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and let me take a moment to express some gratitude to my paranoid and forgetful self, that made sure I had stashes of painkillers hidden in the pockets of every bag I own

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Among all of the ‘seasonal hot beverage flavors’, I still liked the Eggnoog Latte I used to buy in Oxford Starbucks before morning classes on chilly late-autumn and winter mornings the most…

So why can’t I find it or anything similar in any of the coffee shops on this part of the world, is beyond me 😦

Well they still have all the same pumpkin/gingerbread stuff, why not Eggnog?

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Japanese WOWOW channels have been marathoning Die Hard moves a couple of times recently, and then GB website had a discussion about ranking them, and even thought it’s nowhere close to Christmas, watching first two Die Hard movies always gives me these flashbacks to one specific childhood memory.
Of one New Year’s Eve, when Die Hard (I think the 2nd one) was on TV while we were getting ready to go to a club where people from my father’s company were going to be celebrating it.

I should probably mention that for the culture back there, New Years is sort of like Christmas and New Years combined. It’s the end of the old year, beginning of something new, the night when the Santa Clause equivalent is supposed to come, but I don’t know how he manages, because it’s also the night when most people stay awake almost until morning, because most of the fun stuff on TV begins after midnight. You supposed to clean in the day, to make your home pretty for the new year, and then make yourself pretty too, and gather around a table with your family, watch the same movie on the TV every year and the special TV programs, set fireworks, go to sleep somewhere between 3-5am, then wake up in the morning before everyone else and go find presents under the decorated tree.

I’m aware that it sounds like a mixture of other cultures’ traditions mixed in one day.

But it still somehow smelled of magic. No matter what.

But that was probably the first year when someone told my father that celebrating with family was lame.

I was 10, I think. I was also the only child among drunk and not-so-drunk adults there, in the place that was usually and adult kind of night club. (Not the young people dancing kind, but the rich people getting drunk and loud kind, less dance-floors and more tables-and-stages.) I don’t really know why I was there to begin with though, and hardly have any memories of what I did there anyway. Probably ate something, sat on my own or wandered around, watched and listened to what adults were doing, as usual. My mother had to ship me out of there right after everyone said Happy New Year, to my grandparents’, because the club had a strip show scheduled after midnight.
The club was actually not far from my grandparent’s place, and I don’t really remember if we walked, or if there were still taxis around, but I do remember my mother’s heavy face, because she really wished she could escape the whole thing too and stay with us, but she had to go back and play her role.
What I also remember, is falling asleep in my grandparents’ bedroom, with lights, music, and occasional fireworks still loud outside, echoing on the city’s main square right outside the window above my head, holding on to the string of a helium balloon I got in that club and brought back with myself. Feeling empty and floating, exactly like that balloon.

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I found this picture.
And I kept staring at it, because at first I couldn’t remember what and where this was, and where did it come from, and I kept trying to place it…

And then I remembered that I took this on my 18th birthday.
At that time, I just happened to be back in the city I was born in. For 3 months, to get some documents right (and study for the exams people spend normally 3 years of high school studying for, from 0 because it was in a different country and language from where I actually did go to a high school, and pass them with good marks to be able to go to a good university, and go to driving school and get my license (the one I haven’t used once, btw) while I’m at it).
Anyhow, since by all the complicated and messed up circumstances of my education I ended up in the city I was born in, but haven’t lived in for years, on my 18th birthday,  relatives from all sides, who were never a family neither to me not to each other, felt like a big gathering is a must for such an occasion.
Which, in turn, brought all the memories of birthdays of my childhood, when a birthday meant that my mother would be stressed cleaning and cooking from early morning, and  adults from both sides of the family would gather around a table to get drunk and shout about politics after I don’t know which glass, quickly forgetting about my existence and the reason they were actually gathered there. And my father would have this mask of constant half-smirk which was supposed to be friendly, because that is how he believed he must act on such occasions, but mostly it looked like he was planning how to murder everyone, at least verbally, and that he hated every minute of it as much as I did. But all of this was happening because he believed that that is how things must be done. And so we all had to too.

So there I was, on my 18th birthday, which is the year of officially becoming an adult out there, numbed by all the stress of being in that country, and the stress of the exams and studies that were supposed to be impossible, to the point of feeling all solid and blank,
pickling myself in Japanese hard rock, standing outside this restaurant on a riverbank, that was picked by my father for the occasion, with my back to our big private room filled with the noise of trashy local music I could never stand and all the people somehow related by blood or marriage, but most of whom never really felt anything but the obligation towards each other, all trying to act normal and fake-smile friendly and find some neutral topics, with the April air outside still chilly and drizzly,
pointing my camera, which I had with me because I was the person who has a camera and apparently that qualified me for being the one to take family pictures on my own birthday (it was all very weird and awkward, I’d say now, but I couldn’t really say so back then), at the other side of the river, not even being present in that moment enough to remember anything else about that day, but this picture.

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Not a well known fact:

 

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for 2 years of my life I lived right across that Internet-famous house that has a shark sticking out (in?) of its roof

 

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Too often in my life, I feel like I’m moving in slow motion.
With one my blink, time rashes by so fast, I can’t even catch a glimpse of its tail.
Everything is just moving too fast. I can’t catch a breath.
Time is the air, air becomes wind, and when that wind hits you in the face with speed like that, it might as well be a truck.

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True story from a few years back:

Went to see a movie. Bought myself a ticket from the machine, with a student discount.
When I was about to go into the screening room,
a girl that was checking the tickets and IDs looked at my ticket and said:
“Oh, wait a second! Today is wednesday, and it is a ladies day.
You should have discount for that too!”
and she crossed the price over on my ticket with a pen and run away.
While I am waiting, I turn around and see the people waiting behind me.
They actually smile and nod.
And the girl comes back and hands me 400yen in change,

because she found out I payed too much.
It’s these the little things about people in this place that still keep me sane.

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for a moment I forgot where I was … when suddenly the sounds that came from outside my window (and I don’t live that close to the ground) turned into the exhaust sounds of an old american muscle car mixed with the “Gangster’s Paradise” blasting at a very loud volume…

…well, that’s kind of a first…

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It’s much more fun making typos and spelling mistakes in japanese, than alphabet based languages.
Because it’s now so much easier to say that some writer was a very well known female elephant, instead of “symbol”.

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「客がいてもいなくても、同じライブができる」、同じものを作れる、と言える人が好き。
もてたいとかじゃなくて、これが売れそうだからじゃなくて、ファンが喜びそうから、じゃなくて…　自分自信の為に自分を表現する人が好き。
作家もそうだけど。売れるからじゃなくて、今、これは自分の為に書かなければならないから、書く…という人が好き。

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I saw a weird dream… about me going to an international summer school in England, like the one I used to go, … and trying to explain to them (they usually take only 10-14yo foreign kids) what I was doing there if I’ve already graduated with first-class honours from a UK university. :expressionless:

I think it was me wanting to spend few months just ‘learning languages, going cross-country horse riding 4 days a week and going on excursions around UK the other 3.”
Talk about the stuff kids can have that you could enjoy (and need) so much more when you’re an adult…

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Tokyo in December is embedded so strongly and deeply in my memory, I can feel it all on my skin and in my lungs by just thinking about it.

Like Oxford in October.

Or Prague in April.

 

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I prefer Line to other messaging apps mostly because of the stamps that very often perfectly convey my feelings at the moment.

Like this one

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