by ·4 Comments

There is a lot I would like to write about the recent news from Ireland…
But frankly, I can’t be arsed and it would be nothing you couldn’t read elsewhere anyway.

So to keep it short and bitter, I’ll just say that, as a fierce Euro-hopeful, I’m doubly disappointed by this result. Not only because it drags the once promising European process further into the ditch where it’s been for the past couple years, but also that Ireland, of all countries, had to be the one responsible for doing so.

If by now you haven’t heard a thousands times how Ireland virtually owes a huge share of its current miracle economic success to the very European solidarity process they have just bailed out on, then you must have been sleeping for the past 20 years.

It’s bad enough seeing people and countries act as selfish me-first teenagers, but when said country was until not so long a clear beneficiary of such solidarity and decides to leave as soon as they are finally asked to pitch in… That’s both infuriating and slightly dispiriting about people.

by ·3 Comments

Every year I have a moment of panic upon realising I totally let Mother’s Day slip by…

And then I remember that Mother’s Day in the US falls two weeks before France’s (in such matters, I go with most recent country of residence).

by ·Comments Off on Things could be worse

Walking home in the morning, cursing the pre-monsoon rain that forces you to spend all 30 minutes of the way back, hunched under a cheap plastic umbrella, suddenly hearing a loud thump above the noise of rain falling, lifting your head up and noticing that some bird just plopped all over your umbrella; a bird that, judging by the radioactive hue of the goop dripping from all sides, had some serious digestive problems…

And then realising that, at this very moment, your life could be much shittier.

Literally.

by ·4 Comments

Aside from a brief emergency trip to an eye-specialist last Summer (literally a mom-and-pop operation, whose office was approximately half the size of my current bedroom), I have never, during my stays in Japan, been afflicted with illnesses serious enough to mandate a trip to the hospital. At least nothing that couldn’t be treated with a self-administered treatment based on quinine-rich tonic water (aptly sterilized and base-neutralized with proper dosage of gin and lime).

This morning, though, I had to check in at my neighbourhood clinic and undergo a whole series of health exams. Not that I was feeling in any particularly bad shape (nasty lingering chest cough and faint hangover from previous night’s gin&shochu outing aside), but the Japanese Ministry of Education and Research insists on making sure that I don’t have tuberculosis, cancer or bubonic plague before even considering shelling out some Yen toward my World Domination Plot research, otherwise known as PhD.

In the grand tradition of furthering cross-cultural enlightenment that has made this blog famous in the greater Shin-Nakano Sanchome area, I figured I would share some random observations about the experience:

Continue reading

by ·2 Comments

Don’t you think?

I mean, the alcohol, the drugs, the neverending nights of feral sex, the uninspired blogging… it gets old, really.

Alright, so maybe not the booze, drugs and sex part. But the blogging part: definitely. I don’t mean the part about writing inane crap that nobody in their right mind should care about, in between two intense navel-staring sessions. I don’t think I’ll get tired of that part any time soon (I’m trying though). I mean, the sterile format that this blog has come to follow.

Oh, trust me, I am very aware of it. Sure, I have many excuses as to why my posting rate has dwindled to the levels of Bangladesh’s strawberry production on a bad monsoon year… Work, life, love (or pursuit thereof), happiness (idem) etc. But we all know there’s more to it. Truth be told, blogging here bores me, most of the time. There are a couple reasons for that, chiefly among them are:

  • This blog started out on the wrong foot.
    When I decided to open my first self-hosted online space, it started as a bastard mix of for-friends-only (“hey guys, long time no see”) news reports and travel-journal (“lookee all the whacky things they have here”)… Both rather boring genres in the long run, neither something I really felt like doing much. But I have been pulled toward these roots ever since.

