So I've come across two small things this week. The smallest things amuse me, hence why the internet meme creation association (I assume there to be a secret cabal where the creation of funny pictures is a high priority, (the IMCA to those of us with an 80's cult classic dance bent)) has my lifelong patronage. I love encountering the unexpected. In todays world, where I can accurately guess the outcome of at least 85% of movies after ten minutes, it's refreshing to encounter brilliance in unexpected ways. The fantastic thing is that prior to the internet, very small groups of people would direct the flow of television and movies - media in general. Now, one person takes a picture in India, another adds a funny caption in England, a third in Germany photoshops (yes, photoshop has become a verb, (to shop)) in a shark with lasers, and the fourth posts it onto an american board. Forget unified medical systems, funny pictures is what the internet is good for.
Sheer brilliance.
So anyway. The two amazing things I done saw.
The first is this. The pilots evidently forgot to put the wheels down. Why is this amazing? Well, due to hollywood, I've been conditioned to think that a plane landing sans wheels, will explode upon impact, usually sending Bruce Willis flying out of the window. What actually happens is far more interesting. I don't know how much this plane weighs, but there's a lot of weight resting on those engines. The casings don't break, collapse or even deform (noticeably, obviously there will be deformation to some extent) enough to send pieces of the interior flying. I wonder if the turbines are generally okay inside the engines? Do the blades shatter? Do they gouge tracks in the casings? What's the deal with that? To be honest, I assumed the engines would sheer, essentially forcing the plane to bump over them like errant tyres on a racing car (a sight I've seen at least a dozen times in formula 1, but can't find the correct search in youtube).
I'm genuinely impressed with how well the aircraft coped. Let's not make the false assumption that landing on anything other than arrow straight, perfectly smooth tarmac will result in the same outcome. They also emptied the fuel tanks by flying around a bit, before landing. Is it even a landing? Landing implies a sense of normality. I think this is more of a controlled crash, but the outcome appears to be favourable. I wonder if they can ever repair that plane? It's probably a junker now. The same question goes for the runway, the amount of crud kicked up behind the plane suggests there would be three distinct ruts present on the tarmac now. I guess it could be an auto-guidance system for all arriving planes, the wheels fall into the groove as it were, and are directed to the end of the runway with no pilot input.
The second thing that impressed me, is something I can't show you. Cans in England have become thinner and thinner, presumably to save on the cost associated with metals the world over. Cans in Japan however, don't seem to be following this trend. More accurately, the cans of a specific brand of green tea are so thick that I can't crush them. In no way am I able to flatten the can. End on end, or sideways - both are impossible. Admittedly, with my right hand out of commission I'm not using my strongest hand (I can crush with a force of 81kg's on my left, 84kg's on my right (my local gym recently had a competition to see who had the strongest grip, when I left I was about 8kg's more than the next best; when I came back I had been replaced by someone who was 5kg's less than me. Foreigners not included, apparently.) but the extra 3kg's won't make much of a difference in this case.
I don't know what it's made of, but it may well be adamantium.
Every so often I'll receive a parcel from my parents. Inside will often be something vital for survival (bright orange shoes) and chocolate. With the shoes, for example, were numerous packets of melted chocolate. There were still liquid when I put them in the fridge; but my apetite for sweets overtook the solidifying process and while the outside was hard, the inside was still liquid. This is an amazing combination, by the way, and if you have time I suggest you buy a bar and try it yourself. You won't be disappointed.
This time, however, there were no essential items. Mum sent me foodstuffs only, the likes of which baffled, surprised, amazed and bamboozled me, in equal measure.
The staple foodstuff of Asia (and consequently the majority of the world population) is rice. This is heavily supplemented with noodles. I don't specifically know the occasion for eating noodles over rice (for example, as posh nosh) but they eat it a lot. Ramen (pot noodles) are massive business here; with each supermarket having microwaves and hot water dispensers dedicated to customers who want to eat the instant noodles they bought, right there in the shop.
So, for a reason beyond my imagining, and resulting in me laughing in the middle of a meeting (garnering some serious, disapproving looks) mum sent me some instant noodles. I'm still smiling now.
These noodles, coupled with the pastry cheese twists and pringles have kept me smiling all day. It was lucky she sent the pringles, because I missed breakfast this morning. Pringles are also available in abundance (ruddy expensive though) although they're somewhat smaller than their western brethren.
