MIXEDRICE

Don't think I was going to bore you about my culinary skills although I must say they are pretty good. Even if I say so myself. This is about something much more timely, topical and dare I say, necessary.

I love our good old Paradise, but, sometimes the stuff that's going on there is just ridiculous and embarrassing. You probably know what I'm talking about by now, but in case you don't, I'm so pissed and embarrassed about these bigots who have sprung up in Sri Lanka of late who are trying to oppress other people's rights to live peacefully just because they happened to be of other faiths and/or races.

So I and a bunch of good friends of mine have put together a web site and a social media campaign in order to invite you all to participate in some sort of discussion and let the world see that not all of us are fools. We just don't want to sit around and watch while these douchebags ruin our motherland and the love we have for it.

Mixedrice, not about rice.

Please visit the site, subscribe via e-mail, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and help us spread the word. Even more importantly, please join us to take a stand against the forces that threaten the unity and peace in our motherland.

Evil Humanlike Aliens. Seriously?

What is Hollywood's obsession with 'evil' aliens? And what's with almost all Hollywood's 'intelligent' aliens having some kind of resemblance to humans? In fact this doesn't limit to Hollywood. Even most of the Sci-Fi writers are culprits of being stuck in this template so to speak.

One could argue that a rocky planet, as opposed to a gassy one, is a must for life. One could also argue that having a set of free limbs is a necessity to evolve into being called intelligent. Or having a fairly large brain or being able to work with fire. But really, those are weak arguments for they are based on the assumption that life in the universe is life as we know it. However when you think of the scale and the diversity of the universe there is no reason why life elsewhere should be life as we know it. And theoretically there is no reason why life elsewhere should bear even the remotest resemblance to us let alone looking just like us. Think about it; all life on earth is related. Not just you and me, if we go far back enough we can find a common ancestor of you and the alpha male of a lion pride in Serengeti or of me and the first dinosaur to die on that unfortunate (or, rather fortunate) day where a meteor wiped them all out. Point is, all life on earth is related on some level and yet they look so much different to each other. Think of a cheetah, a dragonfly, a jellyfish, an amoeba, a bird, a dolphin, a tapeworm, a wasp, a spider and a woman. They look so different they might as well be from different planets. So why should we bear the remotest resemblance to aliens whom we have no relation whatsoever with?

I have a theory as to why.

I think the reason is that Hollywood and Sci-Fi writers take the easy way out. It is indeed such a difficult job to construct a new life form from scratch just by using your imagination. If you don't believe me, try describing an animal to a person whom never have seen it just by using words. You'll find that a mighty difficult job. I know I have. Conjuring up an alien is far more difficult. It's much easier to go with the shape you know best, stick an antenna here, change color there, a bigger head perhaps, probably bald as well and you're good to go. Alternate would be to think right from the beginning. What kind of a planet they live on? What is their biochemistry? What do they breath? Do they breath at all? Are they also DNA based or is it something entirely different? Would they fit the scaled we know of or would they be giants? Or microscopic for that matter. Will they have something equivalent of language as we know it or would they communicated in an entirely different way? Would they be single entities or would it be a collective intelligence? Would we even recognize it as life if we encountered it? Think of a tapeworm and a human, only, this time we are the tapeworm and aliens are the human. I'm pretty sure the tapeworm has no idea whatsoever who and what a human is. Who are we to argue that we are any different confronted with an intelligent alien race? There are all kinds of questions like these that the writers don't bother to answer. It's much easier to go with the little green men.

The evil aliens of Hollywood is also due to this lack of imagination. It is far more easier to think of evil aliens who wants to kill you for no apparent reason and then fight them back than think of doing something constructive with them. After all you'd think that a species capable of traveling all this stellar distance is intelligent enough to put petty wars behind them. Technically earth should be of no interest to them. The earth is made out of most common stuff in the universe, and with the data we have now scientists think it is very likely that the planets outnumber stars in the universe. That's a lot of planets if you ask me and law of the averages says that there should be gazillion earths out there. Why should our earth be of so importance to them? Only plausible reason I can think of is as a research project for an alien PhD student. Lab rats might come to some people's minds, but really, I'm willing to take the risk. Maybe I'm an optimist but I'd like to think they'd be more civilized than evil warmongers the Hollywood like to portray them as. If we ever come into contact with intelligent aliens chances are that we'll probably learn something from them. In fact it's highly unlikely that they'll fly here in fleets of their super fast disc-like (why is it always a disc?) spaceships anyway. I'm not counting the possibility of interstellar travel out, just that it's more likely we'll come into contact with life elsewhere with something like radio signals first.

So, Hollywood, and writers, I'm not impressed. Give me something better next time.

