Ling and I visited the new Singapore National Library complex today. I noticed they had a great collection of international newspapers. They were all in a nice format, perhaps 18"x 30" (?) neatly bound laser-printed booklets that were faithful copies of the real newspaper. I was impressed by the Library's xeroxing skills until I noticed on the back page "this newspaper brought you by newspaperdirect.com."
Turns out there is a company that has made arrangements with international newspapers to provide print-on-demand, read-online, and even delivery of print-on-demand newspapers. What does this mean? I can get the New York Times daily delivered to my house in this marvelous format. It's expensivce (about 1000$USD for a year subscription) but boy, what an indulgence...
On a moment's notice I decided to move Ling and my vacation forward from December to November. Now instead of Ling and I going to Sydney, Ling, Luke, and I will be going to Perth. Ouch.
Flying to Sydney is something like an eight+ hour flight. Perth is only four. So figured that was simpler since we're bringing the Little Man. Another problem is that he goes to sleep at seven pm, and his evening ritual begins at 5:30pm latest. Conseqently my plan was this: "we'll rent nice house right on the beach. It'll be close to nice cafes that we can have lunch at, and then at night I'll cook dinner hile little man sleeps." We ended up renting this place on Cottesloe Beach, where I'm told there are many nice cafes and good restaurants and it's not far from Bohemian Fremantle.
What do I plan on doing? Enjoying nice cafe lunches, kayaking in the Indian Ocean, and fishing! I've never fished before. But here is a perfect opportunity to fish from my kayak, especially since we'll be eating dinner at home and the house has a nice barbeque. I bought an encyclopedia of fishing today and next week I'll go buy some equipment. Buying equipment is always fun, even if fishing turns to be not fun!
Our trip leaves Saturday November 19th and returns the following Sunday.
This tufte-style chart of suicide jumper locations on the Golden Gate bridge is interesting.
The obvious first remark is "gee, everyone walks to the middle and jumps in on the east side." Now the article suggests the east-centric jumping is due to the pedestrian walkway being there, and only a bicycle way on the west side.
The article also says that for years the engineers have tried to design a jumping-barricade that would work.
Ok, but what about this: maybe people have some warped perspective, and it is far more daunting to jump into the west side, facing an infinite pacific ocean sucking out into the horizon? If it's somehow more "comforting" to dump your corpse towards the city, maybe they should move the pedestrian walkway to the other side of the bridge. It might reduce total suicides per year.