How to be Useful: The Importance of Nice Sounds

I'm not very good at getting things done. 

I like to sit. Sitting is really, really nice. I like walking as well, but oh boy, do I love to sit. I like warmth. I like sitting in warm places. I'm essentially a human cat. And, like any other cat, I'm not terribly good at writing blogposts or taking out the recycling on time or getting to a spin class.

But, whether it's because I'm feeling more energetic, or just because I'm getting older and it's putting the fear of death in me, I've spent the last couple of months getting more and more done. I've noticed a massive, pleasing uptick in the speed in which I cross things off my list. It's surprising, given that it's coincided with moving back into working a full-time job, but this seems to be how I act - like a gas, I expand or contract into whatever space you squeeze me into (I always like to think of the most flattering similes for myself). In periods where I haven't had a lot going on, I find it easy to slip into bad habits: sleeping in late, not getting out of the house until late, general wallowing. When I have a job or activity that takes up a bunch of my day, I manage to use my time much better, I guess because I value it more.

So how do I make myself get things done? And keep track of everything I need to do? In the past I used my laptop to keep long to-do lists and notes; then, for a while, I moved to keeping a notebook in what I believe trendy people refer to as "bullet journalling", but both were imperfect systems. I found them a bit fiddly and I didn't necessarily have a laptop or notebook everywhere I went, which was unhelpful because I tend to think of things to put on there constantly. In addition, it didn't give me much satisfaction when I managed to finish a task; on the laptop lists, I would delete the task and it was like it never existed in the first place, and in my notebooks crossing things off just looked a bit ugly, like I was a child who'd crossed something out in an essay. It sounds dumb but I like organisational systems that are aesthetically pleasing: neat, cute and fulfilling when I tick something off. I want to enjoy my productivity. Ideally, I wanted to hear a little "bing!" sound when I achieve something. I like bing sounds.

I'm not sure how the thought didn't occur to me earlier, but since I'm carrying my phone everywhere I go, I recently realised I should probably find an app that does this job for me. I haven't actually managed to find one perfect app, but I have two that I use in conjunction: Wunderlist, and Productive.

They're both very simple, which I love. Productive is good for things you want to get done on a regular basis - household chores, the gym, taking medication, studying etc. You can program what the task is and what days of the week you want to do it, then check your list daily and swipe things as you complete them. And yes, you get a bing. I've been using that for seven months now and found I have pretty good success; plus you can look back at previous weeks and months and see how often you achieved perfect days where you completed all your tasks. My only nitpick is that the system doesn't distinguish between days where you completed, say, six out of seven tasks, from days where you were total rubbish and achieved nothing, but I guess it might encourage you to strive for perfection. Wunderlist is newer to me; I've been using it a few weeks, but I really like it. It's a lot more flexible and allows you to create multiple lists; so you can have shopping lists but also things you want to get done that week or that month, lists of places you want to travel to etc. I like Wunderlist for keeping lists of one-off tasks, to be used together with Productive for my daily tasks. You get bings in Wunderlist too. Productive has a heavier bing - more of a bloop, actually - whereas Wunderlist has a light, springy bing. Bings are very important when it comes to productivity.

I'm curious to know how other people organise themselves, so please let me know if you have apps or systems that you like (also let me know if it involves bings). Myself, I'm going to continue trying to get better at using my time. Although I don't think I'm ever going to be the kind of person who doesn't like to sit.

University applications suck.

Being up at 2am trying to write an essay about how great you are is no fun. I would be rubbish at being Donald Trump.

Cribs 2017: The Unheated Studio Flat Edition

It took a bit of time, but I'm here. I've got bin-liners and an Allen key. I'm about to tackle Ikea self-assembly. I've gone mattress shopping, which as it turns out is a very pleasant experience where they give you cups of tea and invite you to bounce on a variety of expensive beds. I've had the internet set up twice, once on Monday and once more when it broke down half an hour later. I've moved my furniture around pointlessly out of pure curiosity. I've become dictator of the central heating.

I've moved into my own flat.

Okay, so the mattress I bought won't arrive for a few more days, so in the meantime I'm sleeping on a rather uncomfortable sofabed (I keep dreaming I'm an Indian yogi lying on a bed of nails to impress my circle of hippie followers). And the radiator is tiny. And there's bird poo on the window. But the window's so big! And it's mine (well, rented). The kitchen's adorable and the bathroom's surprisingly spacious. I'm on a leafy street with an easy walk to the beach and the city. I feel very lucky and I think once I actually have, y'know, basic furniture I'll have something pretty nice going on. The space is small but I think I can make it cosy and welcoming if I invest in a couple more candles and drapey materials. I've only been here a few days so I still feel a bit in-between, but I'm looking forward to being properly settled in. Living by yourself for the first time opens up a lot of opportunities to cook in your pyjamas while you play the same Dead Kennedys song on loop and rest assured, I will be taking those opportunities. Plus, I'm eliminating the two-hour-per-day commute I've been doing the last three months, and that frees up a lot of time for blogging and mooching about in cafes.

