Nagasaki

Last of the archived blogs now. Yay!

Nagasaki then. It was, unsurprisingly, rather good. However, I should probably start with the hows and whys.

There’s a “rule” in Kumamoto-ken that ALTs are not allowed to work over 20 days a month. When they told us this during the closing stages of the Tokyo Orientation there were cheers even through the Jet-Lag assisted exhaustion. This Kumamoto exclusive allowed me 3 “choseibi” days off during August which I was required by law to take. Well well well. How marvellous. However, I found myself at something of a loss; what to do with 3 days off? I can’t just sit in my apartment eating noodles for three days straight (which is the only foodstuff I currently have in my kitchen). Luckily, the Kumamoto City orientation provided the answer in the form of a group of ALTs heading off to Nagasaki. I was kindly invited along, but only after I promised to stop attempting a cockney accent (something which I’ve become curiously fond of recently).

So, after a 2 hour bus ride to reach our departure port I find out that all but one of the group has had to pull out as their BOE (Board of Education) had stuff for them to do. The one remaining ALT, a South African called Megan, is a Senior High School teacher the same as me, who reports directly to the Prefectural BOE rather than any local council one. We decided that as I’d come so far we’d throw four fingers (two sets of two) up at the other ALTs and go anyway. So we did.

First stop was Nagasaki-shi (shi=city) itself. After an extremely short ferry ride we arrived and flatly failed to find the Youth Hostel we were staying in. Infact, we went to the opposite end of the main street and stood for a good ten minutes scaring the locals with our odd language and copious sweating. Yes, it’s hot in Nagasaki too.

After finding the Hostel (and discovering its 11 o’clock curfew) we headed to the place every tourist goes to first, the A-Bomb museum. It turns out Megan is a bit of a museum nut, even going so far as to consider a Masters in Museum Studies so it took us about 3 or 4 hours to get around the various sections. Which is not to say it wasn’t interesting, on the contrary it was fascinating in a rather morbid manner. I did however leave with mixed feelings; no doubt the A-bomb was too harsh a measure to take (especially seeing as the US’s own advisors had predicted Japan’s surrender with or without the use of the Bomb) but I couldn’t help noticing the lack of information surrounding Japan’s role in the war. They seemed to be presented as an innocent and unsuspecting party, which is blatantly untrue. Oh well.

We visited the Hypocentre (the exact spot where the bomb exploded) and the Peace Park (a rather kitsch collection of statues including the faintly ridiculous Peace Statue) and called it a day. However, we did pop down to the Wharf for a drink and the smallest pizzas you have ever seen in your life. Possibly their growth was stunted by the residual radiation. Who knows?

The second day in the city was spent temple hopping. There’s a street that contains nothing but temples, shrines and graveyards so we spent most of the day wandering into the variously coloured and increasingly impressive buildings, eventually ending up being force fed beer by the caretaker of one particularly fine example. He was lovely though, and gave us both a patterned tea towel as way of thanks for filling his lunch with Gaijin-goodness. Mm-mmm.

I also bumped into my Tokyo roommate; it turns out that all the new Nagasaki JETs were in the city for their Orientation which was a complete coincidence. Anyway, we rejected his offer to join the NagaALTs in an all you can drink party and instead took a ropeway to the top of the local mountain, Inasa, to see the city at night. I took loads of photos but none came out. D’oh.

The next day we heading to areas more rural, firstly stopping at the spa town of Unzen nestled below an active volcano. It was temperate, it was sunny, it was haunting. Until it started raining. With our accommodation waiting for us the next town over, we headed out without seeing either the volcano or much of the geysers which was disappointing. We were booked into another youth hostel in the Castle town of Shimabara and it was there we headed, keeping marginally ahead of the rain. We arrived just in time to watch them close the castle gates and shoo off any hangers on so retired to catch up on some much needed sleep.

On the final day we finally made it to the castle (not as nice as Kumamoto’s) and also to some old Samurai houses (with scary plastic mannequins). Taking the ferry home, we arrived in good old Kumamoto in time for a quick stop into an old folks home (where they gave me more free beer) and I made it home yesterday.

