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.