In other news... an eruption of blogging!

This is a post of some semi-random musings on the volcano Eyjafjallajokull.

"Hah!  Easy for you to say...."

Twitter:

Am following a number of Twitter sites including @Eurocontrol, who are very open about replying to information of what is going on in European airspace.  Also the mildly amusing @Eyjafjallajokull, who may or may not be the official Twitter account of the volcano itself.  (Bio: "I'm a lava not a fighter")

Conspiracy nuts:

NATO conducting one of the largest exercises in Northern Europe, combination of operations including Operation Brilliant Mariner, using air sea and ground forces in UK, Netherlands, France, and Germany, started 12 April and scheduled to finish 22 April.  The same day the airspace over the exact same countries is due to reopen.

Other stuff:

Here is a link of a bunch of people trying to pronounce the name of the volcano.

The name Eyjafjallajokull scores 47 points in Scrabble!

My NZ passport has flown from Heathrow to Germany and then to Hong Kong!!

DHL Airwaybill # - xxxxxxxxxx - Detailed Report



April 16, 2010 15:35 Lambeth - UK Shipment picked up
April 16, 2010 18:57 Lambeth - UK Departing origin
April 16, 2010 18:59 Lambeth - UK Processed at Lambeth - UK
April 16, 2010 20:50 Lambeth - UK Departed from DHL facility in Lambeth - UK
April 16, 2010 20:59 London-Heathrow - UK Arrived at DHL facility in London-Heathrow - UK
April 16, 2010 22:25 London-Heathrow - UK Departed from DHL facility in London-Heathrow - UK
April 18, 2010 12:38 Leipzig - Germany Processed at Leipzig - Germany
April 19, 2010 02:59 Leipzig - Germany Shipment on hold
April 19, 2010 12:53 Leipzig - Germany Departed from DHL facility in Leipzig - Germany
April 20, 2010 10:20 Hong Kong Hub - Hong Kong Arrived at DHL facility in Hong Kong Hub - Hong Kong


How?? Presumably not by sea....  Wont try to explain why I simultaneously sent my NZ passport to be renewed in London and my British one in Tokyo.  Both done and returned inside of 2 weeks, including volcano...

Finally.......

The last wish of the Icelandic economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe.

So, what`s it like? (2)

I am getting a bit bored of this blog.  Which is probably natural.

It was originally set up to avoid the annoying group/spam/distribution e-mails which inevitably follow when you go overseas, drawn out updates clogging up mailboxes worldwide.  This way I put my thoughts (supported by a formidable cross section of technology: 3 Twitter accounts, 7 e-mail accounts, Skype, 2 mobile phones, 3 laptops, camera, Facebook, Linkedin, my own Youtube channel, lots of pen and paper) as they are relevant to me, without too much worry about audience impact, people can browse if they wish.

My guess, is that my audience (you) are probably at a similar, yawn, kind of stage... so soon I will wrap this little baby up.  Maybe a few more posts, a brief summation of the meaning of life, that kind of thing.

I have to think about whether to start a more public blog after that or leave it.  I have contemporaries, you know, inspiring business related stuff.  Profile building.  I dont think I will.

To relieve the boredom, here are some things that have happened to me in the last month....

• My 17th visitor has stayed (my mum) since I've been here
• I walked smack into the glass door of McDonalds at 3am, cut nose, black eye, chipped tooth (nice)
• Stopped going to the local McDonalds out of embarrassment
• Made some cute Japanese friends
• Wished I had been more able to meet more Japanese friends
• Went to Hanami party (cherry blossom viewing) where I discovered that the Hanami party is more about drinking alcohol than viewing cherry blossom
• Went to some more Hanami parties
• Worked a 16 hour day, a 60 hour week, worked a Saturday and a Sunday, had conference calls at 10pm, had 35 meetings in a week.
• Took a chill pill and didnt work so crazily, for a day or two...
• Restructured my sales team and started the process to hire 3 more people including one to poach from UK
• Ate sushi in the Tsukiji fish market, the biggest fish market in the world, and possibly the best sushi I have ever eaten (and I have eaten a lot)
• Changed my Japanese teacher and I am learning twice as fast as before
• Started reading as well as speaking
• Went to Sydney and gave my niece a mini-Kimono and the little shoe things that go with it
• Went to new restaurants - Indonesian, Italian, American, French, English, and... um, Japanese
• Drank lots of beer, sake, and wine...
• Ate amazing food every day
• Got lesson off my mum on how to read music and planned to buy second hand electric piano
• Had my apartment loo changed to an electric one with sounds and gadgets
• Started bowing out of courtesy to people I dont even know
• Went to the gym a lot because the weather was a bit crap for running

..... Found myself more incumbent, involved, and interested to the point that I dont feel like an observer anymore....

:)

Poker Face

Tasks for today:

Delete all my friend connections off Facebook

Create new FB profile

Buy bike pump

The air feels good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You Got the Dirty Love

Missed the Brits.  Must get a proxy set up so I can watch this stuff on line.