To finish, here is a list of thing what I have ate:

Raw horse meat
Moving raw fish
Lots of squid
Fried Octopus Dough-balls (takoyaki)
Fermented soy beans (sticky)
Enough rice to fill a large barn
My pride.


The ridiculous looking Nagasaki Peace Statue. Looks like a Pokemon.


The interior of one of the myriad of temples we went to.


Some lovely mountains in Shimabara.


Shimabara Castle. An amazing photo by me if I do say so myself.

Stuff

Here's another archived blog. Most of the stuff in here is outdated (the bug is dead and I have the telephoen back) but still....

So far it’s been good. Great in fact: I’ve met some great people, done some great things, and generally felt great about it all. Course, the danger here is that it can’t possibly continue to be great for the entire duration of my stay (however long that may be) and although it is all still, well….great, I’m beginning to imagine how it might not always be so.

I’ve started to understand the idea of ‘culture shock’ a bit, although I wouldn’t use that particular term myself. ‘Culture frustration’ is perhaps more accurate. I’m starting to get a bit fed up of not being able to understand anything, a bit sick of feeling as helpless as a particularly undereducated 4 year old. And it’s not even as if my Japanese isn’t improving, I’ve learnt a truckload of new phrases not to mention a great deal more about the grammar but these are trivial advances when you’re sitting in a restaurant being spoken at in machinegun bursts of a language that has absolutely nothing in common with your own. The culture itself isn’t particularly shocking, just a bit hard to get to grips with when you can’t even attach the correct “goodbye” to the correct situation.

And my supervisor…he’s a lovely chap and has been indispensable but bless him he’s got absolutely zero knowledge of anything more technologically advanced than a desk drawer. And I’m not kidding. Take this example; my predecessor had an internet account where she rented the modem from the phone company who obviously requested it back at the end of her contract. With the former JET in question having left the country, the responsibility of sending the modem back passed onto my supervisor.

He sent them her phone. Her actual phone that she had bought with her own money. Not a rented phone. Not even just a phone: a phone/fax combo. He mistook a phone/fax combo for a modem. He told me that he thought it was a bit odd that the modem had paper in it. Douglas Adams couldn’t make this shit up. That thing was expensive too, about 40000 yen (£200) and I’ll be buggered if I’m forking out the same amount again if the telephone company have lost it/thrown it away in bemusement. You can imagine how hard it is to try to get this guy to help me with setting up the internet. That’s one Japanese stereotype out of the window then.

The apartment too has lost some of its initial sheen. I’ve been to a few other JET houses and they’ve all been, if not bigger then newer. I’ve started applying such terms as “basic” and even “ramshackle” to my pad, which may be a bit unfair with regards to everything except the kitchen. It really is a nightmare to do anything with. I’m not perhaps the best, ahem, cook in the world but there’s hardly room to put two plates down side by side in there. Hmm. I’ve also had my first bug issue. I decided to have a cleanup on Saturday (as most of the rooms didn’t look to have been hovered before I arrived) and while moving the bin a cockroach the size of my face scuttled across the floor and under the freezer. I actually screamed. I may even have swooned. This thing was bigger than most of the plates I own, Christ knows what sort of food it thought I was throwing away as a three course meal wouldn’t have sated it. I immediately armed myself with a Tupperware bowl and a poker stick thing and set about thrashing the space under my white goods. Or rather, I spent an hour working up the courage to. As it happens Percy, which is how I now refer to him, was not to be seen again that night so I closed off the kitchen and dreamt, for some reason, of Spaniards with 8 legs.

Today however, he resurfaced with a friend. I glimpsed him moving between the freezer and washer and proceeded to run screaming from the kitchen once more. A few hours later, for various reasons, I needed to go out so tentatively ventured back into the kitchen, keeping my tootsies as far from any dark areas as possible, and turned the door handle. Christ almighty, something ran from the front door to, yes you’ve guessed it, the back of the freezer. Lord only knows what it was but it was fast and long and, I thought, bluey-white in colour. Now, I still haven’t seen this mysterious presence again but that didn’t stop me from going to the nearest Hyaku-en store (100yen shop) and buying the biggest can of insect spray I could find and nuking my kitchen. My gas detector alarm went off I used so much of the stuff and I can no longer feel my legs. Only kidding, but hopefully Percy can’t feel any of his. We’ve been told not to step on them for two reasons:

1) They may be carrying eggs. One crunch and all the little eggs go everywhere and you have an infestation. Nice.
2) When they get squished they released pheromones telling all their little mates to come and have a party at mine. Again, infestation.

