I went to paper school this morning. And besides all the free mentos, tea, coffee, scones and sandwiches I could eat, they gave me a lot of paper and a lot of paper riff-raff which I will store in the frontal lobe of my brain for a few days, but then probably subconsciously misplace. Who ever knew there was so much to know about paper: stocks, gloss, matt, opacity, broke, scuff and so on. Not me anyway, and not before today. So now I am versed in the art of paper it seems, in only four hours too. I even got a certificate and a graduating class photo to prove it, oh and a way cool magnifying glass to look at paper real closely with.

One of the more concerning moments at paper school, though, was when the short, fat, bald host man interrupted the guest speaker (a fellow technical supply service man from the paper company) to tell us that if we only learn one thing today, that it be to never guess which way the grain of the paper is going, ever. Because if we do, and we are wrong, it will ruin our lives. He really said that, ruin our lives. And with a surprising amount of conviction too.

When paper school ended at lunch time and I walked out on the city streets to catch a tram, the road was blocked off by a large mob of taxi drivers on strike. Maybe they guessed the wrong direction of the paper on their drivers license test…it is life threatening after all.

Anyway, all that paper business aside, I am wearing a beanie with a pom-pom on it, a woolly scarf and fingerless gloves while inside today, and I am still cold, and I wish I was in Japan with the peanut people, sitting on the floor eating and drinking out of 8 different recepticles at the same time, one of which might be full of sweet, powdery red bean sludge.

Things I am learning about Japan (in point form).

• It is not unusual for a house to have no chairs. I am in such a house. My legs are being forced to bend into new and tubular positions all the time.
• Engrish is hilarious. On a train door: EMERGENCY DOOR COCK
• There are cute characters forming the logo for most products. The more boring the product, the more saccarinely cute the character need be.
• Elderly Japanese rarely top 5 feet and closely resemble peanuts.
• You cannot say “Arigato Gozaimasu” (thank you) too many times. It becomes a mantra.
• Everything is punctual. Except me.
• Japanese people are great at formalised hand guestures. A hotelier can look like Marcel Marceu.
• If you think you know a little Japanese and can get by – you don’t and you can’t.
• When eating it is not uncommon to have up to 4 or 5 separate plates of food and be drinking from 4 different cups (beer/sake/tea/miso). That’s 8 recepticles per person at a table of 5 people. Things get crowded.
• Japan is not like a Bladerunner megalopolis. There is countryside here and it is beautiful and tranquil.
• With no chairs, people sit on the floor, on straw tatami mats. There is a special electric blanket to sit on so you don’t get cold.
• The cars look a bit like the people. Small, and with flat faces.
• I was yelled at today in Japanese by an automated sensor on the tiniest of backwater train crossings.
• There are more types of sweets here than you could possibly imagine. Many seem to involve red bean. It’s mixed with vast amounts of suger to create a strange, sweet, powdery sludge.
• Japanese TV does not appear to be all its cracked up to be.
• The Shinkansen bullet trains look fantastically cool.
• Some Japanese get very red faces from even the smallest amount of achohol. Most don’t. They just get drunk.
• The toilets deserve a special mention. Here is what happens. You walk in the bathroom and the toilet senses your presence. It obligily lifts its top lid. Thank you toilet-san, but I need to wee. You find the console and amongst a bewildering array of buttons and diagrams you find the ‘raise seat’ button. You press it and the seat raises. You wee into the bowl (in a similar fashion to conventional Western toilets). You then press another button to close the lids. A beat. Then a quiet, efficient flushing sound. But wait! You might need to poo as well. The toilet senses your hesitancy. Suggestively, it opens its lid again. Oh, ok, if you insist. You lower yourself onto the pre-warmed seat and begin your excretory processes. A bubbling noise. It is the toilet, conspiritorially masking your shameful sounds. You finish your deed. Then you must choose from your style of duvet, or as I prefer to call it, your anal wash. There’s a spray, a startlingly powerful stream that has me questioning my sexuality, and a mysterious ‘girls only’ button. I’m yet to fully experiment with this final option. You stand, you wipe, you press the flush button (no diagram here, just a hopeful stab at some Japanese characters), and you leave.

That’s some initial observations. The strangeness here is incessant. And I love it.

Happy birthday to the Creaker I say! He must wearing a shiney purple hat on his head all day.

