And you thought I'd simply been wasting my life away during my prolonged Dayorama absence. From the creator of Dayoramoblog, the almost-live Dayorama audio extravaganza, I give you: viDayorama,

This roughly translates as "Ollie has a new video camera and has come up with a nice, gimmicky name under which to start filming stuff".

You can watch the first viDayorama, very much a testbed for future episodes, here:

Now, if you watched that, rest assured that you got off lightly. There was plenty more slow-motion dog footage where that came from.

The camera, for those who worry about such things, is a Sony SR190E. It fits neatly around your palm, records direct to a 40 gigabyte hard drive (so you simply copy your files across to your PC when you're ready), and yes, has a super-slow-motion facility.

This I only discovered while walking the dog around a nature reserve, which would explain for the dog why he suddenly received so much attention, at close quarters, with a camera crammed in his face.

So far I can find very little fault with the camera. It is incredibly light, intuitive, produces gorgeous colours and the sound is not as bad as it could be - and will only get better once the added audio kit I have ordered arrives.

My only gripe would be that it sometimes takes a little too long to auto-focus - oh and it took forever to find a decent video editing package for Mpeg-2 files, which the camera (like many others) produces.

Windows Movie Maker does not want to know, but in the end I discovered Mpeg Video Wizard. I have just put the first viDayorama together using the free 30-day trial, and it was as easy as using some of the BBC standard issue stuff at work - every tool I needed was there and it was easy to work out how to do everything. I really recommend it, even if it's going to cost me around £40 to purchase once the trial expires.

So, where next for viDayorama? I think you could well expect something from the MPH motor show in London this weekend, and from the Spaced event at the BFI on 10 November. But if you have suggestions for interesting events around London or the Home Counties, drop me a line and I'll see if I can mobilise...

I think the most appropriate word to describe Macau is eclectic. It is an utter confusion of Portuguese, Chinese, American, English, Catholic and Buddhist influences. As you turn the corner of a street or enter a square it is difficult to predict whether you’ll be immersed in the hustle and bustle of traditional shops, overwhelmed by the magnificence of a Catholic church, confronted with a Buddhist temple, dazzled by a Vegas-style casino, or faced with a combination of all of the above, standing alongside a Starbucks or McDonald’s.

Now a Special Administrative Region of China, Macau was under Portuguese rule for 4 ½ centuries until 1999. It’s relatively small and I was able to cover the main sights during the six hours I was there. Beginning at this picture-postcard edifice, the ruins of St Paul’s, gives you some idea of the splendor on offer in Macau. I suppose you could describe it as the “Acropolis” of Macau, but strangely enough it quickly gets lost once you descend into the hustle and bustle of the streets below.

I wandered around, visited a few of the temples and went inside several splendid Catholic churches, the main Cathedral and a couple of other notable buildings. It was rather comforting to be amidst European architecture again – the architectural detail on some of the buildings was incredible and the warmth of the yellow facades against the blue of the sky was a very pleasing combination.

Perhaps one of the prettiest places was the Largo do Senado or Senado Square. Chinese writing and shops aside, you could have been in Seville or Granada. The square is cobbled, guarded on either side by elaborate buildings and at one end host to an imposing church. I sat and ate an ice-cream on the fountain… green tea flavored Hagen Das. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s, um, interesting.

There are some very pleasant gardens around the centre of Macau, sections of the old City walls, Moorish barracks, and then out of nowhere a large fortress and lighthouse. Perched on top of a hill, this is the largest lighthouse on the Chinese coast. Due to land reclamation, the lighthouse now sits away from the coast and is a distinct symbol of the Macau of yesterday. It’s incredibly peaceful location and affords spectacular panoramic views across the entirety of Macau and away towards China in one direction and the South China Sea in the other.

Moving away from the architectural and cultural delights, you are faced with an entirely different scene: the casinos, the grand-prix race track (which I walked along) and the plush hotels. A mini Las Vegas - think Ocean’s 11, neon lights, fountains with sparkling lights, lots of gold, lots of red carpet, women dressed in cocktail dresses and stilettos, and money. An utter contrast from the remainder of the City – the delights of Asia never cease to amaze.

