Frankly, I Would Have Preferred The Sword

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:17:00 +0000

I'm the world's worst blogger, but I hope I can be partially excused because I've been spending rather a lot of time making a game:

Alone in the Park

In a way, it's kind of like my blog but in game form.

I hope to make more and post them on my site, and let people know about them also via facebook.

Episode 7 � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:46:00 +0000

Episode 7 � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

Play Eyjafjallajoekull, a free online game on Kongregate

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 08:42:00 +0000

This makes me laff:

Play Eyjafjallajoekull, a free online game on Kongregate

(Use the mouse to target planes with volcano ash)

MISSION TWO: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Mission two of INVOKE is up: MISSION TWO: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? � Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:25:00 +0000

Check out this new "ARG" from Christian McCrea and I:

Invoke – An ARG to Save The World Bank

We made it in celebration of the World Bank + Jane McGonigal's new ARG 'EVOKE'.

Here's a taster of our version:

Facebook | Manifesto of Video Art

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:19:00 +0000

The Australian Centre for Virtual Art released their ground-breaking, game-changing Manifesto for Virtual Art on Wednesday.

I suggest that everyone with an interest in the future of art study it closely.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Manifesto-of-Virtual-Art/354801415968

On the very same day, and by complete coincidence, my friend Christian McCrea and I made a surprising discovery. At the bottom of a box in the dusty old attic of an aged relative we had the luck to unearth perhaps the only extant copy of a very historically important document: the "Manifesto of Video Art", written in 1982. And thanks to the wonders of modern technology we were able to scan and upload the manifesto and share it with the world that very evening.

I think you find, as we did, that the ideas it contains are still very relevant - even after all this time.

We encourage you to join our Facebook group in appreciation and discussion of this marvelous document:

Facebook | Manifesto of Video Art

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:21:00 +0000

My favourite bit starts at 1:37.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:09:00 +0000

Yesterday I read that Belle de Jour, the famous English high class prostitute-come-blogger has outed herself. As well as her true identity she has revealed some real life details about herself that I find interesting.

Dr Brooke Magnanti took to sex work after finding it hard to find reasonably paid work in London while she was finishing her scientific PhD. She eventually found work as a computer programmer, but quickly returned to sex work upon deciding that whoring was more enjoyable.

I think there's a lesson here for all educated women who want to maximise their earning power. Perhaps you want to save for a house, a car, a holiday, a long-stay visa in France... Whatever your financial need, you have two clear career choices: whoring or programming.

Whoring is the clearly superior option, but it has exacting entry requirements; namely, youth and beauty. I have decided that it is not for me. Unfortunate, considering the 300 pounds an hour Dr Magnanti was able to earn.

Resorting to programming, therefore, I have created a tool for those lucky enough to be able to charge by the hour for their services. Even if you are not a sex worker, you may use it. It's freeware.

Workwerk times you as you work. You can then export timesheets (readable as spreadsheets) to your computer or to your account on Google Docs. There's a little bit of data visualisation in there too. I'm still fine-tuning, but it's usable now, and it works on Windows and Mac.

Workwerk

Install AIR first, if you don't already have it:
http://get.adobe.com/air/

If you find a bug, please report it in the comments of this post.
Please excuse my (lack of) graphic design skills. It's an ugly little beast.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:37:00 +0000

In his quest to work under legendary game designer Tim Schafer, Craig "Dubious Couture" Duturbure brings out his ukulele:

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:43:00 +0000

"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog."

Where are these robots so that I may battle them? I've dreamed of this moment ever since I saw Linda Hamilton geared up with a rocket-launcher in Terminator 2.

If anyone wants to find me, I've been in the weights section of the Brunswick gym three times a week for a few months now. Uzis don't carry themselves, now do they.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:07:00 +0000

The other day I had one of those irritating experiences where some other entity is credited it with an idea of my own or that of my friends. Public credit for one's ideas isn't a terribly big deal I suppose, but the more mis-crediting that goes on in print and on the web sort of makes me look like a liar on my increasingly feeble-looking CV.

