June 25th, 2009
So I’ve finally managed to sort out my domain names, I actually have two, which is rather greedy. But now if you type in either pagemaya.com or pagemaya.net your gaze will be directed to this lovely site.
It’s taken me a long time to sort this minor problem out - it only involved one email to my domain name registrar, but I’ve been very busy recently and haven’t had much time to think about blogging. Well, actually that’s not true, as you can see from the post below. I have been doing nothing but blogging but it’s all been personal finance, Wimbledon and must-have tickets. Fascinating.
Today I decided to write something for myself and so I embarked on this new blog post with no particular theme in mind. Actually that’s my approach to most writing and probably the reason why I’ve never finished anything longer than 1,000 words. No wait, my university dissertation must’ve been about 10,000 words, but oh how I did pad out that essay! (Doesn’t everyone?) It took me about 3 months to decide on a subject and once complete, I reckon it was 10% discussion about the female characters in Homer’s Odyssey and 90% padding. Fairly surprising I got a 2:1 then.
But planning isn’t really my forte. I would never say anything so trite as that I live for the moment but the future isn’t something I generally concern myself with. Not in any kind of sensible, constructive way at least. Only in a vague panicking way that is entirely unproductive and completely pointless.
If only there were some way of channelling the unproductive worrying into something proactive and useful. I’m speaking in very generic terms here but, for example, had I contemplated seriously the consequences of investing in a mortgage, or devised a shrewd means of saving and devising a round-the-world-trip, perhaps my current situation would be much, much better, or at least very different, and aren’t those two things essentially the same?
Oh dear, it seems as though my purposeless rambling has digressed into a self-indulgent ‘poor me’ tirade. Planning ahead wins 1-0.
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April 8th, 2009
Managed to lose a year’s worth of posts through changing my domain name and generally being a noob. Lacking time to write new posts. Fail.
Too much time spent on work blog. Check it out.
Not as interesting as this one though, of course :/
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April 4th, 2008
Looking at an airplane, you’d never believe it could fly. Hundreds of tonnes of metal just soaring up above, and from the ground they seem to be moving so slowly - how come they don’t fall out of the sky? I once read that the only thing keeping them up there was the passengers’ belief that the plane could fly. That would be apart from the jet propulsion of their engines then.
Still, it’s quite understandable that so many people have a fear of flying, despite it being statistically one of the safest modes of transport. But I’m not one of them. On the contrary - I love flying. From the moment you walk down the gangway to board, to the touchdown at your destination - it’s all awesome. The take-off is exhilarating every time and watching the world drop away and become lilliputian is fascinating.
That may sound like hyperbole but, for me, I swear it’s the truth. On the way to Barcelona I was lumbered with an aisle seat and the experience was really no different from riding a badly ventilated train with the added bonus of a toddler kicking the back of my seat and pulling my hair. On the return however, window seat! I spent almost the entire flight staring out the tiny porthole window, sunglasses on to prevent the glare of the early evening sun reflected on the glassy sea, contentedly absorbed with seeing shapes in the clouds and trying to spot whales in the sea, sheep on the ground (neither of which did I find).
I even love plane food, admittedly not to the extent that some people do. I’m not about to turn this blog into a plane food journal. But there’s something very satisfying about the separate little compartments of bread, foil-sealed water, hot meal, dessert, sometimes a side-salad. Of course the quality of the meal depends on the class you fly and the airline. Once on an American Airlines flight it was too short for a proper meal so they distributed snack boxes including mini Pringles, Oreos, cheese and crackers, dried fruit and a mini Toblerone. I was still reeling from the earlier pretzels and so I saved most of the snacks for after the flight. I think they lasted about a week.
Imagine my disappointment when I realised that good ol’ EasyJet don’t provide meals, just extortionately expensive bland-looking sandwiches and KitKats for a nugget. Oh well, more time for admiring the view, I guess. Only, it makes it a lot harder to concentrate on believing the plane can fly on an empty stomach.
Tags: airplane, American Airlines, Barcelona, EasyJet, fear of flying, Plane, plane food
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April 2nd, 2008
In the beginning, when God was creating stuff, he said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good.
Thousands of years later the Temple de Sagrat Cor at Tibidabo, Barcelona, was created in God’s name and no doubt he told his followers to let there be light inside it. They saw fit to install electric candlelight. I saw these candles, and they were not good. But perhaps God has developed a sense of humour.
I’ve been to a fair few churches in the past but I’ve never come across electric votive candles before. What a gyp! Pretty candle flames and churches surely go hand in hand, but in the church in Tibidabo, instead of paying to light your candle’s wick, you bequeath your 10cents and, Lo! a little bulb flickers on.
