I'm currently reading 1421, The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Mensies. Excellent read so far. I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw the review when it was first published. Alas, it was only available in hardcover at $25! What a pleasant syurprise to see it on sale in paperback in Oxford. I scooped it right up.

Wandering about Oxford was a delight. I took lots of photos of the old college buildings and crooked narrow streets, poked about the old covered market and chatted with farmers and shopkeepers and bought strange but tasty cheeses. Alan and I and a bunch of the other programmers had a great curry dinner at a restaurant called Chutneys. I still owe Francis a copy of the infamous Exhibit A photo; Alan tells me Francis is fretting over it. It's nothing really naughty, given that it was taken at the ACCU speakers' dinner in front of several hundred people, or behind them as the case may be. Next year I'll take all the photos myself, thank you very much. I'm constanly surprised at what lousy photographers most people are.

Finally back online with my own laptop. Also picked up a wifi card, turned out to be a cheap convenience, very cheap. Of course it would be nicer if I had a lighter laptop rather than the old panzer-puter. This Toshiba laptop is a serious contender for the doorstop computing award.

Got an invite to sign up for gmail when I logged onto the blog tonight. Couldn't resist trying out something new, espcially something free and new. I'm very concious of the devil's deal Google is offering but keeping that in mind, I can still find uses for the account.

I just finished a really brilliant novel called Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hillary Mantel. It was very aptly compared to Henry James' novel The Turn of the Screw. Also as an Orwellian nightmare. I keep thinking of the moment when the book's protagonist, a professional cartographer, labels a map of Jeddah as "cartography by kafka". Perfection. Chilling. You NEED to read this book. In fact, I found this book at the local library and now I have to go to B&N and buy it and others by the author to add to my collection. More, more!