This veritable feast was topped off with some mint chocolates.
Fantastic.
By the way, this is my face when I saw what was in the package.
Read the article here. It's only a brief mention of Japan, but the article doesn't present itself as being revelatory, for a change. They don't mention the fact that social networking is not a big deal in Japan, and they have their own networks over there too. Whether this is taken into account I don't know.
The extreme work ethic, social practices, and extremely cramped living and working conditions all play their part in this statistic; I would imagine.
In other news - I bought conditioner instead of shampoo yesterday. The upshot: very dirty, but extremely shiny hair that smells faintly of oranges.
Work related news - My old boss left, to be replaced by a new boss. One of the guys I work with has been promoted. After spending a week as the department leader/head, he is looking for a new job. Hard work is not fun, apparently.
So I just had some exciting news; the island is without running water for three days. No showers, no cleaning of clothes and no toilets.
A pipe that supplies the island burst earlier today, and while I assumed the news to be a monumental wind-up on behalf of a colleague, the news was unfortunately true. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that school would be postponed, owing to the whole no toilets and no cooking water scenario; however the school exists in its' own dimension, and while three quarters of the island is without water, the school will happily plod along with water. How did they manage that?
It's only twenty-five degrees today, with a low humidity of seventy five to eighty percent; so I only lost five kilogrammes today. When the weather turns hot on Friday, it will be hitting twenty-eight degrees, and the humidity will be eighty five percent plus. That's when the lack of water will be noticeable. It smells bad enough in my classrooms when the kids shower regularly...
On a lighter note, the teachers reactions were humorous. One teacher flat out refused to work without a shower; presumably he (I embolden that word because, yes, it was a man acting like a woman) has accepted that there's nothing he can do about it. Another thought it would remind him of being in the scouts. I can't say I approve of either mentality.
So what to do. The provisions in my room won't last me a full three days, and panic buying has already begun - I should really buy some more water and whatnot. Then again, I'm extremely lazy.
New plan: Go to american football training, work up a sweat, come back, wash with a two litre bottle of water and minimal shampoo/shower gel.
I've not done many tourist activities, (as is my general trend when visiting capital cities) but I did manage to sneak to the top of Seoul tower. The tower itself is relatively small:
But this graphic belies the true height (and by association, awesomeness) of the tower, because it stands on a large hill in the middle of the city. It essentially doubles the height of the tower (at least) relative to this chart, because the tower is twice the height, and the rest of the city is in a divot. The resulting view is, put quite simply, amazing.
I managed to wangle a night-time visit (I prefer the neon cityscape to the concrete sea, as seen during daylight hours) and managed to take a few pictures that encapsulate roughly one fiftieth of the beauty of the nighttime scenery. I had neither the skill, nor the photographic equipment to capture a greater amount of the beauty.
This is the tower itself. On an interesting photographic side-note; the next group of pictures might be an interesting way to learn about the digital equivalent of film grain. At higher ISO settings, digital cameras produce 'noise,' this noise is odd colour pixels appearing because the wrong information has been created by the sensor. This happens at higher ISO's because the signal is amplified. Amplification causes darker colours to appear brighter, (the sensor is actually analog) but also amplifies errors (just as in audio terms). The effect is most noticeable in large blocks of single colours (large areas of deep, dark shadow, for example).
Anyway.
The tower isn't that tall, but the climb up there is pretty steep and long, making me suspect that it's at least as tall again, by being placed upon a great big hill. There were old stone ruins of (presumably) an old wall that was built along the same path as the road. It would have been the perfect place to build a castle to defend the city, and were I emporer way back when, I would definitely have placed a castle atop this hill.
I include this one primarily because of the figure flying into the tower. There were a number of suspended flying meshwork persons around the place, running along wires in tune with the wind. I'm not sure how they were secured, but they moved quite freely when the wind blew. It was quite nice watching them float around.
This is probably my favourite picture of the tower itself. Like I said before, I had neither the talent nor the equipment to take a picture that truly did justice to the surroundings, but at least with this picture you get a sense of the shape and design that ordered this building.
Aside from demonstrating another photographic ailment (or effect, if so inclined) (see: vignetting (an ailment that appears to be common with lower quality lenses (at least as far as I can tell)))
This picture also show 1/50th of the awesomenss of the view I talked about earlier. It really is spectacular, and I would recommend anyone who visits Seoul to come and view it from this angle. It's just plain great.
