Maybe I've just been too super-busy to be joining the bulging ranks of bilious, boring bloggers eager for a ten-pence slot in already over-crowded clouds of information. Or maybe I've just been lost in those clouds- chasing threads with unexercised interest in agribusiness, poverty pruning, permaculture, psychedelic culture, global food ( Read more... )

My migration blog is not making for particularly interesting reading and I think I need to let off a little steam here. Quite literally. From sub-zero bitterness to 17 degrees in a t-shirt, my decision to cycle to work in michelin-man style layers proved a tad excessive after weeks of foul sagging woolly tights (New Look, you suck big time- ever ( Read more... )

Seeing that almost half a year has elapsed since my last entry, I feel it's time to move on. Perhaps I will leave this blog as it stands, a record of 6 years of movements. But before summarizing the happenings of the strange months gone by, I wish to describe the feelings prompted by my first walk from the bus stop to my new home in the Robertsau ( Read more... )

Clearing out my desk has revealed a treasury of begun, unfinished, forgotten thoughts- scribbles about Walter Benjamin, de Sade, Soka Gakkai, Djuna Barnes, police and power, lesbian manga and boy love in early japan, and of course the old continued concerns- Zimbabwe, immigration, gender theory, stories, cuttings, recipes...a little microcosm of my ( Read more... )

A big clamour over the death of 'maikuru jakuson', a sense that something 'big' has happened even though most people know little about him outside of 'surillaaa'. Nothing about the destructive effects of too much money and too much isolation from the real world, let alone a questioning of the seismic implications that something ABC News dedicates a ( Read more... )

Getting dressed in me ropey ol' Hawaiian shirt this morning ( a pass down from Occy's office uniform last year), I heard 'CHAAAARRRIIII' distantly from outside, but thought I was imagining things in the morning heat (it's a scorcher) and kept on buttoning up. Heard it again and went to slide open the front door- there at the edge of the driveway ( Read more... )

It's gone full-circle. I started treating my back in the wintry January gloom, having little magnets stuck behind my ears and being told we're all caught in a web of allergies that interrupt our body's healing processes. I've had acupuncture and told not to be too stringent about posture and that rain will make my back worse, told elsewhere that ( Read more... )

I usually feel like I'm preaching to the choir when I use this blog as a chance to rant with little form or structure about whatever issue is niggling me at the time. And usually I'm not saying much that anyone wouldn't have read in a newspaper column, if it's not me droning on about the hilarity of Engrish or Japanese brand names (I will miss Cat ( Read more... )

Watching BS2 news over breakfast has become an interesting morning routine. I turn on the Japanese voice-over for Al-jazeera, 'Deutsu' ZDF, Korea (Kankoku) KBS and China TV, enjoying the English of Hong Kong's ATV and Singapore's news. This morning was pretty depressing viewing, though, the entrails of doomsay about North Korea (kita chousen)'s ( Read more... )

Nadine's birthday weekend kicked off with a great night in Recife, fuel of the Sri Lankan kind in our bellies (their spinach salad, lentil curry and rotis fill a spicy hole long longed for). I've fallen madly for Acai juice, which is really more of a berry smoothie, now that my analgesics have arrived and alcohol has become the particularly mind- ( Read more... )