Extra extra, car edition
- Callum Eagle Hendrick
- Aug 23, 2024
- 6 min read
Welcome one and all to the grand unveiling of the above mystery car.
Before the grand unveiling, a few photos for contextualising the last post. And before that a comment on the work, which is unexpectedly easy, days go by quickly and there seems to be little oversight or expectation on what i should actually be doing, which is brilliant for me because i can write these all day and do other things besides. A poor work ethic in one sense but here is the quandry. What is more valuable in the end of the day - the quantity of work completed or the quantity of time spent doing it. Can you leave if you finish it in an hour? The incentive when you are paid by the hour is always to drag everything out and fill your time because you have to be there regardless. And the incentive if you are paid by the job is to just rush it, finish it as quick as possible and move on to the next. Quality vs Quantity? Time vs Job? Depends on the work really, the importance of it and the consequence of getting it wrong. An air traffic controller paid by the job might be still diligent but a mindless excel drone? almost definitely not going to be doing things with 100% due diligence. Maybe i am wrong and the excel drone is filled with passion and pride and relishes the act of ctrl+c/ctrl+v but its probably best to just pay these people a fixed wage and let them muddle through the endless digital swamp. i have the theory that incentives are pretty much the only thing that drives change so for example if hypothetically one were to be paid per lesson plan created rather than for sitting and looking busy for 8 hours a day one would hypothetically not be writing a blog post and would instead, hypothetically of course, be doing work related work. anyway i am probably wrong with my theory and this is all irrelevant.
The humidity yesterday morning reached 85%. This is not a normal experience for a pasty irish boy and as such the alarm at the sheer rate of sweat coming through several different tops before leaving for work was staggering. it is like existing inside a steam room all the time. no matter what you do, what way you sit, what deodorant or rag you apply, the stains inevitably appear. A lovely green top, adorned post shower, lasted a mere three minutes before the pools of sweat overcame it. Pits stained, back utterly fused with the top itself, it needed changing. Repeat two more times before leaving for work in the vain hope that you don't turn up to a room full of polite adults looking like the swamp creature from the deep. I heard a disturbing (possibly ill informed) genetic theory that asians don't have sweat that smells. I think they do not sweat at all, they have become extremely accustomed to it, i do not see anyone out there with those swamp pits. Either way, it would make sense for evolution i guess? I do not understand why we sweat to be honest, dont we need the water more at precisely the time we start sweating? we need it to cool ourselves down apparrently, but I honestly do not feel that works at all. I would much rather be less thirsty and less sweaty and just be a bit hotter, ill be hot regardless what difference does one degree celsius of sweat make realistically? You lose 1.5-2litres of sweat an hour in some cases, how is that viable. If you are in a hot place, you are less likely to be around water and so to counteract this fact, the body decides to shed water at an alarming rate, increasing the need for water? i am ignorant of course. Did asians stop sweating because they figured out the fan earlier? if so they figured out a nice hack there and didnt deign to share it with the rest of us sweaty monsters.
In other news i have learned the first alphabet of the japanese language, hiragana, have discovered some nice new neighbours in the form of a nest of wasps which seem to have taken residence on my balcony and have communicated in a very stunted manner with the colleagues here as well as eating a meal with two of them. They are all very polite, do not seem to be overly serious or rigid. The colleagues and the wasps both.
On with the show and tell now;
These are the lovely canals in Toyama. Evidently I found literally not one other thing that was worth taking a photo of in that grey pit, i searched through the camera roll and alas nothing, I feel i have been overly harsh so I will go down there again and give it another go in better weather hopefully. Again I did not know about the fiery devastation that occurred there so I was perhaps overly critical etc.
The best thing about Toyama is the tram out of there, quite literally. I am not only a terrible evolutionary biologist, i am also a terrible photographer, in my mind these were taken a lot better and at better places but apparently this was not the case. If i ever return to Toyama I will endeavour to capture the glorious return in better detail because these are god awful and i accidentally got pictures of peoples houses instead of the mountains so i look like a creep stalker to top it off.
Now in my short time here i have been warned/informed on multiple occasions regarding the presence of a cult in the town. Originally founded here but now a global organisation this cult apparently believes they can heal the soul using light. Having spent many days with a wise dog (remy) who also believed in the power of the light, it is only natural that i must investigate this cult as a matter of curiosity and potentially education. Who knows what secrets the light holds. the objective will of course be to gather as much information as possible without paying a single yen, only time and possibly organs (joke).
The above image was taken on my ramble through the hills close to me. You can see quite clearly the cult building in the distance there, with the lovely shining gold roof on it there, sort of mocking the traditional shinto shrines, perched above the city leering down on it. What a beautiful display of wealth!
This was the lovely clearing i found on that same ramble. Extremely peaceful up there and a cool path leading up to it, went around in sort of concentric spirals from three different sources, so you could easily come up one and go down another in a different direction altogether.
It is accessed via another hill and a little roadway, one end has a little cafe and then the other end leads into the woods a little bit and offers the path up to here, so will be exploring that more.
little shrine thing on the same hill no idea what it represents or what it is. My overwhelming ignorance will need to be conquered so that i can give more detail on all of these things.
Again another little monument i have no idea what it is but it seems to be well maintained - bear in mind it is on top of a rather steep incline to get up to so it must have some meaning or significance for people to keep it in good shape.I did see, excuse the tangent, an older lady clearing by hand the weeds around a similar sort of stone/engraving at one point on the bus to toyama so maybe it is a normal occurrence for the community to do a bit of upkeep, similar to tidy towns or even the church around culmullen, people chip in as a collective.
Another way up to this little summit. You can follow these stairs down from a small buddhist shrine and it actually leads you to a much larger shinto shrine. Along these steps you can actually find many many graves which i will not be taking pictures of for obvious reasons. Nice place to walk around anyway.
Now for La Reveal Magnifico...
A few boiler rooms i listened to recently, more music-ish than just thumping beats:
Hard house type of one:
Hope you enjoyed and as always, if you read this far, find something better to do with yourselves;)
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