I am a material boy

[robinturner]

Sometimes it's good to forget all the philosophical/spiritual stuff and just take pleasure in material things. Yesterday Nalan and I went into town and, in addition to finally getting to see The Lord of the Rings, I got myself a cheap Chinese multi-tool and, more importantly, put in my orders for a Go set and a leather coat. The Go set is a Chinese one: board with mother-of-pearl inlay and jade stones (if there are any Go players reading this, they'll know that this is totally orgasmic). The coat is being made for me by a pretty good leather-worker from drawings we made after downloading pictures of Morpheus from some Matrix site. And all of this on a teacher's salary, because Turkey is the kind of country where research pays off -- go to a high-street store and you'l get ripped off royally, but dig around to find people who import stuff or make it to order and you're well in.