Lucca is dangerous.

We've slipped in to the Lucca way of life far too easily. Up at nine, a lazy meander to the shops, spending three hours over lunch and shopping till seven.

Yes. Shopping. Me. Shopping.

I don't do shopping. Nor does Belara. So someone please explain to me how I maanged to shop for six hours and not only be present while Belara bought bags and shoes but actively encouraged her to buy more?

Last night was really cool. You know the drill, breakfast, bit of shopping, eating out for lunch, little nap, friends of my aunt (who is fab!) around for some nibbles and a splash of sparkly stuff then off to the George Michael concert at Lucca stadium.

Yep, me at a George Michael concert. Who'd have thought eh? OK, I didn't know 3/4s of the songs but who cares? The man puts on a good show.

Today kicked off with the pair of us hiring bikes to scoot around the walls of Lucca. None of your poncy sports bikes here, good honest working bikes with a basket on the front. It was great zipping around the walls drinking in the sumptuous views. It sure made a nice change to have the wind whipping through my hair (no one wears helmets here).

After such massive exertions we naturally had to have a bit of refreshment and that filtered us nicely through to a 3 hour lunch back at my Aunt's place.

Then came the serious business of shopping which I've already spoken to. Tomorrow will probably be Piza and then, well who knows? Until we hit Paris we're sort of making it up as we go along.

The last week has been spent with family.

The first half was with my parents up in Irvine, Scotland. It included a nice lunch with my grandparents and a fair bit of Belara doing a bit of her genealogy.

The genealogy turned out to provide the spring board for one of the more memorable days. It started in the village of Kilwinning with a visit to the abbey there which is now little more than ruins. We were fortunate enough to catch one of the volunteers who maintains the exhibits and spent a delightful hour taking in what was on offer.

It turns out that Kilwinning is Masonic lodge number zero. Apparently the lodges originally split in to two factions with Edinborough claiming numero uno status to which Kilwinning said, uh-uh it's us.

Most of the overseas lodges affiliated with Kilwinning and eventually common sense prevailed and the two factions united. Kilwinning was not prepared to give up its calim though and rather than renumber all the lodges took the number zero.

All that history, and much more, for nothing. Although I did leave a ten pound donation.

For lunch we went to an exhibition mill in Darlry. It was restored from a wreck some fifteen years ago and contains many exhibits, the highlight of which currently is a collection of chinese silks circa the Boxer Rebellion, circa 1899. This first class collection was donated after a 'wan pasty faced youth' from the Kelvingrove Museum turned it down. More fool him!

Then it was down to Deveon to see my neice for the first time. My sister now lives in Cadeleigh in a converted farm house. It's huge! A lot of work has gone in to it though as it was pretty much a shell, not even that, when they took posession. There's still some work to be done but what has been done looks like it's stepped straight out of a Laura Ashley collection.

My neice is a delight, she's in the terrible twos and is very far from terrible. It's nice to see my sister doing so well for herself, she's married a top bloke and her in laws are absolutely fabulous.

We're in Rome now. This is our second visit and the only thing we really wanted to tick the box on was the Cistine Chapel which we've just done. Absolutely amazing collection of art and to be honest you could spend a week in there and not see everything. Four hours was enough for a taster though.

Onward to Lucca tomorrow to see my Aunt. Great holiday so far :-)

OMG, simply amazing.

The sun came out to play and we were at the barriers two hours before the caravan set off. We didn't get much in the way of freebies but we got heaps of entertainment.

Prior to the caravan rolling out a man in a summer suit riding a Brompton (these things are amazingly popular in London) rode the course to resounding applause. Fantastic.

Seven hours on your feet is an endurance test neither of us fancied so after watching a couple of riders whizz buy we retired to a grassy area approximately 50M from the course with a big screen and telly, we proceeded to watch the rest of the prologue with hundreds of others whod abandoned the barricades in favor of watching it on the big screen. That still left the route lined 4-5 deep throughout the whole course.

Suzie dipped out, she went to get some ice cream and missed Robbie setting off for his time trial. Of course he's not a time trialist bu he is one of the most popular riders out there, I knew when he was passing because cries of ``Robbie'' went up as he rode past, one of the few riders to get that.