The river has dozens of bridges spanning it (just like in London) and they're all frenetically lit by cars.
I include this picture to demonstrate the hill, upon which myself and the tower exist(ed). It's a park, and has few to no buildings on it. The dark area is the park, and shows how much higher than the surrounding city it actually is. Now factor in that we are looking down at the hill, and realise just how far above city level it is. Cool right?
This picture is reasonably self-explanatory. Each window had world cities attached, showing how far, and in which direction, each city is located. I'm roughly (see: exactly) 8,872.64km from England. The .64 is preposterous, but it's nice to know it'll only take a decade of walking to get back home, should it hit the fan. I also know the exact direction I need to take, too. Handy stuff. Why did they write 'Paris,' in bigger letters than London?
Busan is the nearest city to my island, and is, incidentally, the second city of Korea. I've not been there yet, but will dutifully report on here when I do. A handy 328.12km from Seoul.
This is the most skyscraper filled shot I could find. They're all tall buildings (tall enough to stand out against the background noise of lots of other tall buildings) and probably represent a business district. There were a few pockets like this one, but this had the highest density, and represented everything asian cities stand for. (Phallic misrepresentation, primarily)
Of the journey up here: I will write more once I've made it back down to Goeje. It was a five and a half hour bus journey I've to repeat in reverse, so I don't want to reopen fresh wounds, for fear of making the journey worse for myself on the way back down.
Happy birthday Ray! First of all, follow that link for my Happy Birthday Ray Japanese lesson. Curtesy of a couple of willing Japanese 'volunteers.' You have no idea how difficult it is to convince Japanese people to participate in such events. They either have to be drunk, or in ann extremely good mood.
Secondly, check out my visit to Tokyo Aquarium. It has more drums, is full of fish; and even has the best meal ever conceived! The whole day was fantastic.
So onto yesterday.
Yesterday was a travelling day, I took the shinkansen (bullet train) from Yokohama to Kyoto; and arrived around 2:30PM, having left at 12PM. Frankly speaking the whole thing was too efficient. While i was on the train I wrote todays entry, so here it is:
At this point I mention Nan and Ray. I got the people in the hostel to say happy birthday in Japanese, and I recorded them, but I've lost that days' pictures and videos. So hey Nan, happy birthday! I'll give you a ring later.
And hey Ray, happy birthday, I'll probably catch you on MSN when you should be working, at a later date.
So I'm sitting on the bullet train, on my way to Kyoto.
I woke up this morning and decided I'd had enough of Tokyo and Yokohama. I'm off to Kyoto, for some serious temple and shrine sightseeing, while meeting up with Pascal for some fun and frolicking; maybe. I'm told there's not a lot to do in Kyoto, other than the temple and shrine route. This has driven a number of my fellow travellers to distraction, and I've found a number of them crave the Tokyo life after only a week or two in Kyoto. I have to say that the type of person who's commented in such a way is usually here for the technology, rather than the general tourism. A number of people have come here on stays for cultural reasons, Naree for example, and loved Kyoto. Then again, she was engaged in dancing activity for a large amount of her time, so it was more like a job than a sightseeing tour I guess. We'll see how it turns out for me, I might get bored of it, I might not.
One of the guys sitting next to me seems extremely nice, he's chatted a little, and even showed me the power socket for my computer. His English isn't very good, but neither is my Japanese so I think we're equals in this sense. The other guy is too cool for school. Ginger hair is big over here, men and women wear it with equal zealousness. Genetically speaking, I don't think it's possible for a native Japanese to have anything other than black hair, so when they see foreigners with blonde hair and blue eyes, they immediately stare, mouth agape. If you happen to be blonde and have blue eyes, and be female, no matter how ugly you are - a job teaching English beckons here.
So to explain my motivation for dropping such a large amount of money on this mode of transport: The shinkansen is just awesome. It's doing two hundred miles per hour, and it feels like we're on a cloud. The trains have their own dedicated tracks which means no interruptions by normal intercity riff raff, and the tracks have neither junctions or much in the way of bends. Those corners we do round, as you'll see in my videos when I upload them, are banked like an american oval to a degree that you can actually feel your bum being pushed into the seat. That's really g-force. However minor it may be, the fact it happens on a train is just plain mental.
