Last night S and I went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the local (Solihull UCI cinema). INW recommended it a while back now, so I knew it would be good, and it was.

It was completely unlike anything I have seen recently and I found it totally captivating. The entire film was visually enchanting, with every move (not just the martial arts scenes) looking properly choreographed rather than just 'directed'. There was a sense of wonder and awe at the almost mystical abilities of the hero and heroines. Whilst I don't know the culture being depicted at all, I felt that the soundtrack was suitably appropriate (and certainly not intrusive). Go see it! I might well get it on DVD when it comes out as I could then watch it without blurred subtitles (a big sarcastic thank you to UCI cinemas for those!).

Hmm... Word's spell checking dictionary doesn't contain the word 'totty' in its "English (United Kingdom)" language. The suggested correction of 'toothy' is a bit worrying.

Network access now restored - Horray! I can check my mail again. Hopefully this will last 'forever', but might end as soon as they realise their proxy server is proxying rather more than they expected. Just because they didn't make the WinSock proxy client available to us on their network, doesn't mean that we can't obtain our own copy and use it... The working environment is now back to 'acceptable' (although there still seems to be a distinct lack of fresh air in this office), and I've even been promised more money at my next review.

Late breaking news from last weekend: On Saturday I picked up the keys to a new (well, second hand) car. My old trusty 1993 Ford Escort was approaching 90,000 miles and was getting to the stage in it's life where it was going to start costing significant amounts of money in servicing in order to keep it on the road. Last summer it cost ~£400 to get it through its MOT. When the clutch began to feel somewhat spongier than usual a couple of weeks ago S and I went shopping. I've been pleased with the Ford car I had so we headed off to the local Ford garage to see what they had on the forecourt. Before leaving we had taken two different cars for test drives and put down a deposit on one of them. Another major purchase made by the two of us in record time (although it still doesn't come close to the £75,000 we spent on our first flat one day).

The new car is a blue 1999 Ford Focus 1.6 litre LX, complete with all sorts of features I am not used to in a car, such as tilt and slide sunroof, electric windows, RDS radio, remote control central locking, power steering, etc. Ford have a website where you can design your own car, but unfortuntely I can't seem to find any way of linking directly to the closest approximation I can 'build' of my car - however feel free to check this out and have a play yourself.

It cost rather more than I was expecting to pay for a replacement car, but then again it's rather better than I was expecting to get - It almost two years old, and has only done 9,000 miles. So far I'm happy with it - and after all, what is money for if it's not to be used to enjoy oneself?