FOUR YEARS

It's been 4 years, folks.

That is all.

First time in a Brothel

It has been a while since you guys had a slice of my life. Ugh, that didn't sound right. What I mean is that it has been a while since I wrote something about my life. While things are mostly boring and mundane over here sometimes they do get spiced up, and when they do, they really do. This is the story of how I went looking for brothels in Tokyo and almost ended up with a prostitute. Well it looks a silly sentence for you go looking for brothels in order to find prostitutes, but there's a catch so read on. In case my children or their potential partners come across this post when they do a background check before the arranged marriage, note that the keyword here is almost. By the way, why I thought my children, if I had any, would need arranged marriages, baffles myself. I have no idea.

So couple of months back, there I was happily munching on a particularly good cookie while staring at the computer screen, i.e., browsing the Internet. Because that's what we software engineers do when we come home after staring at a screen for about 10 hours at work. Anyway, my Skype went 'blongg' and there was a chat from an old mate who lives abroad. Well the mate isn't particularly old, our friendship is. For reasons you will understand in a minute, I need to keep the identity of this friend concealed, so let me call him, let me think about it... Aladdin. Suffice to know that he lives in another country. Turns out he was thinking of spending a few days in Japan en route to somewhere from somewhere else. So Aladdin and I made plans to meet up since it's been a while since we saw each other and all.

Fast forward a couple of months, the bugger arrived in Japan. But we didn't meet at once for he had planned his trip so that he would arrive in Osaka (which is a few hundred kilometers south of Tokyo), travel around there with some of his relatives, then head towards Tokyo where he will eventually leave from. So after his stay in Osaka, Aladdin finally arrived in Tokyo a couple of days ago. I met up with him that evening, took him to see the Tokyo Tower and then had a good old Japanese dinner with a beer catching up with each other's news. It was good to see him after a long time (well, I didn't think the same next day though) and finally I took him to his hotel and we said goodbye. But it wasn't the final goodbye because we arranged to meet up the next day for a beer as well as he was to leave Japan on Saturday and didn't have much to do till then.

Next day we met up as decided and I took him to see the Shibuya junction (this is probably the only road crossing in the entire world that tourists go to see), then a bit of this and that before heading towards a sort of famous bar where you can get foreign beer. We ordered a couple of Guinness with 'Fish and Fries' and were chilling when Aladdin started a very odd conversation.

Aladdin : Dude... erm.. you see I need to ask you something... I dunno if you know... I mean maybe I should have told you before...
Me : Man, what the hell, are you going to propose to me or what? Don't fret if so, ask me out like a man.
A : Oh please... I have better better taste than that.
A : But it's kind of something like that too. I mean...
Me (very concerned) : ....
A : Umm... do you like know any place around here... erm... I can like hook up with... you know... an escort or whatever you call that here?
Me : HOW THE FUCK ARE THOSE TWO THE SAME?
A : Okay maybe they aren't. Shut up that's not the point. Do you know any?
Me : You think I'm a pimp or what? Or that I frequent Tokyo brothels?
A : Oh okay sorry man...
Me (laughing) : Just kidding dude. Are you sure about this?
A : Yes you fuck, Jesus I thought I offended you. These Jap chicks are cute.  Can you...?
Me : Well, I don't know any but if you really want to... I think I know where to look.

Now I'm not a fan of hookers, never been with one and never will be (I swear, my future daughter in law) but that's just me. If anybody wants to go to a prostitute that's quite fine by me. I'm not like the people who think two other men getting married affect their own marriage. I don't judge people. And to see the cup half full, some poor Japanese girl gets a few thousand bucks too. So I said yeah, and though I've never been to a brothel before I knew generally where to look for one. There are a couple of famous areas in and around Tokyo where you can supposedly get 'full service' if you know what I mean. Prostitution being illegal in Japan, they generally disguise it under various kind of massages so that's where you want to go. I took out the iPad and a couple of searches with safe search off told us the details we needed to know. Internet FTW! So we finished our beers and got on a train.