So, not for the first time in my life...and probably not for the last... I am now using a remote keyboard with my laptop. After the "let's chuck the best part of a bottle of water" over my laptop incident at the weekend, the keyboard has been declared useless by the IT dept at work. I think the technical term they used was "b*ggered".

Thankfully, the water doesn't seem to have seeped to the motherboard, but it has short circuited something in the keyboard, apparently. I can get it fixed in time... just when I get around to affording to do so. Ah well, could be worse. And I’d sort of missed having a slightly broken laptop…

It's alright, everyone. We play the South Africans at cricket in July 2008 and we'll beat them then. Mark Thursday the 10th of July, 11am, in your diaries now - the first test begins at Lord's.

An element of dedication is shown in the manner in which I am having to create this post. Yesterday, in rather spectacular fashion, I chucked water all over my laptop. Thus, my keyboard is well and truly useless and the laptop is off to hospital on Monday. I'm typing this on my BB, will send to myself, cut and paste, and then upload. Photos if we're lucky.

Today I went to another of the outlying islands around HK island. Lamma is an incredibly beautiful island, with no cars and skyscrapers.

It is, however, host to an electricity power station with three dominating towers. Thankfully you can only see it from one side of the island, but even so...

Really not much else to report. I ambled from one side of the island to the other, between the two main villages. Incredibly beautiful flora and forna, brightly coloured butterflies and wonderful birdsong. A world away from the City. Oh and a fabulous fresh seafood lunch.

In order to celebrate the “Chung Yeung” Festival, today has been another public holiday in HK. Also known as the “Autumn Remembrance”, the festival is a day where families journey to the graves of their ancestors to perform so-called cleansing rites and pay their respects.

It is also the day for “hiking”. Apparently the festival also commemorates a Han Dynasty (BC 202-AD 220) legend, which tells how a soothsayer advised the “Woon King” that he should take his family to a high place for the entire ninth day of the ninth moon (today). I’m not sure quite why, but I think heading to the hills was meant to encourage success and promotion. As a result, today many HK families venture into the countryside to walk and picnic.

A colleague and I decided to try a relatively famous walk in HK, known as the Dragon’s Back. We started the day relatively early by catching the MTR and then a bus to our starting point. The bus route was incredibly busy, but the reason soon became apparent. Out destination was not only the start of this stage of the trail, but it was also the location of one of the largest cemeteries in HK island. There were hundreds of people swarming around with incense and bunches of flowers. Quite bizarre.

The walk we had chosen to do covers the spine of the southeast headland of the Island and forms the last leg of an 8-legged trail spanning the Island. It’s relatively undulating, but nothing particularly strenuous.

You can see why it is called the Dragon’s Back though:

From the ridge there are spectacular views overlooking the particularly rugged coastline and across to some of the outlying Islands.

The trail itself was very enjoyable. It was certainly leisurely and relaxing, but there were always a few people around – hardly isolated. It can best be described as if you were on the tourist route up Snowdon or perhaps having an amble around Buttermere.

We ended our walk (around 5 miles) at Shek-O. We had a very enjoyable and leisurely lunch in the quaint costal town and visited the obligatory Tin Hau temple. We then sat on the beach for a couple of hours before taking the short bus-ride back to the City. Most relaxing - not a bad way to spend a day off.

Educate, inform, entertain... and interact?

It only took a matter of minutes to herd these various BBC 'Have Your Say' links into an image. The BBC website, indeed any major media website, is awash with audience calls to action. Call us, text us, email us, vote on the website, have your say.

It does often feel as though any broadcast journalist caught eschewing audience interaction will be strung up at dawn. So bravo Eddie Mair. His PM programme on Radio 4 won a Sony Gold for interactivity (a Sony being a very, very prestigious radio gong to receive).

Now he's getting a new programme, iPM, designed to reflect input from its audience. More of that shortly. For all this interactivity, writing on the BBC News website, Mair insists this pursuit of your views is to the detriment of the end product:

Whole weeks of airtime each year are devoted not to well-made programmes, but to the garbled scribblings of the ill-informed being badly read out by presenters who would never have cut it in the "Golden Age".

The BBC is the worst offender. In a wilful misunderstanding of what public service broadcasting entails, putting the public on air as often as possible in as many different forms as possible is now the goal.