I also can't emphasise how luxurious this travel is, even in scumbag class (I accidentally got on the wrong end of the train, meaning I had to walk, bag and all, through all the really nice parts of the train, knocking people, cups, sushi, bento and all flying) I have ample legroom, and I mean ample, just check out the pictures. My baby laptop is sitting so far away from me on the aeroplane style desk, that I'm having to lean forward to reach it. This is amazing. Width is still something of an issue, but since the age of ten it became obvious my shoulders were not designed for public transport. Height is the most amazing thing though.
Most trains require me to enter sideways, while bent double in a full ninety degree shuffle. This modern, forward looking transport system means I only have to nod my head down to get through the doors, and once I'm inside I can stand tall! It's amazing! In twenty years time, foreigners might not even have to duck at all.
I've been on the train an hour or so now and the air hostess lady has passed three times. Now that's (expensive) service.
The noise is also something that took me by surprise. English trains, at their fastest, do half the speed of this thing; but by god do you know they're doing that speed. One hundred miles an hour on an English train may as well feel like a thousand, and every time another train goes past those with gulf war syndrome jump aside for cover; and those sleeping pretend it didn't just make them wet themselves.
Here, when another bullet train goes past, in the opposite direction, at a combined speed of over 400 miles per hour you hear nothing. I kid you not. Nothing. The only reason you know something just happened is because train rocks slightly, and by the time you look over to see why, the other train has already gone.
So it was getting a little crowded between the other two guys, so I switched seats, and using my incredible foreigner powers I've bagged myself a seat with a spare to the side.
The efficiency of the entire endeavour boggles my mind, every time I think about it. It's never late, there's no fuss with tickets and whatnot because you ask someone before buying, buy it from a person, have it pass through a machine, then another person checks it. In terms of economic efficiency, it's probably much more labour intensive than it could be, and therefore much more expensive; the human and mechanical efficiency of such a system means that everything runs smoothly. It's obviously an expensive service, as I've just seen first hand, but the fact a large number of people are using it, even today at a decidedly non-peak time is testament to the value this service holds, beyond the cost.
I guess justifying having eight members of crew on-board a single train, not including the drivers (plural) would be difficult for the bigwigs who run British trains.
On a side note, rural Japan seems to be extremely nice. Contrary to what I was expecting, a large percentage of the houses do seem to carry the traditional style to some extent, specifically the typically oriental roof design, that seems so frivolous and eccentric. It's difficult to see at this speed whether there are any wooden buildings left, I fear this might be simply a dream. The number of rice fields here is also surprisingly high but then again, Japan produces 120% of the rice it needs as a country, so presumably they've got a large export industry in rice. This is of course nullified immediately by all other foodstuffs. Except maybe daikon. They love daikon here, and I don't even know what it is; bar some kind of vegetable. All meat is imported, hence the horrific bill I paid yesterday for my yakiniku meal. A day on and it was still worth it though, so I figure I'm safe in terms of conscience on that spend.
On a further note about Japan; I learned in a geography lesson a while ago that the landmass of Japan is primarily mountainous and cannot be built upon. Therefore, despite being (roughly) 1.1 times the size of England, they only have the luxury of being able to build upon a quarter of that land. This is the reason for the chronic population densities, that top anywhere in the world. Having been here for a while I couldn't really see where this particular mountain statistic came from, or what the Japanese obsession with yama (one of the few kanji I know, 山, mountain) was. I now know. Since we left the built-up regions I've seen nothing but mountains. And I should add they're mountains that are quite definitely not populated, or able to be built upon. The effect is quite incredible, having massive high rise apartments a stones throw from a great big hill. Although most are quite modest, some reach through the clouds. Most belong to chains, and I suspect a lot also have shrines and temples on top, with thousands of steps ala Kill Bill, or any number of samurai/martial arts films.
Factor all this into a population of 125 million, and the density now makes perfect sense in my mind.
Awww jeez I wanted to write so much more, but we're already at Kyoto. Damnit.
You never know, maybe we'll be delayed and I'll have more time to write...
And now for some pictures!
A funny little warning telling you not to run on the platform.
Presumably to see this sign you've made it onto the train; so you survived the platform experience. You never know though I guess; someone might have been carried aboard.
