Booked to go to Jyapaan

So, tickets are purchased, language skills need a bit of brushing up but I’m soooo looking forward to it. It’s my first voyage back to the land of Gatsby body paper since my working holiday in 2004. As soon as the xmas holidays begin, I’m off for just over 2 weeks.

I love the feeling of going to Japan. The only thing I don’t like, if I remember correctly, is… the actual going bit. The 12 hour trek across the world is a bit on the unbearable side of things as it just screws with your mind. However-many long-haul flights I have taken, it doesn’t really get any more pleasurable. I do generally like flying, I just wish it was faster.

This time, I thought I’d give Virgin Atlantic a try. Well, actually the decision was made for me really as I used my Virgin Flying Club mileage to get a bit of a discount and compared to other direct Heathrow-Narita flights, it was a good £100 cheaper. I flew JAL last time so I’m not expecting Virgin to be better as Asian carriers generally have a better service but past experiences with a good old British airline (BA and their limited legroom) means that if I have space, I’ll be happy. Plus now that I’m a little older, I’ve come to expect to be treated a little better for the money you have to fork out to sit in a metal tube for half a day.

A big plus this time around is that because I will be entering Japan with a simple 90-day tourist stamp on my passport, I can actually use the Japan Rail Pass!! Score! It means that I can use the Shinkansen unlimited for 7 days so I can go and see friends all over the place. My current plans include using it to head West to Nagoya, Kansai and Fukuoka to see as many of my JapSoc friends as possible. One of the main reasons I chose to go in December is because some of my Leeds buddies are out in Japan for their year abroad so meeting up with our Japanese friends will be just like old times.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m currently spending this fine autumnal Sunday afternoon in bed with a case of the dreaded Freshers flu. I leave you with the bombshell: “aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii can give you GATSBY”

I just wish that we could have a Matsudo Legends reunion. See you in the Toke!

A Letter to the Culture that Raised Me

I just thought a lot of people need to read this so I posted the link. Lazy, I know, especially since I haven’t blogged for a while but whatever.

A Letter to the Culture that Raised Me

By Yasmin Mogahed

From Suhaib Webb

Posted using ShareThis

Why twitter = awesome. A true story.

A lot of my friends know that I am an avid user of twitter. Thanks to a friend (@mohsin) who introduced it to me, I have been tweeting for quite a while now; well before the press started making it popular. Anyway, at first I used it to accompany this blog as a way of advertising new posts to the world. Now, I use it less for that and more to follow friends who I have never met in person but whose updates I find very interesting and informative through their sharing of links to cool stuff amongst other things.

As the media started to report on this new phenomenon, celebrities and personalities began to jump on to the bandwagon and being the sad cool person that I am, I began to follow a select few, occasionally sending tweets to them in the hope of getting a reply. Mind you, only the really cool ones have had the honour of being sent a direct message from me. People like John Mayer and Andy Roddick to name a few. Anyway, after watching United’s first game of the new season against Birmingham (did I mention I’m a United fan?), I sent a tweet to Wayne Rooney after he checked in to twitter after the game.

As usual, I didn’t expect a reply. I continued on my merry way on the tinterweb, when this pops up on my screen:

I couldn’t believe it! One of my favourite players replied to my tweet!! Is twitter nuts or what?? Please note the poor grammar and lack of punctuation in his original post, which both confirm it’s actually him.

But none of that matters to me as he is the first famous person that I follow on twitter to reply (besides the TRS guys that is). He is a legend in the eyes of all United supporters and I am no different. He’s easily one of England’s bestest best players and he let’s his boots do the talking and that’s the way I like it. Wazza is ace!

Now that he’s my homeboy, I hope to keep in touch with him from now on. It just goes to show how the web is ever-evolving and in particular how the advent of web 2.0 has changed the ways we connect with people. Adding famous people to your facebook account is so 2007. Now you tweet with them and make them read your messages (well, if they use a twitter app with growl notifications at least). Cheers Wayne!

I can’t wait for Ramadan to start next week so I can begin to feel guilty about wasting time like this.

