Relocating Fergus Ong

is no easy task. For a self-professed communist, that man has a lot of stuff. Also, we've decided to not kill ourselves climbing the stairs, so we've been moving bit by bit over the three weeks, since renovations finished. Oh yeah, we forgot to post that bit up. Opps.

So. People have been asking "So any updates on the house?" and all we have had to offer is "Errm, we're still moving Fergs into it." After a few weeks, we just sound lazy. And slow. Please bear in mind we've been out of town a number of weekends, which is prime moving time; there's been several rounds of celebrating Jesus' birthday; and after that there was a funeral to attend. So there. We don't look so bad after all.

Anyhow, in his own words, here's what the last two moving rounds have looked like.

Moving house deadline watch: 5 days to go
9am Pack microwave, beanbag, folders and box with boxes, boxers (the sportsmen) and boxers (the shorts)
10am Pack box with boxers (the dog)
11am Unload at new place and travel back to Muar

Moving house deadline watch: 2 days to go (at this point things heat up a little as the December 31 deadline looms)

9am Pack work gear and some more boxes. Work at new house
12pm Put long work process to run and head back to old room
12.15pm Pack clothes into box and backpacker bag
12.35pm Dismount deer head from wall and pack in plastic bag
1pm Unload and return
1.15pm Pack ironing board, tiger rug and kitchenware
1.45pm Dismantle PC
1.50pm Unload and return
3pm Pack kitchen knives, swiss army knife, hunting knife, samurai sword, axe, viking hat
5.10pm Pack movie posters, music posters, propaganda posters, table lamp and books
6pm Unload
6.45pm Kill puma
7pm Dinner

At the time of writing, there is ONE day left. There's still several carloads of stuff, mostly bulky stuff like his bookcase, TV and sofa. Will we make it before this year slips away? Ooo the suspense.

Postscript: On the first night of 2010, Fergus Ong will finally sleep under his very own roof. Hoorah!

Happy Blessed Merry Super Mirthful Christmas!

Fergus: Merry Christmas everybody!

Athalia: Yes, Merry Christmas everyone!

Fergus: Thanks for reading our blog.

Athalia: And leaving us all your fantastic comments.

Fergus: Athalia will respond to all your comments on Boxing Day.

Athalia: I will?

Fergus: Of course you will.

Athalia: Oh, how come me and not you? I'm always responding to comments.

Fergus: Not to this post, you haven't.

Athalia: -_- This post hasn't even gone up.

Fergus: By the time someone reads this, it would have.

Athalia: And so your point is?

Fergus: Athalia will respond to all your comments on Boxing Day, guys!

Athalia: You are a lazy blogger, Fergus Ong.

Fergus: And she will post about what we got for Christmas!

Athalia: Stupiak.

Fergus: And she will do a 1,500-word post about New Year's Day!

(Throat clears from behind Real Fergus.)

Real Athalia: Eh, don't la.

Real Fergus: Don't la what?

Real Athalia: I'm busy wrapping Christmas gifts and you're goofing around on our blog? At least write a proper Christmas post.

Real Fergus: Too late!

-Click!-

Guest post from Lionel Messi!

Hola Fergus,

It's me, Lionel. I heard that you've been saying that blue and red don't go together? What's this, bro? I always thought you had good taste but I think maybe you've been a bit stressed, no? Well, don't be stressed - impossible is nothing and that includes painting your wall or your door or your ceiling blue and it will match with your red couch, just like FC Barcelona. Un momento...

(Es su sala de estar, Andreas. Que no quiere que en azul y rojo. Está bien. Está bien.)

My friend Iniesta ask me to tell you that the blue shade, if it is near the purple tone, it is very nice to go with the red. He likes that very much.

All the best with your house. Come and see me one day, I will show you my World Player of the Year trophy. Oh. That Athalia has good taste. You should listen to her advice.

Adios,

Lionel Messi

Guest post from Natalie Portman!

Dear Fergus,

I heard that you said that red and blue do not go together, so I thought I'll send you pictures from my latest photoshoot with Marie Claire to show that if you pick the correct tones, they can in fact look very nice side-by-side. Don't you think so?

I think the trick is to avoid the bright, primary shades and to have one colour as the dominant one and the other as an accent. I hope this helps you and Athalia with picking out colours for your new place. Be sure to post pictures up once you're done so I can drop by and have a look okay? Looking forward to it!

