fergyboi

I just overheard a guy offering his very small child (probably 2ish, definitely not talking yet!) a drink of his coke as he couldn’t reach his bottle of milk. Now i’m not sure if he was being serious or not, but as i had a computer at hand, i thought i’d Google the ingredients of coke to find out what is actually in it, and i came across this interesting site.

I’m not sure if it’s all entirely factual, but it is interesting reading, and it wouldn’t take much to convince me that it’s all true!

We spent a glorious 10 days on a small island called Malapascua, just off the tip of Cebu island at the top.

Sadly i didn’t take any photos of the palm tree rimmed white sand beaches (use your imagination, or Google Malapascua!) . However, i did take a few snaps underwater during some amazing dives! I dived with Thresher sharks which was rather spectacular, and saw some devil rays which was also pretty neat!

I’ve also put a few photos on Flickr, and you can check them out by clicking the photo below.

Big thanks to my big bro for buying me a Flickr Pro account for my birthday. This removes my upload limits, and allows me to show more than 200 photos, and to create more than 3 sets. So, due to this, i’m going to be uploading more photos to my Flickr account, and i’m going to organise them a bit better into more sets so that it’s much easier to browse my work.

Despite the 200 photo limit being lifted, i don’t want to end up with a stream of 000’s of photos, so i will still be selective in what i’m uploading.

You can check out my Flickr photos here.

Scott Heron, a friend i used to work with, has started a rather ingenious new website - SpaceHaggis.com.

The site tells the story of Alfie Haggis, a wayward chap making his mark around the universe. The rather cool part, is that by signing up to the forum, you are able to vote on what you would like Alfie to do next. Each week (or so) a new episode is posted, based on the results of the previous week’s votes.

I think that this type of community based fiction will become increasingly popular, and hope that Space Haggis leads the way!

I thought that it was really about time that i add an update on what we’re up to!

We arrived safely in Cebu, Philippines last Tuesday and promptly checked into our hotel at 4am. Hoping to get some well-deserved kip after a 40 hour journey, we realised that there appears to be roosters everywhere in this island…and they seem to crow at random times…all day and all night! Someone needs to give these cockerels a watch!

However, we enjoyed the delights of Cebu city for a day, and then jumped on a bus down to Moalboal to check out the seaside life of the island. Moalboal lost it’s beach in a typhoon about 10 years ago, but we still felt the sleepy seaside town that’s popular with divers was worth a look. We were a little disappointed that when we arrived we were the only ones under 40, and Emma was the only female foreigner (there were, however, an abundance of local ladies to go round all the single males if you know what i mean!).

After a few days, the numbers of other tourists picked up a bit, and we enjoyed a week there chilling out by our nice pool!

I also managed to squeeze in a quick dive, the first with my underwater camera! More pics to follow soon so stay tuned! (this one wasn’t taken by me though!).

Today, we’ve arrived back in Cebu, and tomorrow we’re heading up to Malapascua to see how that fares.

Is that my credit card was declined when i booked this flight, but we were already in the Philippines by the time i found out!!

On route to the Philippines, we had a slightly longer stopover than expected in Hong Kong, so checked our baggage into storage and hopped on the express train to the city. A nice dinner and drink later, we arrived back at the airport to find out that they wouldn’t let us on the plane to the Philippines because we didn’t have a return ticket. After the persuasive story didn’t do the trick, we had to sharply book a ticket out of the Philippines, which we’ll hopefully be able to get refunded (or at least most of it!).

A fine example of how useful free WiFi around Hong Kong airport is! Perhaps something that the £6 per hour folks in Gatwick might want to consider!!!

A new single out by a band called Lo-Star, all profits will go to the Burma Campaign UK. You can download the single from iTunes here.

While watching ‘In The Name Of The Father‘ last night, i surprised to hear how people reacted to the initial introduction of the terrorism laws which allowed the police to hold people for up to 7 days without charge. That was in 1975. It is now up to 28 days, and current government proposals want to increase that to a staggering 42 days!

42 days in police custody without basic rights.

