In my ongoing effort to find new and inventive ways to worry the crap out of my poor mother, I finally boarded a flight to Shiraz in Southern Iran on the Arabian take on Easyjet. After numerous payments to an extortionist sponsor in Tehran, an endless Sisyphusian battle with Iranian bureaucracy and a sizeable donation to furry-faced Armadinajad, I’d managed to secure a visa for a two week stint in the dark beating heart of the Evil Axis.
There’s no poetic way of putting it – after just 5 minutes of sitting on the runway, we’d barely gotten through the pre-flight prayer and it was brown trousers time. Minutes from takeoff, a fellow at the back of the plane suddenly started hollering something about God with half a dozen others. Embarrassingly, it was enough to induce a mini-panic attack – my heart raced and the colour must have visibly drained from my face since my fellow passengers (in a four-row radius) began cracking up. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for folks to get some jazz-chanting going when they’re keyed up – especially on flights or at a concert or celebration. Shouting on a plane is alarming anywhere – but especially when done in a Middle Eastern language en route to Iran. I eventually laughed along, but damn Iran – you scary!
A list of my favourite Android apps, kicking off with the only two paid apps I have installed.
BeyondPod (paid app) – For reliability and functionality, this podcast manager beats all of the free alternatives (including bare-bones and buggy Google Listen). Subscribe to your favourite audio feeds via Google Reader and this app wakes up at a set time, connects to your wifi and downloads the latest podcasts from the last 24-hours. Click for a list of my favourite podcasts.
Swiftkey (paid app) – Swiftkey is fast, smart and learns your typing habits and colloquialisms. This replacement keyboard for the stock Android one makes inputting text a lot less painstaking.
Listed here are a selection of my favourite Chrome browser extensions.
Ad-Block - The most popular Chrome extension, with over 2 million users. Blocks ads all over the web.
Bookmark Sentry - A bookmark scanner that checks for duplicate and bad links.
Chrome Gestures – Allows you to navigate pages, back and forth, by holding down your right mouse button and drawing a line. Speeds up web browsing very effectively once you’re in the habit.
China’s first official ‘International Pillow Fight Day’ was held on April 2nd, 2011. Synchronising with over 130 cities around the world via pillowfightday.com, several hundred people turned up to Statue Square in Central to beat each other silly with pillows (often in fancy dress).
Matt Harding of YouTube fame invited Hong Kongers to dance with him in Tsim Sha Tsui this week. I turned up in costume with friends and, as CNN reported, “…there were easily over a hundred people there, including a man dressed in a Mario outfit who Matt immediately pointed at and said: ‘You, my friend, will get me sued.’”
The US military-led tour of the Korean border zone Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) commenced at 7:30am sharp. In charge of proceedings was poker-faced Sergeant Rivera, an American solider with a well rehearsed, distant, steely squint. With clinical delivery and detachment, he informed us of the DMZ’s many rules and regulations, along with tips on how not-to-get-shot by edgy North Korean guards. Each instruction was conveyed with precision, repeated twice and usually book ended with “let’s just have a good day folks”. I sensed some weary exasperation in his tone and felt glad I’d left my (Chinese New Year of the) rabbit costume at the hotel. Indeed, clothing deemed “faddish, extreme, torn, tattered, frayed, overly provocative or otherwise inappropriate” was disallowed, including – quote – “baggy gangster-type” garb.
Throughout the day, as Rivera ordered us about, I felt that he was able to penetrate my soul with his trademark, no-nonsense glare. It was mildly unnerving yet oddly invigorating to be bossed around – I particularly enjoyed being told twice. “No photography here. Repeat: No photography.” What a thrilling paradox to be addressed as ‘sir’ as he humoured my stupid questions, yet also be ordered around – certainly, for a few moments, I had to question my heterosexuality.
