Glasgow

In Glasgow, the sunshine capitol of Europe, global warming has caused the Mediterranean cafe culture to take off big time.

And that's not all that is blue...

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Christmas Origami

And the turkey was nice too.

It is, however, very dark in Scotland at this time of year.

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People sheeple

Much enjoying the improved sheep density in Ole Blighty compared to Japan, although we have yet to eat any of them, because the relatives have naturally been mostly serving fatted calves.

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143

The people came and packed up our stuff and took it all away - in 143 packages.

Getting ready to eject the sofa out the window and over the balcony; a standard procedure in Japan.

Wrapping a tandem

This being Japan the level of service and organisation was extraordinary.

They were amused by the number of unicycles, bicycles and tandems, and quantity of bicycle parts so it was fitting that the last package, no. 143 was Tandem Bicycle (blue). Naturally we have another tandem tucked away in our check-in baggage. Wouldn't do to be without any tandems at all for 6 whole weeks!

Don't know what Pickfords are like at the UK end, but at this end they were just as careful as you'd expect a normal Japanese moving crew to be.. (super-careful).

What now, you are thinking? This is Japan! Now we CLEAN!

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MAC Excess

It's a tough life working for JAMSTEC. Here's my desk on our last day.

By the third from last purchase, when we were told to buy new computers if ours were more than 3 years old, because there was too much money to spend, I'd run out of good names and called my new Mac Pro "MACXS". The only mitigating circumstance is that these are the sum total of both our computers. The oldest dates from 2008, which is a long time in PC world, but Macs almost all just keep looking new. One is broken beyond repair and another so well used that it is held together with string and sticky tape. But another only has a dodgy trackpad, and the iMac's disk blew up a few weeks ago; we would have got that fixed if we were staying.

So what happens to all these computers now? Usually when someone leaves, precisely nothing happens. We have been there longer than almost everyone, and since our research was so fundable, we had three large budgets we had to help spend on our really rather cheap science. Computers and travel are what we bought. So I think we have accumulated more than average. We have at least got someone in another program interested in taking the latest two laptops. But I don't hold out much chance of the Mac Pros going to a good home - everyone will want the new style tiny black desktop thingie... I prefer the old one, as the modularity was very useful for spending up budget. Buy a base model one year and then ramp up the disks, RAM, graphics whenever the budget demanded to be spent. If only the motherboard could also have bee upgraded...

Things are going to be different now! We have a beautiful second hand laptop from Akihabara with his'n'hers partitions.

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