After the prologue we went to see a show which in hindsight probably wasn't wise as we were both shattered this monring when we got up. We flew from Stanstead to Glasgow today and let's just say that it took an hour and a half to get through security. What a farce.

Got off the plane to be picked up by my folks and it wasn't long before we found out that they had Eurosport. It's around about then that I informed them that they'd lost their television druing Tour hours

Fast forward a bit to today's race. My Dad used to commute on those roads so it was interesting for him. He likes watching the tour though he only has a passing interest in cycling as a sport.

Then Robbie went down. Oh woe. 20 kms out and we were despondent. but we could not take our eyes from the screen.

Minute by minute Robbie's team clawed their way back then, just like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he disappeared from view until the last moment when he exploded to the front.

The hills of Scotland rang to the cry of Robbie, Robbie McEwen!

Yesterday was a long day.

It started out with a bit of sight seeing and, shockingly, I even did some clothes shopping much to Belara's delight. Not cheap clothes shopping either, I spent more in pounds than I ordinarily would in dollars on a jacket.

We went on one of the London Walks, Eccentric London. I highly recomend going on a couple of these if you're in London, very entertaining.

After that we had a delicious three course lunch and then headed to Trafalgar Square for the sign on. We got there an hour and a half before teh start and it was already packed. Good atmosphere, lots of flag waving and watching the riders wheel on was real good fun.

It was a long day on the feet though, feeling it today. Once I log out of here we're getting a couple of tickets for a show tonight then claiming a spot in Hyde Park

We had a great time in Malaysia and we'll certainly be back.

Things I like about Malaysia.

The people. Hands down the most tourist friendly and welcoming place I've ever been to, bar none. The service here is fantastic and nothing seems to be too much trouble.

The public transport system. It's quick, it's reliable and you really don't need anything else other than your own two feet.

The sights. Old mixiing it with the new, some really impressive architecture and some great museums.

The traffic. I don't know, it's busy but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of agression displayed on the roads.

The food. Yum!

Things I don't like so much.

Peak hour public transport. Oh boy! Sardine tins.

Not sure I'd wan't to ride a bike here. With the prevalence of scooters I'm not sure cycling's a practical option. Shame as it's mostly flat.

The humidity. OK so that's something I'd get used to but when the locals are praying for rain, well you know it's kind of bad.

So thirteen hours later we land in Heathrow to .... rain.

What else? This is the UK after all.

The flight was good, as good as these things can be, and the transit from Heathrow to our hostel in West Kensington was relatively smooth, yay for decent public transport.

Today's a day of doing a bit of sight seeing, although having lived in Watford for three years there's not much we want to see that we haven't already, and scouting out a good location to watch the Prologue tomorrow.

A little sooner than I expected but it seems rude not to use the facilities of Malaysia's Telecoms museum.

I don't know if Australia's even got a telecoms museum. Given my line of work I've found this place particularly interesting.

Earlier today we visited the KL tower which forms the hub of the microwave network here. The customer service here is absolutely fantastic, having a great time.

More later.

Yay, on holiday!

Set off on Monday, flying out of Melbourne @ 15:00 for Malaysia where we're spending a couple of days. This has been the culmination of much planning and little bit of angst but we're finally on our way. A five week holiday, w00t!

The angst, well as you may know I'm now an Aussie(Aussie Aussie(Oi OI OI))! When I had my citizenship interview I asked what I needed to do passport wise as I had a permament resident's visa in my British passport. I was told that all I needed to do was get an RRV stamped in it.

Imagine my anger and frustration when with 6 working days to go I was told I neeeded an Aussie passport :p Oh well, cost me an extra 100 bucks and a bit of stress but it's well worth it!.

Check in lady was quite excited with us, collectively we're 9 kgs under the baggage allowance of 40kgs, not bad for a 5 week trip! Flight was with Malaysian airlines and it had individual movie screens, computer games etc etc. Waste of time bringing magazines and books, oh well.

Oh nearly forgot, if you're ever travelling overseas and want to take advantage of the duty free on your return you can sort it all out before you go. We've got over 200 bucks worth of spirits waiting for us when we return, sweet!

We're staying in Kuala Lumpar at the Equator Hostel, a basic backpackers place which is all we need and adds to the flavor of the place. We got in at around about midnight local time, a quick beer and off to bed.

