Urban oasis

While it's definitely much more convenient to watch the Malaysian Grand Prix live at 10.00 am our time, I'm still not at all convinced that it's a good idea to have this race and last week's starting at 5.00 pm local time. It's yet another nasty example of the tail wagging the dog, with TV-coverage and commercial consideration calling the sporting shots. Hopefully this won't continue next season. Driving into the setting sun caused problems for the drivers last week, while this time it was a combination of the late hour and the weather which caused a different brand of chaos.

When it was all over, the explanation for the long delay while the race was suspended because of bad weather ('bad weather'? -- more than torrential downpour) was that the officials had to calculate on which lap the leading driver had complete his last full lap (or something like that). It doesn't say much for the computer system if this had to be done manually, and says less for the officials that neither the spectators on-circuit nor the worldwide audience of TV viewers were made aware of what was going on.

The fiasco of having to tell the drivers as they went to the podium that there'd been a change in the finishing positions just topped off the whole sorry mess. That said, once again Ferrari covered themselves with nothing like glory, Brawn came away deliriously happy, and it was great to see unexpected faces on the podium.

After all that, I had to sort myself out and decide what to do. Unfortunately, likely book shops were already closed by the time I got in to town to search for the Stieg Larsson books mentioned by G. I'd also missed the best of the weather, so the end of the day was all a bit abortive. The blip ended up being yet another view-from-the-car-park effort. Ah well ... maybe I'll track down the book(s) tomorrow, and maybe I'll get a better blip then too.