Thursday, August 09, 2007

Has it been a month?

I know its been a while, but a month just zipped by like scurrying squirrels. I had been travelling quite a bit, travelling to Lumut, then to Raub, and flew to Miri, drove to Sarikei, took a boat to Tanjung Manis (nice fish), drove to Bintulu, and I just got back from Tawau, where I was stuck in the airport from a much delayed flight. Luckily the absolutely dreary airport restaurant had a fridge stocked with beers.

And now I'm home again, and with a new project, I'm building the biggest ever structure yet, a 4 metre high gardening superstructure I call Hydrocomplex. I've not built anything on this scale but I think if this goes through I can actually build a real house! Imagine that.

Which leads me to the next topic, tools. I just recently got myself a proper toolbox. The old plastic one I had had trouble closing because I was trying to jam in all the stuff I needed so I got a newer, bigger one. So one fine day I had the absolute pleasure of not having anything to do so I stopped by Ace Hardware to actually shop. I hardly ever have that luxury of just taking my time looking at stuff. So I got a nice large-ish 22" box.

Then I looked at their multi-tools. They had the regular Swiss Army knives. Now these things are great if you're a Boy Scout or if you're one of em wannabe DIYers. But they can't really do much. The construction of these tools are, I'd say pretty flimsy, and I've got a couple of blades breaking on me before, so its not something I'd recommend...and corkscrews! What's up with corkscrews on all these tools? I don't see myself trying to fix my machinery and at the same time thinking, ah yes, a 98 Shiraz would be nice right about now.

So with very little effort I ended up with where I first started looking, at Leatherman. Leatherman tools are built tough, they're heavy, they can withstand abuse, and are generally full sized tools that can do real work. I wanted one back in 2003, but at that time, and even now, they don't ship here, so I just left that on my Amazon.com list. Now, I know how to import these things back here, and so it was time to do some shopping.

Once you head over to the Leatherman site you're swamped with options. There are a lot of models to choose from, and each differs slightly in configuration and construction. I had a hard time picking one out, since they are each catered to a semi-specific application. In the end I chose a Charge TTI. This is their flagship model with almost everything, enclosed in Titanium.

And then I got the Crunch, Hybrid, Surge, and thought the smaller ones might be more convenient too, so I got the Juice CS4, an S4, and 2 Micras since they make such good gifts.

It seems that I make, and spend money sitting in the same chair. How's that for retail therapy?