christmas cheer

My last day of work before 11 days off is crawling by so far, but the end is in sight. I am looking forward to a week of sleeping in late, eating very well and drinking too much. Christmas dinner will be a family affair at my Aunt's house. My Aunt's Christmas dinners are amazing and she has a swanky new kitchen to play with this year so i am expecting good things. It will be roast turkey and roast pork and all the usual Christmas trimmings. mmmmm. I am glad that because there was a man preaching forgiveness and tolerance 2000 years ago, i get to give and receive gifts and eat good food until i feel slightly sick once a year in celebration of his birth. I think its what he would have wanted.

And after all the Christmas fun i am off to Stockholm for New Year. Wooo.

01707

As it is the build up to Christmas i have been out drinking quite a lot recently. Last night i saw some University friends. I stayed out late and just made the last northern line tube. It was going to the wrong side of the Northern line but it was getting me closer to home and i could get a bus across and up from Golders Green. The first part of the plan worked flawlessly. I arrived at Golders Green and waited for a bus. It was at this point my plan started to go wrong. I got on a bus, where the warm air, the gentle rocking motion, the low hum of the engine and the fact i was more than somewhat drunk meant i was soon asleep. The next thing i knew i was made to get off the bus at a bus depot. I stumbled off the bus and tried to get my bearings. I didn't recognise the area and was concerned to see the area code for the shops nearby was 01707. (The area codes for London are 0208 and 0207.) I was no longer in London, which couldn't be a good thing. I was drunk enough that the bus system was far too confusing to use to get back but was able to call my flat mate up and give him the name of the angling shop i was standing next to and the telephone number. From this he found out i was in Potters Bar (??) and was able to call me a cab and get me home safe and sound. Apparently my call back to the flat was an amusing one with me on the other end of the line drunkenly trying to explain where i was.

I was just looking today to try and work out the route i must have taken and exactly where Potters Bar is. It is 5 miles north of where i live and just outside the M25, hence the change in area code so the taxi back wasn't too bad. But the thing that is confusing me most is that according to the transport for London website to get from Golders Green to Potters Bar is a journey involving 3 different buses. So my conclusion is that one of the following things happened. A. I didn't get off at Golders Green at all and was somewhere else allowing me to get a direct bus to Potters Bar. B. I changed buses... twice without noticing. Or C. They didn't kick me off at the end of the line and finally noticed i was still on the bus at the bus depot. I think option C is the most likely. But I hope it was option B. I think i can discount A as i distinctly remember Golders Green.

relief

I went up home to see my cousin and her family on Saturday as they are not going to be around at Christmas. I drove over early in the afternoon and was fed once shortly after i arrived with a buffet type spread. It was all very nice and i ate well. We moved on to the pub for a few drinks before returning to their house for a delicious, filling goulash dinner. I was no longer in a fit state to drive so was going to walk home. I thought it would be about a 20 minute walk. It turned out to be more like 30 and was made worse by the fact i left my house keys in my car and only noticed about 5 minutes in to the walk, so had to go back and start again. I felt ominous stirrings in my belly as i was leaving but figured it would be fine. That was a school boy error. The last 15 minutes of the walk were a sphincter clenching nightmare. As i reached my road and my overly full belly was pushing on my liquid filled bowels and i was groaning with the effort of not pooing myself. The relief of release when i finally got home was near orgasm good.

new phone

I replaced my new phone with the best free phone they could give me, which i will inevitably break or lose at some point. I like it though. It has GPS built in so until i lose it i shouldn't get lost. It reads out new texts to me if i push a button - i am not sure exactly when that will be useful but i do like to hear my phone swearing so i have been texting myself with swear words. And if i push a button and say the name of the person i want to call it calls them. That seems to work pretty well and may well be useful.

Chas n Dave

I went to see Chas n Dave in concert last night. (Chas n Dave are a cockney double act who were popular in the early 1980s with various snooker based and tottenham hotspur supporting songs. A good old fashioned cockney pub knees up type act. Snooker Loopy was probably their most famous song. On their fliers they wished people a very happy christmas and a rockney new year. They describe their music as rockney.) It was a pretty enjoyable evening although i foolishly agreed to go on drinking afterwards and then slept through my alarm this morning and turned up to work 2 hours late. It was at the electric ballroom in Camden. They had the weeiest toilets i have ever seen. The entire floor of the mens toilet was covered in a slippery layer of wee. It would have been a revolting fall. After carefully walking to use the toilet and not slipping over i proceeded to wee. i had my coat tied around my waist and the arms were in the way of my zip so i had to hold them to the side. Mid wee i lost my hold on one of the arms, it fell in to the stream and was covered with wee. So my coat is a bit weeey now and i had to wear it today because it is freezing and it is my only coat.

bizarre

One of my friend's has recently moved to Australia. He is living in Perth at the moment where the local university has an anime club he has been attending on a Saturday afternoon. They show a variety of different anime, have some live action stuff and a bit of cosplay. (people getting dressed up as their favourite cartoon/ computer game characters is cosplay) In order to try and make sure they are showing the series people are most interested in they passed out a questionnaire for people to fill out.

Here are some of the brief descriptions of the shows from that questionnaire:

Bamboo Blade [School,Kendo club, girls]
Blue Dragon [Kid,Totem,Evil Empire]
Ghost Hound [Kidnapping,Visions]
Monster Princess [Guy dies - resurrected as servant]
Moyoshimon [Boy sees microbes]
Murder Princess [Princess,bounty hunter,body swap]
New Giant Robo [Daiskue,ruins,Giant Robo]
Pumpkin Scissors [War relief efforts]
Rental Magica [Rent a Magician]
Sky Girls [Young female test pilots]
Touka Getten [Fantasy,Many Themes,Weirdness]

I am intrigued by Touka Getten. A lot of anime is pretty weird so to have weirdness in the description it must be exceptionally weird.

And Moyoshimon - Boy sees microbes might also be worth a look. Looking it up on google brought me to this strange episode description.

The kiviak bit just sounds bizarre. If you can't be arsed to read the link the episode involves the boy who sees microbes following mirobes to a dead seal buried in the ground. Basically, if the cartoon is right, the kiviak is a fermented food eaten by inuits. They bury a seal in the ground filled with birds, leave it for ages and suck the juices out of the fermented birds through their anuses. Surely people can't eat something like that. An internet search for kiviak brought me this description...

"Kiviak is a gastronomical Christmas treat from Greenland which, for some reason, hasn't been adopted by many other nations. It's made from the raw flesh of an auk which has been buried under a stone in sealskin for several months until it's achieved an advanced stage of decomposition. Apparently, it smells like old blue cheese and tastes very pungent."

nothing about sucking the juices out of the birds asses though. There are other sites discussing its presence in the cartoon but i could find nothing definitive. It was mentioned that the best site about it is in Japanese, which is of no help to me as we are yet to learn the words for fermenting dead birds inside seals yet. Who first came up with the idea of fermenting dead birds in a seal carcass anyway? Seems a repulsive thing to try and then continue to do...

lost phone

On Sunday night I went out to the pub quiz thing with the quality streets. I drank too much and stayed too late and missed the last tube. I lost my phone at some point in between going down to the closed northern line and going back up. I had it on the escalator down but not on the way back up. I went back down to look for it but couldn't see it anywhere. I may have sent it flying when i threw my hands up in disgust at there being no more tubes. I am an idiot.

coconut chocolates

I went to a pub quiz last night where one of the prizes was a big tin of quality street chocolates. (a selection of different chocolates wrapped in foil. Life is not like a box of chocolates in the UK because you do know exactly what you are going to get next as all chocolate boxes come with a bit of paper telling you what all the different chocolates are.) They are a popular Christmas gift and there will normally be a tin of them passed around at Christmas parties. Standard eating practice dictates that the nicest chocolates will go first (the toffee and fudge based ones) , followed by the less good chocolates (fruit based and nougaty ones) and you will be left with a load of coconut chocolates in the bottom of the tin, which few people seem to like. One of my friend's Mums uses this to her advantage. She is a very big fan of coconut chocolates but rather than eating them first she will go with the other chocolates first knowing she will be able to indulge herself later on with all the remaining coconutty goodness. My friend is somewhat annoyed by this and in an act of petty revenge has taken to eating the coconut chocolates first even though he doesn't like them.

bragadocious

Thomas Hauser, a boxing writer, had this to say about American's views on Floyd Mayweather ahead of his Ricky Hatton fight this weekend...

"there are a lot of people who don't respond to his bragadocious nature."

I just tried to find the word bragadocious in an online dictionary and unsurprisingly could not. It can be found in the urban dictionary though - a collection of "urban" phrases too cool for normal dictionaries. It is not as good as my favourite made up American word - winningest, but i do like it.

The future

I saw a violin playing robot on the news last night and found this clip of it and other roboty things.
Very cool I think you'll agree.(As long as you find robots doing things that humans can do cool. i do)

Stone company

Writing about my work Christmas party last year got me thinking about my time there. The best story to come out of it was this. You may wince...

