Okay, so I realise the interval between blog posts might be stretching the definition of "slightly less irregular" a little. Go ahead, kick me while I'm down.

The work thing has been getting on top of me in a big way, because the Pointy-Haired Ones have decided, in their infinite and thickly-bespectacled wisdom, that we have too many staff whose meagre salaries are eating into their gargantuan profits. And so, over the past few months, people have been departing the department and not being replaced. The practical upshot of this is that those poor sods among us who remain, such as your Friendly Neighbourhood Pasta Fiend, now each have the work of four or five people to do. My little grey cells have therefore been slogging away more or less constantly for the last three weeks, and are now nearing the point of collapse, much like a 34-stone bloke beginning to regret his assessment of the London Marathon as "a fun day out". Stress-tastic!

On top of this, the strange, hairy chap who rents a room from the very nice old lady in the house next door has started with the swearing again. He does this occasionally, every couple of months, when whatever medication he's currently trialling in the name of medical progress wears off. I've spent many an enjoyable evening trying to sing the Piglet Song loudly enough that my small and impressionable children won't hear the violent purple curses wafting through the aether from the other side of the wall. If you actually manage to meet him physically, which is quite tricky due to his habit of staying indoors unless there's a full moon, he's seems pleasant enough. Assuming, of course, that the word "pleasant" has been drastically redefined by the Oxford English Dictionary to read: "pleasant ['plẹ|zənt] adj. 1. Has the personal skills of a bus crash, dribbles pale yellow froth from the corner of his mouth, and incidentally smells like Satan's bum". I worry on a daily basis that he will come through the aforesaid wall wielding an axe. Maniac-tastic!

But aside from being knackered, insufficiently caffeinated, living next to a possibly-homicidal lunatic, overworked, underpaid and, for some reason, covered in carpet fluff, I'm good. How are you?

Prapiroon is a damn stupid name for a typhoon. For one thing, it rhymes, and that's never particularly impressive for describing something which can tear the roof off your house. Typhoon Prapiroon. Who the hell came up with that idea? Yes, I'm sure in the original Thai, Prapiroon is a terribly impressive name meaning something like "thrusting warrior" or "bloody enormous wind formation", but in English it just means "reason I got stuck at Hong Kong Airport for 18 hours". I doubt that they have an equally succinct name meaning "reason British Bloody Airways sent all my luggage to Buenos Aires", but I shall be phoning the Thai Embassy tomorrow anyway, because you never know.

Since "reason I was in Hong Kong in the first place" also does not translate succinctly, I feel bound to explain that my younger brother took it upon himself to get married to his girlfriend last week, and they had decided to have the wedding in Hong Kong on the rather unreasonable basis, I feel, that they both live there. Duly The Missus and I packed three squillion tonnes' worth of clothing into two small blue suitcases, and bundled our squealing offspring into the belly of the flying behemoth that is the Boeing 747. I would ideally have liked to make my children's first introduction to air travel a gentle one - say, a quick flight to the shops down the road - but circumstances conspired against me, and they instead flew for 13 hours to the other side of the world, whilst sitting (or doing headstands) in seats clearly designed for people with a yard of padding on their bums, and whilst eating food which should probably have been reserved for medical research. Their behaviour, under the circumstances, was pretty impressive; Sarah only threw one bread roll - although, given its consistency, it could theoretically have done serious physical damage - and David only called the flight attendants "poo poo" twice, which for him is something of a record in restraint.

The weather, aside from the aforementioned seasonal gustiness, was uniformly awful, ranging from 39 degrees Celsius with 99% humidity (most notably on the day when I had to wear a heavy penguin outfit and the air-conditioning wasn't working properly) to the sort of rain which is basically a vertical ocean which you have to walk through because your umbrella wouldn't survive being battered by raindrops the size of tennis balls.

The stag party, and the events occurring thereon, are a matter best left to obscurity. *

The wedding event itself was quite a success, as I can happily report that both newlyweds are still married a whole 10 days later. I looked rakishly handsome, of course, and all were charmed by the extreme cuteness of Sarah in her bridesmaid dress and David in his tiny waistcoat and bow tie. My wife didn't look too bad either, I suppose. As best man, I had to give a speech in front of all 250 guests, which was a nerve-racking experience along the same lines as being stared at by a pack of hungry hyaenas who are trying to decide where to bury the bones afterwards. The speech was peppered with stories about my brother's many youthful misdeeds, most of which were actually true, and in fact the speech went down quite well (especially with the nice gentlemen from the Hong Kong Police's Arson Squad, whom I took the liberty of inviting along to hear the evidence stories).

The food, which to my mind is always the highlight of going back to HK, was of course fantastic. The Missus and I spent a particularly delightful evening at the inappropriately-named "American Restaurant" in Wanchai, which serves the best shredded beef in hoisin pancakes this side of the Yangtze, and the sort of toffee banana which makes me wish I had a separate pudding stomach so that I could fit more toffee banana into my abdomen. Then there was "The Water Margin" in Causeway Bay, which specialises in Northern Chinese cuisine and features an internal market where one can trade tokens (which you win at your table by playing some ancient Chinese version of Pickup-Sticks) for extra edible goodies like sesame rice cakes and candied tomatoes. Mmmm... candied tomatoes. Naturally I've brought back a selection of fine edible goodies for my work colleagues to sample, and since I have a reputation to maintain in such matters, they are not the usual bag of sweets but rather various dried goods which the Chinese (and I) consider delicious delicacies, but which might not necessarily be thus to the average English palate. (Dried cuttlefish, anyone?)

Anyway, we are all back safely, which means the irregular blog updates will become slightly less irregular again. Can I tempt you to a curried beef cube? No, you say?

* No, Mister Goldfinger, you won't make me talk, not even with that enormous industrial laser you've got pointing at my goolies.