The RoggBlog

It’s 4.18 am. My neighbour has just beat another tattoo on our adjoining wall, telling me to shut the hell up with the guitar playing and let him get some sleep. Third time tonight, if memory serves. I have a translation to do by Wednesday, along with a raft of coursework my erstwhile group mates will likely blank out on again, bless them, but the real trial of insomnia is that you’re not in a state of sufficient wakefulness where you’re actually able to produce anything worthwhile. It’s just your brain leaking a primal desire for blessed unconsciousness, along with all the neurochemical housekeeping you’re supposed to get done while lounging on a golden deckchair under the sunny skies of the land of Nod.

While I know for a fact that he doesn’t feel the same way, I don’t actually hate my neighbour. True, while writing this I’m actually googling for a subsonic frequency generator I can attach to the wall and gradually tune till I reach the sweet spot where his eyeballs explode, but again that’s the scratching, hamster-in-a-wheel mania of looking for something to do, rather than any real, you know, malice.

Mostly.

Sod this, I’m going for a cig.

But the worst part of it all is knowing that in mere hours I’m going to have to rouse myself and go to work. And since the debacle, it’s not been a fun place. I’ve been switched to translation, which I could deal with if there were any articles beyond regurgitated press release to do; I’ve been stripped of my website editing rights and watched the site design devolve into a piece of grade-schooler’s IT homework, and I shut my new boss’s phone in a drawer after it emitted one of its trademark screams for its owner’s attention one too many times.

(Two, and it goes out the window, I swear.)

I told Roscoe once I’d rather have a test of ability than a test of patience. He thought the latter would be good for me.

It’s not.

/endcommunication

It’s almost time for home. As of RIGHT NOW, I’ve done 16 hours 53 minutes, fuelled by nothing but cigarettes and a hastily-scarfed bowl of tantanmen. Which I choked on, sc-horching my throat.

The upshot of all this? Well, I can now see things that arent’t there and have developed a pressing urge - nay, biological imperative - to punch certain 2channellers in the face and steal their shoes.

At least driving home will be fun. Zoom.

Dad sent me the Police Rider’s Handbook the other day. As many of the Amazon reviewers note, a gripping page-turner it is not. What it is, however, is chock-a-block with helpful advice on becoming a better rider, and it’s become my bedtime reading since it arrived last week.

“Knowing yourself” is the basic theme of the first chapter, and thinking back to the ride this morning, I’m seriously thinking of staying off the road for a while, no matter how physically painful it is.

What with one thing and another, the only thing I have to look forward to each day is the ride home. But due to my now near-permanent state of seething irritability, I’m riding stupidly. I know it’s happening: the scuttling up between waiting traffic mere seconds before the lights change, the pointless overtakes if anyone dares to drop beneath the speed limit, etc., etc. I don’t think I’ve done anything really bad yet, but still.

The thing is, if I stop riding, I may have to release my stress in other, oh-so-much-more-anti-social ways. Beating on homeless guys seems to be flavour of the month round here at the moment. :/

Of course, every outfit requires the appropriate accessories.

What a couple of weeks. Aside from being landed with a job at work recently which is not unlike trying to juggle chainsaws while wearing handcuffs, university has kicked in for realz. Not for me, the Sunday night spent curled up with a good book, a pipe and a glass of sherry. Oh no. I was designing a subtring search algorithm (which probably has more holes than the average The A-Team episode plot) and all but pogoing off the walls.

Last weekend was better. My darling adoptive mother and big sister took a trip up from Kitakyushu, so we had one night out in Shinjuku and a day in Yokohama.

J-nee likes to think she can outdrink me. She cannot, but she staggers in such a cute way I pretended to be more drunk than I really was to make her feel better.

Oh, and before we hit Yokohama’s Chinatown for late lunch, we visited the Meguro Parasitological Museum.

Try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.

There was a photo there, now seared into the area that I used to keep my happy place in, of a man whose scrotum had swollen to the size and length of his leg.

Wonderful.

More on that tomorrow. Maybe.

In a moment of frenzied introspection - well, I say moment, but it’s been going on for the last month or so - I sat down and tried to work out what I’m doing and where I’m going. (more…)

I’m trying to be good and save dosh at the moment, but every so often I have a relapse and splurge on books. A couple of days ago I had just a moment of weakness in Junkudo, but at the last moment common sense kicked in and I whittled my shopping basket contents down from about 10 (inc. big glossy photo collections) to 3. I think I did pretty well.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share my 3 favourite places to buy books in English in Tokyo. (more…)

Sometimes, the daily grind - especially when topped off with a healthy dose of fail - can induce one reach for the nearest handgun family-sized syringe of heroin large bar of chocolate, or other such mood-enhancer.

Today, my Prozac takes the form of this video.

Aaaah, one of the very occasional joys of working for a large Japanese company: the annual grab bag of obligation chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Click the photo to see the annotated version on Flickr. nomnomnom