Past Tense

The thing with travelling abroad often around SEA for work is,you tend to classify your fellow commuters. They can be categorized to a few distinct classes:

1. The Consultants: it’s easy to spot these bunch. The sharp suits,the fancy watch that displays time in 1000 different timezones, and their micro laptops. Odds are,as soon as the seatbelt signs are off they’ll be pulling out the micro pcs to start pecking on their financial models.
2. The Outgoing Tourists: the happy lonely planet Reading people. All the relief on the freedom they saved so hard to enjoy. You cannot help but want to share in their joy (and want to them to take you along)
3. The Returning Tourists: the exhaustion on their spent faces and the dread on compng back to reality.
4. The Selfish:these are the ones who asks for extra peanuts,asks for all the freebies the flight offers,the ones who are standing as soon as the plane touches down and is barrelling down the aisle to be the first off the plane.
5. The TechnoRat: this dude has it all. iPhone, a separate ipod for music,dvd player for the journey,a psp and funky cans of Sennheiser. To say he’s come fully prepared to keep himself occupied is an understatement.
6. The Tourist Guide: This is the man who is walking around doing PR with his flock. For some reason, they make my teeth grind. I was on a flight once where the tourist guide, in an effort to show his flock he was King, made the stewerdess heat up a can of beans for him because he “cannot eat cold food”.

Note: this wasn’t typed on the plane.  (It was scribbled on the notebook on a plane)

The IMF has declared a global meltdown warning.

The USD is flopping like a fish out in the air.

Credit Crunching.

Recession.

And yet:

1. I’m still contemplating the new 323i before next year.
2. I still bought that useless Madrid moleskine(RM88, Czen Lim, Bangsar), just because.
3. Pulled the reins on credit card spending but, nyeh.

Walking around Bangsar picking up gifts yesterday for the party, I just didn’t see any problem. Nirwana is packed as ever. Bangsar Village was as packed as ever. Even Datuk Nazir was strolling around looking at crap. Could we really be in the worst global crisis since WWII? Forget about bonuses, be lucky if you still have a job at the beginning of next year. But I still don’t see the problem affecting anyone.

I think the new matra for this week is: Tighten up the belts. Just in case.

1. It’s the 17th of September. No new government in sight. I didn’t know they moved April fools’ day to September.
2. John McCain apparently invented the Blackberry. Props to you future-president-of-America.
3. Wordle. Very Cool. [via azuradec]

I really think I need to get more shelves.

I am proud to say I’ve gone wide rather than deep on the books I bought. (Growth!) I’m in this economist (not the magazine) kick. Bringing out the Economist in me and the Long Tail await patient reading…now if only I can put down the Bartimaeus triology first.

Note: Not all of the books are mine.