Panthera Sapiens Ellipsis: The Blog

So it's now Sunday night and I'm a little bit depressed. Not that I don't have good reason to be: I've just three days left to do all my packing and say all my farewells and settle a few administrative niggles, though with a little planning and careful use of time I certainly should be able to do all of that. But it remains that I'm essentially saying goodbye to everything that has been familiar to me for the past four years (plus three months) and going somewhere that I've never actually lived in. Because you shouldn't get the wrong idea. For all that I talk about going back to So Hour, my experience of the place is extremely limited; I go there often, but I only know my extended family there, and of them I know maybe a handful well. I know nobody outside the family and I don't even know the geography of the place--I know the public transport but only as far as it concerns getting to/from the ancestral home (as I've started calling it)--so as far as...

I received word about four hours ago that the company I had an interview at on Tuesday has chosen to offer me the position I interviewed for. I've already written back to say thank you very much and I look forward to starting in October, and received an email in reply to welcome me to the company "family"--inverted commas not mine--and now I'm panicking in earnest. I know the implications of this decision, after all. It means my life in Singapore is over; no more swimming or listening to MRT jingles or convenient public transport. It also means that within two weeks I will need to be at least proficient enough at driving to get to and from the factory and wherever I live (either that or I'll need a place so near that I can just cycle instead), and given how frightening driving was to me when I first learned it, the second time 'round mightn't be any easier. But it is a good opportunity, and I'll have a good boss and the HR seems friendly and helpful en...

Let me start off by saying that Google is a magnificent company making some quite magnificent things, not least a magnificent amount of money. But there's one thing Google can't do when you type a keyword in, and that is to magically create a site that links together all the pertinent information you're looking for. When my grandfather died my father looked up "Septic shock" on Google and had to trawl through several sites (of which two or three were things like "Cure your Septic Shock today! ____ brand medicine") and now that I'm thinking of moving I'm trawling through the many, many sites advertising places to rent in Singapore, which obviously doesn't include the forums and agents and things like that. So here's a proposal from me to whomever is a website designer in Singapore who wants to make renting better. First off, of course, it should be free to join, post ads, etc. But ads should follow a certain format--enter address, descript...

It's come to my attention lately that the place I live in has a distinct sort of smell. I'm not sure exactly what the smell is due to, but I have my theories. After all the house-owner (to avoid being clubbed by ladies the world over for tarnishing their name, I shall no longer call her the landlady) has a unique way of keeping the place clean--she tosses a cloth in a pail of soapy water, wrings it out, then tosses it on the floor and steps on it and then proceeds to walk about, dragging the cloth around as she goes. It's a system that only works because nobody eats anything crumby or does anything likely to lead to messes. But I'm becoming, as anybody with me on Facebook knows, increasingly disenchanted with the place I live in. The new roommate is already thoroughly disenchanted--two days after he arrived (that was when I met him, having just returned from my grandfather's funeral) he announced to me that he planned to move out. But the place has a smell--it's...