Perhaps electric candles are only to be expected in a church which shares its lofty mountain spot with an amusement park. Gaudiness is not unprecedented in Catholicism but a theme park juxtaposed with a church? The amusement park is every bit as tacky as the electric candles. Built some time in the early 1900s, each rickety ride looks like it’s about to topple down the mountain.
The good thing about Tibidabo is the view. It really is impressive. If you go up to the top of the church, a view of Barcelona stretches out before you right to the coast. It was an overcast day when I visited and at that height I found myself swathed in clouds - not great viewing conditions but an awesome experience none the less.
The name Tibidabo is Latin, meaning ‘I will give to you’, and refers to when the devil was tempting Jesus. He offered power over all the kingdoms of the world which they could see from the mountain they stood on - it was that high. It’s a very apt name for the area. Standing high above the city, taking in such an impressive view, I reckon it would be tough to turn it down, even if I were a god. You can keep the theme park though, Beelzebub.
Tags: Barcelona, candles, church, theme park, Tibidabo
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March 17th, 2008
Recently, with increasing regularity, I’ve found that people just aren’t comfortable with silence. Not a groundbreaking revelation I admit, but it seems to have cropped up an awful lot.
Only yesterday when I was helping my boyfriend make dinner, his flatmate (who I’ve met just a few times) and I were the sole occupants of the kitchen. We were both busy with our separate culinary preparations - in silence. Then out of nowhere, presumably interpreting silence as awkwardness, the flatmate informs me that he had spent the morning attempting to make various phonecalls.
‘…you know, the obligatory weekend calls to mum etc.’
(I make receptive but non-committal noises).
‘…and not one person answered. Either no one was home or they’re all ignoring me,’ he concludes.
I observe that Sundays are usually stay-at-home days, unintentionally implying that his second asumption is correct. But if I were one of the recipients of his calls I think I would have ignored him too, since this little insight to his life doesn’t set a promising precedent for future conversations. Harsh perhaps, but fair.
So rather than embracing the companionable silence we were working in, the flatmate instead chose to show me how utterly boring and friendless he is. Oh well. It’s no wonder there are so many adages along the lines of ’silence is golden’.
Tags: boring, silence, silence is golden
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March 14th, 2008
She beckons to me, enticing with her promise of amazing bargains and impossibly good value for money. She lays her bait and I think to myself, ‘It’s only 99p. What difference would it make?’ And that is when she knows she has snared me, that all she need do is reel me in, gently at first with tiny increments: £1.50, £2.00. Small fry.
Then, when she is certain that I am hooked, my teeth firmly sunk into something shiny, pretty, desirable, she can hike up that price brazenly. I’m too far gone to care. Like a junkie getting that desperately-needed hit, or a closet trannie furtively wearing his wife’s knickers, I’m riding high on the thrill of chasing down my bargain. I must acquire the shiny thing; it will be mine. And before I know what’s happening it’s all over. Victory! Success! I am a winner!
I must pay soon. But PayPal softens the blow. Electronic money doesn’t feel like really spending. I happily click away. Then the emailed receipt: I have spent £25 on something I don’t need. Guilt sets in. I make excuses to myself. ‘It’s still cheaper than in the shops.’ ‘Hey, I deserve something nice.’ Time passes. The package arrives. Excitement! Anticipation! But the desired shiny thing is not how it seemed online. Oh fail.
I’m not the only one with eBay addiction. It seems so innocent, so innocuous. Those low-priced bargains waiting to be snapped up. But don’t be fooled. eBay is a cold, calculating mistress, a mercenary with a heart of stone laying traps for the work-bored, the commercially-naive and the bargain-hunting hopefuls.
Tags: eBay, eBay addiction
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March 12th, 2008
I had a bizarre, protracted dream last night. I had to go in a great hurry to meet some friends and so began packing necessary items into a bag. Despite not finding everything I needed, I left to catch a bus. The bus was slow and was going in the wrong direction so I got off to walk the rest of the way.
I took a shortcut across a vast, cobbled courtyard, but I must have tripped because I managed to lose one of my sandals to an angry seagull. The bird had a ground-level nest filled with mud in the centre of the courtyard and it was to here the gull took my footwear. The bird had black, beady eyes and a long, snaking neck which snapped out at me when I tried to get near. With the help of a passerby who distracted the vicious bird’s attention long enough for me to escape its sharp beak, I managed to retrieve my shoe.
Muddy sandal re-appropiated, I headed on to meet my friends who were all in a theatre. The building was huge and full of the anticipation of an eagerly waiting audience. They were about to watch some kind of show and everyone was waiting for me before it could start. Feeling embarrassed for holding up the proceedings, I rushed to find a space to sit in but could only find an empty spot on the floor.