Several minutes later we got off the train in a station in the area where we needed to go. Normally if I want directions here I ask a Jap, but that was out of the question this time. However, Internet FTW again! This time Google maps told me where to go and a couple of minutes later we ended up facing a bit dodgy looking street. Usually, in evenings, business streets in city areas in Japan are buzzing with all kinds of people. You have colorful blinking lights, shop owners - especially in restaurants - employ people to go outside the shop with a menu and shout to attract people, you have street vendors; simply put an atmosphere I suspect you would not see in most if not all the other developed nations. These streets are like improved versions of Pettah if you catch my drift. But this street was a bit different. It had all the above but it also had a range of shops with advertising boards of bikini clad pretty chicks, and a bunch of thug-ish looking guys in front of every one of them, trying to snatch clients for their 'massage parlours'. Not to mention a couple of girls at the doors dressed not very different to those in the pictures. However, there's a catch. I've often heard that not every such place take foreigners in so I was kind of reluctant because though chances of that happening are very rare, getting stabbed in the back of a dodgy ally in Japan was not my favorite way to die. I also had a feeling this would not sit well with people close to me once I'm dead, especially with me not being able to tell them the story and all. So we walked to the end of the street, Aladdin ogling at the chicks and me listening to what the goons were shouting. I realized that a few guys asked us to come in too so we turned back and chose one shop my 'desperate' friend fancied. 

Then I realized that there was another problem.

Aladdin doesn't speak a word of Japanese. And I was pretty sure the Japs who were there don't speak a word of English. Now this was a problem that I hadn't counted on. My initial plan was to leave the bugger there but now that option was fast flying out of the window. And almost immediately he realized it too.

A : Umm... so... how does this work now?
Me : You son of a bitch, now do I have to go inside with you too?
A (grinning like an idiot) : Can you?

 By now the goons around us were also looking at us like are you going to go in or what?

A : Oh well. Waren ithin. Mee haraka.

So for the first time in my life I stepped inside a brothel, even if it was a disguised one. I must admit here that I was kind of curious to know how this thing works as well, so actually I didn't mind. One of the two hotties at the door led us into a nicely lit room with a comfy sofa and a few flower vases, and beckoned us to sit. We did as asked and she brought us some Japanese tea. Looks like they are classy even at a brothel. While we were sipping the tea I explained to her that my friend doesn't speak Japanese so that I will have to translate to him everything and help him out. She was cool with that. The type of 'massage' they provide is called 'Soapland' (Google, with safe search off, if you want to know further details which I'm not going to go into here) which apparently is very popular in Japan. She went on to explain that we first needed to pick the 'course', meaning length of time, and then pay the relevant amount. We did so, then she said we can pick the girl if we wished so, to which Aladdin responded with an eager nod so we said yes. And then she went inside an adjacent room and a moment later returned with few gorgeous ladies following her who proceeded to stand in front of us. You've got to give it to them; they were hot and they also had very 'appropriate' clothing for the occasion if you know what I mean.  However, here it popped up in my mind that slave trade must not have been very different from this except for the fact that the slaves were not wiling. This just felt wrong. Anyway, Aladdin picked the girl he liked and she took his hand and led him towards a corridor out of the room.

Then the cutie turned to me and said,

"So... would you also like to take the same course?"
Me (confused) : What?
Cutie : Umm... would you like the same course?

 Then I realized that I never told her that only my friend was going get the massage, not me.

Me : Oh... I'm sorry... it was only for my friend.
Cutie : Oh... I thought you just wanted to first send your friend in and then pick one for you. Are you sure?

To make matters worse the cuties were still standing there looking at me with very suggestive looks. This whole standing-in-front thing really put me off; as I said before I don't have a problem with prostitution but this just felt wrong. This was not at all what I had in mind an hour ago when my godforsaken friend asked for some help and I decided to help out a 'bro'. This whole bro-code thing is overrated I tell you.

Me : Yeah... I'm sure. Oh and... could you please ask them to leave?

Our host signalled the girls to leave, with what I thought was a bit of a disappointed look on her face. Then I realized that I couldn't arrange to meet up with Aladdin once he's finished and I most certainly did not want to stay in there for an hour. So I asked her if she could tell him to come to a nearby coffee shop which was at the start of the street and she said she could do that. So then she proceeded to lead me to the door where she bid me farewell with a typical Japanese "bye byeee" and a wave.

I stepped onto the street and upon seeing me leave one of the earlier mentioned goons turned towards me.

Goon : "Sir, what happened? Are you leaving?"
Me : Umm.. erm... never mind.

Explaining the whole story to a random pimp on a street seemed too much of a hassle, and even if I did the chances were that I was going to come out looking a bit silly anyway. I just shook my head and turned to leave.

That, my friends, was how I almost ended up with a prostitute. Or as they call them, a 'massage therapist'.

Thank you for that small step, Neil.

That small step did mark a great moment in our history, we were no longer bound by our own planet. 

Thank you Neil, may you rest in peace.

End of Vacation : The Good, the Bad and the Worst

The Good

• You actually get to do some productive work instead of sitting on your bum all day. Doesn't probably apply if you live in the good ol' Paradise, but other than that, yes it's applicable. And it's a good thing.