This inspired me to write to my MP:

Dear Mark Lazarowicz,

I am writing to make an official protest to the current terrorism laws
in the UK which permit the police to hold suspects without charge for
28 days, and the proposed increases to that period.

I find it hard to believe that a democracy can ever justify holding
innocent people for a month without charge and therefore without their
basic rights as citizens of this country.

Yours sincerely,

Fergus Macdonald

And at 7.40am this morning i received this reply:

Dear Mr Macdonald

Thankyou for your email. I can tell you that I had some concerns over the 28 day period when it was proposed last year, but eventually was prepared to accept it as a compromise which did seek to reconcile the protection of civil liberties with the reality that some terrorism cases are complex to investigate. You will no doubt be aware that the 28 day period received all-party support.

I did not agree, however, with the proposal for a 90 day period of pre-charge detention in terrorist cases, and was one of the Labour MPs who voted against that last year.

You will no doubt be aware there is currently a proposal under discussion to raise the 28 day limit to 42 days. While I am of course open to all reasonable argument, I have certainly not been convinced of the case for this extension, and at present I do not intend to support it.

Yours sincerely

Mark Lazarowicz
www.marklazarowicz.org.uk

And so, in response…i decided to get it all off my chest!:

Dear Mark Lazarowicz,

Many thanks for the personal reply, and i appreciate that combating terrorism is a difficult process.

However, i do not belief that people’s human rights should be infringed for the supposed benefit of society. I believe that a democratic government and fair justice system are necessary ingredients for a successful country in the world today. Removing people’s basic rights for the protection of others is putting ourselves on a slippery slope towards imprisoning everyone for their own protection! Not that i can see this happening, but it certainly appears to be the direction the country is headed. The steps may be small, but the path only leads in one direction. I believe that taking sufficient time to look at the causes of our current ‘war on terrorism’ (from the most neutral perspective possible) and spending significantly more energy on ensuring that the same problems do not repeat themselves in the future is the best way to national security.

I am in no way professing to have the answers or detailed knowledge on the subject, but the fact that our government has spent a great deal of time meddling in the affairs of other countries over the past few hundred years (and indeed longer) inevitably creates a situation where some people resent us. I believe that a change of course towards helping countries in need without the aim of profiting from their natural resources or installing a puppet government is the best way to ensure the future stability, integrity and ultimately safety and security of our country.

The first step on this path may be to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of GDP as the government has agreed to do for over 20 years, yet still does not. A more equal world where there is less variation between the extreme poor and the super-rich, and all countries are involved in international trade with each other is almost guaranteed to create a more peaceful and respectful society. When you take away the pride, honour and hope from someone - he has little else to lose and is far more likely to believe that he will be better off in the after-life.

My apologies that this has gone slightly off-topic and become more long-winded than i anticipated, but i hope that you will take the time to read it.

Yours sincerely,
Fergus Macdonald.

Thought it was about time to introduce my latest little addition to the Acer family! I recently got myself an Acer 6292 as shown below:

Firstly…i was very pleasantly surprised to find out that it looks a shed-load better in real life than it does in the photo! It is a truly great looking laptop which i did not expect!

Secondly, rather sadly, the little nipper comes with Windows Vista installed as standard. I had tried to find one with XP, but they were all considerably more expensive, so i settled for the Vista option. I decided that i would do my best to like it and settle in for the new ride. However, within 30 minutes of turning the thing on, i was absolutely convinced that i had to get rid of it! (I was asked 4 times if i wanted to give Windows permission to create a folder on the hard drive! Of course i want to create a darn folder, i wouldn’t have done it if i didn’t want to!!!)

So, i began researching how to downgrade from Vista to XP, and turns out that it’s really not that difficult. I’m now happy to announce that it is completely XP’d up without a trace of Vista anywhere to be seen for miles around!

I bought this laptop for going away as it’s 12.1″ screen and 2kg weight is significantly less than my other Acer 8104 . It packs serious bang for buck, and for it’s size, and i must admit that i’ll need some serious persuasion to not buy another Acer next time! Plus, the integrated webcam and fingerprint scanner are seriously awesome!!