In "Akumu Chan" a cold-hearted school teacher finds herself enmeshed with a strange new pupil who has fantastical prophetic dreams. Try as she may to avoid it her life is turned upside down and inside out. At one level each episode is the pupil "Yuiko Koto" has a weird dream, and the teacher "Ayami Mutoi" does her best to avoid that dream coming true. On that level the drama is quite acceptable and involving and interesting, adding a twist to the usual formula. Where the drama shines is the character arcs, particularly the teacher strongly played by "Keiko Kitagawa". That holds the whole drama together and lifts it to greatness. The characters grow through the episodes. Wonderful and fun.

In "Sweden Laundry" the put upon middle child of a family gets given a supernatural power by her dead grandmother. The power to tell from people's clothes what they're worried about. The downside is she has to help them. This quirky comedy of manners manages to be fresh, helped by its starting premise being so original. It's not dramatic, but there are a host of interesting characters and twists and turns. A cat also pops up here and there. Watching this gets a sense of modern Korea, the way people are - that's the way it feels to me. So it's country which is very technological yet people still consult psychics. Parents seek to live through their children. A slight shame that the heroine doesn't tie the knot by the end of the drama, but it's a rewarding watch.

"Prince of Prince" is based on a web cartoon, and perhaps if I could read Korean and had read that cartoon I might understand it a bit more. Set in the world of a fantasy game developer, a rich guy forces his way into the game company to save his younger otaku and cosplay fixated younger sister. It's quite watchable and inventive without being readily comprehensible to me. There's overt references to the "Choon Hyang" drama (which the "Hong" Sisters based their first drama on). Appropriately for a drama based on a web cartoon this was a web drama - judging by it they are very fast paced to the point of incoherence.

My efforts at game-making have become less ambitious over the years. This current project was to do a present hunt for Virginia, where she followed a paper trail to find where her birthday (it turned out to be Christmas) present was. The twist being the paper chase is in the virtual world not the real one. I used Google maps to able to click on locations to visit. Really kind of Google to provide such a facility for free. At each location there are some pictures. The menu lets you see a welcome page, the current clue, or the map. Nothing too elaborate. (Update in March 2020: this game is currently broken, Google started charging for use of their Map API in the way this game uses it.)

Virginia and I stay near Winchester in Hampshire, see National Trust places like Uppark and Hinton Ampner, and the Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth.

Steelheart (2014) follows young David Charleston as he seeks revenge for his father's death. He has the slight problem his father was killed by an invincible superpowerful villain who's turned Chicago into steel. To some extent this could have been done as anime. The world of the book is one where ordinary people have gained unusual powers, a much used device at the moment. "Steelheart" and its sequels deepen the experience by first exploring the powers of the Epics (those with the powers) - and their weaknesses. There is real world-building and magic system building here. There is also exploration of what power does to people. If you had power like "Steelheart" does could you stay sane? All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely as the man said. And can an Epic be redeemed? This theme runs through the series. Ignoring all that I'd just like to say this book is a well-written imaginative romp where the underdog humans take on supervillains.

I visit South Korea, seeing Buddha's birthday celebrated at a nun run temple and visiting a Baduk (Go) school.

