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Taipei Ramblings
Rambling from a hotel room at an ungodly hour in Taipei, en route to England.
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Homeward Bound
Two and a half years is a long time to be away from home, no matter how many awesome experiences you have. It’s hard to describe the feeling – I don’t really miss England per se, but I do miss the great times I had with friends and family while I was there. Having said […]
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I’m Back And I Have A Virtual Twin
So it’s been three months since my last entry and enough of you have emailed me about it that I’ve finally gotten round to writing something. At first it was because I didn’t have Internet access and was having too much fun to try and find it (it seems there’s hope for me yet!) and […]
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Broome Town
Broome, lovely Broome, which reminds me of that (awful) Simply Red song, “Beautiful But Oh So Boring”
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Broome Time
Making plans to head up to Broome in northern Western Australia
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Cup Success
Having watched the semi-final in Singapore, I was looking forward to what I thought would be an easy enough FA Cup Final against West Ham, who we’d hammered on the last day of the season. Though he hasn’t really done too much on the pitch, I was especially glad of having Harry Kewell in the […]
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Pinnacles United
One of the guys, Ian, had a meeting up in Jurien Bay today, so I hopped in the car to go with him and get a taste of the Australian road. Jurien Bay is pretty close as things go in Australia, being ‘only’ 3 hours north of Perth, up the coast. So far, if I […]
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Getting Sorted
I got myself a mobile phone today which means you can go back to emailing my phone from the about page again and I also opened a bank account so I can get paid if and when I finally get a job. I’ve been looking at finding work in Perth, though to be honest, I […]
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Come Home Chris Hand
Always happy to help out a good cause! Get that man home!
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Swanning About Town
A pleasant day in Perth, Western Australia, a lovely city which is a little sleepy but easy to relax in.
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King Of Navigation
My friend Steve once told me while drunk about his keen sense of navigation. “I get it from my mum”, he said. “She had a really bad sense of direction, but she could run really fast. So basically, I just keep running until I see somewhere I recognise.” That same night he ran halfway to […]
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Knocking On Oz’s Door
My time in Singapore couldn’t have finished in much a better way. As a special treat, Alan took me over to the Penny Black, a Victorian-style English pub, with real ale from the tap which was bested only by the plasma screens showing Liverpool and Chelsea’s FA Cup semi-final live. The pub turns into the […]
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Singaporean Surprises
I’ve got a joke for you: Q) What do you call a guy who injures his back playing tennis during a short vacation, subsequently spending 2 of his 5 days in bed barely able to move? A) Lots of things. None of them polite. Yes, I am that idiot. I played a few sets with […]
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Curries And Slings
Continuing the theme of appreciating food, lunch today was at a fantastic Indian place called Samy’s. Five types of gorgeous and hot, genuine Indian curry, with fresh-squeezed lime juice to wash it down. Brilliantly, it was all served on banana leaves instead of plates, just like some miso dishes are served on leaves in Japan. […]
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Goodbye Nihon, Hello Singapore
And so, to leaving. It’s still hard to believe I don’t live in Japan anymore. I’m writing this from Singapore, where I’m staying for a few days with my cousin Alan, his wife Aneta and his kids Sarah and Stephanie. I was lucky enough to be seen off at the airport today by three of […]
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Shou Ga Nai
Despite my various recent excursions around the local area, I’ve still somehow found time to do the important things too. Cancelling things is always a pain, but it hits new heights, bordering on excruciating, when trying to do it in Japan. What with gas, electricity, phone, bank transfers and posting stuff, it’s a wonder that […]
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Mountain Town
Magome is a small town in the mountains on the border of Gifu and Nagano prefectures that sits on the old Tokaido route which was heavily used in the Edo period. It was originally built as one of a number of rest posts for weary travellers making the long and dangerous journey from Kyoto to […]
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Out And About
Despite my best intentions, I was worried that I wouldn’t get round to seeing much of the country in the last few weeks before I left because I’d been in kind of a rut lately, doing not much other than working and sleeping. Luckily, there’s nothing like leaving a country to create a list of […]
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Done And Dusted
And just like that, my two year teaching ‘career’ has come to an end. It’s hard to put my feelings into words as they alternate rapidly between the joy of revelling in new-found free time and a kind of emptiness, which I didn’t really expect. I guess suddenly stopping anything after a long time is […]
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Over-Efficient
Japan is known, often erroneously, as being a very efficient country. But today I realised that sometimes things can be too efficient. Having settled on checking out Australia, I’d originally booked my flight to go to Melbourne after staying for a few days with my cousin Alan in Singapore. But, on the advice of a […]
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Downtime
If you hadn’t noticed, this site’s been unavailable for the last few days and it’s pretty much my fault. Though nobody probably really noticed, I transferred hosts last year and I was naive enough to think that it would all go smoothly. It did, actually, until last week, when suddenly my site became unavailable and […]
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The End Is In Sight
Seeing as the cat’s already out of the bag after the comment someone left on my last post a few days ago, I suppose it’s time I mentioned my big news. In a few weeks I’m leaving Japan and I’m going to Australia. My contract expires at the end of March and I decided I […]
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The Case For Feeds As Classes
If you were expecting something on life in Japan here, sorry to bore you! Normal service will resume shortly, I promise). A few days ago, I made a suggestion to the WordPress Hackers lists to restructure WP’s feed handling into a class-based system. There has been a lot of discussion recently on the list of […]
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Fit For A King
Munching on king crab’s legs in Sapporo, which are bigger than my hand!
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Biting The Snow
It couldn’t last really, could it? With 13 days of riding under my belt and no injuries beyond feeling a bit sore, it was probably high time that I got something a bit more lasting. Luckily for me, it was only small, practically nothing really, but it could have been a lot worse; one of […]
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Hot Srar?
Looks like a hasty fix to avoid a lawsuit to me, but maybe they are just rebranding…
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Howdy!
Technology and travel stories from a global roaming, kangaroo loving, sake drinking gaijin pom.
Check out my projects and my resume, take a look at some code on Github and feel free to contact me.