I was driving my Japanese teacher to the station after class, and on the way we passed an incident with a lot of fire engines and ambulances outside a house with smoke pouring out of it. Let’s call it a ‘fire’.

My teacher said he had seen a lot of fires today, to which I replied, ‘that’s because it’s Tuesday!’.

Guffaw!

日本語で：

今日は日本語で私の最初の冗談を作ったよ！

私の日本語の先生は：「私は今日は火災の多くを見ている」を言った。

私：「はい、火曜日ですから！！」

（笑）　^_^

Meanwhile, I kept checking the local governments web page (if you are using Google Chrome it should offer to translate it for you) that kept us up-to-date (twice-daily) with the airborne radiation levels in the town I live in, the levels in the water supply and the prefectural levels. Of course, the totally non-biased, non-propaganda Russia Today website would probably have you believe it’s all lies. Trust no-one!

I digress. Let’s assume that the readings are accurate. As far as I remember, the readings went up to a maximum of one-point-something-something-something (I knew I should have been a scientist) at one point, which was pretty scary. I was reassuring people here and back home that it was fine and ‘apparently parts of America are higher’ and other stuff like that, while googling for numbers. I learned a lot about it though, in a round about kind of way. Hey, at least I’m not pretending to be an expert, like so many others thought they were.

Anyway, I am writing this now because I just checked the radiation in my town again this morning and as you can see, it appears to have bottomed-out at around 0.08 microsieverts per hour. That’s not good, is it!? I want 0.00 microsieverts per year! OK, obviously there has to be some in the background, so 0.01 would be fine, I suppose.

So I had a look for background radiation levels in the USA and Cornwall (a place with a fairly high background level, I hear) and found this article.

“The U.K. Health Protection Agency estimates the typical Briton receives about 2,200 microsieverts of radiation per year from background radiation, or about 0.251 microsieverts per hour — more than double the levels registered in Tokyo.”

“Cornwall, a popular tourist destination in southwest England, has four times the level of radon as other parts of the country, he said.”

Is Bloomberg.com partial to a bit of anti-cornwall propaganda? Please let me know.

I finally switched it back on last night to get in touch with someone so I thought I should finally put something on here too.

I think the main reason I was away so long is this reason right here.

After March 11th, I fully intended writing about my thoughts and experiences, but not ‘in the moment’, because I didn’t know what to think most of the time, plus my thoughts were mostly along the lines of ‘everyone back home is overreacting, why won’t they shut up, we feel worried enough as it is without their ill-informed opinions on radiation’, etc, etc. Basically, if my head was now one big tumor and I had no skin left, I would have looked a bit silly now. All the scaremongers would be like, ‘told ye’ and they would laugh and point and spit on my rotting, sizzling, glow-in-the-dark melted-welly head. Probably.

Anyway I hate it when folk do that, so I thought I would write retrospectively, once the situation was a bit clearer. That time never came though, and after a few months it became old news, even for us. So I didn’t bother.

I fact I’ll do it now. The short, posting from the phone version.

That was scary, glad I stuck to my guns instead of running away. Those anti-nuclear – in fact, forget it. Water under the bridge.

Facebook. I’m back on it, for now. I’ll just be doing some more trolling, most likely. It’s too easy on there.

Hit like!

Check my twitter feed for updates

Learn to speak any language

Step 1:

Think about all the words you know in your native language and find the corresponding words in your desired new language. Memorise them. Take special care to learn how the words are pronounced, too.

Step 2:

Do the same for grammar: memorise all the grammar of the new language.

Step 3:

In place of the words and grammar of your native language, use the words and grammar of your new chosen language. Hey presto! The people who speak this new language will understand you and you will understand them!

For example: if you chose German as your new language, and followed steps 1 and 2 above TO THE LETTER, then travel to Germany. The German people will understand what you say to them and you will understand them! Crazy. The same works for Italy, China and even Russia or any of those other places.

I will accept donations, by the way.

I knew it.

Videos keep popping up of UFOs in (perceived) backwater countries, such as China, Russia, Jerusalem, London and A Field somewhere. Mostly pretty unconvincing to people who are familiar with the feature-list of Adobe’s After Effects. OK a few are not bad, but it doesn’t matter.

There are NO SUCH THING UFOs and I will now prove it.

Ever looked up at the sky and seen something weird? Maybe it was like a star, but bigger and way brighter. Maybe you stood there for 10 minutes thinking of all the possibilities, reasoning with logic best you could but still finding yourself crossing off each item in your head, all the while getting a bit more nervous about the whole situation. After all, you stopped in the middle of the road and there is a big line of cars honking at you to get past. The driver at the front has even got out of his car to ask you what the hell you are playing at.

Wait, no.. forget that bit.

Finally, you conclude you have just seen a UFO. Shut it! You are talking nonsense.

What is a UFO? An Unidentified Flying Object.

The moment you decided it was a UFO, whether by saying it or out loud or by merely thinking it into your internal dialogue thing you’ve got going on, you identified it.

So it cannot be a UFO, can it? Eh? EH??

IFOs, on the other hand – they are the ones to watch out for…