I don't think England has three syllables. I don't think the essence of Enlgishness is violence. I don't like red and white. I don't think flags hung from every window and car make us better people, in any way I can imagine. I don't think huge flatscreen TVs in every bar in the land make me feel... anything.

Don't kill your wife: let us do it

Let's face it, Thai Temple Curry is entirely a marketing construct: it's never been near a temple, there's not a recipe to be found all over the interwebnet, and, well, y'know.

Quoth the back of the tin (from The Really Interesting Food Company):
"David Scott, successful restauranteur, published food and travel writer, has journeyed exstensively to bring you these authentic and delicious vegetarian dishes.

A Soul satisfying Thai curry based on a monastery recipe. Chick peas and tomatoes, cooked in coconut milk, flavoured with spices, soy sauce, sweet basil and cane sugar."

First, let's deconstruct:

did he journey or travel?

there are no "authentic" vegetarian dishes. I suspect it's not an authentic Thai dish, or we'd have heard about it, and the marketing peeps had to make it an authentic something

why has Soul got a capital S?

And that's not a sentence, "a soul satisfying..."

the blurb says cane sugar, but it's not in the ingredients list, and it's labeled "no added sugar."

So we know this isn't an authentic Thai recipe, because we have google, and we just can't find any reference to it. It could be called something else, and just the "Temple" bit is marketing. What spices do they use: why won't they tell us.

I could go on. I won't.

Here's how I think you make it:
cook some Thai red curry paste with coconut milk. Maybe add some coriander? Empty in a tin of chopped tomoatoes. Add cubed potatoes (par boiled), cook for a while, add chick peas, and garden peas (even from the freezer, if you must), and some torn basil leaves. Use apple juice to thin the sauce slightly, add soy sauce. Theoretically, that should be it. Let me know.

This is what the voicemail message on my mobile phone says "Hi, please leave a message after the tone, many thanks." I think I say it - allegedly - in a slightly sultry voice. It's a mulit-purpose greeting; suits clients, friends, whoever.

A family member just left me voicemail, and said "many thanks is not for a voicemail message."

Waddya think?

I really want to go to Deptford, now I've seen the bendy 453 bus.

I have become obsessed with eyebrows; walking the street, at parties, on public transport - the enforced crossed-swords setup of the Jubilee line especially - I'm mesmerised by this modern artform. Bushy, bold, blonde,
barely-there: women perform all manner of above-eye artwear in the perrenial quest for perfection.

Could be me, but when I see someone with straggly hairs at the tail end of her brow, I want to tell her to neaten up. Sister. because neat brows, even with a bare-faced no-makeup look, say groomed, thoughtful, tidy. You know this person has sent their grandmother a birthday card and filed their credit card receipts, and those are values worth communicating to the world.

The office manager at my current client is walking around with two guys who are clearly going to supply something. Who knoweth what. One of them is wearing a belt with a large metal buckle, emblazoned with the legend GET DOWN NOW.

Blues for Mr Charlie opens at the Tricycle Theatre tonight.

ReJoyce Dublin 2004 - The Official Bloomsday Centenary Festival Site. It's Today.

These are the rules of offices. If it's hot, the air-conditioning will break. If the airconditioning breaks, the air conditioning resussitation engineer will be busy, because it's happened to everyone else, too.

If it's hot, the watercooler will have run out of water.

If there's a problem with your technology, IT will say it's someone else's fault. Google isn't working, for example.

If you want to speak to someone, they won't be there.

If you don't want to speak to someone, they'll find you.

However many cover-your-arse emails you send, it's the one you don't send that'll be your downfall.

Welcome to my world. Just for a few weeks, mind. And it's sunny.

HoldTheButton.com . I mean, WTF, right? Some people ought to get out more.

How far up the favour chain are you?

I'm tired, you're emotional. Or maybe it's the other way round. You know how it is. Say something: please.

Lunch: strawberries, cottage cheese (low fat), cashew nuts. I'm into that whole sweet/savoury mix thing. I'm half Elizabethan cook, have Mediterranean, or something.

Get your local election results from the BBC

Now, this is truly fabulous. A Sigmund Freud action figure. I can't tell if he really says "tell me about your mother" but the captions speak very highly of it.

Forget AskMoses.com. This is what I need - a Moses action figure. Word of G!d optional, clearly.

OK, so what's happening?

I've been a little quiet here, as my projects runneth over, and I'm starting something new on Monday. I spent one day in the British Library (best quality of silence in the city, I say), but didn't get much writing done. Thinking, though, was good.

Got a little connundrum: I'm starting a project for a regular client Monday. Fourth project. I've made them a lot of money, so they do come back. The last project, there was a huge amount of to-age and fro-age on the contact with the HR Director: he was convinced that I was a short-contract employee, me and the MD said I was a consultant. HR Director got out all sorts of examples of how I wasn't managing my own work: we countered with how I was. It took a month into the project, was a right royal waste of time, and kinda pissed everyone off. Not least because at the end of the project there was a currency exchange issue which none of us had considered and I was out of pocket big time.

Everytime I do something for them, at the end of the project they say, "Sasha, we love working with you, we get great work, but it's really expensive and we should just hire more full-time staff." So everytime they call me for something new, I'm surprised. But I know I deliver.

So I've been talking to the MD about this project for a couple of months, and he confirmed about three weeks ago. We agreed we would do the same contract as last time, as the HR Director was happy with it, and there's no currency angle on this one.

Yesterday, 5pm, I get a call saying the HR Director says I'm an employee because (a) I spent too long in their office last time (this was what the MD wanted), and (b) I'm using their equipment. He wants be to bring my laptop. I say fine, but I don't massively want to carry it around every day for six weeks, and what's their insurance position. I also say I'll need a PCMCIA network card, and to sort out email.

He says fine. I think odd - I know the IT people are going are going to go 57 shades of purple before they hit the roof at his request.

Today he emails me and says he is going for a PC in their office - so I was right about IT. I email back and say fine as long as I'm in the office all the time, otherwise it does have to be my laptop, so I can see all my sent mail in one place, and manage email (probably a couple of thousand sent/received mails on this project).

I think they'll have to forward my [client] address email to my own work email, and I'll use an alias to send. Then I'll have to use IMAP (if their server allows it, and IMAP doesn't break) to collect my mail, whether I'm in their office or not. I think I'll do a different-account Outlook setup on my laptop, because it took long enough to get it working.

The collective tech brains of my buddies offered these suggestions:
1 - I leave my laptop on all day at home and VNC (or XPpro equivalent) into it to get mail, so I am working off my computer.
2 - I use the yahoo mail advanced ($20) setup, and BCC everything to myself. Then I have a rule that moves anything from that address into my sent mail... so I have it.

I remember the halcyon days of having an IT department that did this sort of stuff for me.

Any more for any more?

You know how I was looking for a viable alternative to a car, while we still don't have enough bus stops/a decent transport infrastructure? Well, Yoz may have found it - the G-wiz :: Automatic Electric Vehicle. I'm just worried that I might forget to charge it, and then I'll be on the road to nowhere, in the words of the song.

C'mon, you know you want to. AskMoses. Dot com, of course.