Wishing you both a very merry Christmas and happy new year.

xoxo,

Natie

Pictures from a weekend in Muar

The backyard of the family house leading out to the vast stretch of greenery by the side.

Muar is close enough to tap Singapore TV stations with the help of tall antennas like this. Can you see it?

The clock tower peeking out from behind the row of shops. The next time we go back I really want to do a proper shoot around town.

Fergs' favourite stall: cui kueh. The bubbling pot of chai poh sits on a charcoal stove, which lends a touch of old-fashion charm to this uniquely Muarian breakfast.

Firecrackers at his cousin's wedding. It's been a long time since I've seen one of these go off.

The still, cool light in the living room before the entire household has woken up.

The most photographed member of the Ong clan. Smile!

Home-made coconut candy being cut. Serious sugar high there.

Our kitchen window

This is the view from our kitchen window. I don't know about you, but I'm quite in love with it.

Don't tell Athalia, but I can see myself doing most of the cooking next time. :)

Lesson 04: Toilet bowl trajectory

The next lesson to learn about buying a toilet bowl is to be imaginative when you look at it. Specifically, you have to imagine your WC in all its most gory detail.

Ours, so it seems, has turned out to be the poster child of horror toilet bowls from the dark side. Innocuous on the surface, this monster has a ceramic portion from the front of the bowl going some two thirds of the way towards the back of the bowl. Coupled with water that doesn't fill past the surface of this ceramic portion, one ends up with very little water in the bowl to do all the dirty work of catching one's excrement when it exits one's proverbial arse.

What all this means is that we've got ourselves a streak-prone toilet bowl. It's an insanely poor architecture, but there just isn't enough water filling up the bowl to stop the shit from falling and getting stuck on the ceramic portion. The only way to prevent this from happening is to develop a technique where you actually shit backwards. The change in trajectory of the shit would cause it to hit the water and not cause streaks.

Honestly, though, I don't know if I will ever master this technique. I think putting a powerful spray hose next to the toilet bowl is a better option. Either that or keeping a crap-eating, ceramic-clinging, flush-resistant pet from the tropical jungles of Borneo. Just gotta make sure it doesn't bite.

Working from home

I worked from home yesterday. Not just any home - the new home!

Yes, I spent the morning and evening legs yesterday working from our new and newly cleaned apartment as seen above.

It's actually quite comfortable. Short of having a chair and table to hammer away on, the concrete floor is extremely cool to sit on (temperature cool). With the front sliding door and the back door and window open, it did not feel like 1pm on a Malaysian afternoon. Not at least till I left the apartment and got into my car.

Can't quite do breaknecking work there yet, but everything else, from scripting to logging and capturing video footage can be done from the new home. Just gotta get some furniture and that beautiful thing called An Internet Connection in. And a fluffy kitten. And a 9-foot teddy bear that speaks in Hebrew. Yes, once those are in, I can properly work from home.

Ah, gorgeous days.

Postscript: I should disclaim that the photo I took above is a nod to my next-year-to-be-brother-in-law david's post on his own house works and moving in. Go check out his swanky grey walls!

Late afternoon series 01

Took this on a cloudy day last week, just before it started raining. When I was young, I remember going out into the garden every time the sky looked yellow. We had a very yellow sky last Sunday evening. It reminded me of those late afternoons that end so quickly.

Lesson 03: Toilet bowl hole distance

Among all the lessons we're learning, the one about toilet bowls may not be the hardest to learn, but it definitely stinks the worst. Here's how it goes.

You can't just buy any old WC, shove it into your half-renovated bathroom and force the holes to align. Each toilet bowl comes with a certain measurement that relates to the distance between the wall and the center of the hole in your floor. That's the hole where all the brown stuff goes, so buying a commode that doesn't align is bad news.

On most toilet bowls, this measurement is something like 7 to 18 inches. It's not entirely hard to shop for a toilet bowl if your hole ... ahem ... is that far from the wall. But our toilet bowl hole (this is getting tiring) happens to be a whopping 22 inches off the wall. And nobody sells toilet bowls 22 inches off the wall. Nobody except one shop, selling it in one brand, one model, one colour.