Brown is in the Japanese country-side now and within no time we are hoping to have an addition to this blog with a travel page from him. And I must thank him, for during his time away he has lent his prized possession that he speaks of, his Attenborough collection, to the bookshelf next to me. I will now endeavour to spend hours soaking up the entire series of David’s endless knowledge on the true wilderness of the earth “Life in the Freezer” and the like. And oh so timely it feels at the present as life in the freezer is indeed approaching us here with the plummeting temperature. But perhaps all I really need are some gloves, a hat and a scarf for my newly naked neck.

Anyway, today is the old Creaker’s day, so happy birthday to ya ya geeza!

ps. oh and so much for my dreams of pie making and so on. That rotten old oven still won’t bake, so I made soup instead, in case you were wondering.

China is in disarray, there is no mistaking it. I hope you’re not claustrophobic, and if you are going for a job as a train conductor, you might need to check up on your people pushing skills. How many people can you shove on to one train and what happens when the doors open at the next stop? That’s what I want to know.

Pardon the in-jokiness of this post, but I just had to upload this snap I took in the city on the way to work this morning – it basically says it all, if ya know what I mean.

Napoleon had Josephine, John had Yoko, and Picasso had lots of them. Everyone needs a muse.

Mine is this lady.

I cut her out from a magazine and stuck her on the window in front of my desk. So now she stares directly at me. And I at her.

All day.

The TED conference is an annual gathering in Monteray, California, where some very, very smart people sit in a room together and listen to each other present ideas. The presentations, ranging from economics to science to to design to religion, are sweet and succint overviews – 20 minutes usually – just enough to inflate your mind without blunting it with excessive detail.

Above is a very strange example, Clifford Stoll, an achitypical mad scientist, but the TEDtalksDirector YouTube page has literally hundreds of videos, and nearly all of them are wonderous, intoxicating distillations of pure inspiration.

Yesterday the plumber fixed my oven. It has been a long time coming you see. I have been living in this house for over 6 months now, and it has taken all this time for us the get the oven fixed – preposterous I know, just think of all the baking we have missed in that time. So, to celebrate the long awaited operation of the oven, my housemates and I have decided with must have a bake-off and cook a pie or two. I thought perhaps the following might be suiting.

I love this pie for many reasons, but aside from it’s deliciousness, and the portmanteau it’s name makes with banana and toffee, this is the pie I would choose to be thrown at my face in a pie throwing competition (if ever I had to make that decision). There are no illusions here, it is an honest English desert made from bananas, cream and condensed milk, oh, and some crumbled up biscuits, what more could a girl ask for pretty much. And while this is no invitation for pie to meet face, I really wouldn’t hate you that much if this pie blocked my nose, got stuck in my eyelashes and gelled my hair to my forehead. Give it a whirl for yourself and let it butter you up

Ingredients
1 packet of granita biscuits
175g butter
2 bananas
1container(300ml) of double cream
1 can of condensed milk
1/3 cup of brown sugar

Method
Process biscuits in food processor until finely crushed. Add 125g of melted butter and process until well combined. Firmly press the biscuit mixture over the base and sides of the tart tin/s (you could make several small pies or one larger one). Place in the fridge until required.
To make the caramel filling, place condensed milk, sugar and remaining butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 10 minutes, or until caramel thickens (beware: do not boil). Pour the hot caramel over biscuit base/s. Cover with plastic wrap and place in fridge for 1 hour to chill and harden slightly. Peel and thinly slice bananas and arrange over the caramel filling. Top pies with a dollop of cream and serve immediately.

I recently spoilt myself and bought the entire box set of David Attenborough’s Life Series. 24 DVDs and 70 hours of a thoroughly proper English gent in a safari suit (front leg up on a rock) explaining the mysteries of the natural world in hushed, breathless tones. I grew up watching Life on Earth, so I have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the world that Attenborough presents.

Yet in trawling my way through this mountainous collection, what struck me was not the incredible photography nor the wonderous creatures and their fantastic behaviours. It was the sheer Britishness of it all. It was the certainty, the clear, passionate, authoritarian, Modernistic certainty that Attenborough so effortlessly conveys. From no other country could a figure like Attenborough emerge. Articulate, wise, well groomed and slightly effete – he represents and embodies, for me at least, the high water mark of that slightly patronising, paternalistic English culture that seems to have dissapeared amongst a listless tirade of Jordan and Peter Andre tabloid flotsam.

David Attenborough, Britain and an afternoon cup of tea. He-aaars to that.