I think this looks wicked... Florence vs. Dizzee...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDCy7iKc_nw

That link is now broken thanks to a copyright claim by British Phonographic Industry Ltd..

Try here - nice mashup, same audio....!  still think it rocks. cant decide who I like better..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjVuMX7GSSk#

Come to think of it maybe they have a point you can download the mp3 all profits go to charity...

I still have his single Bonkers in my head and I haven't listend to it for months and months.  But that could be just me!

Been a good week for Rasu music, Rage Against The Machine annouced a free gig, ballot happens today, Kings of Leon in Hyde Park 30 June, that would be nice, I could do Glasto and that in one hit!

Still not decided on a summer festival.... Soundwave would be nice.  Even found a studio and someone to take me to learn keyboard (and maybe singing??).

And took possession of new Hot Chip finally.  Stuck in my head.... My Brothers!
One Life Stand

Oh and - let's not forget We Are the World 25 for Haiti!

National Foundation Day (建国記念日)

Today is a public holiday in Japan.  Yay!  We get a total of 18 public holidays, and many of the fall on really nice days like a Thursday, so it takes the sting out of the weekend.

Except I am at work.  How did this happen?  Japanese lesson this morning (learnt to read food wrappers, now I remember why I never ate pot noodles. 450 calories and 21 grams of fat, my god...)  So I also had to go for a run.

Now I'm in the office.  Anyway, not the point, at all.  This will be quick.

Video - Japanese Right Wing Nationalists at Work

Filmed these guys on my iPhone on the way in, they are a typical sight, but today it seems, being National Foundation Day, they are all over the place!  I thought it was just because it was a holiday and they are out having fun making noise but it's also the significance of the day.  They are Japan's answer to the BNP.

Tokyo Rasu's Unscientific Guide to Right Wing Nationalists in Japan:

• Are called in Uyoku dantai
• Get money from some dodgy politicians, who may also be affiliated with the Yakuza
• NB- Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) have been in the social and politcal fabric since the end of the war. Construction is where they get a lot of their money from. One reason why there are so many contruction projects all the time!
• Go around the streets in these noisy vans with skinny undernourished looking guys yelling into megaphones
• Promote a return to pre-war values, e.g. pretend we didnt lose
• Support Japan's conduct in WW2
• Dont like foreigners (oops!!) especially Koreans (bad Koreans!) and Chinese etc
• Are very right wing and anti-left

There are around 1,000 of these groups in Japan.  Crazy

Have a nice day... I hear another one coming past the office now, and we're on the 20th floor.

Here's the video again....

We Are The World

Winter Olympics starts this weekend.

Should be a few good events, curling is up there, and the snowboarding.  I wont be competing this year.

Opening ceremony includes a new version of We Are the World, for Haiti.  It promises to be a cheese ridden extravaganza of warmth and huggyness rolled into a sweet pop culture bun.  I'm looking forward to it.

Here are the performers in a funky pic you can drag your mouse over.  Download it, watch it, get into it.  And if you haven't (and I know I am not supposed to start a sentence with "and") you can maybe donate some money for those children and their families.

On a different note, last night I watched a documentary with A band called Gallows, called "Lives of The Artists".  He reckons music should not be acceptable, it should evoke emotion by any means to break the pop-by-numbers hold on the industry.

So if Celene Dion singing we are the children is not your thing then check that out.

Controlling Risk (or "Skynet Becomes Self Aware")

I was reading this blog which is quite funny, and realized that my blog is not so funny. I am not sure why this is, as I am clearly a very funny person. I saw some statistics the other day about how people describe their blogs and the highest rating was for people who describe their blogs as “sincere”. Not: “funny”. At least I am not alone.

I bought a new laptop finally.  Sony Vaio, 6Gb RAM, Solid State Drive, wide screen, HD.  Most important it looks cool, which is a key determining factor in long term enjoyment ... of so many things!

Which links to an article this morning by the Federal Reserve on Algorithmic Trading and "High Frequency Trading", which is where banks use computers (like the one above, which incidentally is not an algorithmic trading computer but a Japanese receptionist robot for firms that dont want to pay for a human, but it is an example of a com-pu-ter) to track miniscule (or large) abberations in the global stockmarkets and then trade heavily and at lightning speed to arbitrage a tiny window of opportunity on that delta before it closes.  This can all happen in less than the time a human could touch their keypad.  The 2% of firms engaged in High Frequency trading could be contributing up to 70% of the worlds stock market liquidity.  They need a lot of very fast fibre optic networks and very clever computers (and very very clever highly paid people to operate the computers) to do this.

Any case, the part I liked was the below (when the Federal Reserve talking about risks and how quickly these could spiral to a very large scale problem):

For example, in 2003 a U.S. trading firm became insolvent in 16 seconds when an employee who had no involvement with algorithms switched one on. It took the company 47 minutes to realize it had gone bust and to call its clearing bank, which was unaware of the situation.


Can you imagine, the cleaner, in the communications room, looking for the switch to turn the vacuum clearner on...........  oops!