Lotusblog

I am supposed to be working, but I can’t stop watching the Chromeo “Needy Girl” video. Here’s a screenshot. You can extrapolate what watching a 4 minute video would be like; it’s this picture with a lens flare ™ factor of ten.

The new black?

Plaster of Paris is the new black.

Act of Senseless Kindness Number One
I accompanied a client yesterday to the ward office and immigration office. We waded through several levels of bureaucracy, lapped it all up and then found ourselves at the Ministry of Justice building at 16:03. They close at 16:00.
After being ignored for a while I pleaded with one of the staffers to process my client’s papers. I was expecting a no, it was closed after all, but miraculously, although huffing and puffing like a little-piggy-eating wolf, said staffer angrily said “well you’d better do it quickly because I have already turned other people because we’re closed”.
And would ya believe it, my client had a stamp in his passport, a spring in his step and pride in his heart in less that fifteen minutes. A new immigration office record.
So, I would like to publicly say, “Thank you immigration office. You really saved my bacon yesterday. If there’s ever anything I can do…”

Act of Senseless Kindness Number Two
Eventually I made it home. It was raining heavily due to the typhoon and I was deciding whether I should wrestle an umbrella or just dash home through the rain. I thought that a middle-aged woman standing at the top of the exit stairs was thinking through the same puzzle, but no, she was actually waiting for people to enter the station. Ah, I thought, she has forgotten her umbrella and she has the nerve to ask people if she can have their umbrellas. What a cheek, I thought.
But, I was wrong again. She approached a well dressed woman in her early thirties and asked if she was going to catch a train. Yes I am, said the younger woman. Well then, said the middle-aged woman, you can have my ticket. It’s a day ticket and it’s still valid- it’s a waste to not use it. And so, the younger woman, with a ticket in her purse, a spring in her step and pride in her heart bounded towards the ticket gates.

Thanks to this site , I just watched the pilot episode of “Mork and Mindy”.

Nanoo nanoo!

I was completely overcome with nostalgia, and remembered myself wearing an itchy wool dressing gown over my flannel pyjamas, sitting down with my brother to watch the weekly episode. The sets, the jeep, the music shop, Mindy’s father- it was almost too much.

For a few moments I was eight years old again.

But Lordy Belgrano, what complete nonsense! How my parents could have tolerated me watching such a ridiculous TV show I will never know. Maybe standards were different back then. At least the show was non-violent, devoid of (overt) sexuality and moral (whatever that may mean). But I guess for better or for worse, I am now the sum of all the TV shows I have ever watched.

Perhaps it’s quite different from TV now. What do today’s eight year old boys watch on television?

I am trying to imagine whether I will ever permit a television in my home. And if I were to have a son, who would presumably become eight years old at some stage, how would I entertain him? Somafm? Wired? Jazz guitar? Perhaps I could just let him watch my archive of DivX 80’s television shows. At least there would be no commercials.

I figured a bit of lens flare wouldn’t hurt the cool house.

The cool house became even cooler

The cool house just got cooler.
And I bet the-people-who-live-there’s mother doesn’t mind one bit if they roller skate indoors. In fact, she probably encourages it.

Fancy living here?

Now who wouldn’t want to live in a house like this?
This is another example of why I loved Bangkok so much.

What a place. What a place…

Keep watching this space for “London Aeroplane Series”. It’s amazing what a fertile imagination, some bad weather and a child’s toy can do.

The Lotusblogger, Mr. TM (background) and a plastic 747

Boy, oh boy. Did I miss this blog.

I got back from Bangkok on Friday morning (Oct 1) where I spent a couple of days on my way home from London.
This trip was one of those times where mind-blogging would have been just the ticket. But alas, the technology just isn’t there yet. But I guess I should do the next best thing and get my moblogging situation setup. Or perhaps I should go back to web-based blogging.
So many decisions to be made.

So let me give you a brief rundown of my time away.

