@PeteH, I hadn't got as far as looking at prices. That's rather north of what I was looking to spend. Damn.

Most stuff's a similar price to the US here, except for Giant which are pretty cheap.

Suppose if I popped over to Taiwan then I could find most stuff cheaper.

We only have Giant and Cannondale dealers here, and the secondhand market's rubbish.

neither of them really makes touring things

Went to a really cool bike shop in hong kong a while back, great prices, but I was never sure how real some of it was. There were a some too good to be true offers

And I can't find any cantilever options from either, too.

So far, I'm looking at a Swiss Cross or CrossCheck

I also want a big dummy, I think Bangkok has a few surly dealers.

Ah ha!

ritcheylogic.com/frames/break-away-cross.html

A breakaway ritchey cross frame

@Alex the price was high on that other bike because it was titanium. Never ridden that

Me neither. Still pretty steep. The Ritchey comes in Ti & steel, so that would be a little easier on my wallet.

Hi @PeteH mother earth reminds us who's boss! :) The focus of your quake was 3km deep, usually quakes of such shallow focus and little magnitude don't go further than 10~20 kilometers around the hypocenter.

we also got a little M4.9 shaker yesterday morning. Works way more efficient than any alarm clock.

@freiheit most damage during quakes is done by consequent fires and tsunamis, so I guess massive fires after quakes would hit insurance companies with fire insurance as hard if not harder than quake insurance.

some time ago when buying computer local shops sold the insurance for "acts of god", such as meteorite hitting earth and what not. Interestingly most people happily bought it.

Actually thinking about it I'm not quite sure how our insurance works. I mean, I'm certainly covered for something like floods, yet presumably they are also considered "acts of god".

The flat I lived in before my house (over 15 years ago now) was in a swish harbour complex, right next to a riverbank. One insurance company refused me insurance because they said the postcode was a flood risk. True, I said, except I'm living on the third floor!

I love it when someone asks a question, you answer it, then they say "nah, I don't really like that answer, are there any other answers?" And you smile and shrug your shoulders, and say "Look, buddy, I'm not the one with the problem here".

I used to get that a lot at the last place I worked. They were very good at going into headless-chicken mode, they'd come to me with a problem, I'd tell them the fix to the problem, then they'd baulk at the solution because it would taske them more than 5 minutes to implement.

There are some cases where theres options x y and z where x is hard and y and z are easier but less good

in this case however, theres only one solution, so...

I finally got around to taking/publishing some photos of our chickens today. So if hens are your thing.......flickr.com/photos/peterhurford/sets/72157650110271797

(They didn't appear to notice our quake either!)

youtube.com/watch?v=IX8sP_JMIC8 , @p

@PeteH