Risks

This evening I played Risk for the firsr time in my life. It's one of those games that is cruel to those that are ignorant of the tactics, and ends with either a swift and overpowering victory, or an interminable grind between two almost-evenly matched opponents while everyone else looks on aghast. I came fourth, which was better than coming last, I suppose.

Of raisins, and weight

I woke up early today, to the happy discovery that I only weighed 172 lbs. This is not the greatest achievement of my life, or even of this month (how I remember back to the Glorious Fifteenth, when I weighed a mere 171 lbs), but it was an achievement of sorts.

Hotels in Japan with strange names

Today I spent some time being pedantic about how you classify hotels in Japan, and not just because I'm a pedant. Or because one of my hobbies is classifying Japanese hotels. Oh no. Part of my job involves long arguments about whether to class a hotel at Chitose airport as a Sapporo hotel, or a hotel in Chitose, or both, or something else.

(One of my hobbies is arguing the toss over whether Gatwick is really in London or not, but I doubt anyone reads this for the glamourous geolocation of airports.)

Tidy up please

Today we took the tram to Wimbledon to see an old friend from Expedia.  Beforehand I met up with a college chum, Hugh, to talk about philosophy, denounce Wittgenstein for being (a) somewhat affected, (b) socially regressive when it comes to persuading university students to take up manual labour and (c) the scourge of honest, if inaccurate builders.