Sunday, July 10, 2005

Events

It occured to me while writing the last post that quite a lot has happened to me since I last posted. So I'm going to do another to elaborate.

Firstly, Live 8. I'd say "wow" but I don't think it quite qualified. It was more of a "very good" than a "wow". Some of the acts kicked metaphorical arse while the rest were...ok. I have completed this handy guide to my opinions:

Best

REM
Snoop Dogg (really)
McCartney + various


Worst

Snow Patrol
Velvet Revolver
Joss Stone

To give an impression of how many people were there, here's a picture of the queue. I say "the" queue, there were two, both this size.



Crikey!

And then of course I had my JET orientation in London. I say it was in London, it was actually about as far outside London as you can get while still being in London. It consisted of a reasonably enjoyable day of Japanese culture lessons and a small amount of Japanese Language lessons. The second day consisted of 6 almost striaght hours of Japanese language tutoring. Now, as fascinating as the language is, that much exposure is bound to saturate even the most fanatic Asiophile. That and, of course, there were other things on everyone's mind...

We were, thankfully, nowhere near the London bombings when they occured, however, being so far out we had no access to any TV or radios. The rumours started appearing at about 11am in the first lunch break when people began getting garbled texts telling tales ranging from there being an electircal fault on the tubes to three buses and 4 tubes being blown up. Eventually of course we began to get the gist of what was going on. With the tubes shut down the majority of us were stranded as most had come along the Met line, now closed. Thankfully a bloke called Omar was going my way, and gave a few of us a lift back home (all of whom have been placed on the southern island of Kyushu) and actually hearing the death figures and Tony Blair's speech on the radio was sobering to say the least.

The next day me and Hannah gave blood after seeing a Blood Donor van at the local supermarket. It was supremely surreal being so close and yet so far from such horrific acts and it seemed a natureal thing to do to help in any small way we could. Stations I had passed through mere days before were now closed to the public and considered crime scenes. On our way to Blackpool via Euston we passed through Kings Cross Tube station (still closed) on a train identical to the one lying not 200 metres away in pieces. It was an extremely poignant moment, seeing everyone on the sparsely populated "rush-hour" tube turn to look at the once mundane station.

Anyway, it's all getting a bit morbid for my taste so I'll leave it here. It's a lovely day outside and I'm off for a Pimms and a book.

Comments

Ooh, I have comments to some of my posts! I haven't read any of them yet so no doubt they're all derogatory but hey, that's why i clicked the "Allow all users to post comments" button.

EDIT: Could people leabve their name after they post a comment? So far it's all very confusing. Interesting though, to quote Jon Jon, "I love it!"