Our office was a fairly cramped affair. It was the Summer and it was a hot day so we had a fan going at the back of the room trying to cool things off a bit. Because of the lack of space the fax machine was placed on top of a filing cabinet above and to the left of the desk my boss was sitting at. A fax arrived and just as the page had finished printing out the fan turned back towards the fax and blew the paper across the room. This coincided with my boss turning his head. His open eye and the leading edge of the paper met and he was left with a nasty paper cut right across his eyeball. It was bad enough to bleed. He wasn't sure if it was something he should see a doctor about so checked on the internet to see if there was any advice, but the only mention of paper cuts to the eyeball were people asking the question- which would be more painful, a paper cut to the bell end or a paper cut to the eyeball?

He did have to go to hospital and was given eye drops which he had to put in for months. It took about a year for his eyesight to return to normal. The moral of the story- don't put fax machines between yourself and fans.

Confusing

Last night in Japanese 2 of the words we learnt were hospital and hairdresser.

byoin is hospital.
biyoin is hairdresser.

Confusingly similar considering it might be quite important if you needed a hospital... If you needed a haircut and got a hospital it would be less serious probably but still annoying. I assume it must have led to at least 1 hilarious mix up.

It seems like there may be a lot of these similar words with very different meanings - iie is no. ii is good. ie is home. e is picture or painting.
biru (with a long i) is beer. biru (with a short i) is building.
are some of the other ones i have learnt so far.

3D

I have been tempted to go and see Beowulf recently, mainly to see how good the 3D effects are. My friend has seen it and says without the 3D it would be rubbish but with the 3D it is just about worth a watch. Angelina Jolie is well realised apparently, which got me on to thinking about using 3D for other types of movies. Somebody presumably has already done this, but the world of porn would present a wealth of opportunities for things to be sticking out of the screen. The money shot could be quite the unpleasant experience for the audience.

Christmas Meal

I just went out for our work Christmas do. It is the first lunch time work bash I have been to and drinking was encouraged so my afternoon is not going to be particularly productive. But at least I have an excuse today.

It was a very different affair to my office party last year. Then, I was working for a company that fitted stone kitchen worktops, so the bulk of the workforce was made up of Eastern European men. We went to a Greek restaurant. Our company took up most of the downstairs area but there were also a couple of families sitting downstairs as well. When a load of stone workers get together and drink too much the atmosphere is not exactly a family one and they must have regretted their dining choice that night. It all got progressively drunker and the low point/ hightlight of the evening was when one of the Albanian guys decided urinating in the street outside would be far easier than walking to the toilet in the restaurant. The police didn't see this as an acceptable option and when it became clear he had no papers to be in the country he ended the evening in jail waiting to be deported. This dampened spirits briefly but things soon picked up again and a very drunken evening was had by all. I lost my glasses on a bus on the way home.

Today's Pizza Express Christmas menu lunch was unlikely to be quite as action packed as half the people present were menopausal women who sat there taking turns to fan themselves with wine lists as and when they hot flushed. It was moderately boozy and by the end of the meal the noise level had noticeably increased. The conversation was only moderately painful- the in depth discussion about the Spice Girls and how they look now compared to back in the day was the low point but it did kill nearly 3 hours of the day and was paid for so I can't really complain. Disappointingly, nobody got deported. After last year's benchmark, from now on I am only going to enjoy a work Christmas do if at least one person is deported.

India

I went to see the The Darjeeling Limited last night and was very impressed. It is all in a similar vein to Wes Anderson's previous movies so if you like those you ought to enjoy this one. It does seem a lot of people don't like his films, which I have never understood. They are clever, funny, whimsical and heart warming. I suspect you have to be a fucking idiot not to like them.

It also really made me want to visit India. That or save up some money and travel across Asia.

Colours

We learnt colours last night in Japanese. My two favourites were grey - nezumi iro which literally translates as mouse colour and brown - cha iro - tea colour. I like the way they think. (Apart from the counting system obviously.)

1st class post service

I got home last night to find the post half in and half out of the door. I was able to push it through the rest of the way with very little effort. Thanks to the rain yesterday it was some fairly damp post when i looked at it inside. What was already a pretty crap attempt to deliver some post was made worse by the fact that one of the letters was in a big A4 size envelope with the words "Please Do Not Bend" written in big letters next to the address and, of course, had been folded in half when being posted through the door. It would have fitted through just fine if whichever lazy bastard the post office had sent hadn't tried to put all the post through in one go.

Sunday brunch

I don't feel very well today. But i am happy to feel a bit crap today because yesterday was very very good. It was a friend's birthday and she booked a group of us in to the Savoy for Sunday brunch. It starts at 11.30 and goes on through to 3.00. There is a huge selection of very good food, unlimited champagne and orange juice and a live band. I ate too much and put away a fair bit of champagne. It is difficult to know how much champagne because as soon as you drank an inch of it, a waiter would be on hand to fill it back up again. We then went to the Coal Hole, a nice pub around the corner from the Savoy and on to karaoke box for a few hours of karaoke to finish the evening off nicely.

My flat mate also came along and was not able to make the most of the food and drink as he had gone to a party the night before and wasn't feeling 100%. I got woken up at about 2.30 on Sunday morning by banging coming from the front door. I went out to the living room to find him trying to break in by ineffectually trying to get his hand through a small open window, whilst precariously perching on the railing of the stairs. It didn't look very safe. He had left his jacket and keys at the party so rather than call me, drunkenly breaking in was his chosen method of entry. He had no memory of the incident the next day and also woke up a few hours later on the settee in his pants and wrapped in a towel. He has no idea why chose the settee over his own bed.

eye trouble

As i walked to the station this morning I was worried there was something wrong with my right eye because i had blurred vision. It wasn't until i was waiting for my train that i realised that the cause of my blurred vision was dirty glasses.

Giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving. Today I get to give thanks for being a member of the greatest nation in the history of humanity. USA No. 1. Woooooo. And I can be thankful that my national soccer team qualifies for its local tournament every time unlike a certain insignificant island nation i call home. Yes I have lived in England for the majority of my life and I was born here but I am American thanks to my Dad being American. You cut me I bleed red, white and blue though. I love Toby Keith's courtesy of the red, white and blue (check it out if you haven't heard it- the lyrics are ridiculously patriotic) - I am as American as Mom's apple pie. As long as it suits me to be so. And it suits me to be American over thanksgiving because i get to eat well. I love turkey dinners with all the trimmings and we will be having a big family dinner in a couple of weeks. mmmmmm. I should hopefully be heading out for BBQ food and NFL fun this evening. It is a great holiday. 2 days off before a weekend, lots of good food and lots of NFL. I like the story behind it too.

When the pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in 1620, one of the local Indians called Squanto who spoke English taught them how to catch eel and grow corn and helped as an interpreter with his local Wampanoag tribe. Without Squanto's presence they may not have survived in the new world. After a successful first harvest the pilgrims held a feast to thank God and the indians for their help. Much later President Lincoln made it a national holiday and it became what it is today. Squanto (actually called Tisquantum) is the most interesting part of the story though and it is surprising he had any interest in helping the English out. In 1608 he was kidnapped by an Englishman and taken to work in the UK for several years. He learned the language and returned to America on John Smith's 1613 voyage - he was useful as a guide and an interpreter. He was returned to his people before being kidnapped again by one of John Smith's lieutenants along with other Indians to be sold in to slavery in Spain. Some Spanish friars found out about the slaves being sold and stopped it and tried to educate the indians in the Christian faith. Squanto escaped and made it to England. He worked there for a bit again before making it across to Newfoundland but was unable to get down to Massachusetts so returned to Ireland. He did finally make it back home a year later in 1619 with an exploratory expedition along the New England coast. He found his tribe had been badly affected by Western illnesses and settled with the pilgrims and was there to help them through the winter of 1620. He ended up being distrusted by both the Indians and the English and died with a fever in 1622, possibly a victim of poisoning. Poor guy. He crossed the Atlantic 6 times, was kidnapped twice by the English and almost sold in to slavery, yet despite all this helped the pilgrims out at Plymouth and then was possibly murdered for his trouble.

punic wars

I am reading a book about the punic wars at the moment. I have got as far as the events of the 2nd war - the famous Hannibal over the mountains with elephants one. It is pretty dry stuff and hard to read quickly but all pretty interesting. After Hannibal pwned them a couple of times in battles in Italy the Romans put Quintus Fabius Maximus as one of their consuls in charge of the Roman army. Apparently his good idea was not fighting Hannibal head on like they had done before when they lost badly, but following him around at a distance allowing him to pillage the land but pressing him a bit as he did so hoping he would run out of supplies and have to break up his army. Before Fabius took command he had the nickname of "verrucosus", which translates as spotty. This nickname came about thanks to his prominent facial wart. But after he did well against the Carthaginians he earned the nickname "cunctator", meaning "the delayer." The delayer is a rubbish nickname, although slightly better than spotty admittedly.

Just a little bit of historical interest for you there. In no way did i write about this because i found his second nickname slightly funny because it sounds a bit rude. That would just be immature.

masseuse?

