roganjosh

last week I went to Hungamunga at bethnal green working mens’ club. It’s a kind of bar, cabaret type thing where everyone sits around making stuff. It’s almost exactly like being at primary school except there’s beer and people singing “fly me to the moon”. Anyway, it was the most fun I’ve had with an empty milk bottle in a long, long time. Sadly my monster wasn’t dry by the end of the evening and I was too drunk to handle carrying him home on the bus, so I left him out there in bethnal green, ready to terrorise the neighbourhood.

Here’s an epistemological problem: I flew back from Amsterdam the other day and took £50 out at the airport while waiting for my bags to turn up on the carousel. It was a bank holiday so when I got home all the shops were shut and I ended up going to Chicken Cottage and spending £3.29 on some chicken nuggets and chips. This left me with two £20 notes and one £5 note and a few pieces of loose change. When I went to the local greengrocery type shop the next day that’s all the British money I had on me. I bought some groceries and a quiche for lunch (how healthy!) the total cost of which was £6.18 - so I hand over one of my £20 notes and a 20p piece and get back £4.02 change…

I look at the girl, the girl looks at me… and I say “I gave you a £20 right?”

And she says, “no, I’m almost certain you gave me a £10″, and takes the £10 she thinks I gave her out of the till to show me.

And then I start to think, did I give her a £10 note? If I did where the hell did it come from? Maybe I only got £40 out at the airport?

Since I go to that shop quite a lot she said they’d check the takings for the day and if they were £10 over then they’d give it back to me next time I visit. So I go back in today (twice, they hadn’t done the count this morning) and they tell me they weren’t £10 over and so that’s that.

Only I did take £50 out at the airport, and I’m certain I gave her a £20. Certain beyond any doubt? Well yeah, pretty much - as certain as I am that I’m not a brain in a vat at any rate. Oh well, it’s only money. It’s just that I did like that shop.

Last year in Tokyo I went to an acting class about fighting with samurai swords. It was one of the most fun things I did in Japan, so to spread the word a bit I thought I’d stick all the info I’ve got on it in English here in case anyone else wants to go:

their english page:
http://www.tate-do.com/en/index.html

They say the tourist introductory lesson is only available in Osaka, but if you email them I’m pretty certain they could sort something out - they were really friendly and helpful. The instructors in Tokyo don’t speak much English, but we just about managed to understand each other.

Tokyo class

Geinou Kadensha
6-12-30 Nishi Shinjuku,
Shinjuku ku,
Tokyo.

(but all the street signs are in kanji, so that’s not a lot of help!)

Nishi-shinjuku station (M-07)
Tokyo METRO Marunouti Line
Take exit 2, it’s 8 minutes walk to the class

here’s a link to a japanese google map - the tiny red dot in the centre is basically what you’re aiming for:
Tokyo tate-do class map

Here’s a link to a google earth location file - handy if you’ve got google earth!
Tokyo tate-do class
(The entrance is to the left of the running track/playground bit in front of the school)

Some days you do a lot of things but still can’t shake the feeling that you’ve not achieved much, you know? I’ve been for a swim, been to an art gallery, bought a wok and a milk frother and just made a nice cup of coffee - but has that helped me understand the difference between causation and explanation? no, it has not!

The art gallery I went to was the Rokeby, which is a very nice little place on Store Street. It was the last day of an exhibition by Craig Fisher, who had made huge weapons out of fabric. Upstairs they were laid out on a table to start with, but as you progressed through the display they were put to more and more use, till in the basement you get the blood spattered chainsaw room shown above. It was only a small show, but I really liked it - it was a kind of toytown bloodbath.

Incidentally I found out about the show by browsing around ArtRabbit which looks like a very handy site for keeping track of what exhibitions are on and when they finish.

I’ve not mentioned the philosophy thing much on here but I’m writing an essay at the moment on how you know when you see a zebra in the zoo that you’re not looking at a cunningly disguised mule. The thing that I love most about this question is that in Tijuana they actually do cunningly disguise mules to look like zebras and then get tourists to have their pictures taken with them!

My guess is lots of epistemologists have partied down in Tijuana in their time.

for the b3ta subvert kid’s tv challenge

Headed out to Finland for a long weekend last Friday with a load of my old Uni buddies. As you can see it’s been a bit chilly out there! It reached -9°C and was snowing on our last night there, which you can really feel when you’re stumbling around drunkenly looking for a taxi. It had been -20 the week before though, so it was relatively warm.

I was disappointed that we didn’t make it out to a proper finnish sauna and get to roll around in the snow but there’s always next time! I did get to walk across a frozen lake, visit the moomin shop and eat reindeer though, which seems finnish enough to me!

acrylic on canvas

for the b3ta Revive the Dome Challenge

Having a fairly quiet day today… It would be foolish to make some bold statement like “I’m never going to drink again” but I think I’m fairly confident that I can say “I’m never going to inhale alcohol vapours through a straw again” without being proved wrong. Cocktails that get set on fire are very pretty, but not great for the head.

So, it’s been an exciting couple of weeks! I’ve moved into a new flat in Holborn, which is very handy for going in to lectures. I’ve been going swimming a lot, I’ve been salsa dancing, I’ve finally got round to filling the enormous beanbag that my sister made for me two christmases ago, I visited Ireland and I’ve been to loads of art galleries around the east end! I’d like to tell you about Simply Botiful which is an installation just off brick lane, but it’s far more fun to go there with no idea what to expect - it is fantastic though! The slides at Tate Modern are good, but Simply Botiful is far, far more ambitious and interesting. Go there!

Also, regarding last month’s word of the month, it’s something I picked up from my favourite philosopher - The t-rex from dinosaur comics.

sesquipedalian