It's time once again for that moving home, city, country and continent thing. Why do I always own too many things?!

I just recalled that The Big Bang is closing after tomorrow, so does anyone want to try to have a last meal there tonight (Monday 29 August 2011)? (It might be packed, but I'm willing to call and make a reservation if anyone else thinks they might be interested.) E-mail or phone to the usual addresses/numbers, preferably before noon.

I've been selected as a World Book Night giver - one of 20,000 people giving away 960,000 books on Saturday 5 March 2011. This means I'll have 48 copies of CJ Sansome's Dissolution, a fabulous, well researched and engaging murder mystery set in Tudor England to give away, free, gratis, no strings attached. I'm obviously delighted, as this is the ( Read more... )

So, last week, I hopped on a plane to Narita. Upon arriving, I got the NEX to Tokyo Station, and then a Shinkansen to Morioka, where I was a bit flummoxed to find that I'd already missed the last bus to Appi Kogen. Fortunately, I was able to get a combination local/JR train to the area, where I was able to call the folks at Pension Mutti (the ( Read more... )

Oh my god, you guys, if this - http://lawandthemultiverse.com/ - had existed when I was in law school, I might still be practicing business litigation in California to this day...

Ian Richardson's ashes are being buried in the new RSC Theatre ( Read more... )

Y'all know I am lousy at the updating, but just to check-in on where I am and what I'm doing:

( Cons,Japanese, and Hawaii 5-0 )

So, I've been busy and failed to post anything, as usual, but just to say that I'm leaving Addis Ababa tonight, and will be arriving in London tomorrow afternoon, having successfully completed my one year in Ethiopia with Volunteer Service Overseas. I have mixed feelings about the experience, but I feel it has been a good thing overall, and I'll ( Read more... )

Just to say that I'm back, and had a fantastic experience all round, albeit with a slight sense of never having enough time to do everything that I wanted to do. This was compounded by the fact that I started having some computer problems before I left, which I thought were virus related, but upon receiving tech support in Tokyo, discovered that I ( Read more... )

So, for my birthday this year, I used some hotel points for a night at the Hilton Addis Ababa, where I enjoyed their heated swimming pool, satellite television (CNN! BBC! English language movies!) uninterrupted electricity and all the hot water I could use. They even upgraded me to Executive Level, so I got a fruit basket and lots of Diet Coke. (A ( Read more... )