As usual, I’ve been spending my quiet evenings in reading the BBC website. In particular this article about the most interesting adverts of 2007.

Apparently the most popular advert is that Cadbury one with the ape playing the drums. This ad will always stick in my mind not because it’s a great advert but because of seeing my dad’s confused face while he watched it for the first time, then after the penny dropped he quipped:

“God, Phil Collins has aged, hasn’t he?”

I nearly fell off my chair.

I wish a very happy Festivus to one and all. I hope that you feel better after airing your grievances and wish you luck with your feats of strength.

Just what is Festivus? I hope this explains it:

Festivus will forever remind me of my days in the Sandcastle, good times.

Now that I have a bit of time and 2 and a half weeks off work. I have finally bothered to write an about page for this site. Hoorah! It’s something that I have been promising to do for about 7 months so I hope it has been worth the wait.

Whenever you need to get to a shop or find someone’s house it should be quite easy, just look up the address. Not so in Japan, sure the addresses are written down fine but none of the streets are actually named so finding a place involves giving really dodgy directions.

For example:

“Go out the west exit of the station.”
“Follow the platform until you get to the escalators”
“No no, the other escalators”
“Go down the road for a while”
“If you see an old grey cat with eyes that are two different colours, turn around”
“When you get to the fire station at the crossroads turn left”
“Take 5 paces forward”
“Sidestep to your right”
“Tell the man you are on the quest for the sword”

and so on..

It is just ridiculous, I can’t understand how anyone gets anywhere without an intimate knowledge of the area. I suppose it does give the police officer sitting in his koban all day something to do, other than asking foreigners for their gaijin cards.

In a certain other blog the author stated that he had an agreement with someone to write a potentially embarrassing post if they hadn’t written anything for 10 days. Well I have no such agreement but I am going to post something anyway. It’s not really embarrassing but just a thought that I had.

While surfing the the BBC Sport website I saw the picture to the left and thought: “Why is that big fellow trying to stare down that old lady?” Turns out that that old lady is non other than super hard boxer, Ricky Hatton. I really think that his hat is not flatering at all, if you what to intimidate your opponent wear a cap or a hoodie, not a grandma hat.

Although I’m not one to talk, I wear a winter hat that Jerry Seinfeld described saying:

“This hat says to the world “I would rather have the heat in my skull rather than anything society could possibly offer.”

Which perhaps is true. I also recently bought a hat to cover my overgrown hair which on second thought makes me look like Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol.