Weeknotes #128

The heat next week is going to be silly. It’s only June but we’re already looking at temperatures in the very high 30s. What will it be like next year? Or in ten years? Or next month for that matter? I worry about Emma and John dehydrating at school.

We went to a gardening centre on Saturday to see whether they had a sprinkler I could buy but the selection wasn’t great and I instead bought something later on Amazon. We did get some edge trimmers so that I can keep the grass that runs around the edge of the lawn under control.

On the way home, I swung by one of the Japanese preschools we’re considering sending John to next year. It sure looked impressive. They had a simply enormous jungle gym thing that the words ‘jungle gym’ don’t do justice to. I do worry whether John will handle a change in school well. One of the advantages of where he’s going now is the fact they deliver part of the class in English. Switching completely to Japanese feels like quite a jump, especially when he’s comprehensive ability is still quite low. That said, I have noticed over the past week in particular that it’s getting better. When we wait at the bus stop he’s more confident talking to the other children than he was initially.

Mum only has a week ‘til she goes back. It’ll be difficult when she’s no longer here. Having another set of hands around is definitely nice and it’s been great to see her again after spending so long apart. Christmas feels like a very long way away.

I finally got a message about Rowan’s citizenship application: seems like I was supposed to have provided a copy of my birth certificate. I’m not sure why; I provided a copy of my passport and surely that’s proof enough that I’m a citizen. Anyway, I happened to have a scan of the certificate readily to hand because Mum had needed one when she’d applied for her visa to come to Japan.

I got annoyed at not understanding the term ‘political economy’ and rather than reread the Wikipedia article for the umpteenth time, I had the idea of looking for a lecture on YouTube. I came across Duke University’s ‘Intro to Political Economy’ (YouTube) and while I’m a little disappointed that I’m now five episodes in and Michael Munger still hasn’t defined ‘political economy’ I’m so otherwise completely enamoured with him that I don’t care.

I finally watched Dune! Why did I wait so long? It was fantastic. I don’t know how it made $400 million (Wikipedia) but I’m happy that it did. Perhaps there’s still some hope for blockbuster cinema. I am genuinely curious what people who hadn’t read the book before they saw the film thought. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I don’t know how you were able to follow along if you didn’t already know the story.

Speaking of comparisons between the movie and the novel, seeing Dune meant that I could finally watch Alt Shift X’s 96-minute video comparing the two. It was worth the wait.

Everything was coming up Milhouse because Trash Theory released a video essay on Björk and her album Post. I wish he’d had time to go into Homogenic and Vespertine but the essay is already 29 minutes as it is. I still wish I had time to properly write something about my relationship to these albums but the video does a pretty good job showing how eclectic Björk’s output was at this time and what a breath of fresh air it was.

Of course, I’ve got to link now to Post (Apple Music). If I had to pick a favourite track to recommend, it’s probably ‘Isobel’ (although a close second is the track that precedes it, ‘You’ve Been Flirting Again’).