Beer

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A couple of weeks ago I had too many things to blog about, but now, I have none, or at least nothing that springs immediately to mind. So, I’m going to write about beer again.
I started a batch of (alcoholic) ginger beer last night, which is the first time I’ve tried making it. This is only a 5 litre batch, which, if you add it to the 24 litres of wheat beer that I also started with a friend on the weekend, makes for nearly 30 litres of beer. Not all of this is mine, but the 10+ litres that is my share, is about what I’d normally drink in a year. I’m cool with that, because alcohol doesn’t really agree with me all that well, but in some ways it’s a shame, as i really enjoy brewing.
The ginger beer should be pretty interesting. I also put some liquorice root in, the sweetness of which, I’m hoping, will add to the body. Along with that, I used amarillo hops, which have this amazing grapefruit aroma, and as long as the aromatics don’t get all fermented out, should add a nice bit of citrus to the final product. Have to wait and see I guess.
Next on my list, after a batch of pineapple beer, is an attempt at making a batch of all grain beer, (i.e. not using malt extract), at which point I think I will have consumed my budget, my supply of bottles, and all the space in my cupboards. Anyone want to buy some beer?

Happy Birthday. Your wife will now come with us.

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For those of you who didn’t know, today (March 28) is my birthday. I’ve known for a while now that I was going to spend most of the day travelling, but what I didn’t expect, was the hassles we would encounter from Chinese Immigration. Or more specifically, the hassles that Sasha would encounter.
The plan today was to fly from Osaka to Hong Kong, via Beijing. Being a transfer rather than entering the country, I assumed that we would simply get off our plane, find our way to the gate for the next flight, then we’d be on our way. Writing this, I just realised that I’ve never done an international transfer before, I’ve always stopped over, so maybe I’m showing my naivety here.
Anyhow, it turned out that we had to go through a health screening check. Then go through an immigration procedure, which in theory is them checking your ticket and a simple stamp in your passport, before we could go to the gate for our connecting flight.
As we were running pretty late, I went to the head of the line to see if we could go straight through, and the immigration guy said we could. I went and fetched Sasha and Bart, then we went to the counter. I had my passport examined and stamped, then he started looking at Sasha’s passport, then he looked at it a bit more, and a bit more, and a bit more, talked to her in Chinese for a bit, got someone else to come and look at the passport…
Ultimately, it ended up with Bart and I on one side of the immigration yellow line, and Sasha being taken back out to the main area, where yet another person was fetched to look at the passport. Eventually, after me standing looking through the glass wall for a while, they came over with Sasha’s passport to explain that her Australian visa had expired, she couldn’t go to Hong Kong, and her flight would be changed to take her to Jiangsu province (where she’s from). I did my best to explain that the date on her visa was the “must enter Australia by” date, and not the “this visa is valid to” date, but he steadfastly ignored my explanations and just repeated that she’d be sent back to Jiangsu. … So, that’s how Bart and I ended up in Hong Kong and Sasha got stuck in Beijing.
She’s still in Beijing (Sunday night), but will be flying back to Nanjing tomorrow morning where her mum will meet her. Bart and I will leave for Shanghai tomorrow as planned.

Now, I’m not sure what this says about the Chinese government, but whatever it is, it’s not good.
I figure there are a number of explanations.
First, they’re incompetent and their English isn’t good enough to tell the difference between the different dates on visas. If this is true though, then it’s pretty incredible. I’m sure that these people would see a hell of a lot of visas every day. So to think that the can’t tell the difference between one date and another is pretty ridiculous.

Second, they deliberately set out to disrupt our travel plans. If you’re going to stop someone, then you need an excuse, and this seems like a pretty good candidate. Imagine that you’re singling a group of passengers out for “Special Attention”, then I’m sure it would be no hard task to come up with a list of excuses, like “misunderstanding” a visa, in order to hold them for a while.
And as to why they would want to… dunno.
Australia doesn’t seem to be very popular with the Chinese government over the last couple of years, and it’s a lot easier to pick on Chinese Citizens with Australian visas, than to pick on Australian citizens directly. There’s a lot less likelihood of official retribution.
Alternatively, maybe they wanted to ask her stuff. Find out what she’d been doing in Australia for the last couple of years, ask her if she’d be willing to let them know interesting stuff in the future.

I feel a bit like a conspiracy theory nut when I start talking like this, but from everything I’ve read about, heard about, and experienced of the Chinese Government, I think it’s pretty justified. Especially when they should have little or no interest in Australian visa. Of course, this is Immigration that we’re talking about, so normal rules and rationality don’t necessarily apply, but her Australian visa should really have no bearing on whether she can fly to Hong Kong or not. As a private citizen, it shouldn’t be the business of the Chinese government at all.

Anyway. The moral of the story is, I won’t go through the gates again before Sasha. And it sucks to travel on a Chinese passport… but we already knew that.