It is not just scrap dealers who come knocking at my front door. The flat i live in is above some shops. The front door is round the back of the shops and up a couple of flights of metal fire escape style stairs so it does require a bit of effort to get to us. Last night at about 9.00 there was a knock at the door. I opened the door to a big guy wearing a tracksuit who looked like he had just finished doing some exercise. He saw me, looked a little confused and said "My friend might be winding me up but I've been told I can get a massage here." I don't know what sort of massage he was expecting coming to some flats above some shops but unless one of the other flats is a dodgy massage parlour, I am guessing his evening did not end as happily as he was hoping. After all i have very cold hands...

shin

I went the pub on Friday night to see a friend who has recently had a baby. It was good to see her again and she seems to be enjoying life as a mother. 48 hours of labour does not sound fun though. It makes you wince just thinking about it... We had a bit of food and a few drinks and a good time was had by all. I caught the tube back and was almost at my front door when i got a text. I continued walking, got my phone out and started replying to the text. My flat mate's car is parked down below our flat. (Parked is not quite the right word. Abandoned is closer to it. It has sat there for months with a leaking fuel line and 4 flat tires and is unlikely to be getting used any time soon. We have had a scrap metal dealer knocking on our door asking if we wanted to sell the car for scrap it is in such a shonky looking state.) Anyway, there is another parking space next to his car which is normally empty and you can walk up to our staircase through the empty space. I was texting and clearly not paying attention because as I walked in to the space I really whacked my shin against the bumper of the car that was parked there.

dung eating

I watched tv when i got in after Japanese and saw a bit of the Liam Neeson film Rob Roy. I started watching about 10 minutes in to the film. Rob and his band were tracking some cattle rustlers. The tracker in the party finds a cow pat. He breaks of a piece, rubs it between his fingers to examine the texture of the dung, then brings it up to his nose to smell and finally pops some in his mouth and has a bit of a taste before spitting it out. Rob comes over to him looking for an indication of how far ahead the rustlers are. His answer is "A day... or two." This answer seems a bit rubbish to me. If I was going to be handling and chewing dung I would want to be able to narrow it down a bit more than 24 to 48 hours ahead. Frankly I don't think I would bother. I reckon just by looking at a cowpat 24-48 hours old you could have a pretty good go at being that specific about its age without putting any in your mouth.

japanese counting systems

Last night during my Japanese lesson we started looking at how the Japanese count things. It seems to be ludicrously complicated...

To count things they first divide things in to different categories. Each category will have a different counting system. We looked at the 8 most common counting categories.
1. People

2. transport and mechanical (cars, cd players, radios, bikes... that sort of thing, but not boats and trains- they have their own counting systems)

3. small animals and fish (cats, dogs, goldfish...)

4. books and magazines

5. pairs of footwear (anything worn on the feet including socks)

6. round and small things(apples, eggs, plates...)

7. long and thin things(pencils, bottles of beer, cigarettes...)

8. flat and thin things (handkerchiefs, postcards, stamps...)

It is confusing enough to work out which category the thing you will be counting goes in to(an ashtray is small and round, not flat and thin, a rabbit is not counted as a small animal but as if it was a bird.), but then each category will have a different way of counting. So to say 3 eggs or 3 dogs or 3 dogs eggs would each have a different word for 3. There are lots of other categories on top of these 8 as well. Bizarrely chairs have their own method of counting. So at some point somebody decided we need a new counting system for counting only chairs and other people agreed with them and they put a system in to place. Why didn't someone at the time they came up with all these counting systems say "how about just the 1 way of counting. That would be a bit easier wouldn't it?"

clairvoyant?

Just before I started my 11 week Japanese course I wrote this...

I have paid for this course and voluntarily chosen to do it so I hope that i am keen and enthusiastic and able to do any homework in plenty of time and do it to the best of my ability. I fear it will be a return to leaving everything to the last minute and not doing it properly. I did enjoy speaking what little Japanese i learnt for my trip so I hope it will be different. If i had to put money on it i would say i will be keen for the first few weeks and then my interest will tail off.

I should have put money on it... This will be the 6th lesson tonight- I just did the homework for it in my lunch hour and am finding it hard to motivate myself to do anything outside the classroom. I must be psychic. That or I know exactly how crap and lazy i am.

onion soup

For my dinner last night I had a sandwich and a whole tub of French onion soup. The soup was delicious but today after distilling in my gut overnight and making my wee smell particularly oniony this morning it has been converted in to a gaseous form of pure evil and is trying to escape. And not without some success.

73

I was buying stuff for breakfast after I woke up on Saturday afternoon and went to the Waitrose where i had previously had a conversation about the end of the world with one of the checkout ladies. This time started very normally. I took my shopping up, bagged it up after it was scanned and just had the usual pleasantries with the checkout lady until I was paying. While i paid the lady was moving her fingers as if counting and when she gave me the receipt asked "What is 73 in French?" I wasn't expecting the question and just answered and left the store. I should have asked why. Why would she need to know what the French for 73 is during her supermarket shift?

galaxian

I still have a blocked up nose and cough, which is annoying. But I just blew my nose and afterwards while the pressures were equalizing or something, it made a sound exactly like one of the aliens from Galaxian attacking from the top of the screen, going from high pitch down to lower pitch. It was good.

Speaking of classic computer games I am going to see if i can download a version of Cannon Fodder over the weekend. I remember it being brilliant and think it would still be good nowadays.

trailing cables

I went in to take my morning constitutional today and found a wet floor in the toilet and a sign warning me about the hazardous conditions. "CAUTION CLEANING OR MAINTENANCE WORK IN PROGRESS... Floors may be slippery. Beware Trailing Cables." I am clearly sufficiently puerile to be amused by the thought of avoiding trailing "cables" in the toilet because it made me chuckle.

remember

It is the 5th of November today and bonfire night in the UK. A charming tradition where we burn an effigy of a man who tried to blow up parliament in 1605 and was hung, drawn and quartered for his crimes. A bizarre way to remember in such an event but that is what we do and it has its own rhyme associated with it. I knew the first few lines but just looked up the rest of it.

Remember, remember the 5th of November,
The gunpowder treason, the plot,
I know of no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Forkes, Guy Forkes, t'was his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below
To prove Old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God Save the King!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

I must admit i wasn't expecting so much Pope burning in the second verse. Apparently the second verse isn't sung much anymore.

Little bastards

I went out for a curry on Monday night (28th of October- 3 days before Halloween) and while we were eating 2 kids walked in. They were wearing Halloween masks but had made no more effort than that to look Halloweeny. They started coming around the tables saying trick or treat. Nobody at the tables gave them anything so they moved on to the waiters. The waiter had some sweets ready to give them but when offered sweets they said "no, we only want money."

Little bastards. Not only were they trick or treating early after putting in very little effort but they would only accept money?

Sense of Smell

I have been ill for the last couple of days. Proper ill. Freezing cold but sweating profusely ill. I am back at work today as I just have a cough and runny nose remaining. The blocked up nose has meant i have lost my sense of taste and smell. Eating food is mostly about enjoying the textures of the food for me at the moment. Beans are much less enjoyable to eat when you can't taste them - they are just unpleasantly textured mush. Losing my sense of smell means, apart from not knowing whether or not the fart i just did smells, that i have a hard time getting dressed. I generally use my floor as a wardrobe so in the morning as i dress, i will pick up potential shirts, smell them and then use them or not depending on the smell of the underarms. If its clean, it's a winner. If there is nothing clean i can go with the least smelly and use a bit of febreeze spray to make it nearly as good as new. Some shirts are too far gone to be worn again and must be put back on to the floor. Without any olfactory ability all of the shirts in the morning smell of nothing. It is a lottery as to what i wear. Nobody has said i smell yet today so i may well have picked a winner.

newspaper?

As I reluctantly walked to the station this morning I passed a man reading a newspaper at the same time as he was walking up the road. It was only a tabloid size newspaper and not a broadsheet at least but still... I have seen people reading books while walking before and it has always seemed a bit silly to me as both require your eyes to be focused on the task in hand. Combining book reading and walking looks positively normal compared with the reading a newspaper and walking though. This man had the newspaper opened out in front of him as he walked and must have meant he had little view of where he was going. What news could be so important that he couldn't wait to read the newspaper?... But if it was that important he could have just stopped and read it. Perhaps he had somewhere very important to be and had some very important news to read? In which case it was probably the right thing to do. But it was the Metro he was reading, (a crappy free paper handed out in the mornings to the commuting cattle.) so I doubt the news could have been that earth shattering. I suspect he was just a bit odd.

Corkscrew

I went to a language party last night organised through the people i am doing my Japanese course with. The idea is you go along and practice speaking your chosen subject with foreign students learning English. It would have been good, but about 10 English speakers learning Japanese turned up and only 1 Japanese speaker came. Anyway, to encourage people to come they offered a free glass of wine. I was the first person to arrive who asked for wine and so they asked me to open the bottle. That should be no problem I thought and got involved in opening the bottle. I was provided with a plastic corkscrew that goes down over the top of the bottle and when you screw it in the arms come up. I put it on and started screwing. The arms weren't coming up very high and there was some resistance but i persevered. I kept turning until something made a snapping noise. At this point I backtracked and tried to get the corkscrew out. It turned out there was already a cork in the corkscrew. It took me a couple of minutes to separate everything and then the whole corkscrew fell apart. They had to search the building for another corkscrew so nobody got any wine for the first 15 minutes of the hour long evening...

chicken atomic bomb

I learnt this over the weekend.