We’ve also been told about Huntsmen (spider that grow on average to the size of an adult’s hand and that beat their prey to death), centipedes (which can kill apparently) and hornets (one of which was buzzing around my windows on the second day here and which could probably have eaten my head whole. I’ve seen smaller cars. They can kill as well and will physically go for you if you anger them/swat at them/if they feel like it). I did however on my travels see a tiny little dormouse running down the road and into someone else’s house. Aw. Lucky bugger.

Oh, and I found the modem. It was behind a cardboard box with a phone/fax combo on it.

More pics, mostly from the Kumamoto City Orientation put on by JET:



Kumamoto Castle. Mmm, pointy.



A view of Kumamoto City from the top of the castle. As you can see, it's not the biggest place in the world (that would be Preston).



Can you see me? This is from the pub-crawl after the second day of the Orientation. The guy in the middle is the other Jet in my town a great bloke from LA called Ellison.



Couple of more recent ones now, this was taken last week (the 3rd of September) and it's me and some of the other Yatsushiro ALTs (plus some of the second and third yearer's Japanese mates)



Me looking rather surprised in a Karaoke parlour. That's an Irish ALT called Dalbhagh (Dalva) in the foreground. She scary.

Anyway, that's your lot. Until next time...

Kagami

Ok, this is the first of my "archived" blogs that I wrote when I was offline. Enjoy!

Kagami

Coke cans are smaller here. Nissan Skylines carry families rather than Rude Boys. They do have shops emblazoned with “Super Happy Time Inside!” type English. Pachinko really is as pointless as I’d thought and it’s much, much hotter than I expected.

Just a few of the things I’ve noticed since I arrived in Kagami-machi (machi=town). I’m writing this Blog entry offline 3 days after I arrived, but as the internet isn’t working I have no idea when I’ll get chance to post it up. The likelihood is that I’ll post it up in a few weeks time when everything is sorted out.

Anyway, Kagami. It’s actually quite nice. When I first arrived I was terrified that they really had stuck me in the arse end of nowhere. I was greeted at the airport by two schoolgirls waving a huge sign with “Richard – Welcome to Hikawa High School” written in large, haiku-esque lines. I greeted them with what I thought was a cheery ”Konnichiwa” and they smiled and repeated the greeting rather coyly. Hmm, thought I. They led me over to Fukuda-sensei, my supervisor for the duration of my stay who turned out to be fairly competent at English and a nice bloke to boot.

The girls and I took the bus back to Yatsushiro train station (where they’re close to completing a Shinkansen (Bullet Train) line) with Fukuda-sensei following in his Subaru. 20 minutes from Yatsushiro is Kagami and it looked bloody awful. Tiny, tiny (and I mean tiny) roads that a fat man couldn’t walk down without getting wedged complemented ramshackle farmhouses and dodgy looking dogs that seemed to live in them alone. True, the scenery is like something you’d find in the Big Book of Beautiful Mountains or World’s Greenest Landscapes (think Thin Red Line and you’re there) but the shanty town look Kagami seemed to be going for got me worried.

As it happens, Kagami isn’t like that at all. For some reason, probably for his own sense of morbid fascination, Fukuda-sensei had taken me through the back streets. The main street of Kagami is reasonable large, certainly very long. Probably about the size of Cleveleys high street but as I say, longer. Hikawa High school, where I’m based looked Ok, like any other High School in the world.

What I really want to write about are the people. Wow. This is one thing I thought the JET handbook might have been exaggerating; the so called “David Beckham” factor. As I’m in quite a small town, the all knowing handbook had warned that I may be treated…differently in Japan. Perhaps the best way to sum up the reception I got is the example of when Fukuda-sensei was giving an extracurricular English lesson yesterday (Thursday the 4th). I went along to see how the lesson worked, if not to actually help out. On my way there I casually “Konnichiwa-ed” a couple of students who turned to me in shock before suddenly bursting into laughter. Not nasty laughter though; they looked like the old archive footage of fans at the front of Beatle concerts in the 70s. It was unreal. And it got worse (or better, it still remains to be seen). We were halfway through the lesson when I noticed through the frosted windows (not actually ice you understand, I was almost melting in the heat let alone any water than my have chosen to solidify) a small crowd. As the lesson ended, what seemed like half the school poured into the room all seemingly shouting to get my attention. They’d call out “Richardo-Sensei!” (how cool is that, I’m a sensei!), I’d smile in their general direction and they’d all burst into raucous giggles. And I’m not just talking girls here, all the boys seemed to find me fascinating as well. It’s surreal to say the least but quite flattering at times.