The show was to be played on my friend’s PlayStation. It was a kind of interactive movie/game and once it started the entire audience was drawn into it as players and were no longer in the theatre. The format of the game was a kind of capture-the-flag mission in teams of two. We had to find our way to the end of the game while avoiding the Predator which was chasing us.
Knowing that the Predator would be waiting to ambush us at a bridge, we sneaked past it by tunnelling underground and made our way to the finish where there was a great throne with an emperor-type figure seated on it. The emperor was dressed in gold-plated samurai armour. He was the goal of our mission. But before I could reach him, the Predator appeared and attacked the emperor.
The emperor was unafraid; he laughed and dared the Predator to attack. The Predator stabbed the emperor in his throat, almost tearing his head from his neck as bright blood came spurting out. But the emperor didn’t die. He continued to laugh and rapidly began transforming into a robot-emperor and grew to over double his size. He stood up from his throne and then marched off chanting in Japanese, leaving the Predator very confused.
I believe this is unequivocal proof of the effect of late-night cheese-eating on dreams. This has me tempted to continue my cheese-dream research I began several years ago. The British Cheese Board carried out such a survey in 2005 but, understandably, only used British cheese. My dream was the product of Parmesan but it was every bit as bizarre as the cheese board claimed Stilton dreams to be.
Tags: cheese, dreams, Predator, samurai robot, seagull
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March 10th, 2008
お早うございます
O-hayo gozaimasu!
This morning on my way to work I remembered it was my mum’s birthday and for some reason this got me to thinking about me being half-Japanese. Being a halvsey in the past twenty or so years has ceased to be such a rare thing. There are so many different races living in and around London that another mixed-race person doesn’t stand out so much. On the one hand it’s a good thing that the community in general is diversifying but on the other hand a part of me can’t help but feel the loss of my uniqueness.
When I was a kid I didn’t like being different and occasionally received taunts such as ‘Chineseface’. (Actually this didn’t faze me that much. I just thought: I’m Japanese, get it right!) I used to long for an English sounding name like Elizabeth or something.
Back in the day being half-Japanese was very unusual. My brother and I would often hear comments such as, ‘I once met a Japanese guy, do you know him?’
One time when I was in primary school, during an RE lesson, the headmistress asked me if Maya was the Japanese version of Mary. Even at the tender age of eight I could see flaws in this kind of logic.
One of my favourite questions I’ve fielded in the past is, ‘Are you a bit foreign?’ But, as I said before, being a bit foreign these days is nothing special. More recently I have had to convince people of my foreignness. An ex-flatmate told me that she had been arguing with her boyfriend about me. Intriguing, I thought. The conversation went something like this:
- Did you know Maya’s half-Japanese?
- No she’s not.
- She is.
- She’s bloody not. She’s English.
(and so on)
Sadly now it seems the only remnant of my foreignness is my name, which people continue to persistantly and stubbornly mispronounce.
Maybe my loss of uniqueness is due to London’s rapidly developing cultural awareness or maybe the longer I live in this country the more Anglicized I’m becoming. And if that’s the case then I think it’s about time to book my next trip to Japan ne?
Tags: diversity, half-Japanese, halvsey, uniqueness
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October 30th, 2007
It’s late Sunday afternoon at Sudbury Hill - not exactly the social hub of London: it’s more of a greasy hole lurking at the periphery of ‘Greater’ London. Waiting for a bus, my wandering attention is assaulted by a violent splash of colour on the other side of the road. A girl strides along the pavement wearing bright-red thigh-high boots. Incongruous? Just a little bit. And this gets me thinking, ‘Where can she be going dressed like that?’ I can only conceive of two possible conclusions:
1. She is going somewhere where her outfit is the pinnacle of sartorial excellence - but on a Sunday afternoon in Sudbury…? So perhaps:
2. She always dresses like a slut.
The latter explanation seems most likely. But why do I instantly brand this girl a slut? Maybe I find the slutboots offensive because I’m so used to our British Sunday traditions: being a sort of religious nation, Sunday is the day of rest and on this day tradition dictates that people partake in relatively quiet, conservative activities such as Sunday roasts, sporting events and visiting elderly relations. Have these things become a thing of the past? Am I missing out on a new wave of exciting, and seemingly flamboyant, Sunday afternoon experiences in Sudbury? It seems unlikely. Maybe it’s simply because she looks like a slut.
Tags: assumptions, slut, thigh boots
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September 4th, 2007
A heady mix of work, extra-curricular activities and good old-fashioned laziness has transpired to prevent me from blogging. Not that I’ve ever been an avid blogger anyway. And to prove my point, here is an entry of no editorial value whatsoever. I’m just flexing my typing muscles and dusting the cobwebs off my keyboard.
So, there it is.
TTFN:)
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