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.