Shinkansen and Hiroshima

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I’m writing this on the shinkansen to Hiroshima, via Osaka. It’s going to take about 5 hours all up, including half an hour in osaka to change trains. It would’ve been quicker to take the “Nozomi” but we would’ve had to pay extra on top of the rail pass, so, we didn’t take that option.
Something that has really struck me this time in Japan, are the similarities with China. It’s hard to say exactly what it is. It seems to be a combination of the architecture, the food, the general attitude of people, the Chinese characters all over the place, and just the general mood of the place.
Sasha’s generally pretty happy with the afood, which means that it must be more like Chinese food than Australian food. On the scale of things, better than toast and sandwiches, but not as good as fresh fish in spicy soup.
In part at least, I think the architecture can also be explained by climate and population density. It’s still only just spring here, so the trees are still pretty bare, which lends everything a bleak, bare concrete feel to the place. Add to this a lot of tall buildings, and heap of people wandering around, and you get a pretty similar ambience to China. Things are however much neater and cleaner, and you don’t get the same impression of underlying chaos that you would in China. Not that the chaos is even that hidden.

The gaps, or lack of, between cities and towns is also similar to China. From the train, everything just blends together. Once you get out of Tokyo, you see more fields, trees and bamboo, but it’s rare to travel through an area without buildings of some description, and even rarer still for those buildings to be less than two stories.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to write any more blog posts once we get to mainland China. I hear that wordpress is blocked. If things go silent, I guess you’ll know why.

Despite no apparent delay, I’m now writing this on the Shinkansen going back from Hiroshima to Osaka. Because we booked late, Sasha, Bart and I have all been split up and put in non-adjacent seats, which is ok because it gives me time to write this, but it leaves me with noone to talk to. Not that should be talking anyway, as we’re in the “Silence Car”. No announcements are made, and the girls with the trolleys of food don’t say anything when they come through the carriage. When you buy a ticket, they give you a little slip of paper with the conditions for the Silence Car, and a bold heading that says Thank you for your cooperation in keeping this car quiet. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how effective this is. There are still a bunch of people chatting away, and I get the impression that a lot of people are in this carriage for the same reason as us, they booked too late. However, I guess it’s a nice consideration for people who have spent 12 hours at work and don’t want to have to put up with the annoyance of railway staff telling them what they already know.

The peace park in Hiroshima was nice to visit. We got bailed up by three Japanese Jehova’s Witnesses, who were very interested in telling us about the bible. Apparently there are 220,000 of them in Japan (JWs, not bibles). The museum is appropriately sober and depressing. They mention the Nanjing massacre a few times in their history of Hiroshima, as the Fifth Division of the Japanese army was based in Hiroshima, and was involved in the goings-on at Nanjing, as well as a whole lot of other fighting in China, Russia and South East Asia.
Travelling around Japan, and seeing the sheer number of people, and industrial facilities, it’s easy to see how such a seemingly small country was able to make such an impression in world war 2.
That being said, if Hiroshima hadn’t had the atomic bomb dropped on it, I think it would be yet another medium sized Japanese city that people may have heard of, but know nothing about.
With any luck, I’ll have internet access tonight and will be able to post this.

Nikko

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We went to Nikko today, and there’s even more photos online to prove it. It’s a nice area, lots of big trees, old shrines, and monks(?) asking you to buy trinkets in every shrine and beside every monument. That’s on top of having to pay for access to the shrines to begin with. Despite that, it’s a nice spot to visit, and it’s worth it just for the train ride from Utsonomiya to Nikko, which passes through some nice, quaint, countryside.
We also found a 100 Yen shop today, which was fun. I got a toothbrush, and some other bits and pieces which I didn’t really need, like velcro cable ties.
Anyhow, I don’t have much insightful to say at the moment, as I’m feeling pretty tired still. I’ll aim to write something when I can allocate some more computer time and energy. Till then, check out the pictures that were linked to in my last post.

Morning in Tokyo

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I’m not sure when I became susceptible to motion sickness again, but after 9 hours on a plane, and another hour and a half on a train yesterday, I wasn’t feeling too well. Fortunately, after walking around in the cool (cold) nice air,and having something to eat, I felt much better. I’ve put some photos in my picasa album. You can look at them at the following URL.
http://picasaweb.google.com/wiley.fuller/JapanAndChina2010
It’s mostly pictures of Bart and Sasha, as I’ve got control of the camera.
I’ll post more as I take them, but for now we’ve got to get something to eat and go to Nikko.

Only one week to go

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Well, it’s been a while since I went overseas. Nearly two years in fact, which means it’s been about that long since I’ve had a holiday of more than a couple of weeks, and I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to it. But, what it also means is that I’ve got to get some stuff organised that I’ve been avoiding. Time to ring the body corporate about the roof and finally send off the form to get my McDonalds super-annuation rolled over (all $70 of it, from 1995).
However, I’ve also got some things done, like finally installing ubuntu netbook remix 9.10, which, incidentally, is really good.
We’ve got all our hotels booked for Japan and Hong Kong, and we’ve even started packing.
In beer news, I’ve still got quite a lot left over from the party. My most recent brew is also the one which people seemed the least keen on. I tried it again tonight, and personally, I really like it. It’s got a lot of flavour, with plenty of tropical fruit. It also seems to have dried out a bit, but not so dry that it puckers up your mouth, or wipes out the aftertaste. Unfortunately, the plastic bottles which most of that batch are stored in, don’t seem to have carbonated as well as the 330ml glass bottles, and it’s not such a great beer when it’s flat. I’ll try one again next weekend and see how it’s going then.