So far the most common questions I’ve been asked (when they find time to breath between the screams) are “Do you have a girlfriend” (“Yes” “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”) and “What is her name?”. If Hannah is reading this you’ll no doubt be happy to know that the ones I showed a picture of you to proceeded to shout “Sexy!” for a good five minutes. Obviously these questions tend to come from the girls, the guys seem to sit they and guffaw to themselves.

The girls seem to be more communicative than the boys generally, probably because they know more English. The competence level is very low however and with most of the questions being barely recognisable I certainly have a challenge ahead of me. Fukuda-sensei, who I’ll be teaching with exclusively until April, has some very odd ideas of how to teach. He’s dragged up some ages old theory by Ogden called “Basic English.” Ogden thought that all concepts in English could be expressed using 850 words and for some insane reason Fukuda-sensei thinks this is the way to teach his class. As far as I know, Ogden’s theory wasn’t very well received when he made it God knows how many decades ago so why we should be teaching it to Japanese children is unknown. He actually wants to drill the 850 words into the student’s heads…In my opinion that’s madness, the little enthusiasm they have for English lessons would go out of the window. Oh well, I’ll have to try and work him around.

As I said, not much is working here in my apartment at the moment. My laptop is up and running, and the power converters I bought work. The new TV (which is huge) isn’t tuned in, and the satellite channels and internet need to be reconnected. Apparently I can’t use the car until my Inkan (a Japanese ink seal used instead of a signature) is registered and until the insurance is reregistered with the teachers union they have down here. Hopefully I’m off to set up a bank account today, having already applied for an Alien Registration card. I’m also hoping to get a Multiple Re-entry pass, a card that allows me to leave Japan as many times as I like during my possible 3 year stay. I got this mainly for vacations to Korea and Hong Kong, but it also works if I want to come home. It costs 6000yen (£30) but lasts for as long as my Visa does.

The apartment itself is larger than I thought, with three large-ish rooms and a smaller kitchen and bathroom (and a separate toilet). Two of the rooms are tatami matted (straw mats used for sitting), one is the bedroom and the other seems to be a spare which is odd as it’s the largest. The living room has the all important air-conditioning unit within, as well as the TV and a small couch.

Natasha, my predecessor has left me absolutely loads of stuff, some useful and some not. For example, I have every spice known to man, but also a scratching post for a cat. A hand-drawn map of Kagami and a big box labelled “Xmas stuff”. Some laptop speakers (very handy), but also the complete Ultimate Fighting Championship: World Series on VHS. Anyway, there’s more than enough space to put everything. Infact, I seem to have an excess of storage space; I found a door today I had previously missed that contained a whole other cupboard (and for some reason, a skateboard).

It does still feel like I’m living in someone else’s house at the moment. Natasha has left her JET calendar up and almost everyday has something pencilled in that she should have been doing, as I said the myriad of cupboards are still filled with a lot of her stuff, a small collection of the worst taste in CD’s I’ve ever seen lies in the living room, and various Canada related artefacts are placed in full view. I will try and unpack today (it’s now Saturday the 6th as I write this) but I have to go to the school to phone the local JET reps (well, I don’t have to but they’re organising a party at for this weekend and I couldn’t get through yesterday).

Pictures (click to see a bigger version)!


My apartment block, containing 4 apartos. Mine is actually offscreen, it's the upper right one. And yes, that's my car.


The main high street of Kagami. Quiet.


A festival in Yatsushiro City, the nearest urban centre. These are very popular and this one involved these poor people dancing for about an hour to 3 repeated songs...


My "Inkan" or personal seal, used in place of a signature. It actually says Godwin in the Japanese Katakana alphabet.


