Report from Greater Tokyo

Woke up late this morning, looked out the window, and saw a couple of my co-workers walking into work, including my boss. So I phone him up and ask him. Seems I was meant to be in today. I get dressed in record time and I'm only 10 minutes late. And it turns out that the administratum had changed the timetable on him without telling him. We all had a nice chat about our holidays and went home.

The ironic bit of all this is that I went into work yesterday, as I wasn't sure which day was the first day back. And I was told that it would be tomorrow, not today.

Worlds Apart on the Vision Thing

The American dream has long been recognised. While no single paragraph can do any such encompasing vision justice, a fair summary could be "work hard and you'll prosper; poverty is solely the result of laziness".

Now here comes this little article proposing that a new European dream has formed. A dream that focuses not so much on the Protestant work ethic, but on multi-culturalism. By the standards noted in that article, Europe is more prosperous in every way that matters. it is also more willing to accept outside cultures too, provided those outside cultures have already subscribed to the umbrella of European union. That isn't actually high praise; The various states of the USA are also willing to accept outside cultures that have subscribed the the umbrella organisation that is the USA.

But Europe is on its way to unification, regardless of how hard certain nations within it may drag their heels. And as with any nation building, a mythology, a national dream, must be built before the people will believe in the unified entity as a nation. Without a dream, the people perish. The multicultural ideal is important for the EU, as it is an essential ideal for expansion to be possible without causing instability. But Europe needs more than that to succeed.

Europe is more productive than the USA in terms of output per man hour (though perhaps not in terms of output per worker). What is missing in the European dream is the driving force that will make Europe the productive powerhouse of the future. As the European dream stands now, there is nothing beyond localised national pride to make it research faster, manufacture more, or even grow more food. And while that localised national pride is good, properly chanelled, it isn't a European dream, it is a merelt a national dream.

So I went out on my bike to buy some bread today. And I cycle on the pavement alongside the main road, as I do. I come up to a crossroads, and I have right of way. Nonetheless, I slow down to check for traffic, as right of way is no substitute for a working set of arms and legs.

There is a car approaching from the side. As she doesn't have right of way, the obasan driving it stops. Since it is generally considered safe to go forwards when other traffic is stopped and you have right of way, I continue in front of that stopped car.

Now, despite the fact that she was looking for other traffic, despite NOT having right of way, and despite my being plainly in her line of sight, she starts moving again, and gets within a few centimetres of grinding my front wheel. Perhaps I should've jumped out of the way or something, I dunno. I wasn't yet bodily in front of the car's path, and there wasn't really any easy way to dismount the bike at that point. Plus I was astounded at just how a driver could fail to notice a cyclist directly in her line of sight at less than five metres.

Few people act stupid. Usually, it's the real thing.

It is way too hot here. In my room, I don't think it has gone below 30 (that's centigrade, before you get all excited) in the daytime for the last few weeks. Unless of course I use my air conditioner.

But I've been trying to do two things. First, save money / the environment by using less electricity. Money is the lesser of the two issues there, as electricity is dirt cheap compared to back in the UK. Second, I've been trying to shake my caffeine addiction. I've been drinking gallons of green tea to cool down, because the fruit juices are loaded in sugar and the tap water is loaded in heaven alone knows what. Unfortunately, I forgot that green tea is loaded in caffeine, and that has messed up my sleep patterns. Combine caffeine withdrawal with too much heat, and you have a perfect recipe for drowsiness.

Fortunately I'm off to Australia tomorrow. This does of course mean that this blog won't be updated for a week or three. Hopefully there will be pictures of the big red thing to show when I get back.

I decided to do a vanity search. This is where you type your name on a search engine and see what comes up. I have been mentioned on pages in Italian, Hungarian, English, French, Russian, and Japanese.

International man of mystery, I am.

Having left that formerly human, and now also formerly orc (or elf) village behind, our protagonist marched onwards, seeking his or her own true identity, and perhaps even destiny.

But at this point our protagonist was lost. The village held no answers, and neither did the home in the forest. In vain he (or she) wandered alone and lost, for many weeks, over hills, mountains, deserts, and the occasional jungle, living off hunted small animals and drinking from fresh water streams, catching only what was needed and carrying the excess as supplies until the next hunt.

Then one day the protagonist came to a small cottage in amongst a copse of trees at the foot of a solitary mountain.