Another rare post

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I know that’s it’s been a long time between posts.   But hey, what are you going to do, sue me?

I’m currently watching a documentary called “Crude” on ABC iView about Oil, it’s well worth watching if you get the chance.  As depressing as you might image, but interesting nonetheless.

In other news, there’s only about 4 months till we fly to Japan, then on to China.  Woohoo.   First, however, I need to fix my camera.  I’d be a bit dissapointed (in myself?) if I went to Japan and China with a camera that still has a dodgy scroll wheel.

You might’ve noticed that my blog address has changed too.  I’ve decided to ditch my web hosting, and just move my blog to wordpress.com, into The Cloud as it were.

I’ve also been reading a lot of Conan books recently.  If you haven’t come across the Conan books before, I thoroughly recommend checking them out.  He’s the archetypal, and original for that matter, Barbarian.   You can download a heap of them from Feedbooks.

Tartrazine and the rest

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I’ve got a lot more interested in food colorings recently, but unfortunately not in a particularly positive way. I bought a cupcake at Woolworths recently, and after eating it (which, I admit, is probably the wrong time) decided to look at the ingredients. I bought it thinking that it had Chocolate icing, but I think it was banana, which is kind of strange, because you’d expect them to use Yellow icing, not Brown. Anyway, you can imagine my amazement, when I discovered that the icing contained seven distinct food colorings, and the cake itself contained two. When I got around to looking up all the numbers, the colorings in the cake turned out to be natural and pretty innocuous, but all seven of the colorings in the icing turned out to be bad in some respect, and a lot of them have been banned in several countries. Here’s a summary of them

  • 102 – Yellow – Tartrazine. linked with hyperactivity, and known to cause reactions in asthma sufferers and people with aspirin intolerance. Banned in Norway and Austria
  • 110 – Sunset Yellow – coal tar dye. Linked to hyperactivity, can cause allergic reaction, Possible Carcinogen
  • 122 – Red – carmoisine. linked with hyperactivity, can cause allergic reactions, skin swelling, nettle rash, same link with aspirin intolerance as Tartrazine. Banned in Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United States.
  • 123 – Dark Red – Amaranth. Possible Carcinogen. Banned in the US since 1976.
  • 129 – Allura Red AC. Replacement for Amaranth, less health effects reported. Still banned in Denmark, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Sweden.
  • 132 – Blue – Indigo, another coal tar dye. Allowed to be used everywhere, but can cause a reaction.
  • 142 – Green S – Coal Tar Dye. Similar health effects to other coal tar dyes. Banned in Canada, Finland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United States.

After this, I went and looked up the list of colorings on the little bottles of food coloring in my cupboard, and they’re all bad ones too. Time to buy some natural colors I think, and time to stop buying crap cakes from woolworths.

Blog Migration

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I’ve finally got around to migrating my blog from Blogger to WordPress.   This probably doesn’t mean much to you, except that if you want to comment on anything, you’ll probably have to create a new account.  What it also means, is that I can put up more information more easily, that I don’t want to put on the front page of my website.

Theoretically, converting to WordPress is pretty easy.   The provide an “import” button that should just take everything from blogger, and dump it into your wordpress blog.   In reality, however, it’s not so simple.  After much wrestling with the software, and swearing at error messages, I eventually gave up and just wrote my own conversion program.  I’ll put a copy of it somewhere on my website when I get around to it.

I’ll also change the theme sometime in the future, though the look of the default wordpress them isn’t too bad, and it saves me more frustration, swearing and headaches.   I’ve also started tagging all my old posts, so if you wanted, for whatever reason, to browse back through them, you’ll be able to more easily.

An apple a day sends you broke

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According to all the literature (published on glossy white paper with
uber minimalist design), Apple products “just work”. However, this is
only the case if you use them with other apple products, and connect
them together using the “Designed for Apple” cables. The catch is, if
you lose that cable, you’re going to have to cough up $25 to buy a new
one. I got given an ipod touch the other day (unfortunately not to
keep), so that I can look at writing some programs for it, but it’s
missing the cable to connect it to the computer, and more importantly,
charge it. No problem, I thought to myself, I’ll just use the one from
my ipod, and I would, if I could find it. So, I went to JB HiFi this
afternoon, and the cheapest cable they sell is $20. This however is $5
cheaper than the official apple one. Maybe I’m just in a mood to be
annoyed, but it seems to me, that Apple is taking people for a ride.
They’ve somehow become the trendiest kid on the block, jacked their
prices up to ridiculous levels, and then they charge you obscene amounts
for any accessories or replacement parts. Anyway, I’m going to sustain
my indignation, and buy a cheap chinese knock-off from ebay, which
should cost about $10, including shipping, and I refuse to buy any apple
products from this point on.