Had to put this one in last. That's me, obviously, looking quizzically at a can of "British Style" iced milk tea. Surprisingly nice.

Hallelujah!!!

'Ello.

Fiannly, finally my internet has been connected in my little apartment. Thank you Mr Yahoo-Japan. It's slightly slower than I would have hoped though:


(the top number is the download rate, approx 8mbps)
Considering I'm signed up to a 50Mbps plan it's a little off. Can't have everything I suppose.

Anyway, I have been writing blog entries since I got here to post up when I get the chance. So I'll start posting them up with their associated pictures ASAP.

Yahoooooo!

Tokyo

I'm writing this while sitting in bed on the 24th floor of the Tokyo Keio Plaza hotel. There seems to be a wireless network up here but I'm not sure why; I'm certainly not complaining however.

Well, it's certainly been some kind of day. I haven't slept in almost 24 hours (I think) and I've been busy.

Leaving the folks and Hannah at the departure lounge certainly wasn't easy, but luckily the flight itself was fine. The in flight entertainment was amazing, they had 40 movies to choose from as well as a digital jukebox of 50 CDs. This is probably why I haven't had any sleep. Anyway, after the excruciating pain in my ears had subsided after landing I realised we were at the hotel. And a very nice one it is too. For example, here's the view from my window:



And here’s the view from the 45th floor bar in the hotel:



Mmm, very Lost in Translation. Infact, I’ve been reminded of this film multiple times in the last few days. I was in a lift with 10 Japanese businessmen, none over 5’7. I’ve had to bend over double to get my head under the showerhead in my bathroom. I’ve sat staring at Japanese TV, utterly confused at what I supposed to be watched (for all of 3 minutes, I’m busy remember?).

The first day was quite surreal. After we got to the hotel we decided that Tokyo couldn’t not be explored so we set off. We actually managed to catch a train to Electric city in the Akihabara region, a town that sells nothing but electronic goods. We also managed, with a suitable amount of odd looks and smirks, to order lunch at a tiny little eatery by pointing at plastic mockups of the meals and raising one finger.

I’m finishing off this entry sat on the floor of the hotel’s 4th floor lobby, mainly because there’s no space in the room with the seats abd they don’t call these tings wireless networks for nothing. I was stopped for the first time to day by a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls, clad in clichéd but traditional garb, and asked for photos. I spent the next five minutes grinning madly as a neverending stream of them marched up, got their friend to point their phone at me and pulled a two fingered gesture that I’m assuming was polite.

Better end this here, my back is killing and people won’t stop taking photos, as if they’d never seen 50 people sat on a hotel floor typing on laptops….

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!"

Over

Well, it's a bit late but I've left Leeds and am now residing in Blackpool once more. However, due to an internet connection as fragile as a porcelain flower in a cattle show, I am forced to relocate to my parents frankly monolithic computer. The keyboard is made from solid granite and each letter takes a good ten minutes to press. This post therefore, has taken some serious effort.

Big Brother 6 eh?

Derek: Posh posh posh bitch Maggie Thatcher darling posh moan
Maxwell: Potatoe off the hook slapper jog off mate potatoe potatoe
Saskia: I'm not racist but ahhahahahahha oh Maxwell is so funny don't fancy him you're so great Maxwell

I think there are a few others still left in aswell.

As I'm on this piece of fossilised shite, I am cut off from my vast archive of pictures. However, I did manage to find one picture taken just after I left Ebberston terrace:

Sith

Well, it's a bit late, but here's my Revenge of the Sith impressions. Firstly, I would like to distance myself from the frankly awful Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Disgusting. Thankfully, RoTS does too. Well, mostly.

The good: the film.
The bad: the nerds sat next to us laughing at Yoda. "Yeah man, he's green and like, talks funny." Fuck off and die.

Anyway, it was good. In the sense that I got to explore my homoerotic side by looking at Hayden Christiansen and getting a stiffy. Mmm.



I would give it 7 noses out of 5.

Japan

I have got my placement through for Japan, the position of which I will illustrate on this helpful map from my archives:



As you can see, I am about as far from my first choice of Yokohama as they can get me. I now have another theory behind why I was chosen for the JET programme; they hate me. They hate me so much they want to throw me to the primatives and have them rip me limb from limb before eating my heart, lungs and testicles with what can only be described as tribal sporks.

