The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

You will remember about this time last year I posted about a film that two French people made for the university. Maybe not – so here is the link.

https://quietripple.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/french-cinema/

Well, they came back to make an update. All filmed on Canon er cameras and edited on a creaky Macbook. The whole project only took a few days, no fuss, no tantrums, just fast, good filming. I like working with these guys so here is an outrageous plug. If you need a movie, hire them, areactionfilms@gmail.com.

Here is the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAlwPcUCqVE&feature=player_detailpage

People I work with, in the back yard

A Grey Heron in Kyoto

My friend Satoru sent this to me.

I am a world famous photographer from Kochi, Japan. : )
This from the A・La・Uno S, which is the make of my toilet see previous post, catalog and translated by Google translation, the center and middle button with some subtle; 

A・La・Uno S has buttocks cleaning function (common to all types)

1. buttocks wash (wash bubble)
Firmly, gently washed in water that is strength.

2. Move cleaning buttocks
Nozzle moves back and forth, I washed a wide range.

3. Soft cleaning
In soft water, it can be used when feeling hemorrhoids and diarrhea.

4. Washing massage
Repeat the dynamics, we encourage defecation.

My new house, which here on in will be called Tigh na Mara, which is Gaelic for House by The Sea so my learned correspondents state, is full of really cool electronic 21st Century schizoid equipment. Let’s have a look at my toilet. Its shape is non-remarkable and its color is white, however it is distinguished by not having a flush handle, a chain, a pedal and anything to make water comes scooting in to evacuate the er waste. It is very smooth, rounded and has no obvious water tank. There is a tiny green light glowing on its  top.

Crapper

I am your obedient servant

The seat is heated, which I find soppy after a youth of freezing toilet seats and a societal structure  constructed around the core concept that once you became a Prefect you could order a younger boy to warm up your toilet seat for you.

There is a control panel on the wall.

I have a 2 day relationship with this thing and now understand it better.  At first I just stabbed the control panel and hoped.

15 buttons

I now have 4 buttons completely under control and 11 to discover. The top two are the flush buttons – one short, one long. The centre and right buttons in the middle row spray water at your fundament with some subtle difference that I have not yet figured out. It is such fun. However I am still a beginner and I know that there is a wide spectrum of finesse of pleasure ahead of me.

So that’s it. I now live in the best house in the visible universe. It is called “The House by the Sea.” I would like to have a Gaelic name but Google translate doesn’t do Gaelic. Must be “Tir na something.” If there are any Gaelic speakers out there – er you know.

Typhoon resistant and it has a palm tree

It is brand new and packed with gizmos as only the Japanese could think up. I will do a series of blogs on the aforementioned. The essential quality is its proximity to the East China Sea, which nearly comes into the front room.

It has huge door window things so that when open you are living outside when you are inside.

I spend the weekend unpacking. This I enjoy, fitting old stuff into new setting.

Unpack

I have been sleeping on the floor with a futon and  a tatami mat between  me and the cold, cold ground for the last 2 years. This I have very much enjoyed. However, due to size of bedrooms, proximity to bathroom, heaving beds upstairs and other pragmatics, I will now try sleeping in a bed.

Could be worse – nice view

I take a break from the set up and stroll along my backyard.

The backyard

I pick up  shells.

Local Hero

I could stumble along beaches picking up shells for the rest of my life. How can I go back to work?

Ladies wear them.

Shucks

Jeepers

Oh flip

Gosh

Golly gee

They asked, not me!

Holy Moley!

 

When I asked if I could take their picture, not one replied, “Beat it, you fat perve.”

They all grinned and said “Sure, life is great and we are beautiful.” er in Japanese.

When I was a student I worked in the steel factories in Sheffield, now defunct, er the steel factories not the city, in the two-week shutdown in the Summer when the workers went on vacations and bands of students came in to clean the place up. These weeks were called Stop Weeks. The money was fantastic. We worked 12 hour shifts and some years I worked very hard shoveling sludge from pits underneath huge rolling mills. Other times I did nothing at all, such as the year that I was  a welder’s mate. He, the welder, would lead me to some lost corner of the massive steel plant where we would sleep all day. Once we slept beyond the knocking off time, whereupon we claimed and were paid overtime. The steel factory we worked in was Steel,Peech and Tozer, affectionately known as Steelos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel,_Peech_and_Tozer

Anyway in Kyoto at a big deal meeting called STS Forum http://www.stsforum.org/ I am on a panel with a chap who mentions he was at Sheffield University.  He was sitting on my left. I mentioned Steelos and he had also worked on the Stop Weeks as a student! We spent an intense 5 minutes of nostalgia for the bad old days of pollution, soot and yellow and blue No 60 buses. He introduced me to the man on my right who had also been at Sheffield University!

We exchanged Sheffield shibboleths such as: “D’areet chuck?” – “Are you feeling well my dear?” and “Tint tin tin.” – “It is not in the tin.”  Very good time was had by all. The man of the left was Rich Roberts:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Roberts

On the right was Jeremy Grantham:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Grantham

Go Sheffield.

Anyway it was a great meeting with lots of old and current friends.

Mighty Cashmore

Jerry Friedman with another gentleman.

Jerry is one of the best. Check his interview with Ali G.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU0vOThFXGA

Jonathan writ large

Yay! Carlo looking good

Cashmore gets ready

Good couple of days.