Some ideas I've had are very silly and therefore don't require me to claim them because they wouldn't in the the least help me to find work. But for edification and historical accuracy I will start documenting them here.

The Seduction of the Saucy Scrabble Player

My friend - let us call him Mr X - and I went away to the country for New Years' weekend with a group of friends and friends of friends. In a rented house we drank, ate and played a good deal of the Scrabble (for people under 25, Scrabble is the board game that Facebook's “Scrabulous” is based on).

One young woman was particularly successful at the Scrabble board, having been brought up in a keen Scrabble-playing family where two-letter words had been memorised as readily as hot dinners consumed.
On the last night of the holiday Mr X accidentally found himself having sex with this woman after downing a bottle of New Year's champagne. The next day we all went back to our homes in Melbourne but my friend was smitten by this new female acquaintance and he decided that he'd have to contrive some cunning way to get to see her again. Of course, loyal friend that I am, I was only too happy to apply myself to the task.

In these situations I take my inspiration from Jeeves, the large-brained gentleman's gentleman and logistical genius, the creation for which the comic writer P. G. Wodehouse was best known. Jeeves could invariably be relied upon to devise clever strategies by which his master might negotiate delicate personal matters.

Jeeves' strategies were based on a study of what he called “the psychology of the individual”. In my case the individual in question – let us call her “Angelica” - was an intelligent young woman with an undeniable penchant for Scrabble.

Based on this scant knowledge I decided upon the following plan of action, which my friend, Mr X, enacted:

Through a mutual friend, my friend obtained Angelica's postal address. Then every day for a period of eight days he sent her an anonymous postcard. Each postcard was cream-coloured and square-shaped with rounded corners. On the reverse side a stamp was affixed and nothing was written there except the young lady's name and address. The front of each card bore a large upper-case letter in the centre, and a smaller numeral in the bottom right-hand corner.

They were posted in this order in these alpha-numeric combinations:

L2, A3, I2, C6, N4, E1, A9, G8

The eighth postcard to arrive on the eighth day was the exception to the rest, bearing a short message on the reverse side where one is normally supposed to write nonsense such as “wish you were here” and the like. Mr X. simply wrote “call me”.

And on the ninth day she worked it out and called him.

We never let on that it wasn't Mr X's idea.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:22:00 +0000

I am back in Melbourne on Wednesday, a city in which I will be embarking on a grand experiment. The experiment is motivated by my sudden need for money - money that I need to buy my way into French residency.

So what is this experiment? It is this: I am finally going to do the unthinkable, and attempt to find work outside of the game industry.

I've never entertained the the notion before, because I have never needed to. But lack of funds is standing in between me and French residency and I'm damned if I'm going to be shut out of France for much longer.

My decision recalls to mind all those things friends and colleagues have tried to impress upon me over the years. Quite inadvertantly I am now taking their advice:

"If you want to be designing the kind of games you want to make, you have to leave the industry. Yeah, you could stick around to get more experience, but is that going to bring you any closer to your goals? No, it's not."

"The Australian game industry is no place for a woman. The only women who have gotten ahead are the ones who have left the industry or left the country. What makes you think you're any different? Leave!"

"I love my new job. The work is kind of interesting, but not too hard. I work 9 to 5. And the pay is good. Very good, actually."

"People think you're weird - a bit of a curiosity - and they don't take you seriously. In management meetings they brand you a trouble-maker. You have an image problem, and it's not doing you any favours."

"You get paid *how much*? Are you kidding me? So you've been doing this for ten years, right? And when do you expect to earn a decent wage - after another ten years?"

"Do you want me to see if I can get you a job on our IT help desk?"

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:05:00 +0000

I am in Bangkok and now have internet access that occasionally works.

So I have just now created a Facebook group called "I consume internet porn and I have the balls to admit it". Please consider joining it here:

Here is the group's declaration:

NEWS FLASH: People have sex. And not just to make babies. If parents want to try to shield their children from that fact of life for as long as humanly possible that's their business. But it's not mine.
Yep, there are many reasons why the Australian government's plan to filter the internet is patently stupid:

* It will make internet speeds in Australia slower than they currently are. (Is that even possible? Apparently so.)

