I have enjoyed getting in touch with my masculine side this weekend. First driving a truck up to Kunigami and today untangling nets. On my morning beach cleaning constitutional, I come across this.
Blown up by recent typhoons
Nets, rope, fishing line and maritime stuff all totally tangled. I covet the rope. I can use it and it is free.
I drag it home and sit on the beach in front of my house untangling it with er a knife. I feel this is masculine and wish I had a pipe.
I bought the knife in MacIntyre’s hardware in Tarbert at least 20 years. Sheffield steel you know, razor sharp
It was very enjoyable as there was a Pacific Rim Egret on the shore having lunch.
Yum, click on this
I am not good at patience and after 20 minutes of untangling, I take the knife and cut the rope into useful shortish lengths. They will come in handy for tying up pesky smugglers.
So all of this is pretty repetitive but I’m going to do it anyway.
This blog and “Unemployed But Comfortably Off” is a good archive of what I have done over the last 3 years and some. I probably read it more than anyone else, as it is pleasant to choose a random date and see what you were doing. I regret all the years that have gone with no record. The blog give structure to my life in a similar way that the Higgs field gives structure to the universe, if you know what I mean.
I go trucking to the forests of the North to return the tables to the village hall of Ada, one of the most remote villages in Okinawa. Ada is so remote that it is impossible to find anything about it on Google apart for ads for nearby hotel.
and I go birdwatching once we have stashed the tables.
This Isuzu truck is very fine. I am definitely getting tattoos and driving around the western states in one of these with a sleeping cab on the back, once I have shuffled off the work coil.
So this will be a kind of rambling narrative on events over the weekend that were not directly connected with how I earn my salary.
I went birdwatchingphotoing with Itamar who is here from Weizmann. He was packing a 600mm lens that is very butch. Mahesh came too and between us the photo equipment inside was worth at least double the value of the car – rich boys games.
Make my day Egret punk
Peewit Herman
Little Ringed Plover
Later I went for a beach clean up. It has been very typhoony over the last couple of weeks. Nothing worth getting excited about but a lot of jetsam is normally deposited and I must have a clean beach.
Boat in typhoon quarters
Special Beach Garbage Bag
Lucky Bag
I then notice that the butterflies have come out of their typhoon hidey-holes and spend a delightful hour following them around.
Drive it down to LA
This looks almost European
What do they think about?
Typhoons not good for flutterbyes
It is now Sunday and I talk to some goats.
Getting on my goat
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a goat.
Japan is a country where you take your shoes off a lot – at the dentist, in many restaurants, certainly upon entering a home, yours or someone else’s. If you take off your shoes then usually you put them back on again at some point.
After the historic shoe experiment
All this putting on of shoes means that the shoe horn is ubiquitous around here. I do not remember using one in Europe or the US whereas here I would feel lost without one.
I use this one a lot. It is at the dentists
In Japan the very long shoe horn is de rigueur. You do not have to bend down to put on your shoes. Just position the shoe horn into the heel cavity and slide your foot sensually into the awaiting shoe. This gives me pleasure.
I quite like the doggy one.
I have only recently understood why I like shoe horns so much.
On my first day at school, actually kindergarten, there was much ritual. First off there was a uniform that had to be exactly adhered to. There were also accoutrements that any well-bred young gentleman had to have such as a satchel, a games kit bag, and a shoe horn. I remember mine vividly. It was short and had a tortoiseshell pattern, although it was undoubtedly plastic. I was very proud of my shoe horn, it was a badge of non- baby-ness and a fetish which would guard me against ill. I had not thought about it for 57 years until I was putting on my shoes in a low bar a couple of nights ago.
I highly recommend Robert Harris’ novels on the life of Cicero. I am listening to one at the moment as I record the events of this day.
Mainly birds I’m afraid. There are no less than 5 different species of Egret on Okinawa. I have been very lazy in truly sorting them out. Today I go to it.
We shall go from big to small.
Great White Egret. Notice thin kinked neck. The real giveaway I have realized after 2 years is the gape line, thin bit of skin stuff under the eye. Great White has one. Click on the photo and you be able to zoom. The next Egret down , the Intermediate Egret, does not.
The Intermediate Egret. No gape line, smaller, less kinked neck. Bad at Math
The little Egret. Blackish bill, but the giveaway is yellow feet, which you cannot see in this photo.
Yellow wellies, much disliked by my Father.
Now we come to the miserable Cattle Egret. Small, short necked, lacking trawthe.
Cattle Egret. Terrible table manners
So these four are usually seen inland, usually poncing around in rice and taro fields.