Now I have to go to Okinawa!

Kuroshio Sea: An amazing video by Jon Rawlinson of the 2nd largest aquarium in the world. Watch in HD for all its beauty. The music is “Please don’t go” by Barcelona.

You can visit his website: jonrawlinson.com

Follow him on Twitter here: twitter.com/jonrawlinson

This was shot at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan. kaiyouhaku.com/en/

There is such an incredible life in our oceans… we must protect them. – Jon Rawlinson

Subhanallah it’s so beautiful.

The PM’s caught the TED bug

Our mate Gordon gave a talk at TEDGlobal in Oxford yesterday about how we have to take advantage of our increased connectivity and the global village. Just watched it myself and thought it was a pretty decent effort so watch it if you have the time.

婚カツ！(Just started watching it)

I just started watching the Japanese dorama, konkatsu! (which means “Marriage Hunting!”) after my friend recommended it to me. It’s actually pretty funny so I have started downloading ordering the remaining episodes through legal means. It’s actually quite an unlucky predicament that Nakai’s character gets himself into from the beginning so I wanna know what happens. Not quite 24 in terms of back-to-back-watching potential but still, you get my drift right?? I will report back later (or most probably, just after I’ve watched it).

How to get traffic to your blog ;p

As some of the more regular readers may have deduced already, I like to experiment with often ironic ways to get people to read this, let’s face it, very average blog. Well, this post is no different to those aforementioned attempts. I found this list posted by Seth Godin on his blog and thought that seen as it is a potentially desirable piece of info, I would blog it in a vain attempt to get people to come to my blog. I’m really lame cool like that (when you’re done reading, feel free to read my posts on what islam is and what it isn’t or how watching japanese dorama backed up my thoughts on tony robbins’ TED talk).

1. Use lists.
2. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
3. Learn enough to become the expert in your field.
4. Break news.
5. Be timeless… write posts that will be readable in a year.
6. Be among the first with a great blog on your topic, then encourage others to blog on the same topic.
7. Share your expertise generously so people recognize it and depend on you.
8. Announce news.
9. Write short, pithy posts.
10. Encourage your readers to help you manipulate the technorati top blog list.
11. Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
12. Write long, definitive posts.
13. Write about your kids.
14. Be snarky. Write nearly libelous things about fellow bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
15. Be sycophantic. Share linklove and expect some back.
16. Include polls, meters and other eye candy.
17. Tag your posts. Use del.ico.us.
18. Coin a term or two.
19. Do email interviews with the well-known.
20. Answer your email.
21. Use photos. Salacious ones are best.
22. Be anonymous.
23. Encourage your readers to digg your posts. (and to use furl and reddit). Do it with every post.
24. Post your photos on flickr.
25. Encourage your readers to subscribe by RSS.
26. Start at the beginning and take your readers through a months-long education.
27. Include comments so your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
28. Assume that every day is the beginning, because you always have new readers.
29. Highlight your best posts on your Squidoo lens.
30. Point to useful but little-known resources.
31. Write about stuff that appeals to the majority of current blog readers–like gadgets and web 2.0.
32. Write about Google.
33. Have relevant ads that are even better than your content.
34. Don’t include comments, people will cross post their responses.
35. Write posts that each include dozens of trackbacks to dozens of blog posts so that people will notice you.
36. Run no ads.
37. Keep tweaking your template to make it include every conceivable bell or whistle.
38. Write about blogging.
39. Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day.
40. Invent a whole new kind of art or interaction.
41. Post on weekdays, because there are more readers.
42. Write about a never-ending parade of different topics so you don’t bore your readers.
43. Post on weekends, because there are fewer new posts.
44. Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
45. Dress your blog (fonts and design) as well as you would dress yourself for a meeting with a stranger.
46. Edit yourself. Ruthlessly.
47. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
48. Be patient.
49. Give credit to those that inspired, it makes your writing more useful.
50. Ping technorati. Or have someone smarter than me tell you how to do it automatically.
51. Write about only one thing, in ever-deepening detail, so you become definitive.
52. Write in English.
53. Better, write in Chinese.
54. Write about obscure stuff that appeals to an obsessed minority.
55. Don’t be boring.
56. Write stuff that people want to read and share.