* It will make Australia -- a country that already boasts arguably the most censorious media classification regime of any country in the Western world -- an object of derision within the international community.

* Like most filtering systems before it designed to "protect children from inappropriate content" it will likely block culturally and socially worthy "appropriate" content by mistake, including the work of media artists, important information about sexual health, and so on.

* We could go on...

Luckily, plenty of people will be ready to come out and champion any of this "appropriate" content caught in the crossfire.

Safely vague statements will be made in defense of the principle of free speech.

Cultural pundits will say lofty, clever things about the right of artists and other creators of high culture to unfettered creative expression (being careful to implicitly distinguish their "Art" from that nasty low-brow commercial porn).

And many of these people, operating within an political atmosphere charged with fear and hysteria around this issue, will qualify their arguments by stating that "of course children should be better protected from pornography, but this system isn't the solution".

Well OK, whatever.

But let's hear from the millions of Australian residents who views or has ever viewed "inappropiate" content (not child porn, but sexually explicit material) and think that's fine.

Some of us are under 18 years of age (shock! horror!) and that's also fine, because the right of young people to explore the world around them should be respected too.

The Australian state, acting through the Office of Film and Literature Classification who's decisions are enforced by the Australian Federal Police, has done its best to quietly remove sex from magazines, cinemas, videogames, bookstores... ostensibly in an effort to protect Australian children - not from poverty, not from disease, not from violence - but from media.

Enough with the children already. Now, won't somebody *please* think of the porn?

I have invited some friends to the group and will be interested to see who's willing to lay their balls on the table, as it were.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:15:00 +0000

The Thai government has been dissolved. That's a good thing for me personally because it means that things have calmed down to the extent that the airports here are operational again, and I'll be able to leave Thailand before Christmas.

So on that positive note I thought I'd post a few photos I've taken recently that feature unfortunate signage.

First up, here is the charity box I encountered at Hanoi airport. It was soliciting money to help pay for the care of "especially difficult children", and I had to wonder what they'd spend my money on. I'm guessing things like handcuffs, Ritalin and flogging posts.

In Hoi An I was encouraged to spend my hard-earned on a hat that identified me as a tourist.

In restaurants in the south of Thailand customers often pay according to the size or weight of the fish they choose. At Bernie's, however, it's the customers that get sized up:

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:00:00 +0000

An enterprisng crab did this.

This dog is obviously german, sent out by his master to reserve the best spot.

The view from my primitive "office".

So there are some photos.

And here's what I have to say about game sequels:

I often get my hands on a sequel to a beloved game thinking "I have mastered the core mechanic of game X. I'm in the mood for curling up with a warm X-like experience - something familiar, something I don't have to strain my brain over because I know and understand the paradigm that is X." So I buy X.2, start playing, and what do you know - I'm stuck in the first level. I try that first level for an hour or so, wondering what the hell has turned me from an X master into a developmentally disabled X n00b.

Notable examples that come to mind are Knights of the Old Republic 2 (stuck in the tutorial!) Thief 3 (hammered by the AI in the first level!) and a few days ago Lost in Blue 2 (my characters starve to death on the first day because I can't work out where the stove is!). Like I said, in previous incarnations of these franchises it was fairly smooth sailing - right from the beginning.

I assume this is because sequels are frequently outsourced to another team or rushed out quickly to cash in on the popularity of the first game(s). Less time was spent polishing the difficulty curve.

Alternatively, I'm just disastrously worse at everything.

Speaking of getting disastrously worse: the Australian dollar. Its continuing fall in value means that unless I earn bucketloads of money while I'm back in Australia my ability to convince the French embassy to give me a long stay visa is fatally diminished. So how am I to earn bucketloads of money? Ideas are most welcome.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:56:00 +0000

I am on an island in the south of Thailand called Koh Pipe. The internet is expensive. The food is expensive. The fish are colourful. And tasty.

Being on a deserted(ish) tropical island I thought it appropriate that I get out my DS and play Lost in Blue 2 (Lost in Blue was set on an island just like this). But I gave up when I got stuck near the start.

