Thailand photos...

I'm too busy to write anything this week, so I thought I'd just post some photos that I took in Thailand. I've also uploaded two videos to YouTube - (1) a (almost) panoramic view of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and (2) footage of traffic in Chiang Mai.

Boring, I know, but unavoidable...

------Night Markets-----

Sensibility versus Sanity

My master plan was brilliantly devised and yet deceptively simple. The strategy that I had cleverly crafted in order to survive the IT orientation presentation today involved supplies (an assortment of foodstuffs and carbonated liquid refreshments), various reading materials (designed to offset the mental numbness that would undoubtedly ensue) and prior planned seating arrangements towards the very back of the room (located to leave me partially obscured by a pillar and the heads of my fellow audience members). Supplies in hand, I marched triumphant into the classroom.

Or rather, the empty classroom.

Or so I thought, until a solitary head popped out from behind the lectern. “Good,” the head proclaimed, “lets get started with the presentation, shall we?”

My instincts screamed at me to run: run far and run fast. Just as the Forest Gump music started to play in my mind, the neurons in my brain fired into action, and explained that if I didn’t stay, I’d be doomed to yet another year of not being able to access the internet at university – no email, no law database, no YouTube…

The head behind the lectern (which I later discovered was attached to an actual body) stared at me, perplexed. No doubt confused at my sudden onset of paralysis; oblivious to my inner turmoil; ignorant of the war that waged within between my intellect and my instincts – the opposing forces of sensibility and sanity…

Sensibility roared victorious: Sanity lay in tatters on the imaginary ground in my mind, limp and lifeless. I collapsed defeated in the nearest seat in the empty room, tears welling in my eyes.

“This is a table,” the bodied head exclaimed, pointing to a photo of what was indeed a table.
“You can put your laptop on this table. This is an internet connection. You can plug your laptop into the internet connection. In order to do so, however, you need a cable.”
A picture of a blue cable appears on the projector screen (see below). “But not this cable,” he cautioned, “this is the wrong type of cable. You need a different type of cable. Now this is a printer...”
The picture of the offending cable disappeared, and was replaced with a clipart cartoon representation of what could generously be called a printer. It’s really anyone’s guess what the correct cable might actually look like…

I think I died a little today.

----A picture of the offending cable----

2 years on,

2 years late,

2 years to go...

Today is my second anniversary of chronicling the happenings in the life of "An Aussie in Japan". I find it perfectly poignant that on this day, my second anniversary of my arrival in Japan to pursue postgraduate studies, that I am now where I've always felt that I should have been two years ago. But I'm here now... if somewhat fashionably late...

Cats and dogs...

Cats... dogs... hell, I had the entire friggin' passenger list of Noah's Ark rain down on me on my way home from work today. As it turned out, not only did I return in a soggy mess, but much of the books and paperwork in my bag decided that they'd prefer to be paper mache, and so I've spent the better part of the past hour performing surgery on my university transcripts and lease agreement. I feel like I've missed my calling. I should have been a neurosurgeon.


Tomorrow, I have the insurmountable joy of sitting through what will no doubt be singularly the most mind-numbing experience of my life - a special ceremony for new students being admitted into the various graduate schools at my university. Attendance is mandatory, but my undivided attention is not, so, other students' and their parents' disapproving looks be damned, I'm taking a book with me to read ... and I haven't ruled out taking my iPod either...

A reprieve... of sorts

Let the birds sing and the angels rejoice - I get a one month break from work.

For once, the incompetence that so accurately characterises the bureaucratic behemoth that is the Japanese government has finally worked in my favour. The filing requirements for visa and work permit renewals are so deliciously convoluted that I won't be allowed to work for the next four weeks - which suits me fine. I have reading to catch up on, university classes to attend, furniture to wrestle with and negotiate to the ground from lofty Ikea shelves... and what's more, my plans for world domination aren't just going to implement themselves… (my minions are few, and rather recalcitrant, and aren't aware that they are, in fact, my minions)

I predict a gloriously hedonistic month ahead.

This is the beginning of something... smelly

There was something rotten in the state of Denmark, or, at the very least, there was something utterly rancid in my new apartment - there was a potent, god-awful stench that emanated and insinuated itself into every corner of every room in my new place, that waited at the door for me to return, like a lion waiting for the opportune time to pounce on an unsuspecting gazelle. I had simply assumed it to be little more than leaking sewerage pipes, or a dozen rotten corpses ingeniously and surreptitiously hidden away into yet-to-be discovered nooks and crannies.

After having tried attacking and cleaning what I had originally suspected of being the source: the forest of mould underneath the bathroom sink which I had only discovered (on day 3 after having moved in) when I had slipped in my metal bathtub, fell on my arse, only to look up and bear witness to my new indoor greenhouse. After that failed, I then tried to mask the smell by strategically placing more than a few room freshener thingamabobs around the joint. When that failed, I then set about triangulating the source of my apartment's aromatic discontent. Long story short, I am a genius.

My new place is great - for one, it's big... nay, huge...nay, gargantuan! It's at least four times larger than my old dormitory room. But then, I've always maintained that if you can touch the opposing walls of your apartment at the same time, then you are, in fact, enclosed in a prison cell, so my old dorm room doesn't properly serve as an accurate basis for comparison. To put things into context, you could have a reasonably decent conga line going on in my living room...

The only problem is that I don't yet have a fridge, a washing machine, my gas or Internet connected, a study desk, book case, table, seating of any description, or, for that matter, a bed! Admittedly, I do have a futon, but it's pathetically single (much like it's owner) and is, to my mind, a glorified, and decidedly uncomfortable, mattress. If I can get an Internet connection at the very least, I figure that I can survive indefinitely without the rest.