So after  a week of great intensity I get up very early to go get my truck, which has been graciously lent to me. I am moving my furniture to my new house that from henceforth will be known as the house by the sea.  I have to move my stuff today as tomorrow I set off to Kyoto for some days and I have to give the keys back on Friday and there is the inspection and so there has to be a final mega clean and so do you get it?   A happy band of people have agreed to help. It is a beautiful day and they stand in the back of the truck as I drive along the azure sea road.

They descend on my apartment like the wolf on the fold and the truck is loaded and dispatched to the new house 4 times in two shakes of a lambs tail.

Beatrice is one fine woman. She could rogue an acre of potatoes and milk the cows before the rest of us had filled even one creel. If you see what I mean.

We throw all the stuff into the amazing new place.

View of the house by the sea

Some of the crew on the deck

More crew in the back yard

Moving, of which I have done a lot.

On the boardwalk. Notice typhoon burnt trees.

I move in for good next Friday but in between I am in Kyoto and the inspection has to be done and the air conditioners er conditioned and the like and so I had to move the furniture today. Do you see what I mean? I am writing this on a laptop sitting on an upended garbage bin in a totally empty flat.

Further on down the road

How many of you remember the GDR?

Anyway,  people from there made my barograph and the next time you need one I recommend you buy from them. Mine has worked perfectly for 30 years.

They may have made crappy cars but let’s hear it for their barographs.

She has worked perfectly but I could not say that she has been a very exciting companion. She measures atmospheric pressure which in turn is related to the weather – low pressure = bad weather, high pressure = good weather.

Her clockwork mechanism has driven the drum around and around for 30 years and the pen has left a line that has stayed between 1020 and 990 hecto whizz bangs. This was in a dull period of my life atmospheric pressurely speaking.

30 years of this

Then I came to Okinawa and the realm of the typhoon. My barograph is having the time of her life. “She also serves who only stands and waits.” she chanted to herself through 3 decades but now she is ecstatic. Twice in the last month she has gone off scale and once nearly. She has experienced an intensity, a frenzy that had been unimaginable in the first part of her life. Now the future promises years of ecstasy and fulfillment. I am so happy for her. My barograph and Okinawa = Getrude Stein and Alice B Toklas.

One month in Okinawa

Hey it’s the weekend and you know what that means – yep another super typhoon. When it comes to typhoons, hurricanes, tempests, cyclones and such, I now have a lot of ‘been there done that’ credit. This one is called Jelawat and has been a really good one.

This is a Jelawat. A what?

Good because it came during the day and so you can now er see its influence on normality and good because it came right over the island and was thus a typhoon in three acts.

The barograph has off course gone “off scale” resulting in 120mph wind gusts.

Off scale again!

Incidentally, I am writing this on the magnificent IPad, which is an essential typhoon tool as there is no power, meaning no computer, light, Internet, cooker, hot water and so on. The pad however allows me to write, listen to music and read.

Contemporary drama – ‘The Jelawat – You what? Narrative’

Act one – 3 hours of screaming and howling with much clockwise movement.

Act two – 1 hour of total calm.

Act three – 3 hours of screaming and howling with much anti clockwise movement.

I hope to do a solo act at Edinburgh next year, or maybe Burning Man.

I interpret the calm  as the eye of the typhoon passing right over my house.

How cool is that?

What a pleasingly unusual, well not really in Okinawa, way to pass a Saturday.

Gone and never called me Mother

Sea Snake blown up on the beach. I saved it but it did not say thank you. What a snake!

Hey, check out the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxiRqDDwmps&feature=youtu.be

The lighthouse which appears horizontally in the film is actually vertical and about 30 metres high. The cliffs upon which it stands are also 30 metres high. The spray was going right over the top of the lighthouse. The film in no way captures the awesomeness. The people in the video are my next door neighbors. I had no idea that they were behind me.

A nearby hotel has a very well-known dolphin show. I heard today that all the dolphins pools were destroyed and the dolphins escaped into the ocean. Rough intro into the free world. I hope they made it.

Juna Kurihara is a very nice person. I first met her when she worked with me at Stanford. She was  young and  an intern doing scientific illustration. She was very and still is very good at her job. http://www.science-graphics.net/

She was also petite, Japanese and quite quiet. Then I noticed that she was going out at lunchtime to play soccer with a bunch of corn and steak fed American guys. This was the first clue. I had a motor bike and Juna discreetly implied that she had motor bike experience.

Juna in California

“Have you been on a motor bike?” I ask avuncularly.

“Yes, in Australia.”

“Oh, you have been to Australia?”

“Well, I rode across Australia on a motorbike.”

“Wow! How big was the bike?”

“125”

“You must be kidding , you rode across Australia on a  125 cc bike?”

” No, I just sat on the back.”

Those of you who have not done long distance trips on a motor cycle may not understand the implications of that answer. It basically means that Juna is special.

Anyway she did a great watercolor of the research yard at SLAC and she kindly gave me the original, which I have kept since. Recently it has been taped to my bathroom wall.

Fall in Palo Alto

Anyway Juna is now in Tokyo, married with a beautiful daughter. Our paths crossed and she and her husband Carlos and beautiful daughter Kanoko, spent time in my apartment in Okinawa. She noticed her painting taped to my bathroom wall and today I received a mystery box at work. It was a frame from Juna with instructions of how to use it.

Small acts of kindness.

Finally! The respect it merits

Thanks Juna!