You’ve probably seen this video. The ‘highlights’ of walking around New York for 10 hours, but not in a good ‘look at all this tourist stuff we visited’ The video troubled me and not just because it seems to be a very narrow selection of choices of the types of men who do interact with her. That could be deliberate, to get more coverage, or it could be as stated, that the majority of comments from white guys were not recorded well. It’s a film by a charity trying to get views and attention, it’s going to do everything it…
-
-
If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll have seen my daily photos charting the renovation of my bathroom over the last few weeks. Finally it’s done!!! After 2 weeks of having to shower at work, it’s over and I get my own bathroom back. I’m pretty sure that the bathroom was original, with the suite installed when the flat was built back in the 50s. The council added central heating since then – running the pipes in front of the bath, but everything else has stayed the same. This is why you have a toilet cistern that may contain asbestos…
-
So Andy Hayler, a great food blogger (who is from Chiswick too), pointed out that there are 992 foodblogs writing about London, or at least 992 who have signed up for Urbanspoon’s blog list. I don’t pretend to be a regular food blogger but I do LOVE eating out..and taking photos of the food, so I thought I’d join the list 🙂 The last time I booked for Hedone, I ended up being unconscious on the operating table having my retina re-attached at the time I was supposed to be eating. So this time, not that I’m superstitious or anything…
-
I had a lovely weekend planned. A haircut, lunch at one of my favourite restaurants, the the British 10k race on Sunday. All of that got blown away Friday afternoon when I looked up to find my eye full of floaters, dark strands filling the vision. They settled down, but over the next few hours, a blurred spot started to grow at the edges of my site and the eye now appeared to be filled with dust. Myy first thought was to pop in to the opticians on Saturday morning to see if there was a problem but some internet…
-
It’s a New Year! 2014 is here and has done its best to make its mark with the weather. Reading How to run the perfect marathon by Beer Belly Running. I’m going to be reading a lot more like this as I have no idea what to expect (pain, I know there’ll be pain, but what else? 🙂 ) It’s 14 weeks today. I have a lot of miles to get through. Facebook reveals mobile growth by country. (TechCrunch) One thing about being a public company is Facebook has to give information to investors that it would not have normally…
-
Reading Odon Childbirth device: Car mechanic uncorks a revolution. A feature about Jorge Odon, a car mechanic from Argentine, who has invented a new device to help with childbirth. What we can learn from fake tears on social media (The Kernal). Why people push their grief onto social media when a celebrity dies. (something you would rarely see me doing, I never know the person!) Raising Steam, Terry Pratchett. I didn’t want to start, as it could be the last book from Pratchett. He’s an author I’ve bought all the stories,the first when he was signing books in Blackwells when…
-
Reading 18 Ways to take Mobile seriously from Inma. It’s been the year of the mobile for years and years, but it’s permanently tipped that way now and this provides a list of the basics to make sure you’re meeting needs. I’m not Angry. After my meeting with Ben, this is where my searches took me, an encounter with him in 2008. Ian Watkins: Didin’t See it Coming by Rae Alexandra. Ian Watkins pled guilty to child abuse and a ex-friend talks about how there was no indication. The reality is, you can rarely tell. My Week as an Amazon…
-
Sitting on the bus, a man is helped on. He says he can’t see, although he does not seem to have too much trouble moving around or slapping his Oyster card down. He says he’s disabled, cheerfully, as that’s the armour against the world. He sits down next to me and just starts to talk. the initial reaction is typical London, ignore him. But you can’t. There’s a stream of talk just flowing out, asking me not to be scared. That he’s disabled. That he had a parachute accident and fell, broke everything and was in hospital for 5 years,…
-
Yesterday, I used up one of my remaining holiday days to play tourist in London. Usually, holidays are used for holidays, somewhere else, but occasionally it’s nice to use one to explore my home town. The plan was made to tour the churches of Sir Christopher Wren. After the Great Fire of London in 1666, he rebuilt 51 of them. Not all of them survive though. Some were pulled down deliberately, other’s were hit by the firebombing in the Blitz and were completely destroyed or ended up being restored. In some cases, only a tower or an outline survives. Yesterday,…
-
Winter is definitely here! it’s getting a bit cold out there. Not sure of it’s the cold but it was a very quiet week. Reading Not that musch this week. The NSA Files: Decoded from The Guardian. An assessment of the impact of the revelations about the NSA spying on everyone. Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin. Another instalment in the life of Rebus Doing The week was very, very quite! The only things of note were watching the Doctor Who 50th anniversary (which I loved) and attending the Brazil BadgerBash, a gathering of F1 fans, to watch…