Other than that, we had a grand total of zero options.

It helped that it didn't cost a bomb, cos if it did, we'd still have been robbed into picking them up. So the lessons learned are manifold:

(1) Know the distance of your hole from the wall

(2) Get your contractor to measure it - we measured 20 inches but Ah Yaw measured 22

(3) A toilet bowl that doesn't meet the wall may be funny, but only for a while.

There are more lessons to be learned from this ill-fated WC campaign. Cheap things bought with no viable alternatives can and will turn out nasty. More on this in the next post.

Lesson 02: Lab sink

If you're a sane person, the kind with at least one practical bone in your body, and you are generally sensible, and you tend to make fairly solid decisions in life backed by the wisdom of those before you and your shrewdness on the day, then you're nothing like us, and you would buy yourself a normal sink.

But noOOOoooOOoooOoo. We had to go and buy ourselves a lab sink. A what sink?

A lab sink.

OoooOOo.

No, seriously. Some days, I really wonder what posessed us to buy a lab sink for our animal testing lab bathroom. It costs more, it doesn't have brackets that let you ram it into the wall and you can't just slap on any old tap. For starters, your tap has to come from the wall, not from the bottom. We've had to construct a base on which the sink will sit (see pics, from my lovely doodle to the finished article), and this hasn't only eaten into our fixtures budget, but it's also eaten into our tile budget, albeit at a whopping bill circa RM25.

Ok, big deal. It's about three square feet in total surface area. We even bought the perfect faucet for it only to have to rule it out because it's a tap that comes up from beneath and it's also too short. Yes, a lab sink on a base sticking out of the wall needs a faucet that juts out some 8 inches if you want to wash your hands with any semblance of peace. All-in-all, it's a fuss that 10 out of 10 sane people would avoid.

Which is why we are loving every bit of it. All hail the white lab sink!

All: Hail!

Fergus: Thanks All. You're very sporting to play along.

All: No probs. Nice sink.

The begining of the end of the year

And to mark this beginning, we've put up a new banner. I plan to do this monthly, hopefully this is not too large an ambition to handle.

Festive banner aside, Christmas looks in danger of being an after-thought that's crowded right at the end of an incredibly packed month. Here's what we have lined up over the next three weekends:

• Moving Fergs into our new, unnamed place
• Doing up said place - plenty of painting and laying floor boards and tinkering around
• Two weddings, one in Muar

Also, Fergs will have to write, shoot and edit the final three episodes of his TV program, which may eat into the weekends. Thankfully, there are plenty of public holidays that fall nicely on Friday and I'm poised to take most of the following Mondays off, giving me a four-day weekend. Such bliss.

Renovations day seventeen

It's heating up.

Yes, the living room has essentially been cleared. The fixtures are almost entirely affixed. The plumbing works the way plumbing ought to work and the only thing I can think of right now is hunkering down for my first big job in the bathroom. Ah, the satisfaction it will bring!

I shall now leave you with more gratuitous pictures of our fixtures.

Renovations special edition: the floor we chose

And so it is

Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky

I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...

Okay. I'll cut to the chase. Our floors are done. We've gone in to look at them. And walked on them. Which was when the magnitude of what we've done really hit.

As you see, we've gone with cement floors. Bare, grey, cement. It's supposed to be a New York loft thing. But right now, it looks really...Raw. Stark. Plain. I told Fergus, "It's really up to us to get the place looking good now."

And it is. So paints, stencils, murals are all going to be marched in soon. Oh yes, did you hear? We're painting the ceiling. It's supposed to be back- (and neck-) breaking work. But it's all part of the look we're going for.

(Deep breath)

Before I go, here's a picture that we're drawing inspiration from. We'll get there slowly.

Renovations day sixteen

This is it. Five years of cold showers are about to come to an end with the purchase of this feral thermomonster. Yep, that's true. Of course, if you're anything like me, you're totally not looking at the words "Panasonic" or "Electric Home Shower" but you're wondering what on earth an "E sen" is.

Is it an electronic shilling?

Is it a Mandarin-speaking doctor?

Is it a Ghanaian Chelsea midfielder gone horribly wrong?

If it is, what's he doing in the shower with my future wife?

Renovations day fifteen

Rules for today.

