs I linked to from that site.)
