thefuckoffkid

JAPAN was somewhere TheFuckOffGirl has wanted to take me for ages. She's in love with the place. I end up getting to go without her, just for a week, and just to Kyoto. But it's amazing, bizarre, fascinating and fun.

Tidbit #1: the toilets seats plug in! They're electrically powered!

VIETNAM: Hanoi was hot. Seriously fucking hot. Well, Kyoto had a few humid stinkers too, but Hanoi!

Then I got to go to the south, for the first time, out to Can Tho. Best night = out on a boat on the Mekong river, a full floating restaurant, with typically sentimental Asian karaoke.

I don't often lose count of my drinks, but there were beaucoups beers consumed that night.

There are cabs we've been driving behind in Sydney, that have ads on the back of them. For (I kid you not) "Titanic: The Musical."

I can just imagine the chorus:
"We hit a 'berg!"
"We hit a 'berg!"
"A huge great 'berg!"
"A huge great 'berg!"
"What shall we do?"
"The boat won't sink!"
"What shall we do?"
"Let's watch the view."

TheFuckOffGirl has taken to doing commando rolls out of the car if I say anything she deems sufficiently ridiculous. Well, OK, she hasn't actually done one, really, yet, but sometimes she takes the door handle as though she's going to open it. Once or twice when we've been slow in traffic and I say something daft, she opens the door and leans out.

I think she's trying to tell me something.

Work is exhausting. The university's restructuring. We're hiring new academics, and I'm having to oversee a lot of that. And that's on top of the usual battles and bullshit.

I'm not as good company as I might otherwise be, I'm finding.

AFRICA: I was meant to go there a few weeks ago. For reasons too pointless to go into here, they changed the dates on me, and I wasn't able to go. I've never been there, and that makes me sad. I was looking forward to that a lot, not only because it's Africa, but also because of the people I would have been workshopping with.


I did get to go to the Gold Coast though, at short notice.

Tidbit #2: Japan has people who stand on street corners in formal clothes, giving out little packets of tissues.

Since we moved in together, theFuckOffGirl has learned a bunch of tricks to get me to respond without me being conscious of it. If we're lying close in bed, she'll poke me high on my chest or under my arm where I'm ticklish. I curl up and face her protectively, to avoid more such attacks.

This is what she's after. It means I bend towards her, and what she's after is to get me to move closer. The fact that I'm trying to protect myself from further provocation is irrelevant. As far as she's concerned, mission accomplished.

She has many other such tricks. It's scary how well she knows me.

TFOG found this on Youtube. It's set in a Japanese library where a bunch of guys sit around taking it in turns to play practical jokes while making as little noise as possible. After all, they're in a library.