• Get back in the Internet. I suppose this is more of a personal habit. When on vacation I don't do much social networking, forums or even other Internet activities. So it's time to get back in touch with the world out there.

• Less stuffing yourself up with food. You stay at home, you eat like a pig. A lot of junk food too. No chance of that now.

• Get back into blogging.

The Bad 

• While you actually get to do some work, not doing it. At least for a few days. Rendering the first point of 'good', null.

• Get back in the Internet. The world out there is stupid anyway, why would you want to get back in?

• Less stuffing yourself up with food. Ah, all those tasty hamburgers, steak, donuts and ice cream. Not to mention beer.

• Get back into blogging. Because you should be working instead.

The Worst 

• Feeling, at the first alarm, like snoozing it and go back to precious sleep.

• Actually doing it.

• Feeling, at the second alarm, like smashing the godforsaken alarm into pieces and then killing yourself. It's a good thing I live alone, or else the sequence would be smashing the alarm into pieces, killing the other person in the room and then killing yourself.

• Having to get up and go to work instead of doing either of the above.

• Once at work, feeling like killing everybody around you before killing yourself. Seriously, who invented work?

Bitching Time

Yo peeps how have you been? I know you missed me terribly, sorry about that. But worry not, yours truly is here with a lot this time. A lot of bitching that is so get ready to listen. Let me bitch about things in an orderly manner, in point form, then.

1. Olympic Games are awesome. Their coverage sucks. Living 9 hours in front of London means that I miss most of the top action unless I'm willing to doze off at work and risk my job. So the next best option is catching up with highlights, but guess what, the goddamn official YouTube Olympic channel thinks that they should only be available to UK and US. Not just YouTube, pretty much every source is the same. What the fuck? Isn't Olympic is a global event, probably the most famous and loved of them all? Shouldn't everybody get to see it without ridiculous country restrictions? I can understand if they want to put country restrictions to TV shows and such, but for Olympics? For Olympic highlights? You gotta be fucking kidding me. I could of course use a proxy, but that's too much trouble so I turned to the ever so faithful torrents and voila, there's just about everything. I downloaded a 1.4GB clip of Usain Bolt's 100m dash just for the fun of it. Take that, London. But then again you can't have very high expectations of organizers who chose a sketch of a man-on-man blow job as the Olympic logo.
   
2. This isn't bitching, rather the opposite of it, but Bolt is awesome isn't he? This is probably the post #12,849,234 about him on the Internet, but hey, when I retell the stories of the great man to my grandchildren I better have some proof.
   
3. American (and British) media can be such douchebags at times. The way they went on and on about that awesome little girl Ye Shewen (not exactly little though) of China is sick. Yes I get it you used to be the kings in the pool, you probably still are, but when she kicked ass the way she did, give her some respect. If she was proven to be doping, good, knock yourselves out, but she was cleared twice ffs! I read some disturbing stories about how she was trained, the ruling party even confiscated her cellphone allowing her to use it only in weekends, which sucks, but that's a different story. That's no excuse for accusing her of doping when she was simply brilliant. Of course there is the possibility that she (just like any other athlete) could be found guilty in future, but reserve your scathing remarks for then. Until then, STFU. It's not as if America has a clean record in this regard anyway.
   
4. Talking about America, it really sucks. The bastards once refused me a tourist VISA - for which I really hate them - and I was like really? You really think that I'm going to leave such a good job and a life here in Japan, one of the most convenient places to live in whole world, and jump ship there in America? Seriously? Such vanity.
   
5. I have been thinking of a move to Australia for some time now but unfortunately that's what it's all been about too; thinking. Sometimes I can be so lazy. I really need to get a move on things, and with 9 days of summer vacation coming up I think I will finally be able to do that. Hope I won't get all lazy and leave it till too late.
   
6. Living abroad means you can end up with lot of free time on your hands and nothing to do with it. I don't make friends easily and even if I did there aren't many whom I can be true friends with anyway. So I tend to spend my time at home a lot, of which a whole lot dedicated to watching and reading. I love learning new stuff, the latest fascination being biology. Living in the country with the second fastest Internet in the world has its advantageous, one of which is being able to download gigabytes of stuff within hours. So I do download a lot indeed (not what you think though, perverts), mostly documentaries. Biology is my new passion, but I've been a huge astronomy enthusiast for a long time, and then I have general interest in science as well, and I can and have dedicated a lot of time to learn such things. So much so that, I took a general science quiz sort of thing the other day and ended up with a pretty high score which is a high percentile. Which got me thinking that it's kind of sad in a way; I don't have a life.
   
7. The week before a long vacation really sucks. In sucky-ness, it is only second to the week after a long vacation I guess. Argh, enough already.