Joe Bloggs

Open Gherkin

All old news these days! Well "no-mind", as the Japanese sometimes say. The Gherkin is officially open. You may remember me banging on about it in days afore. Now, how do I wangle an invite to dinner on the top next week!

Library snoozes

This story of a student in New York sleeping in the library (because he couldn't afford accomodation in the city) reminded me of my first night at university. I missed Fresher's week (is that what they call it?) because I'd only just got back to the UK via a long journey across Siberia on the railway a week before. Having been away for over 6 months, I wasn't about to go straight up north and face my future. There were family and friends to catch up with. Once they were safely caught and herded, I went up. I'd already arranged accomodation in a flat via some helpful University office and arrived into Sheffield late on Sunday evening, thinking that at least my neighbour would be in and possibly offer me a place to sleep on his floor. Well he'd done a bunk - where were you Nigel when I needed you? - and I ended up going to a nearby hall of residence and asking if they could put me up. The porter said I could sleep in the library and, if memory serves me right, I wasn't the only one in there that night. Another straggler from some far flung foreign shore was on the other side of the room. Still eight months sleeping in chairs and one night in a sleeping bag on a hard floor doesn't really compare.

Ardour

Some of you may remember the photo. I used it back in June last year during the rainy season. Well our 'monsoons' haven't arrived yet, but the rain today feels just like it and as I look out the window (to prevent eye strain, I've got into the habit of typing without looking at the screen - too much!) I can see not one pigeon on the telephone wires, but two. They are in exactly the same pose and getting wet in the same way. (Whoa, as I write the male is now trying to hit on the other one. How about that ... live updates on a blog!) Spring. When not even a persistent downpour can dampen ardour!

Michael K

The team met up to discuss The Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee. I was going to say that choosing a book by a Nobel Prize winner is easy pickings, but then I remembered what I wrote about another laureate some while back. Nevertheless, Coetzee was indeed easy pickings - in the sense that he is an excellent author and though this was the first novel of his I have read, I doubt I will be left disappointed when I pick up another. Although a difficult book to categorise, not least because of its timeless and allegorical nature, Michael K did leave two of us with a strong feeling of Camu's The Stranger. Michael is a stranger that doesn't fit in our world and even reading about him made me feel I was infringing on his right (and unspoken desire) to be left alone. Certainly not a man of our times - though possibly we could all do with his resilience and strength.

"He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around quietly minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand. A hard little stone, barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself and its interior life. He passes through these institutions and camps and hospitals and God knows what else like a stone. Through the intestines of the war. An unbearing, unborn creature."

Bill's birthday

And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.    Henry IV Part 1, Act III Scene 1

Whelm-altitude

Guess the movie! From the Grauniad review:

I am just so bemused by pundits who airily declare themselves "underwhelmed" by @#%$*&@$ but who apparently adjust their whelm-altitude downwards for duller middleweight Hollywood products. Both films have a pedal-to-the-metal exhilaration, sporting effortlessly with the texture and style of martial arts and action genres and making of them something vividly new, compulsively entertaining and exquisitely modern.

Can't wait.

Records

Tokyo (and a few other cities) had their hottest April day since records began. Kyoto must have got pretty close to its record at 29 degrees plus. What was I saying about Spring and the punishment that Summer brings? It's here already!

Licence to ...

Went to get my driver's licence renewed today and observed the following.

Do the people who build big characterless concrete apartment blocks think they are making up for their sense of design (or lack thereof) by giving names such as 'Garden Heights' or 'Maison Fonteyn'? Does it make living there any more pleasant?

The old man in the car next to me at a traffic light (who must have been in his 70s) was either suffering from Tourette's syndrome or was rocking along to some music on the radio. I saw him again later and I think he was a rocker. Rock on.

Does the fact that I have to sit through a 2 hour lecture on safe driving (to get my licence renewed for a mere 3 more years) make me any safer a driver for those three years? I don't think so, but I didn't resent it and it seems most of fellow drivers didn't either.

A wandering thought during the lecture - if Americans were as electrified with horror everytime one of their soldiers died in Iraq, the same way the Japanese go into paroxysms of fear when one of their nationals get kidnapped abroad, the international war in the Iraq would be over in days. I don't ask for electricity, but I do ask for more sympathy for the families of those soldiers and the dead Iraqis.

The drive back. South Kyoto is ugly. Pretty much like the rest of urban Japan then!

Green

Before I came to Japan green, frankly, was green. I didn't, for example, see the subtle shades that one gets in early spring as the trees start to bud. Blossoms of pink are, of course, obvious to spot and in a country that has cherry trees in abundance, one doesn't even need to keep a special look out for them. The green that follows that pink though is quite spectacular. Right now the hills around Kyoto are ablaze with etiolated greens that will darken over time. But until they do, there is a lightness in the air and the punishment that summer will deal out in abundance still seems far away. I love this time of year and I'm going to miss not being here this time next year.

An onion in your ear

It's been a while since I provided a straight link and said "go read this", but here's a Wired Magazine article that is both amusing and a good reminder of why we should be sceptical of any piece of news we read until we've verified sources thoroughly. The Onion, in case you don't know, is one of the best satirical magazines out there. However, it seems a lot of people 'out there' aren't aware of the fact that even its trademarked tag line of "America's Finest News Source" is part of the satire, and believe what is written by the magazine. That the average punter falls for some of this stuff is not so surprising, but journalists who reprint the stuff are just plain lazy. As the Wired article quotes, "You have to be skeptical even about stories you see on the front page of The New York Times". The lesson appears to be, 'don't believe it till you know it'.

Bad medicine

I know families where the children love to take medicine when they are ill. The Bloggs boys, on the other hand, have always treated the stuff like poison - "through my closed dead lips". So when the younger of the two came down with a bug that has hit a lot of the children in his school and started to retch his guts dry with an accompanying temperature straight from Hades, we offered him a some liquid paracetamol. This was after he could at least hold a couple of mouths of water down. Incredibly, he'd rather let his body burn than take the potion! Why? Because he doesn't like the taste. Being an increasingly firm believer in "the less medicine the better", we've let him have his way and he seems to have got over the worst. Still, I can never imagine wanting to willingly suffer rather than take a medicine I don't like the taste of. They're obviously made of stronger mettle!

Seasonal dance

Drove into the city with Mrs Bloggs today and parked just outside Kyoto's old entertainment quarter - Gion - and then walked into the quarter to see a performance of the Kyo Odori (Kyoto Dance). The dancing was impressive and very much a visual feast. (And of course it helped that Mrs Bloggs had a passing connection with one of the geisha up on stage!) What was almost more interesting though was looking at people looking at Mrs B. as we walked to the theatre. She wore a seasonal light-pink patterned kimono with a rusty orange outer obi which almost covered the green belt under that. Let me tell you it isn't just the foreigners who stare at women wearing national dress. Japanese women do so also, though perhaps they stare more at the cloth, for you can almost see their brains whirring calculating how much they think it cost. I'd put up a picture of the Missus, but nothing to download it on until Apple come back with a computer. (That's moving towards a resolution, but it seems I am going to be slapped with a non-disclosure agreement, so I possibly won't be able to write anything here about it!) A nice spring interlude.

Incumbentory Advantitude

I've un-Googled myself so with luck I won't get any flack from wandering Bush/Cheney supporters for this post. DJ sent me this wonderful list of bumper stickers for the upcoming U.S. election. I hope somebody is printing these up.

Bush/Cheney '04: This time, elect us!
BU_ _SH_ _!
Bush/Cheney '04: Over a billion Whoppers served.
Bush/Cheney '04: Putting the "con" in conservatism
Bush/Cheney '04: Because the truth just isn't good enough
Bush/Cheney '04: Apocalypse Now!
Bush/Cheney '04: Compassionate Colonialism
Bush/Cheney '04: Deja-voodoo all over again!
Bush/Cheney '04: Thanks for not paying attention
Bush/Cheney '04: Leave no billionaire behind
Bush/Cheney '04: Making the world a better place, one country at a time
Bush/Cheney '04: Or else.
Bush/Cheney '04: The economy's stupid!
Bush/Cheney "04: The Asses of Evil
Don't think. Vote Bush!
George W. Bush: It takes a village idiot
George W. Bush: The buck stops Over There
Bush/Cheney '04: God Save the King!
Vote Bush in '04: "I Has Incumbentory Advantitude"
Vote Bush in '04: Because dictatorship is easier
Vote Bush in '04: It's a no-brainer!
Vote for Bush & You Get Dick!
Bush/Cheney '04: WWJB: Who Would Jesus Bomb?