This experience confirms my theory about game sequels. (I'll explain my theory when the internet is cheaper.)

So mostly I'm just working. I wish there were some kind of desk in my bamboo hut.

We're all kind of wondering if civil war will break out here. Apparently the government has fled Bangkok to the northern city of Chiang Mai. Most of the airports in Thailand have been blockaded by the PAD (the pro-Monarchist People's Alliance for Democracy) and people are having trouble getting out. Getting a bus or a train is nigh on impossible. Damn. Not sure if I want to be stuck on this island forever. That'd be too much like my experience getting stuck in Lost in Blue 2.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:11:00 +0000

Today I had to wade through (pleasantly lukewarm but suspiciously opaque) water to get to my usual café. The bank of the river have overflowed and half the town is flooded.

In these trying circumstances the locals remain enterprising. Instead of being hassled by people wanting to sell me a ride on the back of their cyclos or motorbikes ("you want motorbike ride?") I was sidled up to by people in row boats ("you want boat ride?").

Hoi An is a very small town. One can walk (or wade) anywhere in less than fifteen minutes. And yet hurtling around everywhere are those blasted motorbikes - the Vespass of Death that I mentioned when I was in Hanoi.
This is because, as I was surprised to learn when I had dinner with some people from an NGO that runs an orphanage here, walking is seen as a low class thing to do.
"Think about it: have you ever seen a local walking on the street? They'll take a motorbike, even if it's only a few metres away. It's a status things. Only poor people walk, because they have to."

No wonder people think us Westerners are strange for wanting to walk intead of riding a motorbike for 100m back to our hotels, seeing as we can afford to ride.

When I was in Thailand several years ago my friend and I hitched a ride with some locals to a national park. We spent half a day talking with them in their car. When they asked us what we did for a living they were taken aback by our answers (me: a post-grad music student; my friend: a medical student).

"We don't mean to cause you any offence, it's just that we are very surprised because you are not dressed well enough to look like people with a university education."

Even on holiday, casual clothes like shorts, t-shirts and sandals - though comfortable and convenient - are only for "low class" people. Heaven forbid that "high class" people like us be mistaken for "low class" people! Our local friends, of course, were dressed in semi-formal western style suit jackets, despite being on holiday in the scorching heat like us. We found their outfits as strange as they found ours.

It's interesting how these ideas about what signals status is almost completely opposed to way the signs of privilege and affluence for my generation are defined in my own culture:

Cycling and walking walking... (you can afford to live close by to where you work and play)

Wearing casual clothes... (you're not just any old wage slave who's forced to dress formally, or perhaps because you don't need to work at all).

Eating brown rice... (you're educated about nutrition and you have the extra time to cook it)

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:17:00 +0000

River outside the cafe.

Having an ultra-portable PC is like having a dog. It helps you make friends with strangers. They come up to your table in a cafe and start talking to you.

“Ooh your dog/computer is sooo cute! You know, my friend Bill has this breed/model of dog/mini PC too and he says these french poodles/EEE PCs are so good natured/convenient. I'm thinking of getting one too, actually.”

Shop that sells model boats

I have one of these conversations once every couple of days. They generally lead into conversations on more general topics, like: “Can you recommend a good tailor?”*. This evening it lead to:

“So what do you do for work, anyway?”

“Game development.”

“Wow that's so cool! Lots of money in that, I bet.”

“Er, no, actually. What do you do?”

“IT, corporate stuff. Kind of a boring industry to work in, huh.”

“No, not at all. I hear that in your industry they pay actual money in exchange for work. There's nothing boring about that – in fact I find the idea rather exciting. Revolutionary, even. So tell me, Flex applications vs Silverlight vs JavaFx...”

* which makes me feel like I'm in a P.G.Wodehouse novel, and I love that because I quite fancy the idea of spending time in a PGWodehouse novel

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:10:00 +0000

As I alluded to previously, I am now a regular at Cafe Cargo in Hoi An. Anyone who wants to head down to Nguyen Thai Hoc street down near the river is most welcome to join me for breakfast. I'm generally seated outside, so I can steal the wifi from the (inferior) cafe across the road.

