DANGER!

I mentioned in the previous post about the female only accommodation that is available that eliminates the danger of men...

I had an almost unanimous response to my telling students I'd been to Cambodia. Not 'did you like it?', not 'what was it like?' not 'can I see your photos?' but 'is it dangerous? - every student who commented asked 'is it dangerous?'. Now, maybe it's just me but that is the LAST thing that would come to my mind if someone had been away somewhere. Predictably, the second question was usually 'how was the food?'

On the way to a friends Sayonara Party on Saturday, I was in Shibuya station and there was an old man doddering around after the ticket gates. He could have been drunk, he could have been confused, he could have been ill. Anyway, he staggered onto the up escalator and suddenly fell over, laying there head down, legs up (I'm resisting Kafka'esque comparisons here) - I was quite a distance up and probably couldn't have helped him up by myself anyway, but the people immediately above and below him ignored him for ages before a couple of people decided to help. What really got me though was the number of people above me on the escalator who didn't have the common sense to push the stop button as they got off the escalator so the people COULD help him up.

I pressed it as soon as I could get to it. The old man continued staggering around afterwards.

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Everything is very pretty right now with pink explosions on all the trees. It's just such a shame the weather has been so bloody miserable, wet and cold. Not the best hanami weather. More of a kind of hibernating weather really.

Or in my case, househunting weather. I've found a few interesting places. Hopefully, by this time next week I should have secured somewhere but I'm really not too bothered. There is a lot available and a lot coming available all the time, especially guesthouse wise.

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I'll try and get my Cambodia holiday written up later today.

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It's funny. Life these days: I can barely remember life pre-internet. I mean the days when if you wanted to book a holiday you had to go into a travel agent and when the only information you could really get was from guidebooks or television programmes, if you weren't lucky enough to know someone who had been to the someplace you wanted to go to. Now, I can research the opinions of millions of people, find maps without trudging round shops, order a vegan meal without picking up the phone.....

Househunting is the same. As someone who has lived in thirtysomething odd properties, I consider myself rather familiar with the game of flathunting. And HOW much easier is it when I can find out all the information I need from a few emails and websites, when I can look at photos and check details before going through the time-consuming game of visiting crap property after crap property?

Mail. When did you last write a letter? Or go to a bank for anything other than the ATM?

Life is convenient. And yet we're forever trying to make it more and more so. Funny old world.

I'll talk more about monks later but monks are also moving with the times. Yup, this is what I was told when I asked a monk in Cambodia why he had a mobile phone. Hmmm.