You can't just have a good idea and go out and make a programme anymore. No. Oh no. How very old fashioned of you to think that. Nowadays you must consider before you've made the programme how the listener might interact with it.

Don't misunderstand me, opinion is important. Even ill-informed opinion has its place. It's in the pub. Or the taxi. But on the radio? What makes listeners or viewers or, heaven forbid, bloggers think they have the faintest idea about broadcasting? If they had any good ideas they'd be employed in broadcasting.

[source: Eddie Mair - 'Stop the 'i' madness']

Thank God. It is a delight to hear a respected broadcast journalist, at the top of his game, acknowledge that much of what passes for interactivity is usually undiluted pap of no worth to either the broadcaster or the listener.

Elsewhere in the article, Mair says: "If we wanted to know what a bunch of unqualified loons thought we'd have put a vox pop in the show."

Well I'd even ban vox pops if I could. I've always found them to be an absurd waste of everybody's time and energy. Look at the Northern Rock story. If you are a Northern Rock customer affected, and you're listening to the news, who do you want to hear from? A correspondent? The chief exec of the bank? Or three affable but entirely unhelpful members of the queue outside your local branch, telling you they're in the same situation as you?

Voxes add nothing to a story unless they are very cleverly done. Voxing a particular group of people who you know all have something to contribute - say, medics leaving a conference on cancer - is worthwhile. Voxing people in the street outside the conference for their views on cancer is meaningless.

And sadly, much of the 'interactivity' going on is a rung below that, opening the floodgates and inviting anyone with a spare five minutes and a mobile phone or computer to blanket bomb us with opinion. As Eddie Mair says, there is a place for most of that opinion, and national radio - even local radio to some extent - ain't it.

That doesn't mean we ought to get rid of our attempts to be interactive with you, the listener. We just need to put some thought into it. All too often the interactive bit is the first box ticked because "we'll ask them to email us about it", and that's that. We'll stick the email address in the script, or on screen, and see what happens. It resolves itself without any further commitment of resources.

Genuinely useful interactivity requires as much from the broadcaster as it does from the viewer or listener. Sorry to harp on about that bloody BBC Berkshire flood map, but that's where interactivity really did work, and really did help and interest other members of the public (surely the goal). I spent my days constantly updating the map with new images, video and audio, from our own reporters and from members of the public. Having added their content to the map, visitors could browse the rest of it for important information and other photos.

We had dozens and dozens of lovely messages from people using the map, both those who contributed and those who did not. Australians with relatives in Berkshire were using other people's photos, collated on our site, to see how bad the streets near family members looked. There was nothing inane about it - every photo and video was an important addition.

Now, granted, that was an isolated situation, one that won't often occur. But that's when interactivity works. You cannot just fire a load of interactivity at people every day and expect it to be meaningful, top quality content. Interactivity works best around events, planned or otherwise. For the 2008 Olympics I'd like to think we will harness visitors to the games in a similar way, getting their impressions of organisation, transport, the events themselves, the venue, the whole works. It's not something our correspondents will be able to do in the same way, and we can bring all this together under an authoritative badge, filtering the best contributions to produce something worth looking at.

In essence, what I'm saying is that interactivity needs to become part of a bigger toolkit, rather than the sledgehammer used to bish, bash, bosh our way through fifteen spare minutes of programming. We pull it out of the bag when it's needed and when it's most valuable, not to fill space and not as the raison d'etre for entire strands of programming. Here's PM editor Peter Rippon explaining the new iPM series:

"We are starting a new programme on Radio Four and we need your help. Actually it’s more like an ongoing conversation on the web that will have a programme attached to it once a week. iPM will rely on its audience to help shape the content through a blog."

Right, alarm bells are already ringing. Anything that mentions a 'conversation on the web' needs to be attacked with a big stick before it gets itself hurt. Most 'conversations' on the web, on blogs and message boards, are carried out by people ill qualified to do so, and descend into slanging matches. You need a lot of patience, skill and tolerance to weed out the best contributions before you lose your faith in humanity reading the rest.

