I'm going home!

At first, I was lead to believe that clicking my ruby red slippers together 3 times would suffice in getting me home, but I tried and I tried, and then it just got too embarrassing... standing there in the little girls section of the department store with these shoes half hanging off my size 10 feet...

So I left, barefoot, and trudged home to call the travel agent I usually use for my constant cavorting across the globe to try and get back to the Land of Oz by decidedly more mundane means... flying.

The phone conversation went much like this:

[Round 1]

[Travel Agent] Would you like the cheap option or the stupidly, ridiculously "Oh My God, Are You High!?" expensive option?
[Kallun] The cheap option, please.
[Travel Agent] When would you like to leave?
[Kallun] It depends on when I arrive. I would like to arrive on Day X, January.
[Travel Agent] But when would you like to leave?
[Kallun] Whatever time/day I need to leave in order to get there by Day X.
[Travel Agent] I can't guarantee whether you'll arrive on that day.
[Kallun] Excuse me?
[Travel Agent] I can't give you that information until you book the ticket.
[Kallun] But how can I book the ticket unless I can make a decision given the details of when it actually leaves and arrives?

(Kallun is having a "chicken or the egg" moment here.)

[Travel Agent] Well, how about this... what day would you like to leave Australia for Japan?
[Kallun] I want to return on Day Y, February.
[Travel Agent] No, no. What day do you want to leave Australia?
[Kallun] ...

(Kallun's sense of humour is being sorely tested.)

[Kallun] What airline will I be flying with?
[Travel Agent] Umm...
[Kallun] You can't tell me that either?
[Travel Agent] If you take the expensive option, I could tell you.
[Kallun] So... to recap... you can't tell me when I leave, or when I return, or what airline I'll be flying with?
[Travel Agent] Right.

(Kallun has a mini-breakdown.)

So I spin the wheel of aviation Russian roulette, and book a flight on Air Who-The-Hell-Knows to arrive at 10 minutes past God-Knows-When p.m. and return to Japan at a quarter past I've-Lost-My-Will-To-Live a.m.

[Round 2]

Having bitten the proverbial bullet, the next step is to go into the agency to recompense them for their stellar customer service. Although I had little confidence in giving them my credit card details over the phone - what, with all those digits, something was bound to go disastrously pear-shaped (why, just getting them to spell my name correctly was a feat of extreme linguistic contortionism) - such a method of payment would just be far too logical and efficient for this company to even begin contemplating, and so I was forced to front up in person and pay in cash. So I do, and the lady with whom I had been speaking the day before wasn't there... in fact, it turns out that they'd never heard of her. After a few minutes of frantic arm waving and guttural growls (I speak perfectly fine Japanese, but my ability to form words is directly inversely proportional to the degree of fury I'm experiencing at any given time), the collective brain power of the 20 or so people in the room brilliantly deduced that my booking had, in fact, been made with another branch of the same company.

Yes. As it turns out, though I had dialed the phone number for this branch, what I failed to realise, due to my complete inability to read the mind of the person on the other end of the phone, was that the switchboard had surreptitiously redirected me to another branch elsewhere in Tokyo. Upon learning this, I was not fully capable of articulating the depth of my elation... no.. wait... that's not the right word... RAGE! (there we go... that's it...)

[Kallun] Can I pay for it here, at least?
[Travel Agent] No...

(Kallun, already steeped in the traditions and quirky idiosyncrasies of Japanese bureaucracies, knew better than to argue the point.)

[Travel Agent] But you can pay for it through a bank transfer... you just need a form.
[Kallun] Fine. Can you please give me one?
[Travel Agent] No...

(Kallun is beginning to shake... maybe a 4 on the Richter scale...)

[Travel Agent] You'll need the lady from the other branch to send it to you.
[Kallun] Fine. Can you please call the lady to fax through my payment form?
[Travel Agent] No.

At which point, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had nothing on me. I went all biblical on the bastard, and then calmly went on my way to work. So, thus far, I have managed to book and pay for my ticket... all that remains is to see what special surprises await me when I go to the airport this afternoon to collect my ticket 2 hours before my flight departs.

Round 3... ding, ding.

Heart attack heaven

McDonalds in Japan has just released two new menu items. First, there is the breakfast meal, the McGriddle (see right) - the name alone sounds as though it's nothing more than deep-fried fat with a side of bread. Secondly, there is the Mega Mac, which, if the picture to the left is anything to go by, involves the slaughter of a dozen cows in order to make...

I think I may die...

Phishing for Phools

I just got sent an email that my email software cleverly recognised as being a phishing scam. After all these years of editing the law review, I'm pretty quick at picking up stupid English and poor logic, and so this message just jumped out at me. I have listed my reasons for suspecting that this email is not genuine below as footnotes.

Dear PayPal Online,⁽¹⁾

We regret to inform you,⁽²⁾ that we had to lock your PayPal Online Access
because we have reasons to believe⁽³⁾ that your account may have been compromised by outside parties. In order to protect your sensitive information, we temporaly⁽⁴⁾ suspended your account.