Yesterday started off with an unintended trek, Belera confidently strode off in a direction with the map and I confidently didn't even look at the map and followed Suzie. Over five kms later Suzied discovered it was 5kms in the wrong direction. Oops!

All good though as the National museum was in that direction, then the planetarium. We took in the Police museum as well which was very interesting before hoppping on the bus to the big shopping centre, Berjaya Times Square.

In my case it was close to literally hopping. While my knee's pretty good the endurance isn't what I'd like it to be. The consequence is that towards the end of the day I was getting a little shaky on the legs and ended up tripping over a grate and ripping back the skin on my bg toe. Ouch! Oh well, all part of the fun!

Ended the day by sampling one of the local bistros, obviously tailored for western tastes, and took in a moveie at the IMAX there (2D). Transformers is a fun movie.

More later.

So what does one do when shopping for a pencil and a file rack in Officeworks? Why buy a computer as well of course!

Naturally it comes with Vista (Home Premium edition) As a one time card carrying member of the Free Software Foundation I was prepared to loathe Vista without reservation, however being a natural sceptic I was prepared to give it a go.

Gadgets shudder. I don't like eye candy, for my money it gets in the way and makes a computer less useful. That was one of the first things I turned off. I had a bit of fun with the Aero look and the 3D flip but that soon followed as well. In the first day I have my computer looking pretty much like my work computer: no desktop icons, classic look and my favorite OSS apps installed

The UAC in Vista is a bit clunky. Visually it's very jarring. After a lifetime of Windows just installing applications it's a culture shift to have Windows inform you that you're installing a program and are you really sure you want to do this? Good move and about time too. it doesn't go the whole hog though as Mac OSX and Linux does, i.e. demand your password before proceeding but really in terms of security it amounts to the same thing for home users.

So what's one of the first things I found when doing a bit of Googling on Vista? How to turn UAC off! Good one guys, Microsoft finally comes to the party and you lot do an end run around 'em, way to go for a secure future.

So that's the bad stuff. The good stuff is, well, good. Vista hasn't gotten in my way and there's a few UI things I genuinely like about it.

1) Win+(1-0) launces the icon of that position in the quicklaunch bar. Way cool! As a kbd shortcut guy I really like that.

2) File navigation. Microsoft have tweaked the interface and while there's nothing new in there, it's really groovy.

3) Built in slideshow. Yeah they had one before but this one's intuitive and cool.

4) Tagging. I haven't even started with this yet but if the tagging's offers anything like del.icio.us I'm going to have a ball!

So for now Vista can stay. Ubuntu's waiting in the background and I've still got a box which Ubuntu screams along on. I'll not be getting rid of that but I don't think I'll have much call to use it much either.

Other odd stuff.

Currently reading ``The God Delusion''. I'm about halfway through it and have come to the conclusion that by Richard's definition I'm not agnostic, I'm atheist. I pretty much hold the same position as Richard does:

Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. `I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption he is not there.'

Very readable book and I'm enjoying it.

Leg's good, I rode every day last week and it didn't kill me, albeit one way only Mon-Thu.

Tickets booked to go to Europe in July. Allez allez, le Tour, le Tour!

So we're in KMart an the pager goes off. I'm heading out so I can deal with it and am justa about out the store when the guy on the door calls that he wants to check my bag.

For international readers that's pretty normal in Australia. It's taken me a long time to get used to it. So what was so special about today? Well I'm still on crutches.

Taking my bag off is a majore effort. Generally I sit down, take bag off, put bag on, get up. Getting in to my bag while upright isn't really practical.

OK he's just doing his job. I pass him one of my crutch and unbuckle the bag, nearly fallying over in the process, and hand it to him. Or try to that is, oh I can't touch your bag.

So there I am, one hand occupied with holding my crutch, the other holding the bag and on one leg. ``So what do you suggest we do now?'' (slight sarcasm entering in to voice.)

``Oh, um, forget about it, it's OK'' goes to hand me my crutch back, ``are you OK?''

``No, not really.''

He makes to move off.

``Are you going to help me get my bag back on or shall I just stand here with my bag in my hand and my other crutch propped up on me?''

Fucking idiot.