Rule #1
You cannot go into the house

Rule #2
You cannot step on anything

Rule #3
You can only look from outside

Rule #4
You cannot talk about the floor

Renovations day fourteen

Okay. We've posted too many pictures of our bathrooms, so this an attempt to break from that monotony. But honestly, outside the bathrooms, nothing much has happened. Oh, other than the workers preping the living-dining-kitchen space for Our Unthinkable Act. Did I just give something away? No, no I didn't. You'll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the bottom ledge of the kitchen sink was just built today. See it? Well, there's a clue in the picture somewhere.

(big smile)

Breakfast and supper

Some recent eats. (I marginally prefer supper.)

Mac screen becomes transparent!

Oh no!! Somebody turned Ophelia's screen transparent! Now I don't know how to turn it off!

Renovations day thirteen

Today, the tile contractor finished all his work - that means all the grouting for the floor tiles of both bathrooms have been done, along with that white little fixture thingy in the corner (more on that in another post).

That's all. Goodnight.

Blog Police: Waitaminute. What's this?

Fergus: Hello Mr Blog Police.

Blog Police: Don't hello me. What's this? One sentence? You call that a blog post?

Fergus: It's late, dude. I need to go-

Blog Police: Don't dude me.

Fergus: Sorry.

Blog Police: I want you to lengthen your post. Two of you have been slacking off. You think readers come in to read the same posts twice?

Fergus: Errr no?

Blog Police: You're d*** right no! I give you one minute to lengthen today's post.

Crap. Errr... errr... by the time you read this, Ah Yaw would have started levelling up all the floors, doing all the cementing, lots of dirty work and stuff. Am planning to steal Iris for the day and get some-

Blog Police: Time's up. Let's see what you've got.

Fergus: I need more time, sir.

Blog Police: Don't sir me. "Crap. Errr... errr..."? You truly are pathetic, Fergus.

Fergus: I know Mr Blog Police.

Blog Police: Ok. You can go home now.

Macbook series 01

Ah, yes. Athalia has officially become a yuppie herself with her recent acquisition of Iris. Me? I just happen to be the fiancee with the perks of shooting with this fierce beast. Therefore, because so much of our shared existence revolves around the rolling hills of the Savannah our Macs, here's me offering its firstfruits to the god of apple.

The name game

We have a habit of naming our gadgets. It started with one, just for fun, and it gradually grew out of hand and became impossible to stop. So far we've got:

• Poppy the MyVi
• Makmak the Satria (okay, it's from his car plate, but it stuck and we say it with affection)
• Dante the ipod
• Salvador the vintage iBookG4
• Ophelia the MacBook (I thought it very apt when I found out her name means "help")
• Karlof the 500MB external hard drive
• Constantine the 1TB external hard drive
• Benoit the 2GB thumbdrive
• Mariella the 1GB thumbdrive
• Heidi the portable hard drive, who has unfortunately gone to the great electronics junkyard in the sky
• Olaf the new office PC
• Boris, the old office PC, who now sits in the living room of a 45-year-old Indian gentleman
• Raoul the video camera (named after Raoul Coutard).

Overloaded yet? Well our month-old D90 can now join that list. Everyone, here is Iris.

*click!*

Renovations day twelve

This is where we're at. This is where we've been for half of Thursday and Friday and the weekend - stuck on tiles.

I've since learned a lot about tiles, and I'll compile them in a Lesson 02 soon enough. But a pre-lesson, if you could say so, is that making mistakes cost you days of working. The tile contractor can't proceed because we're short on the right colour of tiles. Ah Yaw can't start cementing all the floors until the tile contractor is done, and the bathroom fixtures can't be installed until Ah Yaw has cemented the floors. I can't move out until the bathroom fixtures are installed. My landlady can't convert my rented room into a meat locker until I move out. And as long as my landlady doesn't have anywhere to store all that rotting meat, the hyenas won't go away.

So when I say that I've been learning a lot about what it means to make mistakes when buying tiles, I really do mean it. Wait...

Shoo! Put that down you mongrel! Shoo!!

Bad hyena.

Lesson 01: Bring a tile with you

Do you see these two tiles? Do you see how they would have appeared identical to the mind's eye if the beholder was not clever enough to bring one piece with him to compare colour? Do you see it?

Cos I see it very clearly now!