During the cold war a chicken filled nuclear device was seriously considered in case of Russian invasion of West Germany. The plan was to retreat from Germany, leaving atomic devices under ground for a week and then set them off once everybody was safely out. There were worries that if they left a bomb to go off after they had retreated it would be too cold for the electronics to work. Some bright spark came up with the idea of putting a load of chickens in with the bomb and their body warmth would be enough to keep the electrics working. So they would be sealed in with the bomb along with a weeks worth of food to stop them pecking the electronics. And 7 days later the bomb would be nicely warm thanks to the chickens and whoomp. goodbye Russians. Scary to think that was considered but a clever idea.

Japanese

My enthusiasm for learning Japanese has cooled (as i worried it might) but I am still enjoying it when i am in the classroom. It is just trying to motivate myself to do the homework i find hard.

The best word we learnt last week was sebiro - Japanese for suit... Because they associate suits with Saville Row that is what they called them. I like it.

Rugby Gods

The Rugby Gods like pricks. That is the only conclusion i can draw from the defeat in the rugby on Saturday night... Rugby Gods are pricks.

Never Met a Nice South African

I have met quite a lot of South Africans - I live in London after all. I have met 1 nice South African (and she is very nice) so it is not strictly true that I have never met a nice South African but the rest of them have been utter pricks. Obviously every country has its pricks. But that is a pretty high prick to nice person ratio. I would hazard a guess that their prick to nice person ratio is the highest in the world. (I have only met white South Africans though so i could be selling 90% of their population short. Apologies if that is the case.)Which is why, I would love it, just love it if we beat them in the rugby this weekend. I would rather Argentina had got to the final because I wouldn't mind too much if they won. South Africa are the team I would least like to win the world cup so it will either be the best possible result - beating South Africa in the final or the worst possible result - losing to South Africa in the final. I hope the rugby gods think the South Africans are pricks too...

Ow

My sore arm means it also hurts to wipe my backside. Which as I have previously mentioned I do more than the average person. I don't think the left hand is an option. I am just not dextrous enough. I have pooed twice already today due to my boozy day yesterday. And I don't think that will be the last. Ow.

Ouch

I went to the park yesterday, after Sunday lunch at a pub. I had brought my American football along and we chucked that around for half an hour or so. It clearly was using muscles I don't use much because my arm is tremendously stiff today. My forearm muscles hurt and it is making writing a painful business. This would have been fine but I had to interview someone this morning and make notes while doing that. I am not sure how impressed my interviewee was while i scrawled slowly and illegibly on to my page during the interview...

Seinfeld

I was watching some Seinfeld DVDs last night and came across the episode where George is moving parked cars for a guy who is away on holiday. Inevitably it all goes wrong and George can't cope. The man whose job George has ruined comes back and speaks to George. He says...

"Moving cars from one side of the street to the other don't take no more sense than putting on a pair of pants. My question to you is who's putting your pants on?"

I love that line. I am going to try and use it as a put down at some point.

England

I particularly enjoyed England beating Australia in the rugby world cup over the weekend. It was a nerve wracking game made better by the fact i could gloat about the win to my Australian friend later. The country that i happened to be born in beat the country he happened to be born in in a sport we both like. In his face!

Pizza Express for Christmas?

I went to the gym at lunch time to have a swim. On my there there i passed a pizza express. The pizza express had a sign outside it saying they were taking bookings for Christmas already. I hope they mean for the Christmas period and not actually for Christmas Day. I hope nobody would actually think about going to Pizza Express for Christmas. Nobody would, would they?

Japanese

Japanese was enjoyable last night. It was starting out at a pretty basic level, I knew most of the stuff we did, but there was lots of speaking practice and it was good to hear the pronunciations of some words. We did introductions, countries, jobs, where you live, numbers 1-100 and the first 5 japanese symbols we need to learn. By the end all the writing should be in Japanese which will be nice. The group seemed OK. 1 Italian, 1 Greek, 1 English, 1 American, 1 French and 2 Polish. I don’t think I’m going to be great friends with any of them but I don’t think I’ll hate any of them, which is probably the best I could hope for. The teacher is good. An older Japanese lady but suitably excitable and giggly about stuff. My favourite words I learnt last night were sarariman for male office worker and I am a rikuruto kansarutanto.

Learning

I signed up for an 11 week Japanese course yesterday. It will be starting tomorrow and I am looking forward to it. It is the first bit of learning where i am taught by somebody else that I will have done since University. I have paid for this course and voluntarily chosen to do it so I hope that i am keen and enthusiastic and able to do any homework in plenty of time and do it to the best of my ability. I fear it will be a return to leaving everything to the last minute and not doing it properly. I did enjoy speaking what little Japanese i learnt for my trip so I hope it will be different. If i had to put money on it i would say i will be keen for the first few weeks and then my interest will tail off.

Weekend fun

I had a pleasant weekend. It was my cousin's 40th birthday on Friday and her husband was bringing her down to London for the weekend so I went out with them and their 2 kids for a curry and a few beers on Friday night. Saturday was to be a surprise day for her. She was getting a massage in the morning, going to see a show in the afternoon and i was organising dinner in the evening for us and various members of our family. Considering how disorganised i am and the fact that i had no table booked until about 3.00pm on Saturday, it all came off surprisingly smoothly. And then on Sunday I had a good Sunday lunch in Camden with a friend, walked down along the canal and through Regents park and in to town and finished the evening off watching NFL with a few beers.

My cousin has an incredibly cute 18 month old son. On Friday night we were waiting in the hotel bar for my cousin and he was dancing along to songs on the tv which was very cute. Then pooed himself while standing up. His face screwed up with the effort of it all and he moved in to a slight squatting position with both hands clenched. That also made me laugh. And in Belgos for the dinner on Saturday night he was taken by the waiter to meet the chef, who gave him a hat and an icecream to eat which again made him look very cute.

And during our walk along the canal and in to Regents park some bastard chucked a dog in to the canal from a bridge abandoning it in the water. It got out fine and seemed ok but still seemed entirely uncalled for.

Norris McWhirter

I was e-mailing my friend yesterday and wanted to mention Norris McWhirter in the e-mail. (Norris was the co-founder of the Guinness Book Of World Records and an ever present back on Record Breakers as the official adjudicator right up until his death. If you are around 29 or older and British you will know who i mean.) Anyway, I was unsure of how to spell his surname so did a google search to find out. One of the pages that comes up is a link to an interesting and shocking BBC news story about the death of tv presenter Ross McWhirter. I had never heard of him, but he was Norris' twin brother who co-founded the book with him and presented Record Breakers before Roy Castle. Ross was particularly anti IRA. He was so anti IRA that he offered a reward of £50,000 for information leading to the arrest of IRA bombers. The IRA were not best pleased with this and the Balcombe gang sent two gunmen to his house and killed him by shooting him in the head twice.

Odd to think that sort of thing was happening in the UK only 30 years ago.

School Trousers

As i was using the toilet the other day at work, i looked down in to my favorite work trousers and noticed a name was sewn in to them as if they were a pair of school trousers. Worryingly though, it was not my name sewn in to the trousers, but the name of one of my school friends. So I am wearing my friend's school trousers to work. I am 29.

I have no idea how it happened, but they are a good fit and are good smart work trousers so i will continue to wear them.

Woolacombe

Woolacombe is great. I made it down on Friday night in time to have a couple of pints before bed. On Saturday I went for a run along the beach, ate pasties for lunch, went for a walk along the beautiful coast, had a good tapas dinner(and free fireworks show thanks to someone getting married at the posh hotel near the restaurant) and a couple of pints in the only oldish pub left in Woolacombe. It is all trendy night spots nowadays. Sunday was more relaxed but i did go surfing and had a great Sunday lunch in a country pub. And Monday started with some surfing - my brother and I were the first in the sea, which was cool. Another walk along the coast and a crab sandwich lunch in a village pub finished the holiday off nicely.

I want to live by the sea. I intend to look in to it. Sadly, I probably won't though...

Hit in the testicles. ooof.

I was driving straight from home down to Woolacombe on Friday night and so grabbed myself a sandwich after work to eat on the walk to the station. As i struggled to extricate said sandwich from its wrapper, i fumbled it but was quick enough to catch it before it hit the floor. Sadly i caught it by bringing my hand down and trapping the sandwich against my testicles. It hurt. It must have been funny to watch though.

Surf's Up

I am driving down to Woolacombe for the weekend tonight for some seaside fun. Apart from the overly long drive there and back, I am very much looking forward to it. Seaside walks, pasties, beer, sunshine(?), surfing and sleeping. Awesome.

tatooed man

I was buying some beer at our local corner store last night to go along with the delicious curry we ordered to have delivered when a tatooed man walked in to the store, had a bit of a look around and then asked the lady behind the counter, "Do you have any boxes of champagne?" (whilst doing a mime of pushing the plastic thing at the front of a box of wine.)