"Our intention is to distil the very best of the web to produce a new type of programme that is in the best traditions of BBC Radio Four. We'll be as transparent as we can about the ideas and guests that make it to air. Our blog will explain why some ideas and stories get dropped or squeezed out. Also, by posting our rough ideas in front of the audience, we're also inviting the well-informed and blog-savvy to help us develop a particular idea."

But, Peter, we can do all of that without getting the audience, the blogs, whatever, to build the bloody programme! What I really think we should be doing is outlining our programmes in advance, explaining decisions we make, and offering behind-the-scenes knowledge in our blogging. Why was this guest dropped? Why did we make a certain editorial decision? Why didn't we mention that story?

That's the extra value that ought to come from editors blogging. There was a brilliant morning's entertainment a while back when the daytime News 24 editor blogged from the gallery, minute by minute, for an entire morning - explaining almost everything we saw on air. That's invaluable when it comes to explaining to audiences how we do what we do.

That should not become confused with letting them tell us how to do what we do. By all means we should be encouraging our audience to have ideas, get in touch with us to share them, and maybe even help to see them through. But I'm sure we were doing quite a good job of that before we invited millions of people to text a five-digit number and start their message with 'NEWS' in order for us to see it.

The BBC is about as far as you can get from a closed shop when it comes to exploring avenues opened up by members of our audience. I'm all in favour of our continuing to do that. But it's important that powerful story-led programming is powered by thoroughly researched and well reported audience contributions, rather than diluted by an incomprehensible tide of texts. Interactivity must be deeper than that.

As Clegg becomes the early frontrunner in the Liberal Democrat leadership race, the old leader lends his backing:

Compo for Home Affairs, surely...

There are moments in life - a fair few, actually - when I'm proud to work where I do. This is one of them:

The BBC's online services will be made available free of charge at thousands of wi-fi hotspots around the UK. The corporation has agreed a deal with wi-fi firm The Cloud, which operates 7,500 hotspots around the country.

The news website, programme sites and downloads of TV shows via the iPlayer can be accessed freely.

Any wi-fi enabled device will be able to surf the BBC's website in one of The Cloud's hotspots without paying a log-in or subscription fee. Users wanting to download a BBC programme - or stream a video - will have to use a laptop initially.

But the BBC said the ambition was to let users download programmes over wi-fi on to portable devices, such as the Sony PSP and Nokia 95.

[source: BBC News - 'BBC online to go free over wi-fi']

I mean, it's not simply that this is remarkably useful, in the sense that you can now go into a coffee shop and watch your favourite BBC TV series at your leisure, for free, on demand, in high quality. Or surf the many and varied BBC websites (yes, even catch up on what's been happening in Berkshire - you could listen to ice hockey highlights!).

It's more, for me, the fact that this is ridiculously clever brand positioning.

We are faced with a big dilemma in that younger, internet-savvy people (a bit like, well, me, really) are not always drawn to BBC content. They spend their time on Youtube and Facebook, not necessarily because those websites do anything better than we do it - we offer different services - but because they don't perceive the BBC to be offering anything of interest to them.

But stick them in a wi-fi hot spot and give them two choices - pay up for the web, or enjoy the BBC for free - and I reckon they'll be downloading Eastenders before you can say "boom, boom, boom boom boom boom-boom-boom".

Not that enticing 16-24 year olds back to the BBC (were they ever there?) is going to be as simple as luring them into a hot spot then acting as an alternative to highway robbery. Yes, getting the BBC for free in thousands of places up and down the country is great. But that means nothing without upping our game in terms of the stuff we're putting out for people to use.

The most excellent Drop Click rugby game is a perfect example of what we need to do more often. It's a quiz based on the Rugby World Cup, but by answering questions you progress in the World Cup, eventually winning the final (hopefully!) and posting a high score. It's very clever and looks immense. When I first saw it, I thought it was an independent production, and was very pleasantly surprised to discover it had the BBC name attached.

Now fans going to Paris can play Drop Click on their phones before the final - and cheekily, BBC Sport have got a new link on their rugby pages, advertising mobile coverage:

If only I worked there, eh, in that pit of cunning ideas. Well, steel yourselves, because here's an announcement: I now do. I'm pleased to say I've been offered an attachment at BBC Sport Interactive until the end of March, working for bbc.co.uk/sport.