It also tells you the load weight of the table! How thorough a warning is that!
Look how much room I have! There's enough for me and my enormous bag!
I don't think you can buy this kind of space on any other mass transit system. First class? Pfff who needs that...
So this is an aisle view of the train. Looks pretty much like an aeroplane in my eyes.
Three on the left, two on the right.
That's as many words as I can stretch this picture to.
Moving from Tokyo to Kyoto is one hell of a creepy experience. I was in this underground station, and there wasn't a single other person; it was only 7PM!
The hustle and bustle of Tokyo only really begins to become apparent once you move to a city like this. There are still 1 million or so people living here, but it feels like a village... Albeit a village with a metro line.
And this is the view of the station looking in the other direction. Creepy.
It's like something out of a horror film - decimated population, zombies in the woodwork, that kind of thing.
A mini salesman and repair shop.
In the middle of kyoto.
Interesting.
A lot of them were pretty beaten up though it has to be said.
I do think the mini is the perfect car for here though.
So for the Shinkansen videos:
So this is the platypus jawed machine pulling into the station.
I managed to get on the wrong end, and had to traipse through the entire train; knocking people and sushi flying. (they have an airline style food service onboard) A lot of people were very angry. Stupid foreigner.
And this is an onboard shot; looking out of the window. You can clearly see the banking of the track in this photo, and it might make some seasick! Advisory, don't look at this video if you get motion sickness!
Oh wait, this is below the video... Oh well (please don't sue)
So basically this machine is expensive, and horrifically efficient. Efficient beyond the realms of probability. But then again everyone already knows that anyway...
Ride the shinkansen: Tick.
On an unrelated note, Naree used a couple of my pictures on her website.
Secondly: A blurred picture of the zanily dressed girl! I don't really like this picture because it's blurred as hell! But then again, covert documentation such as this often carries with it such risks of poor quality. Thanks for using my pics!
So basically I visited a museum. It was an art museum, with exhibits mainly from the mid 1850's onwards, depicting Japan and Japanese life through the eyes of a number of different people. It was a general museum, but the exhibitions seemed to have a pre-occupation with foreign influences upon Japanese art, and the work of foreign artists interpreting Japan itself. All in all I found it quite interesting, and I found the Japanese public reaction to the western influence extremely interesting.
Some of them thought the paintings drawn by Japanese in a western style, oil paintings from the turn of the century for example, were quite vulgar and un-Japanese. I thought they were pretty decent, some of them had taken the crazy pills before painting, but they weren't as dysfunctional as Picasso. The kind of painting you have to stand well back from in order to appreciate that it is actually a horse, and not a colour blind attempt at a cloud. That kind of thing.
Some of my fellow museum goers thought the Japanese artists lacked something their western counterparts did. At least I think this is what happened. One of the couples kept looking between two of the pictures noting differences, and they seemed to me (with my handicapped understanding of Japanese) to be looking upon the Japanese effort unfavourably.
So we have a situation where the Japanese don't like Western Style paintings, and don't like Japanese who have been trained in such techniques. What did these peoople like? Who knows, but I don't think they would have found it in that museum. The exhibits went from the port opening in Yokohama, and the various interpretations of the opening, (western drawings, paintings, eastern paintings, calligraphy, etc.) all the way to the crazy modern pictures that are nothing more than splodges of paint randomly 'painted' onto a canvas to look like... love. Or hate, or apathy; who knows.
Generally speaking I found a lot of the paintings, regardless of artist, to be quite skilfully drawn/painted, but I found few that I really liked. I think the obsession with yokohama having its' 150th 'opening its' borders' celebration is what drove this particular collection, but I was kind of underwhelmed. A lot of the Japanese style trinkets on display seemed quite generic, and even the ceremonial Kimono display, that pretty much symbolises Japan, was rather disappointing.
Its' bacon was saved however, by the photography section of the museum. The photographs they had on display were absolutely fantastic, showing life from back when people still lived in wooden huts, up to the ubiquitous rocker phase that happened, by the looks of things, everywhere in the world at the same time. (And is still going on in Ueno park!)
To me this little slice of life was the most interesting part of the museum, and I think the art was somewhat underwhelming. I can say the photography section saved the experience though, and I must admit to being inspired by the photographs on display!