Because I am a snob I found this funny.

This story reminds me of another box request story. This time i was in a kebab shop waiting for a particularly delicious kebab when an enormous (both tall and very fat) man walked in and asked "How much for a box of meat?" (A large box of various kebab meat is only £4 apparently)

Japan

Japan is amazing. A beautiful, friendly, polite, crime free, karaoke laden, bizarre, sushi filled land of fun with really cool, really fast trains. I had an awesome time.

My two favorite evenings were the first night we got there in Nagoya and a night at the baseball in Tokyo. For our first night we went out for a couple of beers before walking down a street full of bars and restaurants to find somewhere to eat. A lady standing outside a restaurant beckoned us in and although the menu had no English writing on it, there were pictures so we would have some idea of what we were ordering, which was not always the case. We sat at a table next to the stage, which was being used to show a John Wayne movie on loop with the sound off. The music was a selection of cheesy Western love ballads. We ordered some drinks and a selection of food to share and were generally having a good time when the Japanese man sitting at the next table along decided it was the right time to start masturbating. From my angle all i can see was his hand making a mastubatory motion, but the people on the other side of the table confirmed there was flesh on display. One of the waitresses noticed his tumescent condition and politely asked him to stop. As his fun had come to an end for the evening, the man got up to leave but was so paralytically drunk at this point that he fell forward flat on his face. Again, no fuss was made. Two of the waiters helped him up and out of the restaurant. I don't think the same behaviour in the UK would have been treated in such a friendly manner. The evening's entertainment didn't stop there though. We continued eating and drinking and to finish the evening off the bar ran a bar wide rock paper scissors competition, led by one of the waitresses up on stage. By virtue of not really understanding what was going on we won the first round and were rewarded with a pen. And then on to the karaoke box place just down the street to finish things off with a couple hours of drunken singing. Masturbating man, rock paper scissors competition and karaoke... It was a great evening.

The baseball was the most enjoyable sporting event i have been to in ages. It was the Hanshin Tigers (Apparently Japanese baseball's best fans) vs the Yamuri Giants. I decided to support the Tigers because they had a good headband, which i sported throughout the game. It got me some good interaction with the Tigers fans. The atmosphere was brilliant, like a football game because of all the singing going on. It was a great game too, the Tigers won it 9-7 in the 10th inning. (That means it was very close to anyone unfamiliar with baseball parlance.) And you could bring beers in from outside so it was a pleasantly drunken experience. There was a lot of high tenning with Japanese people towards the end of the game.

Bleach

The anime I have been watching recently after finishing Monster is Bleach. There are about 140 episodes. 2 days of solid anime entertainment. I am 45 episodes in and it is pretty good so far, although a little Dragonball Z esque in its ever increasing power of the combatants.

Work

I have had to actually work this last week. It has been annoying. The guy who sits behind me, and, most importantly, can see my computer screen, normally works from home and only comes in once a week, if that. He broke his computer though, so has had to work from the office, so i can not while away my day idly surfing the internet, occasionally pretending to work. Although I have been considerably more productive at work, I want things to go back to the way they were...

This week I have been entertained by our French IT guy coming in for a day. He has been living in Scotland for the last 3 years and still has a strong French accent when he speaks. He has picked up Scottish terminology though and will say things like "that was pretty funny like." It is a good way of talking.

I also was very much looking forward to interviewing a Swedish librarian this week. I am sure you can imagine what i was expecting, but i was disappointed by the reality. I was confronted by a big fat dark haired thing when i walked out. It really was quite the let down.

And I am off to Japan on Sunday. Woooo. How very exciting.

Lost Phone

I lost my phone on Saturday night. I think I probably lost it when I was jumping up and down while watching a good ska band on Saturday night. Because I am cool and young and watch good ska bands on Saturday nights. The band was called Imperial Leisure. They were good to watch. Quite the showmen. I went along to this trendy young person's evening for a friend's birthday and was sceptical before my arrival but ended up having a very good time. Apart from losing my phone. I am slightly annoyed about the photos i will have lost, but it was kind of inevitable as i was never going to be organised enough to get them on to a computer and i was bound to break or lose the phone sooner or later. I don't have a very good record with electronics. This is the first phone i have lost though. I normally break them. I have been through about 6 phones, 2 ipods and broken my computer a couple of times in the last couple of years.

Good Work Barry

Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's home run record is an amazing achievement. 756 home runs in 21 and a half seasons of baseball is unbelievably impressive.

Yes, he may have taken steroids, which would certainly help you hit the ball further but you still need the skill to hit the ball.

My main complaint about the whole situation is the way he is being treated by the media and fans. He has never been found guilty. Mark McGwire, also suspiciously big, suspected of steroid abuse and never found guilty, was hugely celebrated by media and fans alike in 1998 when he broke the single season home run record. In a different sport, Lance Armstrong has been accused of drug abuses after dominating the sport and has never been found guilty, yet he is still an American hero. All 3 acheived amazing things. All 3 have been suspected of cheating. Only 2 are considered sporting heroes? Hmmm.

Comic book shop

I went to see Rear Window at Somerset house outdoor cinema last night. It is a good setting to watch movies, particularly that one. Rear Window really is very good. It is how movies should be. Nothing fancy, just relying on a very good script and good actors to entertain.

I met a friend before hand. He has also been watching anime recently and so we were both intrigued to see what manga was for sale so rather than meeting in a pub or at a train station we arranged to meet in a comic book shop. How cool are we? I ended up buying the 2nd episode of Death Note. It seems good, although it took me a few pages of confused reading before I realised you read it starting from the back.

lobster

It is cheap lobster month at Belgos so i went out for some delicious, relatively cheap lobster last night. mmmmm. I like lobster. Not only is it tasty, but it is also fun to eat. It wasn't as fun as the first time i ate lobster though, as we only had crackers and a long pointy thing and i wasn't given a plastic bib with a picture of a lobster on it. The first time i ate it i was fully bibbed up and was only provided an ineffective set of plastic crackers, so the big stone in the middle of the table was the tool to break open your lobster, which is clearly the best and most fun way to eat lobster.

I also got the splashback from a worryingly large pigeon shit hitting a sign on my trousers as i stood outside texting. It was good i was not standing directly under the torrent. It would have been truly unpleasant.

No Heating

We spent the last Winter without heating in our flat. There seemed to be a problem with the boiler. Rather than call the landlord to get it fixed we took the easy option and did nothing. Yes, we could see our breath in the living room on occasion, but a bit of cold never did anyone any harm. The gasman had to finally come in today and do some sort of check required by law on our gas system. He quickly pointed out how to use the heating. All it required was a little competence... Oh well. Think of all the money we saved and the good we did for the environment not using heating. We don't look so stupid now do we?... Oh

Monster

And I have been watching lots of Monster. 72 episodes of exciting serial killer investigating action. I am 25 in so far. It is good. Not FMA or Death Note good but not far off...

curry

The curry I ate last night was delicious. Prawn Puri followed by lamb tikka korai... Mmmmm. It is treating me considerably less well today though. I have been doing some very unpleasant things this morning. I pity my colleague.

On the walk down from Highgate tube to the curry house, there is a shop that sells furnishings for the home. Although whose homes they are filling I worry about. They sell nothing but ostentatious and tacky pieces of crap. Mirrors in the shape of golfers, poorly rendered wall hangings of Michelangelo's creation of Adam, horribly jewelled vases. It really is chock full of chintzy junk. Yet the items in the front window do change and they haven't gone out of business yet. So some people must be looking at these gaudy trinkets, approvingly examining the expensive price tags and filling their homes with tat. Who???

Fruit and Veg

I have been distracted by scrabble on facebook and have found very little time at work to write in this recently. But I did decide my favorite fruit is the raspberry this weekend.

The perfect raspberry is deliciously sweet, whilst also being so tart it is on the borderline of being too tart. And tasting all raspberryie of course. And it has quite a good name too.

And while i am harping on about my favorite fruit i thought i would mention asparagus is my favorite vegetable, not only because it tastes delicious, but also because if you are gentically enabled, it makes your wee smell of asparagus. I am.

sleepy

I am struggling to stay awake today. The office is warm. My eyelids are very, very heavy although not as heavy as my chin which seems to want to rest on my chest alot more than normal. Only 4 hours to go til the weekend though! Woooo. And i can lie in tomorrow.

cat like reactions

As i walked to the tube last night to go out for a delicious curry (Bengal Berties- on Archway Road a bit south of Highgate station. I've had very few better curries in London), a bumble bee flew at my face. Thanks to my cat like reactions i was able to move my head aside and watch the path of the bee as it continued past my face. I imagine if someone was filming it and then watched it back in slow motion it would have been exactly like the bullet dodging scene in the matrix, only slightly more impressive.

Death Note

I finished Death Note the made for tv live action movie last night. It is a condensed version of the anime that works better in places, but falls a fair way short overall. The ending is handled considerably better though. I will have to find out how the manga ends...

Fat Builder

The fat scaffolder is going to be around for a bit. I walked by this morning and his building crew had managed to get their truck to block the street. There was no driver around so it was causing some annoyance. The fat scaffolder was being asked to move it as i walked by. His response?

