DimWit Kid wrote:.. I will...
On a related note - two days ago one of the friendly snooper just sent me an irritating note saying that he knows I spend time on singaporeexpats.com... which explains my last train of questions!

what the.... nosey f..... or maybe you been to sammyboy as well?
anyway, doesnt matter if you got a virtual machine running linux or whatever, if you are using it on your corp LAN, they will know if they snoop or check the proxy/firewall log.
if you really want to surf the net without corp LAN snooping, then you need to remote control back to a PC at home. luckily for me, all my surfing the net, webcam, network camera, VoIP, etc is via a seperate ADSL line from the corp LAN and on a seperate laptop, no firewall or proxy (although i run my own proxy to get a different geoip location). the laptop is like my sidearm!
if you want to do the remote control thing, let me know...