At this point I would like to say I'm livid beyond imagining. I have spent an hour and a half writing a massively detailed report on what happened, and why it happened; but the website has had a hysterical spastic fit and deleted it all. Good job blogspot. Good job.
So I guess I'll just write it all up for another couple of hours again, I've got nothing else to do at the moment anyway.
Of course being a museum I wasn't able to take any photographs, which is a shame because I'd like to show you how awful some of the pictures were, and how good one or two really were. On the way back from the museum, while looking for something to eat we heard some music. So we went to investigate. We happened upon a street performer the likes of which I've never seen before. If I had to describe his and his performance, then I would say I couldn't. You have to see it to believe it. And so I will now present to you, with a newfangled piece of technoqiwizadry I've found, his performance in a number of acts.
So this guy had a sign up saying, roughly translated, 'the performance begins in 10 minutes.' Seeing this I was fully aware that this was a part of the act as it were. He was sitting down clothed at you see him here (with only two legs at this point) and some music started playing. My companion, and presumably most of the Japanese audience were confused as to what exactly was happening. This kind of audience manipulation worked extremely well with the Japanese audience, as it took everyone a minute to adjust to the fact the sign wasn't true! He uses this again in a later video.
I feel I must mention the sound designer, as the music was absolutely fantastic, and fitted the performance perfectly. It really was something quite brilliant. If anyone knows what the first song is please tell me!
This is as direct a continuation as I could ma
nage with my camera. It only takes video for three minutes, and then spends a sizeable amount of time processing and saving that information. Unfortunately you miss a bizarre sitting thing he does, where he crosses his legs and whatnot, but of course there are four so it looks strange - strange to say the least! (I'm running out of words along the lines of weird, strange, bizarre etc...)
So at this stage we see his other 'study' into Japanese psychology. Whether planned or not, I found this particular part really interesting. He holds cards up giving different instructions throughout his performance. This particular instruction is for the right hand side of the audience to move to a more central location. This particular instruction made sense to the people on the right, because they were actually standing on a path and generally obstructing the public, whereas we were sitting on a group of raised steps in an amphitheatre kind of design. So once these people moved, (he doesn't speak for this part) he took the same piece of paper over to the other side and, in a comedy manner (as you can see in the video) flips it over and asks everyone to move more centrally. At this point no one moves, and he does the theatrical bit you see on the video.
Now by the stage of him begging I'm laughing because the Japanese people there didn't even acknowledge that they were being asked to move. They didn't look him in the eye! Their reluctance to move was quite astounding.
So I was the only one in the audience laughing...Awkward.
But it turns out he was anticipating this reaction. Although I don't have it on camera he holds up another card that read something along the lines of, 'Ok, stay where you are.' Roughly translated.
The audience laughed at this...
So at this point we return to more traditional street performance fare. He manages to keep things feeling original however, by combining a number of disciplines. The 'robot dance' + mime + his amazing music creates a performance that my camera doesn't do justice.
This section of the performance went on for a long time, but it was varied enough to keep it more than interesting!
So he eventually moves onto the next video, which requires a little explanation.
After his techno mime he pulls a glove out of his box of tricks, and it takes on a mind of its own and attacks the audience; eventually becoming stuck to his face. At which point he asks a member of the audience to hit him on the back of the head with a mallet. We pick it up after he's been hit...
So I stopped filming after this point, but he carried on for a good while. I wish I'd been able to stay to see the performance that was after it; if it was half as good as this guy, it'd be amazing.
I couldn't take picture in the library, so these are mainly of the street performer, with a couple of random pictures thrown in for some reason.
So this is a view of the seating area.
The arrangement worked out really well, whoever designs these places in Tokyo is really clever, or really lucky. Either way he earns his pay.
Ok so he does this little 'warmup' skit after the four legged animal, and he uses the legs from the previous bit, putting them over his head and doing stupid stuff like that.
Stupid stuff like this!
It's all done very well.
This is the volunteer from the video. He was used in a number of different skits as well.
This looks like a small, little brother version of tower bridge.
I don't really understand what it's doing here, or why they put it there.
This is the tallest building in Japan apparently. I spent a while lining this picture up, and I think it came out quite well.
I also like the lights and whatnot, pretty!
Ignore the finger, look at the curved escalator! I've always wondered whether it was possible to have one, and now it's been proved possible! Simple things...