Life is good.

5 Things I Miss About Japan

Okay, I already did the post about things I love in the UK. But there are nice things and not-so-nice things about every place, so without further ado:


Mountains - I never knew I liked mountains. In Japan you can see mountains pretty much anywhere in any direction that isn't the sea. It's not only majestic, but also gives you an odd sense of protection. Like the hordes aren't going to come and get you. The hordes could totally come and get you in the UK.

Sento - Since coming back in August, I'm not sure I've ever felt...100% clean. Or maybe I've felt 100% clean, but a sento - a Japanese bathhouse - gets you 130% clean, you know? The little pre-bath showers, the steam everywhere, the lovely big massive bottles of shampoo and lotion and the weird novelty baths with the electric current running through them - they all contribute to a kind of super-clean you can't quite get from an everyday shower. Oh, and it might sound strange, but: when there's an open-air bath with a balcony and a view, and you get the chance to be there all by yourself, and after a few minutes of soaking in the tub you get out and don't even notice the cold air around you because your body temperature is so high, and you're naked as the day you were born with no shame whatsoever and looking out onto the city sprawled below you...you honestly feel like the supreme ruler of the universe. Trust me on that one.

Decent opening hours - Are you in the UK right now? Do you want to buy something or do some kind of activity outside your house? Is it later than 5.30? Too bad. I have a theory that this is genuinely a large contributing reason to the UK's binge-drinking culture. Places that actually have things you can do when it's night-time don't seem to become weird pits of alcoholic despair after dark in quite the same way we do. In Barcelona, kids run around the public squares well past an English kid's bedtime, making their own entertainment while their parents laugh and joke with their friends in nearby cafes. In Seoul, people buy jumpers and drink frappuccinos at midnight.. Drinking is one of a range of possible activities, or a stimulant to other, more central activities, rather than the means of whiling away cold hours. I miss that sense of lunar camaraderie. Also, it's really annoying when you need eggs for midnight snacks. I need my night eggs.

Festival spirit without aggro - somewhat related to the last one. I miss being able to go to massive cherry blossom picnics or other traditional festivals, cracking open a few beers, chatting amiably with strangers and feeling like everyone around me is having a harmlessly pleasant time. The UK really doesn't have enough traditional festivals, and most of the ones we do have seem to revolve around Morris dancing. But to be honest, I don't really want lots of festivals here, because I know we'd do them wrong. People would get edgy and ruin everything. There would be litter and a constant low-level aura of menace. As a generalisation, I trust Japanese people much more when it comes to combining massive overcrowding, alcohol and ceremony.

Trains - I live in the kingdom of Southern Rail. This one wasn't difficult.

Placeholder blogpost just to keep to my 1-per-week minimum because I'm moving this week and I am ill-prepared

Tuna sandwich

Happy New Year!

Well, everyone's already commented on what a weird and terrifying year it's been. I won't bother with that, as plenty of other people have covered that ground. I think I just want to post something to signal the end of the year and the beginning of something new, hopefully with a lot of exciting things in store (on a personal level at least).

In the second half of last year I had a lot of upheaval - basically every element of my life is totally different from what it was twelve months ago, when I was eating dumplings in Taiwan and waiting for what turned out to be some rather pitiful New Year's fireworks (we'd gone to the wrong end of town by mistake). I'm pretty happy with the new life I've managed to cobble together, though. I'm settled in my new job, which thankfully is flexible enough to allow me to squeeze my hours into four days a week, leaving one day for me to pursue voluntary work and still keep the weekend for myself. The idea of "giving back" is hard to talk about without sounding clichéd and self-satisfied, but I find my role pretty challenging and interesting, and I'm glad I get to do something vaguely valuable with my time. Oh, and next week I'm moving into a new place - a place all of my own. I know it's a bit silly to find some big symbolic significance in that, but I feel like the whole idea of "new year, new me" actually has some sort of solid foundation this year. I'm already rubbing my hands at the thought of cooking in my own little kitchen as I play my music as loud as I want (well, as loud as I want without provoking the ire of the neighbours).

I've a few goals for 2017. Most relevant I guess is wanting to post at least once a week. I'm not sure about what yet, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I want to cook more. I'm not a terrible cook but my skills don't go much beyond functional. In particular I'd like to focus more on improving the basics (scrambling eggs, prepping veg etc.) and trying more recipes from different kinds of cuisine from around the world - something I wasn't able to explore as fully in Japan.

I want to maintain my Japanese level. I've already got in the habit of watching Friends dubbed into Japanese (I've watched most episodes so many times in English that it's easy enough to follow even when I don't understand every word). Once I've moved I'll be in a much more convenient place for exploring Japanese language exchanges and meetups, and I might even take up lessons again if I have the time and money. I want to brush up on my Spanish, too, and maybe learn something new.

