xpablo: designer, entrepreneur, creative magnate, great shag.

Time:

9:50 pm.

I woke up this morning due to earthquake tremors. Never had that before, and a little unsettling when you're sleeping on the 15th floor of a 30-storey building in Tokyo.

I watched the film 'Saw' just before going to bed as well, probably didn't help my temperament.

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Time:

6:50 am.

Useful life lesson learned #29387:

When dining in Tokyo at a traditional restaurant with a Japanese businessman who you're trying to impress, do not, under any circumstances, exclaim confidently: "you order for both of us; since I really need to experience true Japanese culture".

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Time:

11:08 pm.

Today we welcome the first full contribution from Ohdave meets, a colourful new blog providing insightful interviews into friends, family and randoms.

I have the honour of being the first interviewee. Whilst it's probably around 50% real and about 50% fiction, it's certainly never far from the truth. An insightful man, that Ohdave.

If you'd like to be interviewed, make sure you're available at some point on MSN or simply by email, get in touch and the man will add you to the list.

Personally I'm very much looking forward to the next installments.

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Time:

12:04 am.

I tried placing a bet, as in a proper money bet at a betting house, for the first ever time yesterday. I've always stayed well clear of those places; they look horrible when you poke your nose around the door.

I think what made me do it is (a) a sense of wanting to risk some of my money, just because I feel like it's not doing anything sitting in the bank, (b) I should experience this world at some point in my life, and (c) that whenever I've thought in recent years that I should have placed a bet on something, I've not done it - and then the outcome has been just as I'd thought. I was particularly annoyed about not betting on London as Olympic bid winner.

So I started off with two things I'm quite confident will turn out alright. Both I wish I'd done sooner, because I wanted to do it whilst odds were better but just didn't get round to it. I put the maximum I could on Gordon Brown being next Labour Party leader (£33) and the maximum I could afford to lose on David Cameron winning Conservative Party leader (£100).

I'm sure I'll move beyond politics at some point. Then I'll just wait for the addiction to set in. Next thing to try: online poker.

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Time:

11:04 pm.

Hello. I’ve just this moment landed on the plane from Warsaw. All the waiting at the airport has put me in a reflective mood, so whilst I wait for the baggage reclaim conveyors to get moving I thought I’d fire up the laptop and tell you about a few things that I’ve been thinking about in recent moments.

( long post )

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Time:

8:51 pm.

At work recently, we've set up a group of people to investigate some of the latest web technologies including RSS, podcasts, wiki, friendster-communities, skype, etc.

These largely sound like geek technologies at the moment but most of them will be pretty well-known within the next 12-18 months. They've already been increasing exponentially but are largely the preserve of those in the know. It's amazing what an interesting journey it has been, seeking out technlogy for technology's sake.

( for example )

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Time:

7:03 pm.

I've finally started working again on my magazine project. Finally.

I'm not sure how similar it might be to the zine things that others including

jinxremoving creates, but I suspect it's very different. I've resisted asking her for a copy as I feel it might derail me from doing what I'm trying to do - realise my own vision, selfishly, of something I've wanted to create for a couple of years. Despite my egocentric attitude, I hope that people will take an interest as it's not about me or anything personal.

People have asked me many times what the magazine is all about, and I can't explain. In fact, the only way anybody will understand is if I produce a first issue, which is what I'm going to do over the next few months.

If forced, I'll say the magazine's aim is 'to excite others to take actions'. In that context, it serves as useful reading for people who have a strong desire to get up off their arses and begin wildly ambitious projects which are generally in a different direction from the one they've been taking so far in life. These projects could be business, entrepreneurial, social or personal initiatives of many varieties.

The name of the magazine will be Unco.

To help readers understand what the magazine is about if they find themselves with a copy, one of the first pages will be a questionnaire, which I have just written. Hope it helps.

( Questionnaire )

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Time:

6:44 pm.