Our long weekend in Stratford started with another telephone call from a carer about Dad managing to fall out of bed despite having a bar fitted by Phillip last night (who I envy being so good at practical things). I went to Milton Tesco after seeing Mum's grave on the anniversary of her death four years ago, and got some supplies for Dad and us on our holiday. A little bit of a rush to get Tabitha and Amelia to the Cattery so Phyllis can look after them til Monday (we forgot the tablets for Tabitha!) and then off on our weekend break. And right into a traffic tailback from a fire on the A14... We stopped at Cambridge Services (which is still being built) for a visit to KFC (I ordered more than I needed) and then rejoined the A14 traffic jam - when that eventually melted away we had an easy drive to Stratford with the Satnav reliably leading to the Macdonald Hotels Stratford Swan's Nest Hotel there. Which happily had parking (I like to worry about things). The hotel was very well situated, we could walk everywhere we needed to go! It was good enough but I wouldn't give it four stars. The hotel had wi-fi - to make this work one had to register / login each time. We ate at the French bistro restaurant in the hotel, I had French onion soup then chicken which were richly cooked perhaps too richly cooked for me. The chef was rather too fond of salt. We kicked off Saturday with breakfast in the hotel - cereals and croissants not worth the price of the buffet at £9.50 really. We walked into Stratford and did some shopping at Marks and Spencers then visited the Stratford Butterfly Farm. Plenty of butterflies! Hot and humid making my glasses and camera lens steam up. Mayan decor, not too badly done. There were insects and snakes and also a colony of leaf cutter ants commuting over ropes - the previous colony died out after chewing their way through power cables and the queen getting electrocuted. Well patronised by those ignoring the signs about touching the butterflies. When we emerged it was raining, but only light rain and we were within a stones throw of the hotel. We had sandwiches at the charming Fourteas - a forties themed tea room where the waitresses were suitable accoutred, the tea came with egg timers, and the menus were 1940s ration books. Another hit was the Stratford MAD museum, an unmissable collection of kinetic sculptures - vibrant and eye catching. Made me miss the ball bearing clock I had once - and remember a visit to see work by the artist Jean Tinguely. Hotel laid on a fire alarm for us, then we went for an evening cruise on the Countess of Evesham down and up the River Avon. They steered the long boat with skill through the three locks, where we were lowered or raised at the speed of bath water emptying. Saw a swan carrying two chicks on its back, on the return the insects in the boat lights swirled like krill in the ocean, wan ghosts of plastic bags were caught in the trees. A four course meal, reasonable charm. Back late though after 11pm and Virginia's lens dropped out again! The return journey was rather stressful. After going to the service at Stratford Baptist Church we found one of the tyres on Virginia's car had been deflated. So pumped it up, and followed the Satnav up to Coventry to find the route we should take closed off. We retreated to a Starbucks back the way we came, and then hesitantly tried the A429 then A445 north to skirt the Circean city of Coventry. Washed out when we got home, not only by the rain which fell.

The cake Virginia did for my 60th birthday.

A quiet and pleasant Sunday afternoon, with family and fellow Church members and friends I hadn't seen for a while, in commiseration for my upcoming 60th birthday. We held the celebration at the Cambridge Holiday Inn hotel in Histon where we live, they provided the nicely laid out Trinity Room, a more than ample buffet, and water and orange juice on the five tables - and we added balloons and a banner. The balloons hung upside so they read "09" rather than "60", but I didn't mind. We didn't have helium or hydrogen to fill them. Virginia did one of her cakes, combining my fondnesses for the Peanuts cartoons and classic Dr Who. I didn't manage to have any of it - I was too full on the day itself and it got thrown away as too dry afterwards. There was plenty of food left over, we ordered a buffet from the hotel without realising how much of it there was going to be. Had to check which dishes were vegetarian for my friend and old work colleague Simon, something to remember next time around. I did gain cards and a few presents to be opened on the day itself. We also gained some lilies which we'll have to be careful with as lilies are poisonous to cats. Do I feel any wiser having reached sixty? No. Perhaps that is wisdom in itself. In a world with so much noise, so many distractions, so many voices shouting loud the challenge is to focus. To get along with the people you do get along with and not those you're never going to get along with. To sit where you're comfortable and not sit where you're ill at ease. To ignore the disturbing clamour of those competing for attention. To live where one is.

The cake Virginia did for Sandra's 60th birthday.

One of these days I'm going to lose this. I've left it behind in so many places, and thought I would never see it again. I left it behind at the Light Cinema Cambridge last time we went to see the new "Star Trek" film - and had to return to the theatre. I've left it at the University Centre where we play Go on Thursday evenings - and was lucky they had in lost property a week later. I've left it behind at Girton Baptist Church and had to reclaim it at the next service. And they are just a few times... It may seem I don't want this baseball cap, that I regard it as a bad luck charm I'm trying to lose but which keeps coming back to me. In fact it is a precious souvenir of halcyon times. Times when my employers considered me worth sending off to software engineering conferences. Times when I could combine a visit to an Oracle conference in Seattle with seeing the Olympics and Mount St Helens and the Boeing Construction Building and eating at a Benihana Steakhouse. Great times. The baseball cap was part of the welcome pack to one such Oracle conference. Those days are long gone. My current employers, a large American multinational, want software engineering to be an assembly line. Constant desk moving even down to every two weeks is part of the depersonalisation. The desks are arranged in open plan typing pools with noise levels approaching those of call centres and trading floors. Only people on the management ladder travel or get real training (in some very desirable destinations) instead of the rat maze online training courses we ordinary plebs find imposed on us. I'm glad I'm not a manager - fear of how one scores on one's superior metrics drives behaviour, it's all about how you project yourself upwards that matters, a ladder I would fall off if I were even on it.

