iBlog... OR AT LEAST iTry

In a wonderful show of support of my role as official family blogger, the darling husband went out and got me iWeb (Pix copyrighted to www.linqvist.com). For the uninitiated, this is a fancy shmancy Apple programme that helps you create websites and blogs. It looks really funky - you can just drag and drop designs, videos, photos and even whole movies... Pete created a cool-as banner (which I have yet to figure out how to upload on Blogger) in something like 30 seconds flat. In any case, it seems rather cool. It sets up the navigation, creates the summaries, does the archiving. Pretty much everything short of writing the posts. Now all I have to do is learn to use the Mac. Sigh. Art

SANDS WINS, ART LOSES....

Okay, Skinny reminds me that I have been a bad blogger. One of those weird weeks at work where nothing is meant to be happening but EVERYTHING happens. Yesterday, for instance, Pete and I woke up completely confident that TeamWilliams was going to be able to make it to sunset-ish cocktails. It was all set. Pete was on morning shift. I got an early start on my story. Matt & Di had a table booked at Loof and all. Angela was coming. Party gears were oiled. I even wore my new dancing shoes. And then what happens? The Government decides to reveal who won the casino bid. At 5.30pm. Bleah. Plans flew right out of the window. Comes with the territory I guess. (For anyone who care, it was Las Vegas Sands). FINALLY got out of the office at about half ten, by which time everyone was nicely half tanked so there was a fairly quick dropoff rate. Ah well. But the good news was that I had reclaimed my Friday night, and to make it EVEN better, the Skaffaris, who are visiting from sunny SanFran, popped over to say hi. Had many Asahi's. Nice. Mood brightened considerably. Turned out to be a pretty good night. I have made Mrs Skaffari promise that when she makes it BIG in the movies, I will get the big J-takes-Hollywood exclusive... In the brief period since we were last in California, she's managed to score at least three roles, so watch this space. Been sadly reminded though, of how much we sorely miss SanFran... Gotta get back to the Valley to play... Stick our nose in their business... Sigh.

iLike!

Had big plans for a bit of fun in the pool and getting some sun with the kids over the weekend, but Mother Nature (and consequently, their Mother) had her own ideas and rained out our plans. The kids still ended up having a blast though, with the (somewhat) newest Williams' family member - Big Mac (Pete's computer), which does just about everything but the dishes. Check them out messing around in the iBooth... Art

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Cormac, aka Vic Ferrari of Camembert Quartet fame, has dug into his hard drive for some old pix of Pete n gang from their NCAD days and created a site... Check it out here: NCAD95 Crew. Sampler: Here's Pete (with Rob and Cormac), looking dishy as always, but man am I glad he got rid of the fringe... :P Art

BLINK, AND THEY GROW UP.

In a blatant reminder of how quickly time flies (insert cliche cringe here), my nephew Lavin (Honey's son) graduated - with honours - from Wharton Business School over the weekend. Congrats Lavin!! The proud grandma headed to Pennsylvania for the graduation and seems to have had a blast (it was her first time attending a graduation in a freezing football stadium. Quite an experience I imagine). I'm pretty blown away about how quickly he grew up while I wasn't looking. I remember when he was born, and his first trip to Singapore as a baby. I recall him as a quiet kid and a lanky, studious teen... I also remember looking at Honey's three and thinking: Gee, I must the youngest aunt in the world. And now *blink*, they grew up when I wasn't looking. And I am no longer the youngest aunt in the world. In another indication of my spent youth, next month, my other nephew, Hash, will graduate from the University of Manchester, which is, incidentally, the next stop of Mum's World Tour. I feel OLD.

ONLY THE LONELY?

Interesting snippet in the news this week, courtesy of CNN (full article here): Google: Irish the Web's loneliest users Ireland may be enjoying stellar economic growth and seen as one of the best places in the world to live, but its inhabitants are apparently also the globe's loneliest. Google Trends, which works out how many searches have been done via the Internet search engine on particular terms, showed the word "lonely" was entered most frequently by Internet users in Ireland: http://www.google.com/trends?qlonely. The Irish, enjoying new-found wealth and a flood of immigration following more than a century of economic decline, are followed in the misery stakes by residents of Singapore and New Zealand -- although Singaporeans are the most frequent searchers of "happiness." Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for a given term coming from each city, region or language divided by total Google searches coming from the same area. Ireland's capital, Dublin, topped the city list for "lonely" searches, followed by Melbourne, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand. Personally, I'm not entirely sure how entering "lonely" in the search field translates into being the Irish being the loneliest people. In any case, if that is how its gonna be taken, I think its even more scary that Singaporeans seemingly in search of happiness are expecting it to find it on Google. I mean, I love Google and everything but er... Art

STABLE BUSINESS?

We don't know what they were thinking with the name. Spotted by Pete on Orchard.

AND THEY SURFACE...

Been reminded by many, many people that we have been MIA for a bit, and we're sorry. We were initially swamped by the elections (Yes, the PAP won, 66.6 per cent) and the hullabaloo that comes with one. It was utter madness for about two weeks, which is ironic considering that I was not even IN the elections team. Strangely, I still managed to get recalled for election stories all campaign week. Ah well. Gotta say, I had a real blast at the Opposition rallies, some real characters show up for those, armed with ice-cream and Tiger beer.. real fiesta kinda feel to it, strangely enough... Of course, just after the elections came the frenzied rush to 1) Get the house back in some kind of order, 2) Try and bang out all the stories that I had pushed back because I was helping with the elections 3) Try and pretend we actually have a life. Which sorta brings us to today. So much has happened and not sure where to start... Ling and Lu and now comfortably settled in California, and trying to find a house. For some reason or the other, the airline, however, managed to lose Luna (the dog) in transit between Singapore and the US. She was eventually found somewhere in Frankfurt though, and has finally found her way to Irvine. Gnat is finishing up her final days at work and will leave for Minnesota next month. She'll be living there the WHOLE year while Gene does some kind of attachment with Mayo, which is great for them, but we'll miss em so... There's word that some of the old SPH/Blue Cow gang might make in here in June, and some others in August, which will be absolutely fab. Gwen (Pete's sister), Andy and Lorcan have also decided to come to Singapore in August so that will be a real blast as well. We can't wait! On the TeamWilliams front, no major major updates. We're very much looking forward to our next vacation, which we hope will be in Vietnam in July... check out HCM, crash on a beach on the coast, eat lots of Pho.. God, getting hungry just thinking about it. Pete's been real busy with work, doing some of his superswish design work.. Its all a big secret right now, so you're gonna have to check in again to see the finished product :) Okay, so now that I have got the blog rolling again, promise there's be more to come... SOON! Art

PARTY MUM

Got this snapshot from Didi Honey in Aruba... Looks like Mum's having a blast... The caption to it said (and I quote): Mum and the Jailhouse Rock... I'm not even going to try and guess what that means!