Lotusblog

So it’s already July. It’s stinking hot. I am in Japan. No more trips for a while. I just upgraded my blog software.

I feel like a fish out of water.

Can I ever blog again?

Is it really 4 months since my last entry? How can this be so?

So much has happened.

But it would take forever to write it here.

So let me just say that I am in London now, will be back in Osaka next weekend. You know my email address. You know my number.

Contact me.

Zefrank talked last week about “busting your cycle”. It’s worth watching, so just click here and sit back. So in the meantime, I decided to bust a cycle of my own.

I rode my bike!

I didn’t fall off!

I didn’t have a crash!

Actually, it was fantastic. I haven’t ridden since my last crash, mainly because my wrist still hurts, but I just had to ride. The autumn weather is just beautiful- too beautiful to miss. So I did a home-Honmachi-Umeda-home run and boy do I feel achey now.
Haven’t felt this good for ages.

BBC’s online news is one place I go to almost everyday to check the day’s headlines, and see what’s going on. It’s clean, the RSS feeds work with my news reader, there’s no advertising and the quality of the writing is pretty good.

At least, that’s how it used to be.

I just read this article and I am in shock. How could such poor writing be featured by the BBC?

The world is a large and mysterious place.

My tomato plants, growing on my balcony, are certainly full of vigour but from three plants, in four months I only managed to get one tomato.
They seem to be more focussed on growing skywards rather than producing fruit.
Is there something I should be doing? Any skilled tomato gardeners out there?
You know where to reach me.

After living in Japan for a number of years, and after having had a number of employers, I found myself with a lot of bank accounts. It was silly. I only ever use two of them on a day to day basis, four of them were lying abandoned. Potential security risks. Fodder for identity hijackers.

So I decided to do something about it. That is close them.

The Japanese banking system (well, the retail banking system) gets a pretty bad rap, especially from overseas. But to be fair, I really don’t know why. While they admittedly pay negligible interest, they don’t charge you money to give them your money. (Western banks; take note!) You don’t have to go to extreme lengths to open an account either (again, US/European banks… take note!) And once you’ve opened it, it’s there for ever. R opened an account in 1992 (?) and it’s still there. 500 yen patiently waiting. What’s more, J-Banks offer smart ATMs that really are automatic tellers. They do everything. Once you’ve opened your account (which involves talking to a pesky human) you can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll never need to talk to one again. Everything is automated.

And if you do decide that you need the human touch, the banks are there. Admittedly, they’re only open 6 hours a day, but nonetheless, they are there for you. And there’s none of the humiliation and frustration of banking in the UK or Australia. You tell the nice lady at the door what you want, she’ll give you a number and you sit down on a comfy couch with a selection of magazines and a TV (no comment). And you relax. Then they call you. You do what you had to do. You don’t shout through a bulletproof glass partition. You have a nice civilized conversation with a charming, young lady (no, they really are all charming young ladies) face to face. And then you go home.

Despite all this, I decided to slim down and close three of my accounts.

And now I feel like I have just lost 10 kg, everything is so much lighter!

In doing all this banking though, I discovered one thing. The banking industry is starting to wake up and modernise. A much more “bespoke” banking experience is being offered by some of the banks. And even a couple of young upstart banks have become so well established that they now eclipse the older dinosaur banks in terms of assets, and blow them away in terms of services. I actually opened an account with one of these younger banks. Their services and conditions seemed to good to be true.

Which, now that I think about it, is a bit of a worry!

S reminded me recently of the (computer) game “Quake II”. We played online the other day as a team- and boy did we kick butt. What a fun game. It’s so ridiculously violent, so over the top, such a schoolboy fantasy game and so juvenile… but I love it. It’s the perfect antidote to what’s going on around me at the moment.

It’s quite addictive to play by yourself (I recently had a day off, and spent three hours in bed with my iBook, killing aliens and robots and searching for power cubes, data CDs and special keys). But it’s the game equivalent of crack-cocaine when you play online with friends.

I just took a couple of screenshots. Check out the polygonal blood!
Yeah!

I guess I am a bit of a rambler. In a random way. Spent last week in Bangkok, Osaka and then Aomori. Have been back in Osaka for five days. Here are some random pictures of my journeys.

In what has become a pretty tired routine, I just got back to Osaka from London. I am here for one week before heading off again.

For the first time, I actually came back without any photographs at all!
Not even one!
And I didn’t have any accidents either!
Not even one!

And for the first time I can’t think of anything remotely interesting to write about. So in that case, I’ll get back to work.

What’s your earliest musical memory? What was the first song you remember?

This is probably impossible to answer with one specific song, but you can doubtless name several songs that go back to the murky ether of infancy. Songs that you heard as a toddler, and while they may not have meant anything then, the rhythms, melodies and beats were indelibly etched into your synapses. Songs that, perhaps, your parents and those around you at the time may have particularly enjoyed. Twenty, thirty, even fifty years later, hearing one of these songs stops you dead in your tracks. Not unlike brushing past someone in a crowded shopping centre and smelling a long forgotten perfume from a long forgotten lover.

It’s a Tuesday morning, and after getting up early, I have been working at home- which means sitting in front of my computer, listening to my cool music collection and pecking away at my keyboard. (Fifty years ago, work would have been tilling a field in the rain listening to cows, but I digress, that’s a whole ‘nuther blog post).

Anyway, so it’s a Tuesday morning and I am sitting here typing and The 5th Dimension song “Up, Up and Away” just came on and BANG! I was frozen in time. For me, this is one of those songs. “On Top of The World” by The Carpenters is another.

And there are more.

To be continued…