"I ent fackin' movin'it am I." in a manner suggesting it wasn't his job to move it.

That, presumably, would be impossible for a scaffolder to do.

Cornwall and New Leaf

Cornwall was very good, if rainier than I would have liked. The train journey was just too long and after some unwise drinking games, some enjoyable putting my head out of the window to take in the views as the train went by the sea and more alcohol than i was expecting us to bring on the train we turned up at Bodmin Parkway a little worse for wear. After an apparently very forgettable taxi ride we arrived and went down to the beach to drink some more. I woke up in the middle of the night lying on a sofa. I was supposed to be staying in the other building but didn't trust myself at that point to actually find it so finished the night on the sofa. The next day involved an exciting amount of table tennis, hoopla, arriba, carumba (essentially keepy uppy), darts, haddock and clotted cream pasties, karaoke, amazing apple pie ice cream, drinking in nice cornish pubs, fish and chips, the yes no game using a bell from deluxe pit (a fun card game if you have not played it), drinking games and good pub animals and a disappointing amount of cold pissing rain and having to change clothes with women. The next day was actually very nice so a few of us walked around the coast to Padstow. It is a lovely stretch of coast line with one amazing beach along it. After ambling and paddling our way around we tucked in to a couple more of Stein's fishy pasties and some more apple pie ice cream - truly great ice cream before heading home for a variety of sporting fun and a barbeque. I returned home on Sunday after an amazing pub lunch. The best roast potatoes I have ever had for lunch in a pub. Normally the potatoes and veg are a let down in a pub roast. A bit more pool and darts finished things off and only a 4 hour train journey home remained. That ended up being 1 hour 45 minutes longer than expected as we crawled from Reading to London. They didn't even apologise or explain the delay. It was a very enjoyable weekend though.

Death Note

I was very wrong to doubt Death Note. It is brilliant (Although the end could have been better. After all the previous cleverness it seemed a little unlikely.) Right up there with Full Metal Alchemist.

They are 2 of the best series I have ever seen. I would recommend them to anyone. After those 2 and cowboy bebop, which was also pretty entertaining, I fear I am going to struggle to maintain that level of quality in what I watch.

stereotypes

"Why is being a scaffolder like being in the Navy?

Because you are always on the piss."

That was the pearl of wisdom a fat scaffolder on the way in to work was informing his colleage in an accent that couldn't have said "i'm a builder from Laaandon" any better.

This was after he had yelled some abuse at a passing woman.

It is always nice to see a real life stereotype.

Level 70!

Ahh. No more experience earning for me. I finally hit level 70 in WoW. Woot. FTW. Now I can start taking the game seriously...

Although that will have to wait until after the weekend. I am going down to Cornwall this weekend for some seaside fun. Mmmmm pasties, Doom Bar, fish and chips and Rick Stein's delicious chutneys. 4 days off. That will be very nice. Despite knowing the date and the exact train people are going down on for the last 2 months and being told where i could get a return for £27, I did nothing and am now going to have to pay £70 for my train ticket. Useless. I am going to try and be more organised from after this weekend. I have Monday off and i plan to get my little brother's rear left wheel on his car sorted (it makes a worrying grinding sound when being driven and corners somewhat erratically at speed) and get all my crap cleaned and tidied. After all, tidy room, tidy mind as they possibly say. That will be a stern test of my new organisational resolve. I definitely will not sleep in late and then sit around watching anime and playing WoW.

I was wrong

Death Note has picked up again at the start of the 2nd series. I was wrong to doubt it.

And I am within touching distance of level 70 on WOW. I should get there tonight. Wooo. Only 22 solid days of play required. That is a worrying amount of time to invest in anything. 528 hours. They say it takes 200 hours of learning a language to be able to get by in that language. I could be well on the way to my 4th language by now... My brother and his girlfriend stopped playing when they had a holiday and realised how much they could get done when they weren't playing. If I stopped though, I would just end up running out of good anime to watch that much sooner so I might as well carry on.

Things I should be doing rather than playing WOW

Getting my little brother's car fixed, taxed and MOTd by the end of the month
Cleaning the kitchen
Cleaning the living room
Cleaning the bathroom
Cleaning my bedroom (i could have just written cleaning the flat but it is too big a job to warrant just one entry)
Sorting my American taxes
Learning Japanese
Reading about where to go in Japan
Keeping in touch with friends who i am generally too lazy to contact
Try and find a career that actually interests me

Nothing too important then... I'll just play for a few more months

Death Note

I have been watching a lot of Death Note recently. Another very well done anime, this time about a kid who finds a Death Note a Death God dropped. It allows him to kill by writing the name of anyone he wants dead in the death note. He tries to create a perfect society by killing criminals and is hunted by the police for his crimes. Most of the first series has been brilliant, but it has slipped a little at the end. I still have the second series to watch so I will reserve full judgement until then.

Giant Spider

I went to see Lord Of the Rings the musical on Saturday. I don't think I would have made the effort to organise tickets myself, but my brother and his girlfriend were going so i thought i would go along and have a look. I am a big fan of the book. I thought the films were quite good although they annoyed me with the unnecessary changes in the story. It is obviously a big ask to fit 3 books and an interval in to 3 hours but they have done it pretty much as well as it could be done. I think it might be totally incomprehensible if you hadn't seen the films or read the book though. The songs weren't particularly memorable but they were entertaining enough and there weren't too many of them. The real strength of the show was how good it all looked. The many sectioned moving stage worked well, Shelob was an impressively big spider and the highlight was the disappearance of Bilbo at the beginning. They dimmed the lights on him as he put on the ring but you could still see his outline. Rather that walking off the set in the dark, he actually appeared to disappear. It was very good.

My favorite part of the performance was just before the brief second interval though. Whilst they presumably did some sort of set change on the stage, they sent out some of the people dressed as orcs in to the crowd to scare us while we waited. One of these people was getting in to position during the 2nd act and scared some woman so much that she screamed and shouted "Fucking hell" very loudly to my amusement.

sad

Today I was saddened to read about Chris Benoit killing his family and himself. It was a terrible thing to happen. A few years back I was quite in to the wrestling and Benoit was one of the names involved during my favorite period of the wrestling. As I was looking for more information about Benoit, i found out Eddie Guerrero, another wrestler i enjoyed watching, died a couple of years back of heart problems. Steroids do really seem to screw people up. The WWE is rather unconvincingly trying to say the Benoit incident has nothing to do with steroid abuse.

The thing I used to enjoy most about the wrestling were the enjoyably ludicrous stories they came up with. Vince vs Stone Cold was my favourite. They still seem to have a decent imagination as they were running with a story where Vince MacMahon had been assassinated by being blown up in his limosine but Benoit's death resulted in the cancellation of the storyline.

pipe smoking gent

I went to see some comedy last night. I caught a bus to get there. As I was waiting at the bus stop a smart looking city type came up to the bus stop. He looked to be about 30. As he waited for the bus, he got out his expensive looking pipe and lit up. Nothing says English gentleman like smoking a pipe. It was a fine look. It is very rare to see a (tobacco pipe - i mean. Obviously I see crack pipes and other drug pipes all the time) pipe nowadays and I have never seen a young person smoking one.

Reindeer eyes

As I got in to the tube carriage to return home after the pub last night the only seat that was free was next to an old man. He had long flowing white hair in what was trying to be a side parting. Whatever he used to brush his hair in the morning clearly wasn’t up to the task as his hair was all over the place. A bushy white moustache complemented his hair nicely. He was dressed pretty smartly, reading the Times and had a suitcase next to him suggesting he had been away somewhere. I settled down to try and read my book. I was finding it hard to concentrate on my book because of the alcohol in my system and the dry style in which the book was written and spent most of the time repeatedly reading the same paragraph trying to take something in. As the train got further out from London the carriage emptied. It got to the point where it was just myself, the old man and an attractive, heavily tattooed lady on platform shoes who had got on at Camden in our section of the carriage. The old man had finished his paper and was tunelessly whistling to himself. I had drunk enough to think it was a good idea to talk to the old man. The conversation went something like this.

“Have you just got back from holiday sir?” I thought the sir would appeal to a man of his generation.

“What’s that?” he replied in exactly the accent I was hoping for – a slightly upper class almost ex-military accent.

“Have you been on holiday?” pointing at the case by his feet.

“Oh yes. I’ve just been visiting my son up in Norway.”

“Nice. Where abouts?”

“Up near Tromso. Right up in the North” It might have been Tromso. I cant remember what he actually said.

“Ahh. I’ve visited the South but not made it up that far. I assume its nice?”

“Oh it is…”

“What does your son do up there?”

“He is studying reindeer eyes.” He said this with slightly uplifted eyebrows and a half smile on his lips. I wasn’t sure if he was smiling because he knew how odd that sounded or whether he was just making this up.

“Really?”

“Yes. He flys around in a helicopter and shoots the reindeer with tranquiliser guns so he can do his tests.”

“Really... What tests is he doing on their eyes?”

“Reindeer eyes change colour and structure with the seasons and they are trying to work out why that happens.”