-
I opened up iTunes this week, sometimes that does not happen too often. There was my full list of all the songs I had bought this year. A grand total of THREE. That’s it, just the 3 songs. When I mentioned this to colleagues, it seems that I’m not alone in my minimal of songs, with some saying they can’t remember the last time they bought something. But there are different reasons for this. For them, it’s because they pay a subscription to services to Spotify and that delivers all their needs. for me, I just don’t do that much…
-
Reading The Ofsted Report on Hogwarts. This is from earlier in the year and is a lot of fun. What would the regulatory bodies make of a school of Wizardry, especially one with such a high accident rate! Up in Arms (Tufts) A look back at the hstory of the US and how the different areas of settlement led to different attitudes to gun laws. The US is divided into different ‘nations’ based on their pattern of immigration The Innovation of Loneliness. This looks like it is a graduate project and nothing in it appears to be original (I wish…
-
The plan to do weekly blog posts lasted nearly 3 months, so it was a start. Let’s see if I can finish off the end of the year with weekly posts. Reading On holiday, I read a lot of books about Japan or by Japanese authors. When looking up what would be good to read, a lot of the recommended books were not available on a Kindle, so did not make it with me, but I plan to find them and buy. So reading there included: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami By a Japanese author and set in…
-
After the touristing of the last 2 weeks, the last 2 days were basically travel. First of all we travelled from Hiroshima back to Tokyo via Shinkansen, the bullet train. We were staying in the Shinjiku area, so wandered along to the park Hyatt (as all the reviews say, made famous by the film Lost in Translation). We were too late for afternoon tea, but had a drink and watched the darkness fall across the city from the 41st floor. Pity the weather was so bad, as I guess it looks wonderful with clear skies! Then the travel home.Up at…
-
Today feels like our last full day in Japan – tomorrow is travelling back to Tokyo and getting ready to leave. We’re still in Hiroshima and the plan today was to walk round the Peace Memorial Park and visit the museum and memorials there. First was the A-bomb Dome. As a concrete building, it was one of the few remaining standing in the centre of Hiroshima and has been left (after much deliberation over the years) as a permanent reminder. It is preserved in the same state of disrepair as it was after the bombing. Wandering around the rest of…
-
An early start to the day as we headed to the station to catch another Shinkansen, heading further west to Hiroshima. It takes just over 2 hours (discounting the standing at stations) to travel the 224 miles, speeding through the countryside. Except it wasn’t really countryside, as you’d call it in the UK. There’s no rolling fields, it’s all suburban. It seems that except for the mountains, everywhere we have seen has been built up, the trip was an endless strip of city and suburbs. There’s an occasional field, sliced into strips, some with cereal or rice, others cultivated with…
-
There’s so much to do in Kyoto we haven’t even started to scratch the surface. But today, we took the decision to head to Nara, the old capital of Japan. Or should I say older, as it was capital from 710 for 75 years. It’s about an hour SE of Kyoto. Like most of the towns we’ve seen, the arrival location is never that impressive, but we headed out up the main shopping street through to Nara Park. First was Kofuku-Ji, transferred from Kyoto in 710. Nothing remains of that time, as with most temples, they’ve been destroyed by fire,…
-
A day in Kyoto. Despite the many, many temples and shrines, World Heritage Sites and Cultural Treasures, the main part of Kyoto is basically ugly, like most cities in Japan it appears. Any charm has been destroyed as buildings are built and rebuilt, modern, flat, grey. Electricity lines snake down streets, not underground but in the air like mad knitting. There’s no space between houses, no gardens, the buildings in the city built tight next to each other, the same pattern repeated as you move to the outskirts. Now and again you get an old building that has survived, but…
-
A new city! Today we travelled from Nagoya to Kyoto, to continue with out sightseeing touristy part of the trip. We boarded the Shinkansen for the 40min trip. We had intended to forward the luggage, but it turns out, that it takes 24 hrs, so we took them with us. Somehow, despite not really buying a lot, both suitcases seem to have got a LOT heavier! Luggage left at hotel, we headed out into town. First of all, we wandered along the row of Nishiki market. It’s like Borough Market, except mainly fish! I thought about it, but in the…
-
Today was the day of the Japanese Grand Prix. The 15th race of the season. A race where Vettel could win the championship. My second GP of the year. And the reason why Sofia and I are in Japan. But this isn’t a race report. These blog posts are more about my travels in Japan. So there’s not that much to say today! We caught the morning train to the circuit and decided to follow the locals in their traditions. Not camping out in car parks though! We found ourselves a spot under the grandstand, spread out our mat and…