The aim of the game is mainly to develop and write for the BBC's Beijing 2008 Olympics website, which obviously will form a large part of the BBC Sport website next year. I can't go into any detail but I've seen initial designs for this and they look stunning. The task in hand for me is to make those already excellent designs redundant by coming up with stuff so unbelievably good, it needs incorporating into them.

Watch this space. Well don't watch this space, watch bbc.co.uk/sport, the new home of yours truly at the Beeb. I've not started quite yet - you'll know when I do, because I'll be purring with enthusiasm after my first day in the Sport Interactive newsroom at Television Centre - and I'll be back at BBC Berkshire at the end of it, but in the mean time there is going to be a lot of fun, and hard work, to be had. And you can enjoy it all for free, in a coffee shop near you.

So it's goodbye Ming, despite one of the more impressive lists of Facebook friends you'll see. The problem, one suspects, is that Ming's friend list was also the list of the only UK ciizens who'd vote for him.

From the BBC News website:

Sir Menzies Campbell has resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats, "with immediate effect". Senior Lib Dems Vincent Cable and Simon Hughes made the announcement, saying the party owed Sir Menzies "a huge debt of gratitude".

Speculation has been growing about the Lib Dem leadership, particularly since Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided not to call an early general election - and indicated he may not do so until 2009 at the earliest.

[source: BBC News - 'Liberal Democrat leader resigns']

It's a little difficult to stomach the notion that Gordon Brown's election-that-never-was has brought about Ming's downfall.

After all, if you're a Liberal Democrat (and at least one Dayorama author is), then you'd be a fool to have installed Ming in the first place if the premise was Gordon Brown taking the nation to the polls as soon as he assumed power.

Nobody expected Brown to call an election when he took over, and the media fervour of the last few weeks has only been because wildly excited political journalists thought 2009 had come early. All the political hacks I've seen have looked decidedly downbeat since Gordo chickened out.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that equally disappointed Lib Dems, staring terrible opinion polls and a two-year wait in the face, saw breaking an antique Ming as an excuse for the cheap thrill of a leadership contest.

Not that anyone outside the party can name any other Liberal Democrats to take over, with a few exceptions. We know Vince Cable because he just told us Ming had resigned and he's the acting leader; we know Lembit Opik because he's bonking a Cheeky Girl; and we know Charles Kennedy because he used to be leader.

It's not a world class squad, is it? If the Lib Dems were in the Rugby World Cup, they'd have been Georgia. And just as there are only eight rugby pitches in the entire former Soviet state (fact), so there are few visible opportunities for the Lib Dems to develop.

Credit, though, where credit is due. A search to see which of Ming's Facebook friends has recently updated their profile reveals some staunch loyalty among the faithful:

Oh, and speaking of the faithful, let's see if Ming and I have any mutual friends...

Well done Rachel - but shame on you, Amy Jones. Bet you're Charles Kennedy's friend...

From BBC News Online:

"The search for a deaf and blind dog of 18, which has fallen down a hole on a south Wales' hillside is continuing sporadically into the night.

"Rescuers are using their hands, pick axes and shovels to try to reach Jack Russell cross Sprogget, who vanished under old mine workings in Torfaen.

"It is thought the hole, which Sprogget has fallen into, opened up on top of the old workings from the former Six Bells colliery nearby."

[source: BBC News: 'Deaf blind dog search continues']

Now I have every sympathy with Sprogget's owners - nobody wants to lose their dog in any circumstances - but one has to ask a few questions about this.

Did it not strike anybody that a deaf and blind dog, on a hillside above an abandoned colliery, was an accident waiting to happen?

I'll grant you that even a deaf and blind dog can probably enjoy a good walk with bracing breeze and plenty to smell, but you'd think a lead would be a very wise investment given the inability to call the dog back or wave at it, even without a gaping hole opening up in the hillside!

Sprogget's owner, New Zealander David Sandford, who moved to the area in April, said he believed the hole on the hillside had opened up after recent rain.

Initially he had feared Sprogget might not have survived the first night.

He said: "This is the biggest event of his life so far so I just hope he comes out of it."

Of course one also has to ask: how unlucky can one dog be? Not only has Sprogget lost his sight and hearing, he's somehow had the misfortune to wander into an open hole above an abandoned mine. That's just not fair.