We continued to talk but that was the best bit of the conversation. What a brilliant sounding job. Hanging around Norway flying in helicopters shooting reindeer. The checking out their eyes bits sounds a bit less fun but you can't have everything… I checked it out on the internet and reindeers eyes do change so he was either a good, imaginative liar or it was true. I hope it was true.

Stale beer

I don't like the new smoking ban in pubs and restaurants that has just come in to effect here in the UK. My argument against the ban before it happened was it is taking away our freedom of choice. Pubs should have the choice to be smoking or non smoking. People should have the choice whether to go to/work in a smoking or a non smoking pub. I went to a nice old pub last night and since my visit my argument against the ban has changed. Previously, the cigarette smoke masked the other unpleasant pub smells. With out the smoke, the stale beer smell is really allowed to come through, which was quite unpleasant. It was one of my favorite pubs before, but unless they can do something about that smell, I will not be returning very often. All because of the evil smoking ban...

Middle Class

I doubt if many people in the country had a more middle class weekend than me. My weekend began on Saturday with a trip to the best restaurant in Leicestershire for a spot of lunch, washed down afterwards by a pint in a quaint country pub. After returning to my brother's home we took afternoon tea before a light supper, which was a selection of meat and cheeses with bread. After allowing that to settle we headed out in to the country and enjoyed a stirring open air rendition of the light opera classic Pirates of Penzance in the grounds of a rather lovely old house. The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast and a bit of reading the Sunday papers, we cooked a delicious salmon and fennel risotto for lunch, before popping out to catch the new Picasso ceramics exhibition in the Leicester museum…

How middle class is that?

Ooh La La

I thought Ooh La La was something said by French stereotypes. Whilst watching Gail Monfils yesterday at Wimbledon, i was pleased to discover it is a phrase used in real life by French people. After miscuing a shot off the frame of his racket he let out an exasperated "Ooh La La."

Apart from that, it was a good day out. No rain, a pleasant amount of beer, some good tennis and no work...

Badadada da da da da da da da da daaa

That, of course, is the BBC theme tune to their Wimbledon coverage. I use that because I am going along tomorrow to try and get some tickets along with all the other twatriots. Come on Tiger Tim!

Shunt

I was in a car crash in Malta. Their roads and driving abilities leave something to be desired. After driving up a dead end because of road works, we were almost hit by a car and trailer reversing the other way to turn around. We turned around and went back to turn on the the road we were previously on. As we were waiting, stationary at the t - junction, the car with the trailer that had almost reversed in to us decided using breaks wasn't the way he liked to slow down. Driving in to the back of us was his preferred method. It buggered his bumper but left surprisingly little damage on the bumper of my little brother's car.

Malta

Malta was good. I had an potentially embarrassing moment on the Heathrow express on the way to the airport though. I was chewing gum. I sneezed. I no longer had chewing gum in my mouth. The gum was no where to be seen. There were a few people sitting in front of me but nobody got angry. I had a good look around before I got off but could find no evidence of the gum. So if anyone did find a piece of chewed gum about their person or on their baggage after travelling on the 5.55 heathrow express I apologise to them.

I had never even heard of Mdina. It is a beautiful medieval city, with well preserved (/restored?) honey coloured buildings providing the narrow streets with plenty of shade, with the odd palace or two, impressive open squares and a cathedral to finish things off nicely. It is set on a hill with great views over the thick city walls, next to the more modern town of Rabat. My little brother took us there for a wander around before sunset and a really good meal. It is an amazing place, yet, bizarrely there were almost no one there. It was good getting the view of the city with the setting sun before the food and seeing it tastefully lit up after dinner. It is brilliant and would have been worth the flight just to see that... We also relaxed on a beach, ate well and had a look around Valetta. Valetta is not as good as Mdina, but still has a lot of charm. The beheading of St. John by Caravaggio in the baroque Co Cathedral (i never found out why it is a co catherdral and not a straight cathedral) is impressive and the old buildings all around the city, despite being pretty run down are still impressively grand.

I had a great time and would happily go again. Getting up at 5.15 in the morning on Sunday was a little hard after a night on the town though. I might not do that again...

Maltese Cross? poke him in the eye...

Hooray. 3 days off. And sunny Malta to look forward to. Instead of packing and getting everything ready last night (and making various calls i needed to make), i somehow managed to fall asleep from about 7.30 until 10 to 1 in the morning. I was all confused and sleepy and unable to pack when i woke up. I did make sure i found my passport before bed as it can take some time to find things in my bedroom, but did the rest of the packing this morning. Not getting any washing done last night has meant i had fewer clothes available than i would like. I am lacking underpants and swimming trunks but I intend to buy those at the airport...

Rant

I dislike Father's Day and Mothers Day and Valentines Day. They are all invented to make people spend money. Surely you should be nice to your parents all year round, not just for one day. And a spontaneous romantic gesture is far better than the forced romance of Valentine's Day. They are all rubbish and should be scrapped...

Just Odd

After luckily stumbling across Full Metal Alchemist, I have been trying to find other anime of similar quality. I have watched some of Basilisk, which I have found a little confusing so far and it certainly lacks the depth of FMA and I was pointed in the direction of Gilgamesh and Cowboy Bebop, but have not started those yet. Another recommendation I got was Club to Death Angel. Not recommended for its quality but for sheer weirdness. I watched a bit of it last night and it certainly is odd. It is about a an angel living with a boy. She is an angel from the future and has the power to turn back time and keeps killing him with her magic club in gruesome ways when she gets angry and then bringing him back to life. Another angel has come back as well to properly kill him (rather than the playful killing of his angel) because in the future he will create an anti aging device, which is against God and will be a paedophile(??). His angel only wants to stop him learning so he can not invent the anti aging device. He spends his time letching over the selection of buxom young girls in the cartoon and getting killed... It is as odd as it sounds. It is amusing but also a little disturbing.

Respectable defeat and binocular camera

The glider competition was good fun. We were fortunate to have bright sunshine for the event. Having said our glider looked good after seeing a picture of it, I realise I was mistaken. Amongst the carefully sculpted planes belonging to the other entries, our glider looked distinctly half assed. Not even the shark sticker on the side or our name on the wings made it look any better. Nobody else was using 5p pieces to weight down the nose either. We were allowed 15 minutes to do any final tweaking we needed to do, which in our case was making sure our wings weren't going to fall off. In the end we basically tied them on with elastic bands. As the competition started I wasn't confident of our chances. Although one plane had broken a wing during practice, so we stood a chance against them. The rules of the competition were every plane got 3 flights and the longest time in the air of any of those 3 was what counted. After a couple of solid efforts of over 20 seconds of flight and good looking gliding form it was our go. The planes were being launched using a fishing rod with a ring on the end of the line to pull the planes in to the air. We got some good height on our first pull, the ring released and then the plane plummeted in to the ground, smashing the end of the wing off and ripping the wing covering in a couple of places. It was in the air after release for 2 seconds. Things weren't looking good. We repaired it with surgical tape, and were able to get it looking like a glider again, adjusted the wing somewhat and got it ready for the 2nd run. By now the best time was 47 seconds. Again, we got good height on the launch and the release was OK. It was a beautiful, perfectly balanced run... And we managed 19 seconds of flight. Very satisfying. The third run got up to a good height but didn't release properly and after some brief aerobatics, managed about 6 seconds. Our 19 second best time was good for 6th (out of 8) place. After the competition, the kids started playing with the gliders and got some much better performances than the adults had managed. We tried to fly our for a 4th time, but the hook ripped out, causing the plane to crash and breaking the wing irreparably this time. The day continued with lunch at my Uncle's house and a good time was had by all.

My brother and his girlfriend had forgotten to pack their camera and so asked her Dad if they could borrow a camera from him. Luckily he had just picked up a camera from a car boot sale. It was a pair of binoculars combined with a digital camera. The box art was funny. It was the binoculars zoomed in on a woman lying on a beach in a bikini. It is good to see the aspiring pervert market being catered for so well nowadays...

Pants

Our internet has been down at work for the last couple of days. It has meant that I have had to work from home in the mornings checking my e-mails there and then coming in to work. Starting the working day lying in my bed in just my pants is the best kind of work there is. It really is a much more civilised way of doing things. I was quite impressed that i did actually manage to do some work rather than just lying there procrastinating (Is that the word I mean?). The guilt made me do it. Given enough time working from home I think I would lapse in to very poor working habits, but for a couple of days I was able to do it...

2 days til the glider competetion... I have seen a picture of our glider and it looks good.

Red

I saw one of the reddest men I have ever seen last night as I went to catch the tube. His face was the colour of rhubarb. The sort of red you can only achieve by years of dedicated alcoholism. Unbelievably red. So red I couldn’t help but stare as he stumbled around mumbling to himself showing off his big red face. I wonder if when he looks at himself in the mirror every day he is surprised by just how red he is, or if, like the smell of shit in the countryside, it is something you get used to over time?