  • It is read by all the wrong people.
    Quite expectedly (although I originally never intended it to be), this has become the place where all people who either have invested some DNA into me, or were court-ordered to stay at least a continent away, come to get their life update on Dave. Knowing that both your genitors (hi Mum! hi Dad!), extended family, past love interests (and potentiall future ones) are all reading this, puts a serious cap on any attempt at spontaneity.
  • And therefore… I write elsewhere.
    Yes, I know, it hurts, but I have been seeing other people. In other locales, other languages even. Usually with completely different style and contents. Don’t even try to search the web: believe me you won’t find it. Those other writings are all that this isn’t: personal, fun, hyperbolic, unauthentic, uncensored etc.

Then why bother?

Good question. I suppose because this still serves a purpose for some writings, in some contexts. Also because I hate giving up. And closing that blog before I turn 50 would feel like giving up.

But things need to change. Not sure what, but they do.

Still working on details. I technically have about 10 days before the official 5 year anniversary of this blog. Do not expect grand announcement or sudden changes, just be warned.

Sorta.

by ·1 Comment

Albert Hofman, discoverer of the lysergic acid diethylamide compound (better known under its initials) and advocate of a mature, non-repressive approach to psychedelic drug experimentation, died this week at the age of 102.

Yet another tragic example of a young life cut short by the evils of drugs.

by ·3 Comments
  • Stuff I emptied out from my apartment: 56 sq. meters’ worth of furniture, art, daily life crap and assorted paraphernalia.
  • Stuff I still owned after distributing everything else to friends, family and random strangers: 6 small boxes (books and some clothes).
  • Stuff actually in my possession and not currently sitting in a basement until I have a home again someday: 1 suitcase.

The first metric tonne is always the hardest to part with… After that it just comes off naturally.

by ·Comments Off on End of an Era

This morning, I sat through the last written test of my life.(*)

(*) Don’t get all excited now: I am far from done… Still got a couple reports and projects to hand in, not to mention thesis defense(s) in the coming months/years. Not to mention JLPT in December and any other such certification test I may ever be foolish enough to apply for… Still:

The last written test of my entire existence!

by ·6 Comments

China’s recent efforts in Tibet to thwart the nefarious plot set in motion by that most infamous of evil-doers (Peace Nobel Prize recipient 14th Dalai Lama, in case you hadn’t seen through this two-faced monster for who he was) apparently seemed to have awaken some conveniently fast-asleep Human Rights concerns among nations taking part in the Olympic Games this Summer. News in France and elsewhere in Europe abound with competitors in rather forgettable disciplines (pole vault anybody?) voicing their concerns about the ethics of the whole thing…

Frankly, I find it all rather funny (or at least: would find it funny, if we weren’t talking about a massive PR operation unequivocally benefitting a dictatorial government).

If you still have some delusion about the International Olympics Committee upholding some sort of code of ethics or caring for democratic values and such, you have clearly been sleeping through the past hundred years.

Forget the widespread corruption, the notorious bribing, the less than inspiring list of IOC members (a good half of which sits atop one minor autocratic regime or other) etc. etc. For fuck sake, do you know who was the head of the IOC for more than 20 years until 7 years ago (still Honorary President for Life)?

Ask your Spanish friends what they think of Mr. Juan Antonio Samaranch. Ask them, for instance, how they feel about Juan’s former boss and good pal: el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la Hispanidad, also known as the guy who butchered thousands and kept Spain in an iron fascistic rule for 40 years. Before his gig at the IOC, Juan Antonio was a prominent political figure in Dictator Franco’s regime (and stayed involved, long after joining the IOC full-time). Best to say that, despite an innate dislike for those dirty heathen Commies, there were certain Human Rights abuses he very much could live with.

The IOC is not a humanitarian organization, they are a for-profit corporation, and a very conservative-right one at that.

So, shout all you want about the World’s powers leaving their principled Human Rights concerns at the door in the name of Olympic Brotherhood and Coca Cola partnerships, but please spare me the part about how you’d expected better from the IOC. Chances are, the last time the IOC expressed an ounce of concern for the ethics of the Games, you weren’t even a glimmer in your dad’s left testicle…