At the moment I'm getting a decent amount of exercise a day simply through my commute to my job, but the place I'm moving to is very close to work. While I'm relishing the idea of my 8.30 lie-ins, I do feel I'm probably going to become a lot more sedentary in my lifestyle if I'm not too careful. So I'm also thinking about that New Year's resolution that will make everyone sigh and roll their eyes - I want to exercise more.

Oh, and I want to get my dual citizenship, finally. When I was a kid and the laws on passports changed - so that children had to have their own individual passports rather than travel on their parents' - my mum asked me if I wanted a British or an Irish passport. I chose British - not out of any sense of patriotism, so much as thinking unicorns were cooler than harps. I've renewed my passport twice since then, and both times I went for British simply because it was easier to prove my citizenship. There's a lot of faffing around with birth certificates and whatnot to be done if I want to get first Irish citizenship and then a passport, but with the status of British passports so up in the air it feels like the right time to get around to it. Plus I like harps more than unicorns now.

That's all, really. See you in the new year. Don't be too hard on yourself. Don't be a dick to anyone.

5 Things I Love About Being Back in the UK

I've been back in the UK for about four months now. In some ways, it feels like I never left. I got rid of the habit of bowing, and I don't find it weird that trains are cancelled at random. I get stuck when I try to speak Japanese, and an inarticulate stream of nonsense syllables comes out instead. I miss a lot of things about it, and there are parts of living in the UK that frustrate me now. But let's do something positive and talk about 5 things I love and appreciate now that I'm back in the UK:

The wealth of food available - When I was in Japan, and people asked me what I missed about the UK, my mind always jumped to food first. There were a lot of individual things that I missed - sausage rolls, English breakfasts, parsnips, sausage rolls - but the whole picture was the most important thing for me. Apart from the US, I'm not sure the UK can be beaten for the sheer variety of what you can buy in the supermarket. There are some upsides to the more limited, focused approach of the Japanese supermarket - the fruit and vegetables always tend to be seasonal, for example, which provides you with a smug sense of being in tune with nature - but overall it could be pretty frustrating to walk into a Japanese supermarket and find entire aisles dedicated to ramen, but pretty much zero non-Japanese food apart from the token packets of spaghetti i.e. Italian ramen. Import stores exist, but are expensive and limited. Part of me dislikes the talons of the big supermarket chains and the way they slowly crush the British high street, but another part of me loves that I can buy nam pla, ras el hanout and marshmallow Fluff all in the same place. (Funnily enough, if you combine those three ingredients, you get my favourite midnight snack.)

No weird bugs - you don't think of Japan as a tropical place, really. But make no mistake, it's in the geographical zone of Weird Bugs and Insect Horror. I've had far too many "what the hell is THAT" moments in Japan. Why does it have fur? Why does it move like that? Can it fly? Why is it eating my quiche?

Weather - this might seem like a weird one. Most people don't think of British weather as a plus, especially at this time of year. But to be honest, I love overcast weather. It makes things feel still and peaceful to me, and I guess gives me an odd sense of beginning-of-the-school-year nostalgia. I like that the leaves get wet and muddy and all clump together and make you tread carefully, so your autumn walks automatically become a little slower and more contemplative. I like the slow trends of temperature, not flashing straight from one season to the next but meandering back and forth. I like the contradictions; that warm sun can fall on frost and rain can fall six or seven times in a day without the pavement ever really getting wet. Plus, no horribly sticky summer.

Hearing different languages on the street - okay, some people don't like this one. Some people *really* don't like this one, as anyone who's kept up with the news this year could tell you. But I get excited walking down from Brighton station through the centre and hearing Spanish, then Chinese, then Korean, then Polish amongst all the English. For starters, my ears are still not quite used to being able to automatically understand most of the people around me, and it kind of hurts overhearing everyone at once, so it's a relief not to understand all of it. And it's just fun to me. Hearing other worlds interacting with your own is cool. Meeting people from other places is cool. It makes me want to learn every language in the world, even the ones that are of no use to me. That's a specific kind of energy I found missing in Japan.

Being able to engage with employees - Japan is well-known for its strong hospitality culture. People say the service is the best in the world. And that's....sort of true. Service staff always look happy to see you, they're always super-polite, and they always come running when you need them. The issue is that they will do everything they possibly can for you, so long as you are doing things in the specific way they expect you to. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't going round Japan asking waiters to put caramel sauce on my gyoza or demanding they only talk to me in rhyme. I'm not a demanding customer. But do something like ask for more than one sandwich or tell a hotel employee you'd rather walk to a certain place rather than get a taxi, and they will look at you like you've got two heads. It's like the whole tree of events has broken down in their minds, and they're not sure what crazy thing this weird foreigner's going to do next. Is it time to get the manager? Is this maniac going to get a gun out and start shooting at the ceilings? It's so nice just to be able to ask for a second sachet of ketchup, or a doggy-bag for your leftover dessert, and to have your needs instantly understood without feeling like any request is breaking The Unspoken Rules.

So that's five things I love about being here. Don't worry, I hate things too.