Of course, there are many ways to do that, but with this website, any answers I choose to give are made public.

So give it a go, and ask me anything you want and tell me what you thought of the experience. Of course, I naturally reserve the right not to tell you incredibly sensitive private information, like my shoe size.

Interestingly so far, most people have asked their questions anonymously. Although I know who you are…

(The BBC documentary that was actually made partly from these rushes is The Virtual Revolution, presented by the divine Dr. Aleks Krotoski, Saturdays at 8.30pm on BBC Two)

Incidentally, it’s nice to know that I have finally achieved my ambition to have my name listed on a BBC network programme’s credits. Even if it’s only my netname, and it’s only listed on the website…

For instance, like driving a Ferrari on the wrong side of the road and into traffic islands across the city of Houston, at 3am on a Saturday night, a bit the worse for wear on a malt liquor beverage.

It was 1994, and I was an exchange student at Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, America. The friends I was hanging out with decided that since there apparently were no nightclubs in Baton Rouge, we should make a weekend of it and go to the next nearest major city. Alas, New Orleans (the logical choice) was nixed, and thus the destination was set for Houston. Six hours away. I hadn’t realised that the parents of my cohorts were so rich that they had tiny Ferraris, but they did, and I was in the back seat for six rumbling hours.

It was somehow decided that we didn’t have time to check into the motel that we’d organised, so instead we drove straight to the nightclub, arriving for about 9pm. Whereupon, with my training in British student bars, I headed straight for the bar and ordered a bunch of Zimas – then the coolest “malt liquor” drink being advertised on American TV.

Fast forward to 2am, and the group gradually assembled for the drive home, all of us a wee bit the worse for wear. Astonishingly, the main driver announced that he was too drunk to drive, and as I was the most sober person in the group, I should drive us home back to the motel. Even though I was still quite drunk, it was a sports car, and I pointed out that I was used to driving on the left side of the road. My objections were blithely over-ruled – and hey, how often do you get the chance to drive a sports car? – and I got in.

The group’s general assumption that i would be fine to drive were almost immediately quashed when I reversed the car, and turned it to the left – which is what you’d do in the UK. But apparently not in the US. The screams were almost comical, but fortunately we didn’t hit anything.

Unfortunately, over the next few minutes, I did scrape along the kerb, hit a traffic bollard, and mount a traffic island. In my defence, there’s not actually not much windscreen space in a tiny sports car – and of course, I’m not used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, I was driving quite slowly, until I got the hang of things. After a while, the group calmed down enough to realise that I was asking for directions they didn’t have, so we all ended up looking around for signs to an Interstate or highway of some sort.

Eventually, we found one, I finally had the confidence to put some gas on the pedal, and somehow we managed to arrive at our designated motel. Why the hotel staff didn’t raise alarm bells at seeing a Ferrari pull in at 2am and four kids get out, clearly the worse for wear, is beyond me.

What was worse was the same six-hour journey back across a rumbling highway, crammed in the backseat, but this time all of us hungover.

Unsurprisingly, these days, when there’s an evening of drinking to be had, I get a taxi.

One of the tapes we used to constantly listen to on those long drives to Liverpool were albums by Sam Hui, who along with his brothers also used to make knock-about comedy capers like Security Unlimited. They were simple, but had catchy tunes and comedy routines – in the back of my head, I can probably still recall the Security Unlimited way of learning how to drive. Think of a working class Nolan Sisters branching into Carry On films, with no innuendo.

Then we got a radio, I discovered how to control the television set, and I threw myself into UK pop culture (Smash Hits! Neneh Cherry! Doctor Who!) while my parents wondered where exactly they had gone wrong.

Fast-forward 25 years, and a chance Googling reveals that American casinos are so keen to get Chinese gamblers coming in, they book Sam Hui to perform at Las Vegas, and casinos in Connecticut have Chinese-language websites where lots of Asian pop stars perform, for the cash. I’ve seen casinos put up Chinese-language signs in London and Manchester to compel Chinese gamblers to come in, but this takes it to a whole new level.

As for that Security Unlimited – the film my sisters and I must have watched hundreds of times on repeat on a dodgy VHS – is now on YouTube, and also available via Amazon.com video-on-demand. Technology, eh?

Now if only I could speak Chinese.

I don’t follow health news at all, but even I know that pregnant ladies are generally discouraged from smoking and drinking. So why they need a particular icon to signify that, in the unlikely event that a pregnant lady picks up a bottle of Sapporo beer, is anyone’s guess!

The temptation to make this my new avatar is quite high…

In other American news, a pregnant lady is admitted to hospital. She’s a smoker. The doctors go to court to argue that she should be confined to bed until the baby is born, to stop her smoking and harming the baby. The courts agree.

Look at this Associated Press photograph from the site of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash in Beirut…

Whereas before we literally pointed and shot the camera at our interviewees, this time we also had a lighting kit to contend with. A huge lighting kit on a trolley that came in a flight case – and I was told this was the portable version. It did make a difference in terms of the visual image, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort of rigging everything up and blinding our interviewees. But if that’s the professional way to do it …

Of course, I was the one asking the questions, although it took me a while to master my brief, as they are wont to say in the civil service. But by the time I’d recorded and logged all the interviews, I had enough soundbites to put something together, although it then became a bit of a mad dash to try and find alternative footage to pep up the visuals – and amazingly, if you want to film at the place you work, you need a permit. Plus there’s so much footage in the archives that it’s actually very difficult to try and find the footage you want, that somebody else MUST have surely filmed.

All in all, we spent a day and a half filming, and got about 90 minutes of raw footage out of eight quick interviews, most of them lasting less than ten minutes. It took me a couple of hours to transcribe the interviews to create a rough “script” to take to the edit suite.

Having spent most of my working life vainly trying to get work computers to do basic video editing, it was a real blessing to walk into a properly maintained edit suite running Final Cut Pro, being run by an editor who knew what he was doing. Even if it didn’t seem that different from Adobe Premiere Pro. We even managed to add in a couple of graphical flourishes and a visual gag. I did miss the physicality of doing it myself though – of pressing the buttons, using the jog wheel etc.

So two meetings, 14 hours of filming, 2 hours of logging, a couple of spare tapes for extra shots, and 8 hours of editing later, I can say that I’ve managed to help produce a 4 minute internal film that five key stakeholders seem reasonably happy with. Which is an innovation in itself. But then, Geoff managed to make this video in 5 hours…

Now I’ve got a vague hunger to see what else I can film and edit. Of course, that would mean finding a subject, the time, the motivation – oh, and the equipment as well.

Aside from crisps and nachos, no food should break when you drop it on the floor.

Burnt-to-a-crisp American bacon does, as exemplified by the picture.

Delicious British oily bacon is resilient. Flexible. STRONG.

When someone foolishly drops delicious, tasty, thick, slightly oily, British bacon to the floor, it stays yummy and edible!

After all the stressing of getting documents together for proof and all that, it did seem like a relatively easy process. Just the nail-biting wait – and we paid an extra $100 for an expediter to get an express service too.

Still, now I have three or so weeks to turn my bachelor West London pad into a place permanently fit for a Queen. so that means out with the old rotting food and the decade-old mattress, and in with a new one. Although she likes it soft and I like it hard (fnarr fnarr) so I guess this means we’ll have to compromise!

What else do I need, besides lots of new coathangers and Lush soaps?

Anyway, cnngo.com had a photo-essay featuring the village at the heart of the railway line, and it’s rather striking how it looks an awful lot like the village my parents grew up. Even if I haven’t been back there in 20 years.

Oh, while we’re here, 50 reasosn why Hong Kong is fab. Now if only I spoke Cantonese…