To reactivate your account, click on the link below and confirm your identity by completing the secure form what⁽⁵⁾ will appear.

https://www.paypal-security.us ⁽⁶⁾

We have seen unusual attempts for logging in regarding your personal account, therefore this confirmation regarding your account its only for security reasons. ⁽⁷⁾

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

Have questions?⁽⁸⁾ Our online help screens⁽⁹⁾ provide answers to many frequently asked questions.

You can also click the Customer Center tab then go to the Contact Us page to find a list of helpful numbers to call.

Please do not reply to this automatically generated e-mail.

We know you have a choice of banks. Thanks for choosing ours.

Sincerely, PayPal Team,⁽¹⁰⁾

(1) I don't have a PayPal account. Also, if I did, they would have had the email generated with the user name that is registered on my account.
(2) There shouldn't be a comma here.
(3) "Reasons"? I suspect that they mean to use the normal English expression "we have reason to believe".
(4) "Temporaly", hey? It would seem that they're getting all metaphysical on my non-existent account. Oh, and it's spelt incorrectly.
(5) That's just stupid.
(6) Obviously a false address.
(7) Wrong, wrong, wrong! The whole sentence is wrong.
(8) Speak English?
(9) "Screens" in the plural form is not necessarily wrong, but I think that the singular is more commonly used.
(10) Note the superfluous comma at the very end.

Finally, I don't think it helped any seeing as it was sent from the email address - nticserv0@dea.org. It's entirely possible that if any of these scam artists should happen upon my blog, they will take note of the glaring grammatical and logical omissions in their phishing message, fix them, thus improving their chances of conning more people. I suspect that the world will be safe, though.

Internet Translations Is Bestest!!

I edit a certain Japanese law journal every year, and each year I get increasingly frustrated with the authors that contribute to the journal, I feel like a little part inside me dies each time... like my soul is slowly being drowned in a sea of grammatical errors and damn stupid spelling mistakes.

Some of the mistakes are forgivable - the authors are Japanese, and they are set the task of translating their own work into English, and then I turn it into real English and give their turn of phrase a certain poetic polish. SOME of their mistakes are forgivable. I have, however, pooled all my money and ordered a hit on one particular author, who I shall give the apt nom de plume - Mr. I - shall - beat - the - living - crap - out - of - you - if - ever - I - meet - you - face - to - face. The reason for my underlying hostility towards Mr. I - shall - beat - the - living - crap - out - of - you - if - ever - I - meet - you - face - to - face is that he doesn't even attempt to translate things into English. Instead, he runs them through some random machine translator on the Internet, and then sends me the end result (lazy bloody bastard bloody beat the bloody living crap out of his lazy bloody....). I've long suspected it, but after his email to me today, I'm positive.

Hello,

Very thank you for having my writing checked very in detail.
Only one being worrisome is that both of terms are intermingled.
I think that it is satisfactory individually even if it unifies into either.
I think that I would like you to unify into either if it was semantically satisfactory specially even if it does so.

Kind regards,

Mr. I-shall-beat-the-living-crap-out-of-you-if-ever-I-meet-you-face-to-face

And don't even getting me started on the plagiarism and complete lack of referencing...

New Year Resolutions

shinnen akemashite
omedetou gozaimasu

(Happy New Year)

Most people I meet don't bother with new year resolutions... more often than not, they've long since given up after numerous failed attempts. I can forgive that, but personally, I love nothing more than setting myself goals and tasks to accomplish. I've got a reasonably good track record of getting what I set out to accomplish, and so the act of putting things down on a list makes them all that bit more achievable.

Take for example, three of my goals for 2006 - (1) learn Spanish, (2) road trip across America, and finally (3) pass the entrance exam to get into the Masters of Law program at university here. I accomplished each of those.

2007 is definitely going to be my year. The keyword for 2007 is spontaneity.

So, in the spirit of spontaneity, I've just decided that I'm going to bugger off to Osaka for the long weekend with a bunch of people I barely know... leaving tomorrow... just after I book a flight to go back to Australia in two weeks time... and book a flight to Korea for the long weekend after I get back from my two week sojourn to Australia. I guess, strictly speaking, that the act of organising these trips weeks in advance doesn't count as spontaneous, but it is a better alternative to wasting my weekends doing the same thing week in, week out.

Something else I'm going to do is try and do some more salsa lessons - after Alice and I kicked arse in Cancun, Mexico in the salsa 'competition'. Of course, the competition only had 4 other couples, and each were more geriatric than the other.

Also, I'm going to make a conscientious effort to take more photos of random stuff. This will mean carrying my over sized camera in my jeans pocket, causing passers-by to look at me with an even more curious expression than they already use. I think that the longer I live in Japan, the more I become immune to its idiosyncrasies, but I'll try...



And I plan on writing more posts on my blog.

Definitely looking forward to this coming year.