(again, credit to Seth Godin)

GUNDAM 1/1 scale Odaiba, Tokyo お台場ガンダム実物大 全身

The full-scale Mobile-Suit GUNDAM has officially opened in Odaiba, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Gundam series.

(taken from dannychoo.com)

The opening ceremony or as the katakana reads in the video’s title, oupuningu seremoni-. You gotta love the original Gundam music they play towards the end.

Finishing touches being applied.

I remember seeing the mini statue of liberty (below) in Odaiba back in 2004 but that pales in comparison to this behemoth. Hope I get to see it in December. Wouldn’t it be immense if they did a scale model of a metal gear??

I knew watching Japanese dorama was good for me… (aswell as TED)

First of all, apologies for sacking off the blog posts recently. Wimbledon happened so I was away for that. Anyway, Tony Robbins gave this TED talk in 2006 and it’s always been one of my favourites as it gives a thought-provoking explanation for a quite subjective issue. As I am currently in the middle of watching プロポーズ大作戦 (a Japanese drama series), and since I recently watched this talk again, I felt the blogger’s urge to… well… blog about the subject. Robbins says that human emotion and inner drive are the most powerful forces in the world due to our minds allowing us to rationalise anything and achieve stuff. If we understand this, we can begin to understand and appreciate the views of other people around us which, let’s face it, as human beings, we haven’t been great at doing. This is something that has probably been highlighted by the “shrinking” of the world and mixing of cultures in the ever-changing global village we live in today.

“The defining factor (in achieving something) is never resources, it’s resourcefulness.” Tony Robbins

What he means here is that if, for example, you don’t have enough money for something, but if you’re creative and determined enough, you find a way to do it anyway. That’s why he calls human emotion the ultimate resource. This is one of the take-home messages from the talk and if you think about it, it’s a very positive view of the world. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I love this talk. One of the best bits is Robbins high-fiving Al Gore in the front row after they joke about the Supreme Court being one such resource.

Our mate, Lance

An awesome example of the power of human emotion is one that he uses, Lance Armstrong. The guy won 7 straight Tour-de-France titles after his diagnosis of testicular cancer, something he was unable to do even once (let alone seven times!) before his illness. This can be put down to his new-found emotional fitness and psychological strength after people put a barrier in front of him. You can either say God is punishing you or you can say that God is giving you the opportunity to succeed against adversity so you either see it as the beginning of something positive or ending with something negative.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Trials and tribulations always seem bad at first but if people come through them, don’t you always here them say that they are a better person for it? Maybe I am over-simplifying it but it fits in completely with my Islamic understanding of hardship. As a Muslim, I have been brought up to believe that God knows best and so everything happens for a reason, even if it is hard to understand for us. Being patient and sticking it out when things get tough is the way to succeed. God will only burden someone with as much hardship as they can take, never more. So if you are really being tested and feel like everything is going against you, God must think very highly of you!

“The beauty in the Islamic approach to difficulties is it teaches you to change your perception of the problem i.e. seeing the glass half full as opposed to half empty. The way Islam does this is by wiping out this (evil) feeling of loneliness by teaching you that God is always with you. This leads you to change your perception of the scenario from being “Oh God, I have a big problem” to being “Oh Problem, I have Almighty God” which gives you confidence, thus putting you in a position of strength.” [Quote from my flatmate, Abdulrahman Alhadithi's blog]

“When Allah desires good for someone, He tries him with hardships.” [Saying of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), narrated in Sahîh al-Bukhârî]

Working at Wimbledon

Sorry for the complete lack of activity recently. I’m currently working in the press office at the 2009 Championships at Wimbledon. Those who follow my tweets will already know this. This is why I have not been blogging, answering facebook messages or coming online in any form. I have just found the time to write this before i clock out tonight from the press office.