Gaz: Big in Japan


Munchies!
October 14, 2008, 10:17 pm
Filed under: Entertainment, Teaching | Tags: , ,

Taken directly from todays first grade mid term test.

Tom: Some hamburgers please.

Staff: How many?

Tom: 4 Hamburgers, 2 fries and one small coke please.

In what situation would someone go to an eatery and request a non-specific amount of hamburgers and then rapidly expand on the initial request when prompted? Only stoners have that kind of mentality, is this closet support for low level drug abuse or just poor English? It needn’t necassarily be either, as the English is actually grammatically without error, it just suggests a lack of thought. As far as I am aware it is usual to specify the amount of burgers required prior to purchase in Japan also, unless I have been making a cultural faux pas for the last two and some years.

Anyway, today my Playstation arrived back intact with fancy new white box to contain retail box, although my plastic bags I used to protect the unit were not returned. I must say I’m impressed with the turnaround, I only sent it over on Thursday evening, so assuming it got their Friday it must have been fixed almost immediately as Monday was a national holiday. A round of applause to Sony for after service support. Which is far more than I’ve heard about Microsoft and their apparent disdain for people with a non functioning X-Box.

In international news, old school sketch show artist Harry Enfield offends the Phillipines.

Apparently the Phillipine government have labeled him a racist for this. I don’t know so much about that, but I am happy that Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse are back on TV, I remember as a primary school student being allowed to stay up late every week to watch “Harry Enfield and Chums”. Perhaps he’s not cutting edge funny anymore, but some of the characters that pair came up with are timeless:

Rowley Birkin: How I would love to grow old.

Tim Nice but dim: Oddly gave me a new found respect for the nobility.

Larry and Lance: The hilarity is anyone who’s ever been to a town maket has met these guys.

I enjoy the final line of Enfields wikipedia entry: In October 2008 Enfield was accused of racism by the Philippine government [4]. The claim involved a skit on the BBC show Harry And Paul where a man encouraged his “pet northerner“ to mount his Filipina maid. It is not known whether any northerners were offended.

I thought it was a rather flattering portrayal of the average notherner personally.

EDIT:

Just found the last ever episode of the Fast Show with the “omni-sexual” fashion clerks and young Jonny Depp: Cracking stuff.

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YES! NOOOO! Yay? ..meh..
October 9, 2008, 9:32 am
Filed under: Daily life, Politics | Tags: , , ,

YES:

I got offered a contract lasting until August of 2010 in this job. This is good news, I’d like to try and ride out the impending recession in relatively secure local government employ. According to the contracting manual, the offer of a fourth year means I have performed my job to an “exceptional level”. However, what it actually means is that I’m not terrible enough to justify spending around 500,000+ yen plus paperwork on a new ALT when extending my contract is free (it’s a little complicated, but it involved subsidies etc. for the town management). I’m not surprised by the positive development, but it doesn’t stop me being pleased about it. I figure if I can manage to extend it all through to August 2011 my Japanese will be pretty fluent (it damn well should be).

NOOOO!:

My Playstation 3 is broken. Yup, had it less than a month and already the laser has stopped working. The irritating thing about this is, whilst its still under warranty. It’s one of those irritating “send to maker” warranties, the store I bought it from won’t touch it. I suppose I should feel lucky, over all the consoles and computers I’ve ever had it is the only time I have ever had any kind of problem. Still, irritating none the less, I’m currently in the middle of enjoying being a crime lord in GTA4.

Yay?:

An extension of NOOOO really. Of course, as a result of the PS3 non-functionage I have to phone the technical help line in Japanese. Whilst my Japanese is decent I didn’t really want to have to go through the pains of negotiating with a help centre flunky in any language other than English. However, with little choice in the matter I went ahead and did it, and it went quite well I think. I managed to explain the problem and arrange a pick up and repair dealy, so yay for me. I’m now officially competent enough to return broken video games consoles.

..meh..:

The Presidential debate was an anti-climax; no one really talked about anything at all save the same pre-scripted splurge we’ve heard for weeks. I don’t think either candidate really came out on top, McCain seemed to finish slightly stronger but he did get blind-sided by Obama when he turned McCain’s “he doesn’t understand” jab into a chide about how “the thing he doesn’t understand is why we went to war with a country unrelated to 9/11″. Aside from that and one or two other moments it was a terrible dull affair, although I really do think that Barack Obama should adopt the use of “That One” or perhaps morph it into “The One” or something like that. Jonny Mac did him a favour I think, check out this website.

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.
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Dan Quayle (1947 – )

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