Issue 11 - lists and worries
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
29 January - 4 Febuary 2023
When I went hot-air ballooning in India, there was a moment just after take off when I was maybe twenty or thirty metres above the ground, and the realisation of just... the absurdity of what I was doing struck. Hurtling into the sky in a wicker basket using hot air. I think I'm at that point with my Japan trip. This utterly ludicrous thing that I've decided to do is now, implausibly, happening.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Some of my favourite shots from my 2018 visit.
I really need to sort the colour profile of these montages, Potatoshop is not copying it across from the source TIFFs
Good grief it's actually happening
Lists have been a saviour for a lot of the run up in these last couple of months. Any passing thought, thing I might forget, task I might miss is noted down in AnyList, plucking it from my brain leaving space for, well, in theory other things I may have forgotten but really it just frees me up for worrying.
In that vein then, a list of premium, top-shelf worries I'm nurturing at the moment:
- Missing my flight(s)
That's pretty much it at the moment. TransPennine have, of course, decided to not run any trains from Sheffield to Manchester Airport on Sunday but several of my wonderful friends have offered to drive me to my hotel, taking at least two hours out of their evening but ensuring peace of mind for me.
An incomplete list of low-to-mid level anxieties and concerns in no particular order:
- What if I get ill?
- What if I break a bone (or bones)?
- What if I get lonely?
- What if I get lost?
- What if I get arrested?
- What if my jet lag never goes away?
- What if I've forgotten how to drive?
- What if driving an automatic isn't in fact as easy as everyone tells me it is?
- What if I crash?
- What if I slip off a mountain road?
- What if my itinerary is ludicrous?
- What if I don't like it?
- What if I accidentally insult someone?
I've been planning this for over two years, I'm not ready
The info pack from my travel agent arrived after a slight delay (which of course resulted in much hand-wringing, panic-dream anxiety from me) - two grand tomes laying out the heres-and-theres of my journey. By design the first five days contain no fixed schedule or travelling to better acclimatise.
My itinerary then for the next ten days is:
- 5th Feb - hotel at the airport
- 6th Feb - red-eye from MAN -> LHR, LHR -> HND (Haneda), HND -> CTS (Sapporo Chitose)
- 7th Feb - jet lag appreciation day
- 8th Feb - Sapporo Winter Festival
- 9th Feb - more Sapporo Winter Festival
- 10th Feb - Asahikawa day trip
- 11th Feb - Otaru Snow Light Path Festival
- 12th Feb - transfer to Noboribetsu, hot spring time
- 13th Feb - Noboribetsu hot spring exploration
- 14th Feb - transfer to Morioka
Out of all those it's probably the Otaru festival that I'm looking forward to the most, but that feels a bit like comparing diamonds.
Timeshifter, the jet-lag app I'm using, wants me to get eight contiguous hours of sleep on the main flight over which is... certainly a nice idea but not going to happen. From the outside flights always feel like this nice block of time to do whatever you want, when in reality they're noisy and cramped, I'm often mildly travel sick and greasy from the recirculated air and all I usually want to do is disassociate until landing. This is the first time I'll be travelling with a sleep mask so perhaps that's been the missing element of being able to sleep on flights and not repeatedly experience hypnagogic jerks.
I think my luggage has its own discernable gravity field
There's not much left to do now other than wait which feels odd to say after the past couple of years being laser focused - financially, academically, emotionally - on this. I probably could have prepared more: more effective Japanese language learning, saved more and sooner, smarter choices on packing; but as I keep telling myself, it's not an adventure if everything goes exactly to plan.
YouTube watches
- John Cleese on Creativity - technically Creativity In Management but there is very little on management here, it is a great video on the nature of creativity and the tangible things you can do to encourage it; the open/closed mindset and using humour to switch from closed to open has been a touchstone for me since I first saw this video years ago
- 7 New Games In February - I'd not heard anything about Wanted: Dead before this video and it might be my kind of thing? I was a huge Team Ninja x Ninja Gaiden fan back in the day and Wanted: Dead is by ex developers of that, not sure of the style though
- How 52,000 Pots Are Used To Age A Rare Japanese Black Vinegar - (malt) vinegar is my kryptonite but I'm not sure how an aging process like this changes the flavour
- Why Tom Cruise's Run Matters - a recent rewatch of Mission Impossible 1 and 2 somehow popped this into my feed
- What Happened To Flying Wings - a good rundown on the engineering and history behind them but stops short of going into the quintessential one: the B-2 stealth bomber
- How Fancy Butter Is Made - so hungry after watching this
- Snow Dance | Kanazawa - nice little short film by Eiichi Yoshioka, a 'tog I follow on Twitter
- Why are TV Cameras still HUGE and expensive - complex, high-zoom lenses and very capable sensors but this is a great dive into the practicalities of cameras for broadcast rather than "just" filming
Random links
- Minimalist Photography Awards
- 20 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books by BIPOC Authors
- All the weird things that happen in each Animorph book - I've only heard anecdotal stories about the Animorph books (kids dealing with PTSD the usual touchstone) but this is something else...
- Very Legit URL shortener
This was hand-crafted by John.