Before our long weekend in Hunstanton we dropped off Tabs and Amelia (who hid in my cupboard as the spare room bed was shut) at "Grange Cattery". This took longer than normal as there were roadworks in Waterbeach near the new housing being built on the old Army barracks there. It may be even slower next time as they're going to resurface the road to "Grange Cattery" - it is much needed as that track undulates beyond bumpiness. We got supplies at Tesco including a Chinese meal we enjoyed later in the garden at the holiday cottage in Ringstead. An easy drive there, the most stress came when parking the car in front of the garage for No. 5 as I didn't see the number! The cottage was comfortable and well appointed, a cosy lounge. We had to enter a number on a keypad to get the keys, using the keys was fiddly and the doors were a bit stiff. There was a bottle of wine left for us which we had a glass of to accompany the Chinese meal in our quiet evening in. A dismal start to the Saturday - the rain was heavy enough to wake me, and kept on pretty much relentlessly during the day. The bathroom mirror has a blue ghostly LCD clock in it, we couldn't find the egg cups so had to improvise tearing up an egg box! Our first bit of tourism was the Hunstanton Sea Life aquarium where they branded us on our hands as having paid - the branding was readable the next day despite several acts of hand washing. Sea Life wasn't that big, but a variety of stuff to see including creepy-crawlies and adorable otters. I almost lost the lens cap off my new camera and had to search for it. We also strayed to see an Lestrange Old Barns arts and crafts place which was hard to park at, and which was without a cafe and facilities we thought it might have. More interesting was the Village Stores across the road from our cottage which also sold old things, Virginia got a glass fruit bowl and two attractive cards there. We walked to see the Gin Trap pub to check out how far it was - an easy walk. Our meal there in the evening wasn't bad - friendly enough service and a popular place with people being turned away who hadn't booked. It got crowded later on with people in Scottish attire (but without Scottish accents which was strange). Ironically Sunday, the day we returned to Histon, was bright and sunny. The roads were very busy with cars and motorcycles and scooters all headed somewhere, perhaps to a fair at Sandringham.

Virginia and I cruised to the Western Med on the P&O Arcadia. We saw Gaudi's creativity at Park Guell and Sagrada Familia, and the remains of Roman creativity at Herculaneum.

Time for the Thursford Christmas Spectacular again! This year we almost didn't make it as we both fell ill with streaming noses and coughs and colds. But such is our dedication to starting the Christmas season properly we forced ourselves to go. Virginia drove (which I find stressful as she drives rather differently to the way I do) and for once the Satnav didn't play us foul, and we reached Thursford in an hour and a three quarters. We ate at the cafe in Thursford Fantasy Land for a change. Pretty much the same unmagical food as the other venues, the soup had to be microwaved as it wasn't even lukewarm. In this venue they give you a table number and bring the food to you. Santa's Magical Journey looked pretty much like it did last year, in fact Thursford as a whole did though there is a new toy shop there. We killed the time before 2pm by squeezing through the bustle in the shops (the coaches had arrived and unloaded by this point), sat on the carousel for a drink, then took our seats. We like to sit at the back where you're not trapped in. The extra seating they put in for the show is a bit cramped and awkward where people come late and have to apologise their way to their seats. The show was a feast for the eyes as much as the ears, a lot going on on the stage. The variety turn was a couple of Japanese adept at balancing and spinning various things. The comedian was pretty clean - a pleasant change from the obscenity equals humour of modern days. I enjoyed the first half - just more variety. The doves continued to fly at the end of the performance. It was the 40th so looking back. After the show we were fortunate to meet up with my cousin Pat and her husband Richard in the marquee for a bite to eat before we left. We had thought they weren't going to be able to make this year when we were there. A dirty drive home with the windscreen dirtied by spray. I was glad to be able mostly to sit on other people's tails and follow their red lights home.