Yes, indeed, I'm a fool of a took, because when Ah Yaw told me that we needed more tiles for the master bathroom, I thought that a product code was enough armour to carry along with me. Apparently not, as you can see - the twelve pieces I rushed back from Selayang are a shade different. Some shade differences are so miniscule, you can forgive. But this one is just that bit past the threshold. I'm the guy whom Athalia likes to describe as "even has an opinion on what kind of white to use". Exchange of tiles will take place Saturday but - sigh - credibility sudah hilang. The more I look at the two side-by-side, the more convinced I am that I should have known better.

In shame, I hang mine head.

Renovations day eleven

Eleven days of renovation have gone by and we're really starting to see the apartment take shape. The kitchen counter and its basins went up first, then both bathrooms' wall tiles. Then today, the balcony cement floor and this - the bathroom's second layer of waterproofing. Tomorrow, they lay the bathroom floor tiles over this waterproof layer.

Some days, when I think of the look we're going for, I gingerly wonder, is our house gonna look grey and still-in-construction even when it's done? I mean, do you know what we're (not) gonna do with our kitchen counter? Okay, I should stop musing. Keep this short and go to bed early. Tomorrow morning, I'm gonna take Ernest's advise and tell my tiles they're gonna get laid.

Renovations day ten

Grey drought? Are you kidding me? Look Athalia! More grey photos for our blog! Look! Look! What? Of course it is. It's got grey written all over it. White? That's not white. That's grey. What do you mean we picked them out together. I have no recollection of any such thing. I don't get it. It's grey. And splotchy. Oh, you mean you're talking about the spanking new white tiles with the matching new white grouting that our tile subcontractor put on just yesterday and today which would make it seemingly new-blogpost-worthy! Aiyah, say la. I was talking about the cement bit just above it that's been there for over a week now. But isn't it grey? Don't you just love it? Errr Athalia? Hello? You there?

Renovations day nine

THE TILES HAVE LANDED!

In gratitude, Sami Fergus offers a prayer of thanksgiving to the Great White Ceramic Tile God for finally breaking the grey drought.

The not-so-glorious start

[Update: since posting this, we've gone and back-posted days seven and eight which happen to come with rather colourful pictures, rendering this post somewhat useless.]

Hokay. We're only into the third week of this blog's official launch and a sense of meh-ness has already set in. As you can see, I've not exactly been posting away very excitedly.

Yesterday, I figured out why. It's because...THE PICTURES ARE UGLY. It's what you get when you have both not-so-stellar photography skills and a dull subject. Really, we've tried really really hard, but there are very few ways you can snap an apartment in the throes of a cement bloodbath and make it remotely more interesting that a grey mess. And Photoshop does not help.

Plus, our grand vision of keeping a daily log of progress failed quite miserably. How many of your noticed that we cheat by back-posting? Oh, no one noticed? Never mind then, forget you read this last bit then. By the way, the sequence of events are all jumbled up, because our addled brains cannot remember what happened when. Though so far we've gotten the where and who part pretty down pat.

Anyways, in short, I think that the colour grey is starting to grate on me.

Renovations: another special weekend edition

Why hello there.

It appears that I only post once a week, during the weekends. Ha-HA! Doesn't this rare appearance make you feel excited and tingly? No? Well never mind then. For I am feeling excited and tingly myself! Wouldn't you like to know why? Oh, you are shaking your head vigorously while gagging yourself? Never mind, I will tell you anyway.

Yesterday, the Furgus creature went to see our contractor and was told that the work should be finished by next Monday! This is wonderfully good news to hear, even though this Monday would be even better. But I am still very happy. For that means that soon, we will have lots more of work to do! There will be painting and wiping and carrying various awkwardly-shaped objects up three-and-a-half flights of stairs.

Oh-OHHH! I just realised that that means a lot of work for me! And it will make my arms and feet and neck and back very tired and sore! That is not good at all. What am I to do? Maybe if I hide under my bed and pretend to hibernate I can get someone else to do all that work. Yes, that is what I shall do. Lets hope the Furgus creature falls for it.

Post inspired by the pure comedy gold series "Berbatov is....The Continental" on Dirty Tackle.

Renovations day eight

When Athalia's mum saw these, she yelped and said "Fergus!! They are giving you good cement!!"