Mon Sept 20: Left Kansai at midnight. Arrived in Bangkok at 5:30 in the morning. Had a massage and settled in for our 7 hour wait for our connecting flight.
Tues Sept 21: Arrived in London in the evening. Made our way to our office where we had dinner and then collapsed from exhaustion.
Wed Sept 22: Went to our storage place to pick up furniture which we took to our showroom in Bermondsey, near the Tower Bridge. Spent the rest of the day until early evening setting up, making calls, planning the week.
Thursday Sept 23: Press, buyers and designers started coming to visit us. The response was hardly overwhelming, but the ones who did make the journey seemed impressed. Went to 100% design in the evening, after which I sent my colleagues home and went out with I, a friend from Japan whom I hadn’t seen for about 5 years.
Friday Sept 24: More of the same. A long lunch. A longer dinner.
Saturday Sept 25: Ditto
Sunday Sept 26: A lazy day- no interviews with the press were scheduled, so I met some aunts and uncles who had driven down to the London for the day. Enjoyed a Sunday roast lamb dinner in a pub by the Thames, it was a beautiful, sunny day. My first time to really relax in a week, and of course it was great to catch up with the Forbes and the Franklands. Went to visit C, another friend (whom I hadn’t seen for more than 7 years) and had an evening well-lubricated with vodka tonics, laughter and stories of getting mugged.
Monday Sept 27: Bagels again for breakfast, and our last full day in London. Stuff had to be packed and carted across the city back to our storage facility. Dinner at the office and then said my goodbyes to friends.
Tuesday Sept 28: (Scott’s birthday) Got up early, packed and headed to Paddington Station. Checked in our luggage, got our seats to Bangkok sorted out and then headed to the airport. Got on a jetplane. Left on a jetplane.

And that was London.

Impressions:

London is exciting. London is dangerous. London is expensive, yet bagels only cost 15p at the Brick Lane “beigel shop”. It’s also incredibly dirty- my shirt collars were black when I took off my shirts at the end of the day. Seriously. It has great galleries and amazing architecture.
I want to live there. Kind of.

Perhaps the cheesiest title for a blog post, ever, but true. We were actually only there for one night.

Wednesday Sept 29: Arrived in Bangkok at dawn. Took a taxi to our hotel, the Sukhotai. The hotel was great- not only is it one of the best-designed hotels I have ever seen, with amazing facilities and restaurants, the service was incredible. Quite a change from London. The hotel kindly let us check in 9 hours early (and also agreed to let us have a late check out too), I spent the time in the bath, and then took my newspapers outside where I sat by the pool, ate, drank, swam, read and slept like there was no tomorrow.
The next thing I remember was Taka waking me up at 12:30 telling me that we were meeting Chico at 13:00. We spent the rest of the afternoon being showed around shops, visiting showrooms and meeting designers.
Went to “Anna’s Café” for dinner. An interesting combination of genuine Thai food followed by Italian coffees and English desserts. We then went to the most amazing bar I have ever been too. Ever. A bar on the top of a 64 storey building. ON THE TOP. No roof. Only a one-metre high glass handrail between you and the pavement. I have never thought of myself as being acrophobic, but this bar was actually kind of unsettling. Very international, well-heeled crowd too. I felt right at home.

to be continued…

I thought the internet was supposed to free us. Or at least free information.

And to be fair, it sort of does. In some ways. I just came across a rather novel application of a company’s ability to leverage the power of the ‘net. Mizuho bank (Japan’s largest in terms of assets) has an online banking function available for those customers who sign up for it. I am one. It works pretty well- you can send money to people, check your balance, the usual stuff. But the hilarious thing is that you can only do it at certain times…

以下の時間帯は、インターネットバンキングをご利用いただけません。

●土曜日22:00〜翌日曜日8:00、日曜日21:00〜翌月曜日7:00
●第1・第4土曜日3:00〜5:00

…which for those of you whose browsers don’t support Japanese means:

You can’t us internet banking during the following times:
Saturdays from 10pm to Sunday morning 8am
Sundays from 9pm to Monday morning 7am
The first and forth Saturdays of the month from 3pm to 5pm

There are also other sporadic, non-regular times when the service is unavailable. I guess now must be one of them, because it isn’t listed above.

I guess you can only shrug your shoulders and laugh.

Tomorrow night I leave for London.

I will be there for 100% Design- one of the premier international design events to try to drum up business for the company I work for. It should be a blast. But getting to London is the easy part- before tomorrow night I have several mountains to cross. Lots of loose ends to tie up. And a shitload of work to do.

So heads down.