Numbers

Yesterday I managed to leave my phone at work. This is a bigger issue than you might think because all the phone numbers I need are stored on my phone. I tried to call the office to see if I had left it on my desk, but of course there was no-one on the switchboard to answer my call at that time and I just got piped music. I couldn't cal anyone on their cel phones because all the numbers were in my phone. I decided it was too late to go back for it, so I left it. It was still here this morning under my mountain of paperwork.

The biggest problem was calling the Dragon to tell her that my phone was at work. She usually calls me to meet her at the station when she finishes work you see. I couldn't remember her number and I had to spend quite some time rifling through wallets and address books looking for it. This is an example of how technology isn't helping. I used to be able to remember hundreds of numbers in the old days when one actually had to dial them. Now I can't even remember my wife's.

I also wrote half a journal entry yesterday and left that at work with my phone. The Alzheimer's is obviously finally kicking in. I thought I had saved it to my flash disk and was intending to finish it at home. I had in fact saved it to my hard disk at work however, so that idea died also. It's been a bad week but it is however Friday, and tonight we fly to England. Vito wants me to buy him a pink shirt he saw on the internet. Sally wants tea, and Kally wants a policeman. I'm not sure about quarantine regulations on the last one. I've hired us a little car to zip around England in. That means there doesn't have to be any long, uncomfortable farewells at the airport because we can take ourselves there. I don't think there will be any diary entries or website changes for a few days. We get back to Taipei on 27 March.

I'm taking very boring reading material with me on this flight in the hope that I'll eventually fall asleep. I'm no good at sleeping on planes, trains, cars, any kind of vehicle actually.

It seems that from today, mother's can legally breast feed in public in Scotland. Apparently anyone that tries to stop a mother from breast-feeding can be fined up to 2,500 pounds. I can't see that this is really a big issue actually. Breast-feeding would seem to be fairly commonplace in Britain and I don't recall ever seeing anyone complain about it. But there you go. Apparently a law is required. Click.

I can't find anything else even remotely interesting in the news today. There is still much talk here of whether China is likely to invade Taiwan. I personally think they are going to begin putting pressure on fairly soon. I hate the thought of this island, which has been my home for more than three years, being taken over by a government with one of the worst human rights records in history. I originally thought that China would avoid any kind of Taiwan conflict so close to the Beijing Olympics, but I'm beginning to change my mind. Why else would they start pushing legislation through? My boss came up with a strange thought about this. He said that the US, which has pledged to support Taiwan if a conflict is started, can't very well argue that China's invasion of Taiwan is morally wrong after they themselves invaded Iraq. I'm not sure his argument really stands up, but I bet China would use it as justification. Some political commentators are saying that the ideal moment for China to launch it's attack will come this year as it builds its military capacity and the US is still picking up the pieces in the middle east. It's also been suggested that an attack sooner rather than later would more likely be forgotten by the 2008 Olympics. Maybe I am putting too much emphasis on the Olympic thing. It's just a few games after all.

A huge rally has been organised here next weekend. The people of Taiwan don't like the Chinese government. It's strange to me however, that the average Taiwanese citizen has no real desire for independence either. They are mostly willing to retain the status quo rather than risk upsetting their huge neighbour. If hey had to make a choice, I think they would chose independence, but that is just my guess. The rally is more a measure of Taiwan's anger at Chinese muscle flexing, than a call for a war of independence. The whole situation scares me. There are people I love here.