Good luck Sprogget. I'm off to check the sculpture trail for fissures. I don't want to be the one responsible when Toby embarks on Journey to the Centre of the Earth to retrieve his tennis ball...

Well, I decided on a rather impromptu trip to the New Territories today to visit the Ten Thousand Buddha Monastery.

I can safely say that I think I’m about done with steps – there were 400 of them up to this Monastery, so on top of the 268 yesterday, that’s enough. Although, it wasn’t really the steps that were painful, it was the humidity level.

I think I can also safely say that I am about done with Buddhas. I suspect that the latter statement could curse me or something, but lining the steps up to the Monastery were dozens and dozens of life-size Buddhist arhats (Saints) that are supposed to have eradicated passions and desires. I’ve now seen enough.

To be fair though, it was a beautiful ascent through bamboo groves and there were wild monkeys running and squawking around – rather surreal.

When you reach the summit of the Monastery, it’s amazing. It’s wonderfully colourful and surrounded by various statues, temples and a nine-storey pagoda.

The reason the Monastery is called the 10k Buddha Monastery is rather apparent when you wander in. The walls are lined with 12,800 miniature Buddha statues. Floor to ceiling Buddhas, each one sitting in a slightly different position or wearing a slightly different look on its face. Incredible.

Also, you know how in every country there is now a McDonalds and a Starbucks, well, it seems something else has now made its way across the globe…

So it was Island hopping for me today. Well, one Island hop. I caught the ferry (though you can reach it by tube) from HK to Lantau. There’s a couple of vaguely interesting facts about Lantau, which are worth knowing. First, it is twice the size of HK Island, and more than half of this sparsely populated, incredibly mountainous Island, is country parkland. Trails wind around here and there across the length and breadth of the Island. Second, in utter contrast to the previous statement, it is now home to the new HK airport. This can, with a stretched imagination, be described as one of Pattern’s legacies. This means that one corner of the Island is pretty ghastly; an airport and a grim town.

The latter however, can soon be overlooked. Lantau hosts the utterly awesome Tian Tan Buddah. This is a seated Buddah – apparently the largest, bronze, outdoor seated Buddah in the world. It’s 34m high and you need to climb 268 steps to reach the top. I was slightly relieved that I’d thought to strap my knee before I left this morning. It’s a really incredible statue, though it reminded me of the Angel of the North in the way it stood (well, sat) tall and overlooked the surrounding area, acting as a beacon for the surrounding villages and towns.

Beneath the Buddha is the Po Lin Buddhist Monastery. This is an incredibly bright and ornate edifice, with hundreds of burning stoves for the pollen-yellow incense sticks that are lit each day. Truly remarkable.

From the Monastery I wandered along to the Wisdom Path. This is a hillside walk lined with tall tablets (they look a bit like railway sleepers, planted vertically in the ground) inscribed with parts of the Buddha’s sutra / prayer. The best bit about the Wisdom Path though is the view. There was quite a lot of heat haze today, so my photos look quite hazy, but to the naked eye it was magnificent. You can look across the lush green of the Island and out to see, as well as glancing up at Lantau Peak (the second highest peak in HK), for a rather awe-inspiring view.

I then bimbled on for around 1.5km along part of the Lantau Path, to look at the vista of the other side of the Island, down across the airport. From a distance, it looks rather impressive – well, for a chunk of reclaimed land that is now an airport. I sat and watched a few planes fly in and out, then climbed back up towards the Monastery. It was incredibly warm, with the sun beaming down, but so so quiet. It was utter escapism from the hustle and bustle of the City. I’ve certainly caught the sun on my chest though and, even though I’ve drunk my body weight in water (well, OK, perhaos not), I’ve got a slight heat-induced headache. What was it I said last week about mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun?!

There’s also a small village (man-made) in the vicinity of the Monastery / Buddha, which was worth a wander, and then I headed for the bus to allow me to reach the major town, and tube back to the mainland. I ended up taking a detour to one of the costal resorts (pretty grim, American-style resort really) just to see what it is like – I pass a sign advertising it every day on the way to work, so I was rather curious – so in the end caught the ferry back to HK Island.