Of course, I wouldn't have the first idea what brand of cement was good cement, or even what good cement felt like. But I do know that any cement that calls itself a fire-breathing beast of yore can't chip. Yep. I'm counting on this baby to stand even after an earthquake. If not, I'm taking it back and exchanging all my floors for an iguana.

Renovations day seven

You know the tundra? That vast, lonely stretch of wind-locked land? It's like a prairie with ice permanently frozen in it. It is wind and wilderness and desolate beauty.

Yeah, that tundra. Well, while it would be lovely to have that in our home office - think of how it'll cool the place down! - we've opted for the cheaper, more common option. So there are four packs of white boards sitting in the office-to-be now, acclimatising to the room temperature and humidity. Sorry to disappoint folks.

Renovations day six

Doorknob 1: Why is Fergus taking pictures of us?

Doorknob 2: Cos he's a doorknob.

Doorknob 1: No, stupid. We are doorknobs.

Doorknob 2: Oh. Heh. Maybe he's trying to be all arty and stuff. You know...

Doorknob 1: Yeah. Such a wannabe. (raises his voice) Dude! We're doorknobs! Go take pictures of girls holding umbrellas!

Doorknob 2: Ooh, not a bad idea.

Doorknob 1: I know.

Doorknob 2: You're smart.

Doorknob 1: I know. That's why I'm a doorknob. On the floor. Waiting to be thrown ou...

Doorknob 2: Err...

Doorknob 1: Nevermind.

Doorknob 2: I think he's taking pictures of us cos the renovation seems a bit slow and he's got nothing new to take today.

Doorknob 1: Actually, I think it's because I'm a sexy beast.

Doorknob 2: Oh ya. Man, you really are smart.

Renovations day five

Fergus had Thursday to call Ah Yaw.

Fergus had Friday to call Ah Yaw.

Fergus had Saturday to call Ah Yaw.

Fergus had Sunday to call Ah Yaw.

Fergus even met Ah Yaw on Monday.

Fergus dropped by the house again on Tuesday.

Fergus: ****!! ****!!

Athalia: What?

Fergus: Super****!!

Athalia: What?

Fergus: The powerpoints! The powerpoints that we decided not to do. They've done it.

(silence)

Fergus: ****!! What are we gonna do??

Athalia: I'm gonna try to not get angry.

Fergus: No, you can get angry. You can get very angry.

I. AM. SOMETIMES. STOOPID. TOTHEMAX.

Renovations day four

Ok kelas. Hari ini, kita nak belajar macam mana nak tambah, tolak dan tukar unit ukuran. Mari kita tengok soalan matematik kita.

Contoh: Encik Ong diberitahu oleh kontraktornya bahawa harga untuk membina kaunter dapur berbentuk L adalah RM1,800. Beberapa minggu selepas itu, Encik Ong memberitahu kontraktornya untuk tukar bentuk kaunter dapurnya dari L kepada I. Kuotasi baru kontraktor adalah RM700 kurang daripada harga asal.

Soalan 1: Berapakah harga bahagian kaunter dapur baru yang berbentuk I?

Soalan 2: Jika Encik Ong meminta kontraktornya untuk diskaunkan lagi harga baru kaunter bentuk I, dan kontraktornya memberikannya kuotasi RM900, berapakah harga sebenar bahagian kaunter asal yang Encik Ong abaikan?

Soalan 3: Jika bahagian kaunter yang diabaikan digantikan dengan kaunter dapur Ikea Udden yang panjangnya 60cm, berapa unit Udden ini diperlukan untuk memenuhi dapur yang panjangnya 8 kaki?

Soalan 4: Apakah pandangan anda tentang peranan Cik Lee dalam keputusan ini?

Renovations: special weekend edition

Today, we're breaking the weekend calm to bring you a rare and exclusive photo of Fergusisus ongius in its habitat, carrying a waste disposal device the only way it knows how to - supported on its hard head and sturdy neck. It was observed making several heavily-laden rounds over the course of three-quarters of an hour in the late morning yesterday, showing mild signs of distress towards the end. Scientists from all over the world have voiced out their puzzlement over such odd behaviour, and are due to meet in Geneva next month to put forth their preliminary hypotheses.

This is AK Lee, reporting from the field.