If a laptop catches fire in Osaka, does anyone smell it?
Image filched from this UK newspaper.
Just did a quick check and W's laptop battery isn't one of those about to do a spectacular impersonation of an out of control toaster. Hurrah.
BTW, W. is still alive but busy entertaining his visiting mother. Updates soon.
Just noticed during the upload of some Sydney photos that my typepad host has separate stats for photo albums. For no other reason besides the fact that Whitebait is bloggin' (relatively speaking) like a madman at the moment ... here are the numbers of page loads associated with each album.
5678 - Chicago
371 - Singapore
344 - Hiroshima
300 - Tokyo
242 - Yokohama
205 - Nagasaki
180 - Kyoto
102 - Osaka
How interesting! (for Whitebait anyway). The Chicago album has been up the longest time but the number compared to the others is still suprising (especially given that these are mostly architecture photos that aren't particularly brilliant). Go windy city!
Yes, Whitebait hasn't been a particularly active bloggeur lately; but, my dear readers, you all know how it goes with life, work and the rest--ebbs and flows etc--so I'm hoping you might hang in there for the moment. There is a new photo album in the sidebar from the Osaka trip which Whitebait made in January to have a peek at if you are interested.
Whitebait loved Osaka. It is actually one of Melbourne's sister cities (and there are all sorts of interesting parallels to think about in terms of it being a once formidable rival of another major national city (Sydney/Tokyo) which then went on to seriously eclipse it economically). Here is a nice quote from wikipedia explaining some of the things that make Osaka different from Tokyo:
Being a big, business-based city, Osakans are thought of as always being in a rush. People consider a waiting period of more than 5 minutes too long in most cases. They apparently also walk the fastest in Japan - at an average speed of 1.6 metres per second (surpassing even Tokyoites who also walk fast at 1.56 metres per second).
Maybe this is the kind of research Whitebait should be doing more of.
Today Whitebait is chained to his Tokyo desk, taking his turn working on a draft of a major university grant application that he is putting in for with his colleague, the Sheepwoman. These applications require an horrendous amount of work (and only have a 27% success rate which is further mitigated by a number of formal and informal factors including your relative seniority and track record, the 'class' of institution you belong to, the quality of your project, and the random luck of draw of who ends up assessing it on the day and whether they got out of the right or wrong side of bed). Overall, pointy-heads in Australia like to grumble about many aspects of them (e.g, they suck up time otherwise reserved for doing actual research), but the applications do at least have a clearly useful function in making the applicants think long and hard about their bigger project, its relevant literature, research questions and methodologies etc.
Whitebait and Sheepwoman's project is on the notion of urban rivalry and comparison. Something W. was very interested in as part of his recent (see below) trip to Osaka. Amongst the comparisons spotted in some of the literature include historical references to Osaka as the 'Manchester of the East'. This led him today to google 'Paris of the Orient' while wondering how many of these imperial/colonial forms of comparison existed. Answer: a number. And he then found this fascinating wikipedia page which list city nicknames. It is a wonderfully eccentric list. Some surprises, old favourites and bizarre ones :
Melbourne: 'Bleak capital of the world' [does anyone know the origin of this? - W]
Auckland: 'Sydney for Beginners'
Chicago: 'Paris of the Midwest', 'Second City', 'City of Big Shoulders'
Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines: 'Locust City'
Messina: 'Rebirthing City'
Warsaw: 'Default City' (popular in Polish usenet community)
Farjado, Puerto Rico: 'Hardface city'
Just got back from Osaka. Have spent an enjoyable hour catching up on the masses of accumulated blog posts via my Bloglines. But the Whitebait is too tired to post anything substantial (so what's new you say!). So to hold the fort here is a piece of poetry from the streets of Osaka, or more precisely the window of an internet cafe trying to attract a salaryman customer base from the look of it. And this is unquestionably poetic, quite above and beyond the amusing way it reflects--or perhaps that should be 'refracts'?--the English language back at a native speaker.
Whitebait is doing a quick research stint in Osaka at the moment. And this city completely rocks. Deftly sidestepping the seemingly monolithic grey face of its exterior is an irresistable charm that starts surging into your veins the moment you start wandering in its streets and arcades (particularly in the southern parts of the city such as Shinsaibashi where I am staying). More details and photos when your bloggeur returns to the big sushi tomorrow.
And Whitebait had some fugu for lunch. Yes, the one on that episode of the Simpsons. Liked the fugu a lot but I am glad I did not read that wiki entry first.
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