I definitely plan to return to Lantau. For one, I’d like to see the views on a clearer day, and second, I’d like to visit the smaller towns/villages suggested by ye old faithful guidebook. But for now, the rugby calls.

What a week it's been so far, and it's about to get even hairier. Believe me, I have very good reasons for having been largely absent recently. Here's a quick run-down:

Saturday

Sam and I went to watch the Basingstoke Bison play ice hockey. We turned up in the arena car park a good 90 minutes before the start where, to my surprise, Sam transformed herself into The Knowledge Of Basingstoke and guided us straight into a Frankie & Benny's. This was a result. In a bizarre twist, I found myself putting up half-hearted arguments for not having the enormous sharing platter to start - Sam insisted. That, too, was a result.

It was a result for the Bison, who also went home happy having stuffed the Sheffield Steelers 6-3. Great game, some of the best ice hockey the Bison have played in yonks if you believe fans on the message boards. Ice hockey is an incredibly under-rated spectator sport although, having said that, watching the announcer at the Bison is also an under-rated spectator sport. He was playing everything from Backstreet Boys to Paddington Bear (or similar), and going mental with delight whenever the audience clapped along. He was the Keith Chegwin of ice hockey.

Monday

If ice hockey was my 'home' fixture, ballet on Monday night was definitely the 'away' leg. We ended up in the Hexagon in Reading to see the Moscow Ballet perform Sleeping Beauty.

We were underwhelmed.

For me it just wasn't quite as graceful as you'd imagine. Dancers missed the musical cues by split seconds, everyone looked a teensy bit wobblier than was strictly necessary, and it was all acted out with a lack of emotion bordering on the mechanical.

Then again, this was a one-night-only whistlestop show in a middling English town from a ballet troupe who, for all I know, could be the ballet equivalent of going to see the Cheeky Girls at Butlins. I may be expecting a little too much if I judge ballet as an entity based on this one performance. I'd like to go to a top notch venue and see the undisputed heavyweights of the ballet world (if that's not an oxymoron) to compare and contrast.

The best entertainment of the night came before curtain-up, when I reached my seat seconds before a gentleman with the exact same ticket. "I should have run faster," he jokingly declared as he went off to fetch a steward. "Yes," I helpfully added, faking laughter and defending my seat with my life.

Speaking of the curtain, the man operating the giant red drapes is clearly not paid overtime. His curtain work was abrupt to say the least! At the end of the second act, the ballerina playing Sleeping Beauty had barely jumped into Prince Charming's arms when the curtain snapped shut in their faces. There was certainly no dwelling on the emotion of the moment! But then as there was no emotion either, that's probably just as well.

Tuesday

So which smart-arse decided lacrosse would be a good sport to take up? Me, that's who. The lacrosse team came into the studio, convinced me to give it a go, and I signed up for training on Tuesday nights.

Sam - labouring under the illusion that it couldn't get more painful than the acting in the ballet - accompanied me down to training with the Reading Wildcats, on a slightly damp but bearable evening.

It got a whole lot less bearable the moment I took to the tennis courts being used for training. Lacrosse stick in hand, I was thrust into the deep end, immediately joining a passing drill where I was streets behind absolutely every other player. "Novices welcome", the website will tell you, but you do need a fairly thick skin to survive constant failure in the face of people who've played for years!

That said, I'd hate to give the wrong impression. Everyone was very helpful, chiming in with hints and tips, and soon I was catching a good two-thirds of balls flung at me, even if my passing still leaves heaps to be desired. But then, as one new team-mate told me: "Think how many times you've kicked a football in your life. Now how many times have you picked up a lacrosse stick?"

In other words, it's going to take time. Having been thrust into a 3-on-2 attack-on-defence drill, I was hauled out by our North American coach Jared, who wisely spotted that I haven't the slightest how to defend in lacrosse. It got slowly better. Who knows - in months to come I may actually develop into a half-decent player. Certainly in the social game at the end, Sam and I both had clear scoring chances - her shot was fierce, on target and unlucky to be saved; mine bounced five feet over the top of the net from two yards out.

Wednesday

Everything hurt on Wednesday morning, most notably my back and shins - but there's no rest for the wicked, nor those suffering the after-effects of an evening's lacrosse, so into London I went for a meeting with the BBC Sport Interactive team.

