Nifty if totally(?) useless: A New Screen of Death for Mac OS X by Amit Singh.

Where were you five years ago, when planes crashed in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and some innocent farmland?

I was in Thailand, attending an APMEA meeting of my new employer. I wasn’t even an employee of that company yet – I joined officially on October 1, 2001; but it so happened that the meeting had been scheduled then, and I was asked to join in.

As I didn’t know anyone from the group – except my boss, who’d interviewed me a coupla times, and spoke French reasonably well – so I spent that evening, which was the first [or second?] of that meeting, on my own. I did know people in BKK, my colleague and former colleague of the job I was then holding, but they were unavailable that night I met both separately later in the week.

I don’t remember what I did really, prolly had dinner in one of the few places I knew from a previous biz trip there, and had a beer or two and went to bed. I didn’t watch TV, that’s for sure And prolly didn’t connect long to the Net, or I’d have seen that. If it was the first night, it’s highly possible I’d have been tired by the flight anyway. And the weather.

But I distinctly remember the next morning. We spent the first hour or so of the meeting speaking about it. It so happens that my boss’s wife, and investment exec of some sorts, had a scheduled meeting somewhere inside the Twin Towers at 9am, NYC time. The guy was livid. He hadn’t slept much I guess. When the brown stuff hit the fan, he was having a beer with some colleagues in a bar. Someone mentioned the “accident” and even showed him a printout of a web page – geeks even infest Patpong it seems… He thought it was a hoax or something, but tried to call his wife nonetheless. No result – I guess the phones lines weren’t working too well anyway.

To make a long [and he did make the most out of it. He rather enjoyed any limelight that could come his way] story short, his wife’s meeting had been cancelled the day before, and she was in bed when it happened. Although I doubt a little bit the in bed part, she being a *Dutch*, and this particular strain of the human genus tend to get up at ungodly hours…

The rest of the meeting went well enough, even if he was a bit distracted. But that, I learned, was normal with that dude anyway.

Our local Asian food shop is very nice, staff is pleasant and helpful, products are aplenty and – considering – reasonably priced. But traditions die hard: if it’s rice for sushi, it has to come from Japan, right? [see Origine : Japon]. And it wouldn’t do to tell the clients that this is is made in Italy. Except that it *is* produced in Italy. Either they didn’t look at the back label or they did, and decided that Japan would have to do…

But it is good rice anyway. Riles me that it’s Eye-talian, but there you go.

Damn right