A San Francisco Slideshow

The images were taken by me in February 2008 and posted on one of my social network sites

On Your Marks!

Big news this past 24 hours in the local media.

Firstly, Singapore managed to secure the 2010 Youth Olympic Games. This is the first Olympic event to be staged in this country and the new NUS Village will be home to many of the athletes when they are here.

Secondly and perhaps of equal importance in many local minds, was the drawing of the $10 million Hongbao lottery.

According to today's papers there were ten winners. Needless to say our ticket numbers did not feature in the 'winners' circle' but no doubt the 10 new millionaires will be very happy.

And So To Vegas

This will be a brief follow up on our recent US odyssey as Las Vegas was a quick three night add on.

I had visited Vegas four years ago and this time instead of staying in Circus Circus we opted for Harrahs. The reason being that is was more centrally located on the Strip and (according to my wife) the slot payouts were better! Alas this proved not to be the case.

It reminds me that prior to our first trip, I did some research into slot machines to ascertain if there was such a thing as a "hot machine" just waiting to jettison its jackpot winnings into our containers.

There are those who believe that if you let others load their money into the machine it will be primed ready to pay out when you follow them. This is a fallacy as the random number generator within the machine keeps running regardless of whether someone is feeding in coins or not.

In other words each machine is pre-programmed to achieve a certain percentage pay out and it is pure luck if your pull of the handle results in a payout.

The rooms at Harrahs were good but the casino itself was so smoky as to be totally unpleasant. I guess the casino owners have worked out that compulsive personalities are likely to be both gamblers and smokers.

By comparisson, the new Wynn's casino and shopping arcade was very pleasant to visit and we had two wonderful buffet brunches there. As it has high ceilings and good air conditioning the smoking was a lot less obtrusive. There were many Asian features in the complex such as the waterfall featured in the image above.

One thing about this trip was that being winter, the oppressive desert heat that greeted us in July of 2004 was not in evidence.