The downside of sitting on the terrace is that it exposes me to harrassment from the local hawkers. Small boys try to sell me clay bird whistles. Women in pointy hats try to sell me mandarins and guavas. I think I already mentioned that man with no legs who shuffles over with a copy of the Viet Nam News.

There's also this dog that comes sniffing around, dressed like Audrey Hepburn. I took a photo of it:

On the footpath people play the game pictured at the top of this post. Can anyone identify what the game is?

Note: Yesterday I was contacted by my correspondant to tell me that the problem of the silent flatmate has resolved itself. The flatmate has for some reason decided to
start speaking again, just like that.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:56:00 +0000

A cry for help in the form of an email crossed my desk yesterday.

My desk is currently a small table outside a french bakery in Hoi An where I am intermittently interrupted from my work by a cheerful man with no legs who tries to sell me a newspaper. I imagine his injury was acqured during what is known here as the American War. And now the poor man reduced to peddling newspapers to the very same kind of people who blew his legs off. That really sucks.

Below I reprint the missive that I received. My advice will appear in my next blog post.

A couple of months ago I moved into a new sharehouse, and about a week ago I discovered that one of my housemates is ignoring me. I don't know why they are ignoring me, and quite frankly I find it very immature, and would like to know what you think I should do about the situation.
I became aware of the situation when I arrived home late one night last week, and noticed on my way inside that the lock on my bike had been broken, and strangely the bike not stolen. I brought the bike in, carried the broken lock in to the loungeroom to discuss the odd event with whomever was about. The only person in the room was housemate X. He completely ignored my story, sitting arms crossed, staring at the TV screen. I repeated my story, tried to grab his attention a few times, even shook the broken lock in front of their face. Housemate X bluntly refused to look at me. I double checked and their eyes were open. They were totally ignoring me. "Riiiigght... " I said, comprehending the situation, and left the room. It's been a week now and they still have not said a word to me, leaving the room whenever I enter it. It's very peculiar, not at all the sort of behaviour you'd expect from a 29 year old.
So over the past week I've been thinking about when this person might have actually first developed an 'issue' with me. I remembered that there have actually been a few times over the previous couple of weeks when they had ignored me as well, which I had put down to grumpy hangoverness.
But there was actually an earlier event which occurred a few weeks ago when I was rolling a joint in the loungeroom. Out of no where, housemate X said "you're not fucking smoking that in here are you?". At first I thought they were joking, but they were not. They were actually being a rude cunt. I have no problem with not smoking a joint in the lounge room if this is a problem, and I duly smoked it in my bedroom. However I don't tolerate aggression of this sort, either abusive words, or passive-aggressive 'silent treatment'. Do you think I should move out, which I don't want to do for any other reason, the rest of the housemates are lovely. Should I humour myself by waiting and seeing how long this person is actually going to attempt to annoy me with their petty mind games? Or should I expose their issue in front of the other housemates? The obvious solution would be to ask them if they have a problem with me, however I can already see them ignoring my question yet again, and leaving the room.
I should note that I made sure to mention at the house interview that I enjoy the occassional joint, and should anyone have had a problem with this you think they might have brought it up then. It was also not the first time I'd smoked in the lounge room, with no complaints on earlier occassions.
Thanks ahead for your strategic reply...

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:29:00 +0000

Everything in Vietnam is flooded, drenched, damp, or at least smelling of mildew*. It's disgusting. It's like growing up in New Zealand all over again.

We finally escaped Hanoi last night for Hue, a small city in the middle of Vietnam. Hue is Vietnam's imperial city; it is where the emperor used to live. We were feeling a bit miserable (for various reasons, including computer issues, and sharing a train compartment with a man who snored all night, but I suppose compared to the problems of the ordinary citizens of Hanoi right now we are very lucky) so we decided to splash out tonight, as it were, and buy ourselves an imperial banquet at a poncy restaurant.

