Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

It used to be that whenever I started a new job one of my grandparents died. That was quite depressing. But recently fate has been getting more ambitious – I started my last permanent job in August 2001 and I’ve only been at my latest job for a few weeks. I’m just hoping they put the bins back on the stations now that they’ve developed bombs that don’t need to be planted in bins.

I was pleased by the concern shown by some of my friends in Japan, but it struck me as slightly odd, too…they regularly have earthquakes there, if part of a city is brought to a halt by a quake a good chunk of the citizens in the local area /will/ be directly affected by it. It would cause a much more pervasive destruction, within which it is reasonable to make sure those you know are OK. And, without wishing to trivialise the situation, yesterdays events weren’t a great deal more than another day of tube timetabling problems for most of the people affected.

Any London based people who feel they would like to get away for a few days in the country, let me know.


6 comments

  1. Hi

    Good to know that you are doing fine. Guess you are not exactly in London. Or maybe my geography is bad w.r.t London.
    As for Japan and earthquakes, well, an earthquake strong enough to bring parts of the city to a halt would certainly be news.
    Hope your near and dear ones are all doing fine and were not adversely affected.

    • Re: Hi

      I’m a little way out of London – about 50 miles (80km) to the north. Everyone I know is accounted for without significant injury but many were late to work and/or got blisters from walking home.

    • Manx?

      Manx? And Japanese? Not that I know of.
      Seems like I’m missing something big here:-)
      And I’m not Japanese, just living in Japan:-) Neil, any can you help me out here.

      • Re: Manx?

        The Manx language is a celtic language from the Isle of Man, home of the Manx cat and offshore tax haven.

        Dunno that it’d be that big for it to have more speakers than on the isle, theres maybe a few thousand native speakers, a much rarer language than welsh.

    • That wouldn’t surprise me – theres a good number of them speak (at least some) English, probably not quite as many as there are English people, but it must be getting on for being half the number.

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