The Quiet Ripple Defines The Pond

So,  this blog rarely bothers with the inconsequentials of my professional life but from time to time, Big Business bellows, groans and kicks his stall so hard that he is difficult to ignore.

Today research at the university was featured on the front page of Nature.

Deep fry

This has provoked a well orchestrated media splurge. For example:

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21660955-studying-cephalopods-may-illuminate-evolution-brains-all-sorts-tentacles

More of the same at :

http://www.oist.jp/news-center/media-links/first-cephalopod-genome-decoded

Thanks Joykrit who wrote:

http://www.oist.jp/news-center/press-releases/decoding-genome-alien

So, for the last 50 years I have had a skin irritation. It is a fungal thing that I caught in a school swimming pool and have been trying to eradicate ever since. It appears and then scurries off to hide for a few months/years but has never totally like shipped out.

I go to a jolly dermatologist who prescribes an ointment. I go to the Chelsea drug store, next door, to get my prescription filled. It seems to take a rather long time but after a wait, the beaming pharmacienne presents me with a tub of ointment that she has clearly just made up herself.

Home-made, hand-made, artisanal, anti-fungal ointment.  Does this happen in other counties? I am used to having a tube of something called, “Zapfung” slapped onto the counter.  I am charmed to have  home-cooking.

Organic

Anyway, I get up and shave and go to work. Big Business is heaving and groaning in his stall. Stuff afoot. I go home and go sailing.

Far out

This is really what it looks like.

It is pleasant and delightful to go for a sail after work.

After all the razamatazz of last week, things had to change. It is written.

“After the morning there comes an evening
And after the evening another day.
Being much more like a commanding officer
Than a man to die upon the gallows tree.”
Quite so.

The curse really began when I tried to fix the mighty Hi Jet. Nothing difficult here. Remove flat battery and replace with the the new battery that I use as a bedside table. However the sly one has many ways of tripping up honest folk. This time he placed the terminals on the new battery on  the other side  from the original battery.

The way the battery is meant to be set up. Terminals at the front giving the + terminal on the left  and – terminal on the right.

However the mighty Hi Jet’s battery leads come from behind the battery demanding that the terminals are at the back of the battery.

Yea, e’en so.

This means that the positive terminal is on the right and the negative is on the left, which in turn means that I connected the positive lead to the negative terminal  and in fact never really  connect the other one because of all the sparks. Result –  fried electrics, well actually probably just a blown main fuse. However this is where living in a country where you are too stupid to learn the language becomes tiresome. How to explain I want a new main fuse? Where is the main fuse located anyway? I flag and leave the dead truck at Chuyoya port.

Anyway the day after the party, I go for a great sail all the way past Cape Zampa and what’s more I see a Short Tailed Shearwater.

Yay!
(not my photo)

I then turn around and batter my way back up the coast in the hope of making Tern Island.

Not to be, as it gets choppy and I am not making much headway against the wind. So I turn around and hightail it back home. Wonderful sail, wind behind, sun above, 35 mins to get all the way back home. However it is very low tide, no way over the reef except through the Iron Gates. I get it all wrong. We end up on the reef in 6 inches of water. Luckily by this time the waves haves gone so there is no surf to grind her to fiber glass dust. We just perch on the reef waiting for the tide to come back in. It begins to pour with rain.

She also serves who only stands and waits . On the reef.

Moving pictures. https://youtu.be/Z2A0o7YlTOk

During the night a huge centipede crawls into my left ear and snuggles deep inside.

My new lodger

I now feel very bad with swollen ear and fever and nausea.

Home of the centipede.

The ear, nose and throat doctor takes some convincing that there is a centipede in my ear, even after examining me. He finally agrees that there is one in there of the genus ‘severe infection.’ It apparently does not like antibiotics and will come out during the night whilst I am asleep.

Our interns, which is a totally unsuitable name for world-class science writers, Joykrit and Laura have come to the end of their  stay. We have a party.

This a good day to have a party. There is a full moon, there is a beautiful sunset, Harry has cooked a pig, Science publishes an article saying how great we are.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6247/488.full

The Peer review report used the adjective “outstanding” 54 times and “inspirational” 567 times, the world’s most famous science journal sends a message that they are going feature OIST research on the cover, the Scaffie is in the water.  All in all, time for a party.