List five songs that you are currently 'digging'.
It doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good.
But they must be songs you're really enjoying right now.
Post these instructions in your 'blog' along with your five songs.
Then tag five other 'people' to see what they're listening to.

I'm not going to tag anybody, but I was tagged by

concourse so here goes:

1) The Streets, 'Blinded by the Lights'. He's a chav, yes, but this is an excellent song.
2) KT Tunstall, 'Black Horse and the Cherry Tree'. In the BBC's first studio broadcast from Glastonbury this year, KT played this song solo and it was excellent. The album version isn't quite as good though.
3) Parry, 'I Was Glad'. I sang this in the choir at my friend Simon's recent wedding. Such a brilliant and powerful piece of music; it's been on loop the past couple of weeks.
4) Bill Evans, 'Peace Piece'. Was driving along to Radio 3 t'other day, and this came on. I had to stop the car.
5) Steinberg/Kelly, 'Like a Virgin'. This version is from Moulin Rouge but for some reason doesn't appear on the Vol.1 soundtrack, which most people have. I've only recently got hold of this, and I'm not regretting it.

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Time:

5:42 pm.

A fairly hectic day. Turns out that I missed being on one of the affected trains by about five minutes; very lucky considering I only just got that train as the doors were closing. I'm also thankful to the guy in Japan who I was supposed to call - the very reason I was travelling slightly earlier than usual today.

The girl who sits opposite me in our office was at Edgware Road when one of the explosions went off, apparently it was very scary.

Lots of people have been calling to check if all's OK. We were worried about a couple of people from work who we couldn't get in touch with until mid-afternoon.

Walking around our local area at the moment is a bit like a ghost town. Almost all public transport is still down; I have no idea how I'm getting home. It's a four hour walk and I have lots of things to carry.

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Time:

5:00 pm.

Tagged by

concourse

Not because you have to, but because you WANT to! Things you enjoy, even when no one around you wants to go out and play. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level? Make a list, post it to your journal.

1. Playing a piece of music perfectly on the piano, with nobody else in the room.
2. Not being able to sleep due to coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas for new projects, having to find paper to write on, and not being tired in the morning due to adrenalin.
3. Listening to loud, ambient, atmosphere-altering music on headphones whilst walking along a busy street.
4. Accidentally bumping into somebody you genuinely want to meet.
5. Forgetting where I am.
6. Knowing that something you did really helped somebody out and not wanting to seek praise or recognition for it.
7. Making somebody believe something you made up (always gives me a bizarre sense of pride - and yes, I generally (eventually) tell people when I've done this to them)
8. Running around the park at midnight when there's nothing but the sound of your footfalls. It's especially good when you've been running for half an hour and you're not tired. You feel like a machine and you feel like you can do anything. Total serenity.
9. Getting to bed early (very, very rare) without any worries.
10. Being intimate and completely relaxed with somebody.
11. Laughing so hard that it hurts.

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Time:	6:30 pm.
Music:	Computer fans.

The Chapman Brothers have moved into the office right underneath me. It's still slightly strange to be bumping into them every day. On Friday they asked us to 'tread lightly' because they were filming and our footstep noise was coming through.

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Time:

2:01 pm.

I notice that the

owltomes has managed to slip his write-up of the same trip in there a few hours before me, but feel free to take a look at this alternative version. NB you'll need a decent internet connection and about 20 minutes to get through the whole lot.

Enjoy.

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Time:

1:23 am.

I've been in Tokyo the last 24 hours and it's completely fucking crazy. Just been to see a Lemon Jelly gig after suddenly realising an hour before that it was happening.

More soon. Nine, I'm planning to stay in that place you recommended in Kyoto for a couple of nights, if they still have rooms (might not get one as it's cherry-blossom season).

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Time:

12:22 am.

Just written an email to International Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontieres to ask for assistance in organising a charity event to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to donate money to countries where availability of medicines is low. While I was writing I developed a lump in my throat, since I realised that the entire success of such an endeavour would depend on the amount of positive press coverage these drugs companies would obtain as a result. Such a pity that that's the deciding factor.

( read on )

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Time:

1:26 am.

Ugh. Been doing a lot of travelling recently; unfortunately it has all been work-related. I've been to a few interesting places; most recently Amsterdam and Paris, but you never really get to enjoy them when you're running conferences (my job).

Generally, any time out of the office - whether business or pleasure - for me means harder work either side of it. So actually you're stressed trying to get things tied up before you leave, stressed while running the conference and stressed about getting back again in order to take care of the backlog of work that's built up whilst away. All of it really does sap your strength. And with eating out every meal and getting precious little sleep, I feel very unhealthy. I think I've now eaten out at a restaurant for at least one meal a day for the past three weeks; I'm desperate to get back to simple food.

At least I've been able to keep exercising despite all this (one of my three new year's resolutions - yes, I'm still on track...) though that hasn't exactly helped me combat fatigue.

Nevertheless I'm looking forward to my trip to Japan in a couple of weeks, with

owltomes and

chadstar. I've not done as much research as I would have liked, and we really need to book our accommodation, but at least I'm confident that the itinerary they've suggested is going to be pretty perfectly what I would have done anyway if travelling alone.

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Time:

2:58 pm.

Distance(km) Time(mins) Av.speed(km/h) Achieved?

4 17 14.12 Yes

3 12 15 Yes

5 21 14.26 Yes

4 16 15 Yes

6 25 14.4 Yes

5 20 15 Yes

What next?

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Time:

12:54 am.

This rising death toll is really scaring me every time I listen into the news. I've just given some money to the International Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontiers appeals but not sure what else I can do. I've heard back from one Malaysian friend, who is OK; I have yet to hear back from my old friend Marsh in Sri Lanka though.

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Subject:	Warsaw
Time:	11:39 pm.
Music:	Lemon Jelly.

Why did everybody give me the impression that Warsaw was a bombed-out hole of a place?

On first impressions I thought it was really rather a lovely European city. Hopefully I'll get to spend a little longer there next time, as I did only manage to spend about 15 minutes outside of the hotel.

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Subject:	A weekling
Time:	1:55 pm.

Seems a little bit like stating the obvious, but I really like going away for a week and having lots of interesting journal stuff to read on my return. Seems as if everybody's been leading exciting lives.

This week I:
- managed to save my conference despite losing half my speakers in the run-up to the event (the main cause of my anxiety in the past few weeks)
- left my one-day-old ipod in a taxi and not cared
- bought two mini ipods at once, two days later
- spent $300 on a ticket for an American Football game (without knowing the rules)
- thoroughly enjoyed the experience of going to an American Football game
- agreed to publish a book
- met a school friend who I used to share a room with and who is now an oily estate agent/salesman in the poshest part of london
- got the second-drunkest I've ever been (not nice)
- ate high-fat fried food every day for a week
- got upgraded on two long-haul flights by making a fuss over lack of legroom
- survived on no sleep for the first time since university (I'm seriously out of practice)
- talked election politics with lots of Philadelphia residents
- took a taxi journey with an Iraqi refugee from the first Gulf War
- discovered some really nice parts of Philadelphia, which I didn't previously believe existed
- sent emails to 7000 people
( - done an email survey. )

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Time:

1:29 am.

Got to go to Philadelphia later today. Really don't want to. Work has been killing me of late; I've worked at least 12 hours a day for 2 weeks in a row now, trying to save this conference I'm organising from the death it so clearly wants.

Anyway, the rest of you put your feet up and I'll be back on Thursday.

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Time:

12:14 am.

Running targets

Distance(km) Time(mins) Av.speed(km/h) Achieved?

4 17 14.12 Yes

3 12 15 Yes

5 21 14.26 No

4 16 15 No

6 25 14.4 No

5 20 15 No

Terrible I know, but it seems to be the only way I can get myself to exercise regularly.

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