Fevers and Pizza

AM

Least: By 10:00am, the silence in my san-Rosie apartment was becoming too much. With a fever running my mind into madness, I wished I'd had someone to complain to. No-one in their right mind would be awake before 11:00am on a public holiday, so even complaint riddled sms messages weren't satisfactory. I settled on shouting at the pigeons and at the tear in the bin liner that let fishy juice out. I can see how isolation can drive people to madness.

Most: By 11:59pm, I looked back at my morning and found it as empty as possible for a public holiday. If I was serious, I would've at least had a hangover. The most interesting thing, unfortunately was that my cheesy phone alarm infiltrated a dream in which I was watching the moon landing from an incredibly high peak. The faux-classical music interrupted the guide just as he was saying "You can now see the vapour-trails - they're 2000 feet thick and...". I wonder what he was about to say. The alarm that robs me of sleep every morning, may also have robbed me of something interesting to write in this space.

PM

Least: Sometime after 1:00pm, I began the mind-numbing process of cleaning the house. For some reason our three-room cubby is the lintiest (the lint removing business is big in Japan) place on Earth. I'm not sure where it comes from, but I blame the previous occupants - they must've owned a lot of fleecy clothing or never vacuumed -probably both (I know who they are). Being without an effective mop, I settled on a soapy towel to clean the kitchen floor, an idea that turned out to be boring and backbreaking. The pain of cleaning briefly made me forget my raging fever but I'm still not sure which is worse.

Most: By 6:20pm, my mind was turning to pizza. After failing to understand the on-line ordering process, my eyes turned to my silver phone. The problem is that my Japanese is poor to the point that I can't really work out how to order food over the phone. The pizza-drive was strong enough though, for me to attempt a phone order from Dominos anyway. I'm sure the poor guy on the other end of the phone would've been groaning ("Oh dear, I got the foreigner") but I persisted. After some shockingly awkward pauses and flipping through the phrasebook, my conversation came to an end without an assurance of pizza. Amazingly, at 6:40pm, the pizza man arrived at the door carrying almost what I ordered - the only thing wrong was that I got a massive bottle of Coke instead of a Zero. The delivery man appeared to be asking me for a coupon, which I didn't have - so I paid through the nose. Incredible.

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Food Note: For lunch, I had a meal of pre-grilled sanma from yesterday's Life Supermaket experience. I heated it up in the fish-grill and soused it in ponzu dressing. The result was delicious and little different from the ones I bought fresh and cooked at home.

The Tank and the Tricycle

AM

Least: At about 9:00am, I made the fightening discovery that I was nearly out of coffee. My morning challenge was to make an effective brew with less than the permitted amound of ground coffee to make a decent cup. With my mind filled with ratios and various brewing-time scenarios, I poured the recently boiled water into the plunger. Given that the coffee amount was at critically low levels, I allowed for a longer than usual brew. Despite my pseudo-scientific efforts, the results were not impressive. I ended up drinking an unacceptably weak coffee at low tide. My lesson is to keep a reserve tin of UCC coffee in case of emergency. At least if I ever die of coffee withdrawal I can be interred in their shrine at Koya San (above).


Most: Sometime close to 7:30am, I woke in the middle of a strange dream that work had infiltrated. I was roaming around a lush and large campus looking for my class. The place where my class was supposed to be had been overwhelmed by drunken college types who reluctantly moved away after being shouted at. Strangely, the breakthough moment came when I saw a battered battle tank driving up some stairs, dropping metal as it ploughed through the concrete. As it turned out, the tank driver was a student's mother arriving to pick her up. It seemed that driving tanks on errands had become something of a trend to show off your battle scars. I never found the class and now I sit bemused that my most interesting moment was in my sleeping hours.

PM

Least: Between 12:10pm and 12:30pm, I discovered that railway employees shared some common and boring features the world over. After going to the 'travelling today' desk to buy shinkansen tickets and refused service, Rosie and I entered the dreadfully long 'travelling in a few days' queue. The number of very old and tight people in the line didn't help, but the staff were moving as slowly as any of the single finger typists at the Flinders' Street V-Line office. Each transaction took far too many minutes and the clerks repeated every step more than enough times. Twenty minutes later we finally got our tickets to Shin-Yokohama I hope the wait was worth it.

Most: At nearly 5:00pm, I was staring aghast at an ancient man riding a tricycle (see file photo right) in Life supermarket. The old man was a sorry sight with an oxygen tank in his trike tray and tubes up his nose. Although he was carrying a massive walking frame, the tricyclist thought that the fastest way to the booze section was on wheels. Upon detecting the trike, the staff quickly stopped the offender in his tracks and assisted him in parking his vehicle outside like everyone else. By the look on the faces of the staff they knew this man well. I'm sure he'll be back attempting the same wild ride to the booze pile next week.