The venue was well posh. My travelling companion phoned in a reservation ahead of time, and when we arrived we found they'd printed her name on a card for our table:

Then the first course came out (there were seven) and it was in the shape of a peacock. (I actually misunderstood the menu and thought that we were going to be served an actual peacock so in fact I was slightly disappointed.)

There was even live music.

Then the refined ambience was somewhat shattered when a large wet rat made a dash for it across the floor of the restaurant. I think he or she was seeking shelter from the rain outside.

It was at that point that my travelling companion expressed her desire to head back to sunny Thailand with the smallest possible delay.

* Anyone who wishes to accuse me of excessive whinging and reckless exageration (or who thinks my comparison with NZ was a little harsh) should cast their eyes over this article. 18 people died in the floods in Hanoi while we there.

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 08:48:00 +0000

We are trapped in flooded, storm-ridden Hanoi with no means of escape. There are no trains out of here due to the weather.

And what's worse, we are stuck in a hotel near a supposedly famous and ancient Catholic cathedral, where the bells get played on the hour, every hour. I see absolutely no theological reason for this.*

If you were kept up all night by Catholics you'd have a black look in your eye too.

The hotel (our most expensive accomodation so far) appears to be run by an incompetent 17 year old son of rich parents, aided by motley a assortment of his less-talented high school chums.

We sometimes brave the torrential rain to go outside. My travelling companion (the one bitten by the dog), for example, has been going to hospital periodically to receive rabies injections - from a nurse who has difficulty locating an arm, let alone a vein. Occasionally we are obliged to go out to fetch food, which is either joyless or unforgivably expensive**. We can't wait to escape down south to Hue, the former imperial city where reputedly seven course meals (of peacock, among other things) are served on tree branches and cost 8 USD.

* when I was in Istanbul I got woken up at 4am when all the mosques broadcast the call-to-prayer. The reason for this was presumably that 4am was one of the scheduled prayer times, i.e."wake up people, it's time to point yourselves towards Mecca and kiss the carpet". Whereas the Catholic church just doesn't want people to sleep for more than an hour at a time, and we have to assume this is purely because the Vietnamese Catholic church is run by ill-mannered sadists.

** unlike in Thailand. Oh how I took you for granted, wonderful Thailand!

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:38:00 +0000

Today my travelling companion and I feel like this Pony, pictured above.

(Many thanks to Moran for wrangling this Pony.)

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:27:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Kipper) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:19:00 +0000

We have arrived in Hanoi and are, frankly, terrified when we walk down the street.

Death (or serious injury) by Scooter is a common problem here, and one can see why. The scooter is a popular mode of transport everywhere in South-East Asia but the popularity of these machines must have surely reached its zenith in Hanoi. The scooters here are so numerous they swarm at you like hive-fulls of angry giant bees.

Unlike Laos, Hanoi is no place for chickens. In Laos there are many urban chickens that roam freely about town. Street chickens, I suppose you'd call them. They are quite bold (recall, if you will, the rooster that came begging for my steamed bun), and have no hesitation in crossing roads filled with trucks and scooters. (It is well known that The Other Side of the Road is a popular destination for chickens, and that their almost religious compulsion to reach it makes it a sort of Mecca for them.)

The only sign of chicken life I saw on the streets of Hanoi last night, however, was fried chicken feet being chowed down by people squatting between parked Vespas of Death on the footpath (scooters take precedence to pedestrians, even on footpaths!). They were no doubt the feet of pilgrims that had been struck down while on their dangerous pilgrimages.

But it is not merely the Vespas of Death that make the streets of this city more terrifying than a pissing contest in an electricity sub-station. Last night my travelling companion was bitten by a dog. It was one of those small, hairy white and yappy creatures one often sees in the handbags of Parisian bourgeois. The fact that there are so many of these running rabid around the streets of Hanoi sinking their teeth into people's tender calves is yet another terrible legacy of French colonisation in this region.

My poor companion was obliged to visit two hospitals and have injections in her derriere. She is reacting badly to the rabies vaccine (rabies is still common in Asia), and insult was added to injury when she was also attacked by a Chihuahua on the way back from the hospital today.