I've been harping on about minority sports to anyone who will listen for months now, so to placate me a lady named Claire (who writes for the BBC Sport Editors' blog here) invited me to participate in a meeting in which the bbc.co.uk/sport team planned their coverage for the 2008 Olympics.

Obviously I've neither the memory nor the permission to elaborate on many details here, but it was extraordinarily interesting and great to be a part of the thought process. Staggeringly, my flood map made it into Claire's starting presentation about new ways of covering events, and she didn't even realise it was my baby! I was extremely chuffed by that. So chuffed that, in an incredibly sad moment, I took a crappy surreptitious phone camera shot of the meeting room:

Ahem, yes, so moving on. Very interesting to see the Sport Interactive newsroom, with neat frosted glass into which the BBC Sport logo is etched, at the very heart of Television Centre. I could put up with spending considerably more time in there, it must be said.

Friday

Has only just started, and it's another big day for reasons I can't really explain yet. (I know, everyone hates the pillock who builds artificial suspense for no good reason). So I'd better be getting some sleep. Good luck to Amy J by the way, who has a job interview coming up later on...

I think the picture below says it all. Check out the queue for a bus in HK this morning. The line of commuters went from the bus stop, backed up the stairs and then along the overhead walkway. Amazing.

In celebration of National Day, there were some fireworks in HK last night, launched from three ships in the harbour. They were pretty amazing - incredibly scenes / displays / sequencing.

Turns out the 23 minute display cost approx. £200,000. That's £145 per second.

No wonder they were good.

Damn waste of money though, really. At the same time whilst the money could do so much good in the world (that's the equivalent a charity asking a donation of £2 per month, for a year, from over 8300 people), it couldn't even buy a decet two-bedroomed flat in London. Money is a funny old thing.

Finally, I have found a park in HK with grass that you can actually sit on. It’s a damn miracle. I have to say though, it may have been grass but it wasn’t particularly good grass: far too much dry soil beneath a thin layer of grass – rather like a threadbare / cheap carpet pile. But, grass you can sit on all the same.

The park was very busy, since it is National Day here (and yet another public holiday). Every Sunday, HK Island sinks slightly from an influx of Pilipino maids. On so-called ‘freedom-day’, approximately 153,000 (it seems a staggering figure, but I can well believe it) line the pavements throughout the Central district of HK. It’s an absolutely fascinating sight. They share food, play cards, chatter away, buy all manner of things from the streets sellers, attend to each others hair, thread eyebrows, pray and generally enjoy their day off. Well, this was repeated today and consequently the park was bustling with the maids, with families and with tourists. There was a very enjoyable community feel, for such a large and arguably anonymous City.

There’s also a so-called “massage path” in the park. People were walking on this, quite steadily, either in light slippers or socks. From what I can tell, it is simply a path composed of pointy pebbles, but it is supposed to have healing properties all the same. The disclaimer on entering the path, however, seemed to dissuade most people from walking along it – no pregnant woman, no one with heart disease, no one with any possible (and they were quite descriptive) foot problem, no one who was old or had problems walking etc – I’m not sure which category I fall into, but I decided against walking on it all the same. Perhaps (see below) I could just say I was English.

To get to this particular park I had to travel on the HK equivalent of the tube, the MTR. It is absolutely spotless and has a reputation for being hugely efficient. My Mother would delight in using it… The train announcer / recorded voice even tells you which side of the train the next platform will be on, so you can hustle appropriately around the correct door. Naturally, you still get advised to “mind the gap”.

In addition to the park, I wandered to the site of the Noon Day Gun. I had absolutely no idea what this was, but it turns out this gun was made by a Portsmouth gun manufacturer in 1901. I am reliably informed that it is a 3lb quick-firing cannon (whatever that may be) and it is still fired each day at Noon. It was this gun (and the firing of it at Noon) that apparently inspired Noel Coward in his song Mad Dogs and Englishmen - only the colonialist braves the heat of the midday sun, whilst the local stays inside… “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun / In Hong Kong they strike a gong and fire off a Noon-day gun / to reprimand every inmate / who’s in late (…) but Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”… You’ve got to admit, we’re a pretty bonkers Nation.