The Telegraphic

I’m sitting in “the coffee bean and tea leaf” café, which overlooks the transit lounge of Brunei airport. I feel like I’ve been transported back 20 years, into a middle eastern RSL club-cum-airport. A coffee and chicken pie costs almost exactly $10 AU, so I’m waiting for what will no doubt be lovely high class airport food. Scratch that, I have my high quality food and it’s quite edible. I love Brunei! As long as I don’t do something wrong and be punished by DEATH. With CAPS in the brochure.

I’m 3/4 the way through “The Cosmic Blueprint”, by Paul Davies, which is a good read although I haven’t been digesting it properly. I’ve already finished the web design mag I bought. I have a New Scientist left to read, which I hope yields a better reading-to-price ratio.

I got an emergency exit seat for the short trip, but have a killer 18hr leg left. Turns out the emergency exit isn’t thermally shielded so is a good place to cool down your water bottle. Think the flight attendant noticed me laughing to myself about how cookie cutter the buildings were. Hope I didn’t offend.

Saw a guy sleeping with his mouth closed but lips open. Thought that was strange. The Oreos on the plane seemed more salty than usual. Will investigate further if 491mg of Sodium is a lot. Main meal was dissapointing, canneloni was a bad choice.

Still have 2 hours to kill. Coffee bean guy keeps calling peoples names in a high pitch voice “Sir Steve? Sir Steve?” Planning on knocking myself out at exactly the right time to have a good first day in England.

Love you all
Dan

For my own spiritual benefit, I’m reuploading the backup of my adventures in Japan. It seems like such a waste for it to disappear into the aether. So into mySQL it goes. You can find it under the “Japan-Four” category.

The Savage stood looking on. “O brave new world, O brave new world …” In his mind the singing words seemed to change their tone. They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. “O brave new world!” Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. “O brave new world!” It was a challenge, a command.

I made two exciting discoveries today:

1. That “twinkle twinkle little star” and “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz” (or the “alphabet song” as it is known affectionately to some), have the same melody. I never realised until the teacher was singing it in Japanese – then it went #BAM# and hit me. I told Simon and he said #SNAP#. Pretty heavy stuff.
2. I refound a site called pitchforkmedia.com which is better than NME for music news and reviews. If anyone knows a better site then let me know.

That’s it. Although I’m interested to know who already knew that about the two songs, so drop in a comment. IF YOU DARE *Insert scary music*

On friday night I went to my first Rotary club ‘party’. It was held on the top floor of the most flashy hotel in Himeji, where the Himeji Dokkyo ryugakusei (exchange students) were invited to dine and mingle with the members of the Rotary club – although there wesn’t really all that much mingling. Whilst we ate, some old men introduced themselves over the PA. I was planning on doing some ‘mingling’ but by the time I’d had a few beers and settled in the main guy goes ‘all right shows over, lets go have a photo together’.

So that was the Rotary club. I am still none the wiser on how they get money, members and international contacts. I think they may be some sort of stonemason-esque cult. Perhaps they reprogrammed us, like in that movie Cypher, where Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) applies for a job as a spy at Digicorp, but ends up descending into a dark underworld of brainwashing in which he struggles to maintain his own identity. Good movie.

After our brainwashing seminar we hit Himeji. The morning after, Himeji hit back – which would have been fine if I didn’t have to admit to my host mother I had a huge hangover, didn’t want piles of food or water and that all I wanted was sleep and panadol. Alas, predictably by the time I got up, changed and left to get to the fireworks in Aioi the entirety of Shosha knew.

By the time we got to Aioi I was feeling fine. We got in early to get a good spot then did some exploring down the sidewalk-stall filled streets. The fireworks were amazing – all 70 minutes of them. As saftey wasn’t really a factor they’d considered we were up real close. Apparently, 100,000 people turned up to watch them. The place was heaving. A kid who was sitting behind us decided to rate every firework (there were 5000 rockets so it got a bit tedious). At first it was either ‘yowai hanabi’, ‘chotto tsuyoi’ or ‘tsuyoi hanabi’ but after he realised we were laughing at him it got more abstract like ‘super smash hanabi’ or ‘mega ultra grandpa hanabi’. We decided he’s gonna grow up and become either a wine or movie critic, or a panel member for a Japanese TV show.

Tomorrow I’ll be studying for a test on Tuesday, which I expect we may have already been given in parts, which I intend to memorize. Wish me luck.

Jap Glossary
tsuyoi – strong yowai – weak hanabi – firework chotto – a little