Thawing Apple?

After the longest period of silence so far (no contact initiated by them since last Wednesday), and after a prompting phone call this morning, Apple called to say that they only managed to save 10% of my data (some 10% more than I thought they would) and pleaded for another day or two to come back to me with a final response to my request. I see that as progress, but did tell the guy who called me he should tell the decision makers that I will take them to small claims court if they do not offer me what I want. He, like me, hopes this can be solved amicably.

Teacher for a day

Over in the UK the teachers are considering strike action to prevent classroom assistants from taking charge of lessons. Today I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing what those teachers face everyday - though without an assistant. The local international school had a teacher off sick and they asked if I would mind taking a class of 6 and 7 year-olds for the afternoon. I have done it before, but with older children. One forgets so quickly what it was like at that age. The difficulty in concentrating on what the teacher has to say and how sometimes the smallest movement outside the window, or a moving shadow in the classroom, takes on the biggest importance and the subject of freshwater and saltwater is, frankly, neither here nor there. I'm comfortable around children so being thrown in at such short notice wasn't exactly the deep end, but rather the teachers than me. I couldn't put up with the constant, "listen up", "Shun stop that and face me", "Rikiya please don't lean back in your chair, you've already seen Mari and Hans fall over", etc., etc..

Stone cold Apple

I've no idea what they are playing at, but that's another 48 hours now without any contact from Apple and no sign of the computer they want to send back to me - which I am very much looking forward to refusing. Stay tuned.

Stone Apple

Apple's stony silence - another day without contact - is only matched by my obduracy. I called the local Lawyers' Association and was informed that I could defend myself in a small claims court and the court handles claims up to 600,000 yen. As I am looking for half that, I'll be heading there if things turn nasty. Mrs Bloggs has always said I have a lawyer's mouth and now she'll be able to see if it is any good. Also registered a nifty little domain name should I need to bring my troubles to the world's attention!

Bad Apple

Apple aren't budging. After a 48 hour silence, they've come back with a "corporate decision", that all they can do is send my old computer back. They are trying to recover data (from a reformatted disk!) and will get back to me with any news. There will be no collective breath holding on that score. I've told them I am not accepting the computer back and will be looking to take them to small claims court. I repeat ... BASTARDS!

Pink Apple

Having admitted their culpability, Apple are now silent. Yesterday I told them that if they sent me my old iBook back I would refuse to accept it and would tell the delivery company to take it back. They've let the whole of today go by without contacting me. Not sure if that is good or bad. Pink? Shamefaced!

Sad Sayonara ... for now

One of the facts of life of living in a foreign country is you see people come and go. Some stay for a long time and are only ever passing acquaintances, while others are only here for a short time and become 'permanent' friends. We're off to take one of those friends to the airport in a few minutes and the entire Bloggs family are going to miss Fusao very much when he goes. Of course one never really says "goodbye" to a friend. We'll all meet again (not least because he's headed for London), but it's the fact that we won't meet as often. There's the sadness. See you soon Fusao.

Black Apple

Well they did it! Got the call from the Apple repair staff today to say that even though I had said not to delete my data (that's what they have noted in their repair authorisation paperwork), they deleted it by mistake. They apologised profusely and said they would send it back to me with just the system software installed. Bloody great (NOT!). I told them they are effectively sending me back a second hand computer and that wasn't good enough. They'll have to come back with a better offer than a simple apology. This is one that could run and run. Bastards.

Grey Apples

After 18 years you'd think I would have learned to accept a 'no' here in Japan when they don't actually use the word. My little iBook finally died (the experts amongst my readers have diagnosed a faulty logic board) and it turns out that Apple have extended the warranty from 1 to 3 years because they recognise there is a problem with my series of iBooks. I got so wound up with the two people I talked to abou;t the problem that I shouted at the girl who took the final details of shipping address etc., but ended up apologising. Japanese might be a polite language, but it's bloody useless when I want to talk in precise black or white and they reply in grey.

April Fools?

Could the Google Gmail announcement be the biggest April Fools joke in a very long time? I think so, but I hope I'm wrong.

I sent this to the Beeb earlier and I wonder if they'll at least take it off their headlines pretty soon in case I am right.

Ever heard of April Fools? The Beeb (and every other news organnisation) has fallen for the biggest one for many a year!