The last Egret is the Pacific Reef Egret, which is essentially a sea-bird.
So this is the grey morph.
White morph. Same species different color – like me and Toussaint L’Ouverture
Anyway that has cleared up the Egret dilemma. I am gratified by my discipline, it is so easy to avoid these niceties but, ‘It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen.’ – birdwatching is a stern mistress. A few more birds from today’s ramble through the Okinawan tundra.
The last 2 weeks or so have been very busy with no time to slob around or have adventures. Not so this weekend – no engagements, dinners and stuff, just stay at home and potter. Also planned 2 day boat adventure postponed due poor weather. Therefore full slob around mandate – is there anything more fair?
I have now lived in this amazing house for exactly a year. You may recall that one of my first acquisitions was a COBB outdoor cooker thing.
I don’t like to talk about my women but I’ll do it anyway. A bit of professional life, which I try to keep out of this blog, is going to creep in. Last Friday Jonathan and the Boys had a 30 min meeting with Japan’ s Prime Minister Good Ol Abe. We are currently a 50 faculty Grad Skool and would like to be a 300 faculty Grad Skool. We also want to double our budget next year. Abe said the government would decide. He is the head of the government. He said this. “Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to visit the Prime Minister’s Office, kantei, today. I visited OIST in early 2013 and I was convinced by the high level of aspiration of the Graduate University. By meeting outstanding OIST faculty members and students, I was convinced that Okinawa’s new future and Japan’s new future rests in OIST…….In promoting Japan’s innovation, I have high hopes for OIST. As world-renowned scholars have gathered here tonight, I would like to listen to your opinion about the future of OIST.”
This a very big deal affair opened by none other than Good Ol Abe. He ends his speech thus,
“I’m determined to turn Japan into a country where innovation takes place easily. As much as the global society is in need of Japan’s wisdom, our nation also requires the world’s knowledge.
One example of this is the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. I would like researchers and students from around the world to continue joining OIST. Mr. Omi is a founding father of this university. It will be almost two years since the establishment of the OIST Graduate University. It will continue to grow together with their researchers from nearly 30 countries and students from 23 countries. I believe this is exciting.”
OIST rocks
We have lunch with French Minister of Science Stuff.
Which two French towns are like a sailor’s trousers? Toulon and Toulouse.
Then the Japanese Minister of Science stuff gets up in another plenary and goes on and on and on about how wonderful OIST is. All this is pretty trippy for someone in my line of work.
Battle scarred or is that scared veterans
1000 delegates. No wifi so people actually had to listen.
Benjamin Bunny
So all very satisfactory. It gets er better.
Fly home to find that Higgs won the Nobel. For 12 years my pen hovered over the page to make that announcement . Never did. Oh well. Congratulations Peter and all at CERN
Roger had a lot to do with it
Good few days. A couple of typhoons ripped through the island while I was away. As they were only category 3 it doesn’t seem worth writing about them.
In these parts,when there is a death in the family, people let you know and you contribute some cash. After the funeral you receive a gift in recognition of your er gift. Today I got this.
Two beautiful towels in a very nice box that I can keep my fishing tackle in.
Afterwards
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?
If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
‘To him this must have been a familiar sight.’
If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.’
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
‘He was one who had an eye for such mysteries’?
And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things’?
Thomas Hardy
I think I have posted this before but who cares, it is a great poem.
I also got temporary possession of a beautiful hand painted screen, which made my office look ultra distinguished.
When at Stanford, I made the acquaintance of a ranching family who had kept cattle and horses on some of the huge swaths of land bought by Leland Stanford. They had been ranching for generations and they probably were there before the Stanfords. They were real cowboys. I phoned the son once .
“Where are you?”
“Neil, Not in California, I’m trucking cattle across the Texas border.”
What romance – that was a real job.
Today I trucked tables from Kunigami to OIST. Not quite so romantic but a wonderful drive. An artist who constructs and paints byobu, er like paper screens, is opening an exhibition at the university on Thursday. He needs tables. He has tables but no way to transport them from the tiny remote village in the extreme North of the island where he lives. I volunteer to truck the tables across the Yanburu border.
I do however drive to work every morning on a road and I have become increasingly entranced by the flowerpower. All the way to the university there are beds, hedges, slaps and stiles of flowers, which I don’t think anyone looks after. They just er grow.
I mention these beds of brilliant lily things to a colleague. She said” Oh those are just weeds.”
Anyway, it is nearly October but flowerpower is still strong. Nice drive to work but what I am trying to get across is that all these flowers are er random, no local government is involved. They are just there.
The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond 