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Shane Warne died (ABC). For those who don’t follow cricket, I think it’s difficult to explain how significant he is in the history of the game. For Australians, we typically think of Don Bradman as the greatest player of all time. I’d put Warne second. My favourite commemoration was this tweet.
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The crisis in Ukraine continued. I wish I had better news to report.
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Eri and I decided some months back that we’d use the occasion of the move to buy a new refrigerator and a new washing machine. This actually happened in the last weekend of February but I went to an electronics shop that’s near the new place and bought both appliances with delivery to occur the day before we move into the apartment. Fingers crossed that that all goes smoothly!
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I called up NTT to start preparations to move our Internet connection over to the new place only to discover that NTT doesn’t service our building. After some further enquiry, it turns out that the company that manages the building has a contract with an Internet service provider and the Internet is available for ‘free’ to tenants who simply need to plug a router into the wall. That sounds nice in theory but I’m pretty sure it means absolutely awful network speeds. I asked if we could contract separately with NTT to install a separate connection and was told we could not. I’m now low-key terrified that the connection might be so terrible I won’t be able to work from home. I’ve looked into an alternative service that uses a cellular 5G connection but of course it looks like the new place is just outside a 5G coverage zone.
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Emma’s COVID-19 vaccine voucher arrived. Unfortunately, due to the timing of the move and the fact that the vouchers are specific to a local government area, she won’t be able to use this one and will instead have to wait until after we’ve moved and then been sent a new voucher. Yay, bureaucracy!
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I mentioned last week that the moving estimate from our first choice in removalists was significantly higher than I was hoping. The second company quoted a price that was about ¥100,000 less which is better than nothing but still a lot higher than we’d hoped. James suggested the trick of playing the removalists off against each other and while I’ve strong reason to believe this can work (I’ve heard the same advice independently from colleagues at work), we decided to save the time and energy and go with the slightly cheaper option.
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New York Times word games further took over my life. In addition to completing Wordle and the Spelling Bee everyday, Eugenia and I started doing crosswords as well. I’d tried to get into these before but would get frustrated at my own inability to complete the more difficult ones (the NYT daily crossword gets harder over the course of Monday to Sunday). Eugenia and I have complementary strengths and we’re generally able to clear even the more difficult puzzles over the course of a couple of hours.
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One of my favourite songs of all time is Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’. I was alerted (via the latest video in Trash Theory’s terrific New British Canon series) to the fact that the excellent Song Exploder podcast had an episode on the song. There’s obviously some overlap between the two but if you’re a fan of the song, I recommend both.
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Speaking of video essays, I quite liked this essay from Phil Jamesson on what makes Conan O’Brien funny. And speaking of Conan O’Brien, I started watching Murderville (Netflix) at Hamish’s suggestion and O’Brien is the first guest and my favourite so far.
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I also watched the second episode of the new series of Law & Order and it was markedly better than the premiere. That said, that’s a pretty low bar and I remain disappointed that they didn’t take the opportunity to introduce a female detective or a female lead prosecutor. Both decisions would have made the conflict in this episode far more substantive.
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So I’m a fan of Franz Ferdinand and, as loyal readers will recall, Daft Punk. In that case, I must love the Daft Punk remix of Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out’ (Apple Music), right? Unfortunately, no. I’ll link to it anyway for the novelty but it really feels like a massive missed opportunity.