Also, I ate an unbelievably good cake over the weekend, bought from a farmers market. A sponge style cake (but the sponge was almost shortbready in flavour) with blackberries and some sort of syrupy covering. It was delicious. It was a big cake but only lasted 2 days. I wish I could cook cakes like that. Although, if I could cook like that I would be enormous… mmmm cake.

let down

I managed to screw up another intended visit to home. I was supposed to go back to give my cousins their birthday cards and presents on Saturday. After last week's train experience, I decided to hire a car. My intention was to get up early, pick up the car and then head on home. I went out for a few beers on Friday night. I found it very hard to get up on Saturday morning. The two may have been related, maybe not though. I could have just been really tired... I managed to head over to the car hire place for just before 3.00pm. Surely people still want to rent cars at that time of day on Saturday, but apparently not enough to warrant staying open. I had to make an embarrassed call to my Aunt to say I would not in fact be coming home for the delicious barbeque, which various family memebers were attending.

I did manage to fulfil my Sunday obligations though, and made it to my brother's house in Leicester to help finish off a glider for next weeks family glider competition. For my Uncle's 70th members of the family have to build identical kit gliders and the longest flying glider is the winner. It sounds like it should be a lot of fun. I am doing a joint effort with my brother. It was looking a bit shonky when i left last night, but my unemployed brother should have sufficient time to work it in to shape before next weekend.

Speaking of my unemployed brother... He is 30, I am 29 and my little brother is 25. Yet somehow we have never all been employed at the same time. A pretty impressive fact, if you ask me.

alone

Both of my flatmates are away so I am on my own in the flat for a couple of weeks. The flat is a little dishevelled at the best of times, but having nobody around has relaxed my already lax standards of cleanliness. My clothes are strewn across the living room, amongst the banana skins and lolly wrappers, I have no clean dishes to use and the fridge shouldn't be opened for longer than necessary if I don't want to stink up the place. The two week gap is not inspiring me to clean as i have ages before anyone else will be around...

On the plus side though, i can walk around naked a lot more (naked wii is good) and i'm getting a lot of good practice in for Japan. At this rate I'll have turned Japanese by August...

fisherman

While waiting to be collected from Bath station the other day I saw a taxi driver who looked like he would have been more at home as a fishing boat captain. A wild shock of white hair to go with his wild eyes and big white beard. It was a good look and made me smile. I look forward to the day my hair goes white so I can affect a simliar look...

Also, I finished the Full Metal Alchemist series the other night. Utterly brilliant. the best cartoon I have ever seen. I would highly recommend it of you are looking for something to watch. Subtitled, not the dubbed version (obviously).

Freedom of Association - a novel

I have been e-mailed this description of this book...

"Set in the suburbs of present-day New Jersey and also New York City, Freedom of Association traces the demise of three talented poets and their determination to continue their work despite overwhelming odds. Each of their lives converge when one of the poets, a middle-aged bard of traditional verse, is sent into the bowels of the turbulent inner city where he is ordered by his publishers to mentor a young, radical African-American slam poet and transform his poetry into verse that is more acceptable to mostly white, affluent audiences. To do this, he enlists the help of his beautiful ex-wife who reluctantly agrees to let the slam poet audit her poetry workshop at the local university. Their lives are forever changed when the young African-American slam poet falls for his mentor’s ex-wife. And when the publishers decide to pull the plug on the slam poet’s career, the three of them must confront the hard realities of living in the turbulent urban ghetto while facing uncertain futures as poets."

Who would have thought the world of poetry was so exciting? I was thinking about dabbling in a little slam poetry myself as I am somewhat bored by traditional verse...

trains

I went home on Friday night as it was my Dad's 65th birthday on the Saturday. I finished work and tubed it up to catch a train from Euston up to Birmingham. I bought myself a saver return from the automatic ticket machine and just managed to make the 5.40 train. As i sat there perspiring freely the train started to pull away and the "train manager" carried out his managerial duties by announcing that saver tickets would not be valid on that particular train as it was peak time. I thought £40 for a return to Droitwich was a little expensive and being made to pay extra was taking the piss but it couldn't be more than an extra £20 or so, could it? But no, if you buy an invalid ticket on a Virgin train, you don't get to upgrade your ticket, you get to buy a brand new one - for £60. Fuckers. £100 to get to Droitwich. It was made even more galling by the fact that my journey the next day from Droitwich to Bath, again bought just before travelling, was £13.90. I intend to write a letter and complain, but i do intend to do a lot of things that don't get done...

My Dad's birthday was enjoyable (cooked him a good lunch and went to the pub with family) and then I headed down to Bath for the evening (My Dad was going out for a swanky meal with my step-mother so I didn't abandon him on his 65th birthday in case you are wondering) to claim the winnings from a couple of bets with my friend. Firstly, a drink bet. He bought my first 3 drinks and his own first 3 drinks and I got to choose what he had for his first 3 drinks. Ginger spirit and pineapple juice, half a guiness with a shot or archers and baileys with a dash of lime... mmmmm. And he had to grow a beard, which I could then make him shave in the style of my choosing, which he had to wear on a night out and couldn't tell people it was because he lost a bet. I managed to walk the fine line of getting him to look stupid but at the same time not so stupid that he had obviously lost a bet. He got a lot of looks and comments and it was a very enjoyable evening all round, although the hangover the next day was particularly unpleasant.

And my friends found 3 4 leaf clovers. I have never seen even one before, apart from the ones I faked making as a child obviously...

Watashi wa Will desu

(I got a learn Japanese book last night)

I liked a couple
of the words I found as I
gave it a quick look

Kareraisu (I think) was indian curry

ringo is apple

and Feransu (again not sure of the spelling) is France.

coconut?

I went to an Argentinian wine tasting evening last night. I went to Argentina last year and it is an amazing place. I would recommend it to anyone. The wine is very good (and very cheap over there), so an evening of Argentinian wine seemed like a good idea. It was nice to drink the wine and to learn a bit more about it all. At the evening you are expected to bring your own glasses and are provided with a small glass of 8 different wines. And a bit of paper so you can jot down your impressions of the wine's appearance, smell, taste and any further comments. My thoughts did not show me to be much of a wine buff. For colour I was going for things like dark red, not so dark red and so on. For smell and taste I did get dark fruits right but that is what every one says about fruity red wines. I couldn't smell the coconut and pencil shavings I should have been getting from one of the wines... The evening wasn't as poncy as i have made it sound (although any wine tasting evening is going to be a bit poncy) and was enjoyable and there were some very nice wines, particularly the last one. And the couple running it clearly knew their stuff. I may be going to more wine tastings in the future.

cool kids

I went to death disco (which is a trendy night with live bands, followed by a disco and attended mostly by painfully cool people.) last night. I could pretend that I fit in at an event like that, but that would be far from the truth. I enjoy the music and generally have a good time but i do not fit in. I wonder is it worth it for these cool people, who look good but it all looks like too much effort to me. I turned up straight from work wearing a suit from work, which is unacceptable clothing- so cool is the evening that work wear is banned. I beat the system and got in before the boucers started work. Woo. Score one for the working stiffs...

It is also one of the types of places that have a toilet attendant, which always makes a trip to the toilet a slightly awkward one. Are they going to talk at me while I urinate?... Am I going to tip them?... If I am not going to tip them, am I going to walk straight out without washing my hands to avoid using their soap dispensing services or will I use their soap and towels and not tip?... I would be totally against the toilet attendant as a job, but there has been one occasion when they have proved invaluable. I was in Vegas, in the Rum Jungle bar, when it became necessary to have a bit of a sit down in the toilet. As previously discussed, I am an inefficient wiper, which resulted in me finishing the meagre supplies in the cubicle. Fortunately, I could call out to the toilet attendant for some more toilet paper, which was passed under the door... He earnt his dollar tip that day. Only in that situation are toilet attendants required though.

slapstick

I love genuine slapstick comedy. The funniest things I have ever seen have involved slapstick in some way. I had a new entry to my top ten over the weekend. I went to the cricket nets again and had a lot of fun. The day was made better by people getting hit comically by balls. One friend managed to direct the ball off his bat and on to the top of his head, which was good, but easily beaten for comic value by another friend's effort. After he bowled the ball was hit hard back past him. A kid from the net next to us kindly ran after the ball and threw it back. Catching is not my friend's forte and the ball was coming in fairly hard at just above head height but he gamely gave it a go. He managed to get his hands on it, but only succeeded in deflecting the ball on to his own forehead. The boy ran in to apologise, whilst struggling not to laugh and the rest of us stood around laughing. Comedy does not get much better than man being hit in head by ball. Groin would have improved things obviously, but I was happy enough with head. There is a slight mark on his head now, so every time i see him at the moment I am reminded of comedy gold.

I was also depressed at the prospect of getting old over the weekend. I was on the tube next to a party of old people laughing along with each other after having been for some sort of trip out. Old people on an evening out having fun... How can that be depressing? Because they were all idiots. I struggle to find people I like from a pretty much full pool of possibilities. What's it going to be like when the pool of potential friends is half empty? (Are you a pool of potential friends is half empty or half full kind of person?) Am I going to spend my golden years in a nursing home surrounded by arseholes, sitting in my own urine, praying for the day of release? I sincerely hope not... I do know old people who I am jealous of though. They spend their time enjoying their family and travelling the world, so there is hope.