Why hello there. Tis a pleasure to be back. I’ve had a few days off feeling rather lost. Still, now those 27.5 years are over, I’m ready to carry on writing.

What’s been going on then? Let me see… erm, oh, yes, I had a couple of exams. The first, Postwar Japanese Politics, went well me feels. Having revised quite a bit for it I found that I could comfortably answer about 6 of the 8 questions offered (but only had to answer 3 of them). I smashed my all time record and managed to fill 19 pages with utter rubbish in the three hours, and still had time to finish the last sentence, unusual for me.

Japanese Language IV was the other exam. That was not nearly so enjoyable. “Rather Bloody stressful” would be putting it mildly, especially as when I opened my pencil case to start writing, I discovered that I’d left my lucky pen at home. I was not happy. Having revised a lot, and I mean, alot alot, I’d got it into my head that I’d be able to understand the translation and comprehension pieces without too much difficulty. That was true to a certain extent, but in a couple of parts I just found myself swimming in a sea of kanji compounds thinking “Have I accidentally walked into a Chinese exam”. Never again will I forget the word for “goods”. As for the write-an-essay-in-Japanese bit, well, I cringe to think of it. I only wrote about 2/3 of the minimum requirement, and didn’t have time to check it over at the end.

Results are out in a couple of months.

In news related specifically to The Daily Mumble, I’d just like to point out that we now have a wonderful array of links down the right hand side (unless you are looking at the page which has this entry on and no other). The first of the four categories will change on a regular basis as I surf the interwww on my Toshiba bodyboard, and come across stuff that I find to be vaguely interesting. Remember, at times when I’m supposed to be revising (like now) this is likely to be VERY dull, as when I’m supposed to be revising almost anything other than what I’m supposed to be revising is incredibly fascinating.

The Daily Mumble is now Technorati-tag enabled, as you can see from the links at the bottom of this post. One day I might even be able to figure out how to use these to create categories or build an elephant with, but for the time being clicking on them will take you to an external page that is full of ‘stuff’ on the internet (blogs/photos etc) that shares the tag you clicked on. Got it? Good. Feel free to ignore it completely. It’s only for those who use the internet far too much and have nothing better to do with their time.

…Which seems to be rather a lot of people. Last month saw a record number of you, 20,201 to be precise, wasting your company’s time by visiting TGW. ‘Horse’ (4.42%) followed by ‘Cock’ (4.15%) remain your favourite key words, you filthy bunch.

I now have over 9,000 photos on flickr, the majority of which are very dull (such as my latest addition, an ancient French farmer I met in Brittany called “Yeves”, not half as exciting as the inside of this chimney at Alton Towers. The blue, by the way, is natural, not a photoshop job. Is that because the sky’s blue?

I must say, I am really looking forward to getting a digital SLR. Fickr has been a true inspiration.

*Twinkle* and I have one more week together in the Broomcupboard. She’s been here since Easter, although I do let her go into the kitchen now and then to do the washing up. I’m leaving Sheffield on Saturday, the day after my final exam. She’ll be staying here over the summer to write her dissertation. It’s going to be a bit odd not having her around to, er, do the washing up.

My summer is looking a bit busy. I have a HUGE list of things to do on the wall (I mean the list is stuck to the wall, not that I have lots of things to do whilst being stuck to the wall myself. That would defy the powers of Blu-tack) including learning all the kanji I was supposed to have learnt last year and generally getting up to speed for Rikkyo University.

Anyway, by now you may have gathered that absolutely nothing of any interest has happened of late (and you still read this far…?)

It’s all change come the weekend though, and I must say, I’m getting a wee bit anxious.

tiddlypom raaaaaaaaaaa