Large load of laundry + Forgotten pack of tissues = EPIC FAIL
My shirts look like they’ve been gang-raped by a pack of fluffy teddy bears.
Category: Discussion
Rock Technicality
Mother, should I run for President? Roger Waters
Hearing this album for perhaps the billionth time since I turned 12, I just realised tonight that this particular piece of lyrics just doesn’t make any sense, being sung by an Englishman.
[…]
Class president, maybe?
[…]
I have way too much free time (not really).
Domestic Conundrum
I need to dramatically raise the hang-drying capacity of my balcony…
Or start doing laundry more often than once a month.
Save the fastest running gene in the galaxy!
If, like me, you delight in advance at the possibility of one day being diagnosed with an incurable disease linked to a gene named after the world’s most famous blue hedgehog, feel free to circulate the following petition:
Dear fellows at the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Guidelines Committee,
It has recently come to my attention that you have decided to do away with names deemed “inappropriate or offensive” found in the existing international gene nomenclature.
I couldn’t agree more: I always thought that the officially registered name for gene kill-all-the-Jews-and-drink-their-blood was a bit politicised for a scientific setting.
Whatever you do, however, keep your hands off gene SHH, otherwise officially known as sonic hedgehog homolog (Drosophila) gene. We like it the way it is (blue, spiky and running very fast). Beside, what better way to break the news of some potentially fatal gene mutation disease to a kid, than by introducing a beloved computer game mascot!
PS: and for chrissake, drop the Comic Sans font: it makes your world-class gene database website look like it was coded by a 1st year CS student in 1991 (yes, I know: it probably was).
Love,
A war, that’s what we need
Most unfortunate quote of the week, courtesy of some economist quoted by the Guardian:
[…] One should not forget the great depression, and that the way we got out of it was a world war. Germany, Japan and China have to do more. […] Heiner Flassbeck, Guardian.co.uk
Of course, this is taken entirely out-of-context for comic relief. I still did a double-take upon reading that sentence.
Template This
Am I the only one absolutely befuddled that a multi-billion dollar company that has had over two decades to iron out the details of its poor excuse for a enterprise-standard word processor, has never managed to come up with one single passable built-in template for business letters?
And I am not talking about their “Fantasy” or even “Elegant” letter templates, which would make my niece’s MySpace page seem sober and sophisticated by comparison. No: I am referring to their most basic, no-frills, “Business modern” template, which still manages to look like the caricature of a “don’t” example in a primer on business etiquette and communication (pro tip: the fact that your monitor has colours, and possibly so does your printer, doesn’t mean you should try to stuff the entire rainbow in your official print documents).
Time to start writing my mail with LaTeX.
花粉症
When I first arrived to Tokyo, I noticed that, come the end of winter, weather forecast screens (in trains, on TV, wherever…) would start adding an extra line under the main sun/cloud/water-drop pictograms. Since the new icons usually depicted lovely little pink flowers or trees blowing in the wind, I naively assumed that this had something to do with upcoming sakura blossom (which wasn’t completely far off, considering most local newscast do have an official daily progress report around sakura season).
It is only a couple years later that I finally understood what this seasonal indicator actually referred to. The infinitely less enjoyable season of eye-puffing, nostril-irritating, headache-inducing, Japanese hay fever. The main reason behind these infamous surgical masks you see people wearing in every damn last “Nippon culture” TV reports.
However, it wasn’t until I moved to the Kansai countryside last month, that I started experiencing for myself what it might feel like. Apparently, my city-dwelling organism was sufficiently immune to Tokyo’s own brand of pollution-laden pollen to go through Kafunshō season unharmed, but much less happy about living in the middle of the woods. Woods no doubt entirely planted with deadly cypress and cedar.
If you happen to be walking in the hilly area surrounding Kyodai’s research campus in Ōbaku, these days, and spot a gaijin with puffy red eyes on the verge of tears, rest assured it does not [yet] have anything to do with feelings of sadness or elation at living more than 20 minutes away from the closest place selling proper balsamic vinegar or non-ersatz chocolate, it’s just the damn neighbouring conifers trying to copulate with my mucous membranes.
Cosmic Karma
Three More Years
a.k.a. The Long Overdue Life-Update
The three people still reading this blog on a regular basis (two of which possibly paid by the Chinese government after some bizarre translation mix-up convinced them I was a dangerous political dissident to be monitored) might have noticed the lack of substantial news on this blog for quite a long time. OK: even less substantial content than usual.
I also realise that the lack of proper context as to my whereabouts made a lot of past blog entries somewhat puzzling. If this can make you feel any better, I am pretty sure that my own genitors have had only the faintest sense of my exact location, occupation or plans, ever since I was last sighted, putting a finishing touch to my grand World Domination Plot Master Thesis.
In fact, it took all that time for the plan set in motion nearly a year ago to finally reach its final stage (tonight).
This just in: Sand, Not the Most Valuable Commodity…
Dubai’s economy is free-falling, the NY Times reports…
A city whose entire economy was based on selling land (and financial services) in the middle of a 2,330,000 sq. km desert… Gee, I wonder how that bubble came to pop.