Cook that pig

Life is hard

The vegetarians

Feeling the heat

Matsuda sensei, the world’s greatest ceramicist, for whom I have total respect, gives me a plate and Laura an awamori bottle

A table – that’s French

Rare photo

The first course

Juan Luis, the quantum cowboy, sings.

Good week

Good dog

The fridge at 2:00 am

For several months we have been building up to a major external review of the university. They like us = happiness and joy, they do not like us = misery and pain.

It finished yesterday. Happiness and joy. So despite the fact that this review has dominated my life for some time, I will say no more about it and get onto important stuff.

The poor Scaffie has been out of the water for weeks. She does not like this, she has fever all day and chills at night. At 7:00 this morning Hisashi, Laura and I foregather to relieve her pain.

Everything goes wrong. The battery of the mighty Hi Jet is flat. We manage to start her using jump leads attached to Hisashi’s rig. We get to the harbor but subsequently the mighty Hi Jet refuses to start no matter what power is injected from other cars.

The truck is dead

We push the Hi Jet and trailer into a corner for later treatment and row the Scaffie out onto the wild and wistful ocean. It is 7:30 on the most beautiful morning so far in the long history of the globe.

We humiliate ourselves by raising sail in every possible wrong way. We are blown onto the shore twice. Luckily there are few humans around to witness my uselessness. Notwithstanding, Laura helms us back to the mooring in front of my house

Laura at the helm, 7:45

We sail onto the mooring most elegantly but nobody sees it. Anyway the mighty Scaffie is back on the water.

Much later, after work stuff, Sunset comes and I am at sea.

Red Sail in the sunset

I mean, what can I say about sailing towards the sunset as everything slows down?

Tranquil

Bye bye 30 July 2015

Anyway, I sail back in the gloaming and pick up the mooring under sail, which most of you will not appreciate the wonderfullness thereof. I swim back to the house in bath temperature sea.  The moon is nearly full.

I am very happy not being a lunatic.

When in England I was able to take photos of English birds – mainly Tits.

This is a Blue Tit but it does not look like one.

Greater Acne-ed Woodpecker

Dunnock

Great and Blue Tits

That’s all folks.

London- Amsterdam-Taipei- Naha.

Home again.

Yay!!

Fish

Okinawa

Whee!

Ie Jima

What can I say?

Grunt

Au clair de la lune.

Rosy and I go to see Mummy. We drive through film-set English villages with wooded tudor houses, ancient coaching inns, saxon churches where Edward Gibbon is buried. The Giant Hog Weed  surges from every hedgerow.

One of the Saxon churches where Gibbon is buried.

Told you so

Mummy at 92 is in good form, although I am not sure she really knew who I was. Her manners, impeccable as always, would of course not allow her to display any doubt and she welcomed me most graciously.

The background music in the sitting room of the home was a medley of sing along numbers. Mummy has always been a great singer and we went through, Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon, Flower of Scotland, These are my Mountains.   Mummy, Rosy  and I lead the singing and the other old ladies joined. After Scotland, we moved to Jamaica and sang, Yellow Bird, Island in the Sun and I Left a Little Girl in Kingston Town. Best fun. I played Amazing Grace on my IPhone as Mummy sang.

Sad to say, I’m on my way,
Won’t be back for many a day.

Lots of love, Mummy.

Roast beef of old England with roast potatoes, buttered cabbage,creamed horseradish, gravy and fine wine.

Thanks Muladys!

Auntie Margie has gone to it. May flights of angels sing her to her rest.

My sister Rosy organized the ceremony with great delicacy and skill such that Margie was remembered with respect and love but without undue  maudlin.

Cat themed coffin

Alan spoke the eulogy and others read and stuff. We sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and “Jerusalem.”

A gaggle of Calders

We than went back to Springbank to guzzle Egg Mayonnaise, Cheeses and Onion and Smoked Salmon Sandwiches.

Konichewa!

Later we ate Fish and Chips.

Has earth anything to show more fair?

Frenzy

England is where I am at. Barry and Rosy have the most amazing house and garden. It is beautiful. So far from Okinawa.

That ‘s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Fulcrum

The best garden

Trees and lawns

Pink

Park

Prince Andrew

Rhubarb

Gate

There is so much more. Congratulations to Rosy and Barry for creating such beauty.