XPan on the Rails

Half of a roll of very expired TMax 400, courtesy of Skorj. Pushed half a stop and developed in ’secret sauce’ (a unique blend of shetland pony urine and bulgarian eau de toilette).

An Afternoon in Nepal

Feminism, that’s the ticket!

Japan’s terrible errors are by now well known. … It resisted the feminist revolution, leading to a baby strike by young women.

It is Japan we should be worrying about, not America – Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans Pritchard.

I’ve seen some stupid things written about the population decline in Japan, but that is probably the most stupid.

If it’s all the same with you, Ambrose, i’ll carry on caring about the US and the UK.

Typical

Just finished dinner. It was really good. Thought it would be interesting to write down. It’s only three dishes:

• spinach (boiled for less than a minute)
• shitake mushrooms (grilled)
• rice vinegar
• shoyu
• seasame

and:

• lettuce
• mizuna
• cucumber
• carrot
• olives (4)
• egoma seeds

with:

• white beans
• chick peas
• onion
• green pepper
• red chilli
• green chili
• tomato (raw and a splash of italian bottled)
• cucumber
• chiptole tabasco
• balsamic vinegar
• egoma oil (1 teaspoon)

Oh, and a glass of red wine.

All of which is pretty typical for one meal a day… except the egoma oil (it’s a sort of shiso i think), which i decided to add because i’ve been getting tired this week. Was worried that i hadn’t got enough of the omegas.

Incredibly satisfying.

A Razor Thin Slice of Autumn

October Diving

The weather this autumn just hasn’t been diver friendly – my favoured diving spot seems to have been closed far to many days; big storms sitting of the coast; typhoons making landfall in honshu in October… When it wasn’t closed the conditions haven’t been great. What a mess. Last month saw me taking Matt diving on a Saturday, and at Futo Yokobama. For the love of Gub!

This month there were a couple of likely looking windows in the weather, so on short notice we went off to IOP to play in the surf. Was really nice to be back. Futo really doesn’t do it for me  - the whole experience is so different. IOP is relaxed and scenic… and that’s just out of the water. In the water it’s all drama and mystery. I’ve been diving there for years and never get bored with the place. All the variety and complexity in the rocks, the big drop offs, walls… ah, still so in love. But a cruel mistress – there hasn’t really been a proper day of summer diving, with blazing blue skies, clear still water, and  that heat in the shallows where the water has been wallowing, soaking up the sun. Still, there is always next year.

Next month i’m off to Australia to dive on the Great Barrier Reef. It’s the time of year when the visibility is supposed to be spectacular. I’m expecting to be blown away… hope it doesn’t disappoint. Don’t think i’ll manage to fit in another dive before that adventure, but if the weather improves… maybe.

Magical Station Light

ByeByeRat

Really. Wonder what those frequencies do to rat ears…

Have to admit it’s a great piece of product naming!

Ripples

Not much to say. This is in the gardens of some museum in Meguro.

Reckoning Time?

The IBM / AMD insider trading news reminded me that i’d meant to get out of my stock positions this week. Somehow i got caught up in some other things, and… forgot.

It also made me go back and read what i’d written earlier in the year. The traditional low volume period of the summer is now over, and it’s time to see if there is going to a period of uncertainty. Back in August i wrote:

Personally, i’m guessed that nothing dramatic would happen during the summer, and it would October before we’d see if the system had enough to drag itself over the cusp, or fall back into the pit. Perhaps that’s still a good guess, and this is just a little wobble.

And, seeing as we are now a couple of weeks into October it’s tempting to think that it’s all good. However, the general thesis is that despite Goldman and JP Morgan managing to get rich by engineering a rally, and doubling down with government money, the fundamentals in America are still drifting downward: unemployment continues to rise; the next wave of foreclosures is coming in; commercial real-estate is sitting idle; intermodal rail traffic is still declining; trade deficit is still getting worse. Hardly a feel good story of growth and recovery.

Still, there have been a bunch of nasty stories (insider trading, GE bad results, Citibank loses, etc.) that could have been enough to change the sentiment, and the DIJA is hanging in there around 10k. It’s not clear what it will actually take to break the rally, but seeing as so many people are saying that it’s got ahead of itself, it does seem somewhat inevitable.

For reasons that don’t really bear much scrutiny, i’m going to say that if it’s not Monday or Tuesday (19th or 20th) then it’s going not going to happen for a while. The fight against reality will rage on!