Oh well, at least I got on the programme at all. For that I am grateful. Yes.

"E3 conferences 'a bit shit' shocker!"

This is copied directly from an email I sent to Gary (him down there):

"If I were to rank the conferences on quality of presentation, they'd look a bit like this:

1) Sony
2) Nintendo
3) Microsoft

Sony's conference was no nonsense. These are the specs, this is what it can do, these are some game trailers, this is the console. The specs stuff was dull however, and most of the game trailers were almost definately not ingame (the amazing Killzone 2 demo being highest on that list)

Nintendo had the advantage of Reggie but an awful DJ set using the DS (padding?) and baby-talking woman Tina (whining into Nintendogs) spolit it.

Microsoft's presentation was awful. "Yo yo yo, dis is da future of da gaming zen. 1 billion users on Live by tomorrow! Yeah!" It actually sounded like they hired people to whoop whenever J Allard spoke. Some excruciating "comedy" (including a be-wigged 360 faceplate for the bald Peter Moore before his presentation, hilarious) topped it off. Awful.

For content however:

1)Sony
2)Microsoft
3)Nintendo

Same reasons as above, but Sony and MS at least showed some next gen games, even if they were prerendered. Nintendo spent almost the entire conference on DS games everyone has seen before and talking about online functions (which, fair enough, is what they said they'd do). The Revolution showing was a joke, obviously only meant to appease the fans. Plus it looked like an Alba DVD player.

I know Nintendo had no intentions of showing the Revolution and they let us know this well before the conference but still, the conference was mainly talk with no substance, the worse of the three overall in my opinion. MS's one was a joke presentation wise but the online stuff was quite interesting. Sony's was rather blandly presented, but the hard stuff was there, the stuff the fans wanted to see."

How exciting.

Over....nearly

I didn't want this blog to be a "ow ma gawd, ma liife's awl messed ap!" blog, but more of a "What what what?" effort. Unfortunately I feel compelled to type about my workload. It is horrendous. I doubt Winston Churcill, when he saw in the distance the fleet of German bombers and foighters rapidly approching our little isle, felt as daunted as I did when confronted with 4, count them, 4 3000 word essays. One of them involved King Arthur. The others did not.

However, I am now rapidly approaching the End Game. With two of these gargantuan scriptures out of the way, and another halfway through, I feel I am able to speak about the tortures my mind has been through. Oh god, the tortures.

Seriously though, it's been a hard slog. Almost done now though. Anyway, here's another picture from my archives. I am not in it.


This is my housemate Jon. He is sleeping

Right

Well something went wrong there. With the blog I mean, not with the world in general.

Anyway, I had to restart and lost 2 very informative and downright hilarious posts. Really, they were fantastic. This post would not be fit to lick the sweaty mochasin slippers of the posts that were lost. I shall create a tablet, engrave it with their names and mourn it every April 21st. Here written are our fallen comrades:

Fireworks
The Holy Grail

It's too nice to do anything today so I have done precisely nothing. Well, I went to a lecture given by the producer of ITV Calender news . But only because I had to. It was rubbish. So, to liven up this frankly rather flat post is a lovely picture from my archives. I am not in it.


This is my friend Gary. He is waving hello to you.

Wrong

Somethings gone wrong here. Not only can I not view my Blog in Firefox, the posting method is stuck on HTML. What the hell....

First Post

First post? The last time that level of orginality was reached we ended up with that annoying Subway advert. You know. The one with the bloke. With glasses.

Well, it is my first post and I have no idea what to write in what is essentially a useless tool, at least for the next few months. I started this mainly because I'm (hopefully) off to Japan on the JET programme (www.jet-uk.org) soon and this might be an interesting way to communicate with home.

Home. Well it won't be here in Leeds for long thank god. Thanks to the weather and frankly obscene amount of work to be done, its hardly like I'm having a good time here. To be honest I shouldn't even be writing this, I should be researching about l33t talk and King Arthur. Not together obviously.

Though I'd put something on here to liven up this page, seems as it might not get updated for a bit:

Aah, New Years Eve '04. The memories. The memories.....