Introducing Myself - haven't done it although I've been here a little while.

Like many other people I can be a bit harsh about myself with regards to how I see myself and what I produce and do. The picture above is a good example of that. I painted it several years ago and I hated it at the time as it was not what I was intending to produce. I reworked it and reworked it and eventually gave up and stuck it into store. About two weeks ago I was going through my things I "rediscovered" it .....and I found that I really rather liked it. All the things that I had been trying to achieve I had forgotten about. All the things that I thought were glaring faults I couldn't see any more. I took a quick snap there and then. Interestingly the faults that stand out now are the fact that I think that I have not taken a very good photograph and the colors are out. It's odd how you judge yourself sometimes. With that in mind I hope to tell you a little about myself.

Currently I live in Liverpool in the UK. I wasn't born there and have never had a relationship with the city until now. It's just that I used to live in Tokyo, (the longest I have ever lived anywhere) and when I came back to London I nearly had a heart attack at the rental costs. I looked round for a city that was cheap and had compact center in which I could run a business project. Liverpool was by far and away the best option. This had lots of plus points too.

• I live on one of the four original streets from 1207 AD so it oozes history.
• The people are really friendly in comparison to London.
• It's very international.
• There are some fantastic and historical pubs.
• There is a big range of public galleries.
• There are some good theatres.
• The weather is probably the best in the UK.
• I can walk pretty much any place I need to go.
• The Chinatown has some great restaurants/supermarkets.
• Add to that London is only 90 minutes by train. It can take you longer to commute from the burbs of London to the centre.

I started off this post with a painting so you might think I studied painting and that is sort of correct but I didn't begin that way. I did an undergrad degree in neurophysiology specializing in neurogenesis. Although I found that academically interesting I found that I couldn't deal with the practical side so that was the end of that. I then did a masters in Fine Art and had a studio on the South Bank of the Thames when it was uber-cool to do so. Did a lot of posing - like you do ...cough. It was fashionable at the time for the financial sector to employ artists as analysts as they thought that artists (especially ones with a scientific background like me) could offer an alternative perspective on the financial markets. Within a few years I got parcelled off to Japan for the simple reason that they knew I had a Japanese girlfriend and that I had lived there before. Cue their plans for for a Japanese office going up in smoke and me deciding to stay for a while. I pretty much multi-tasked while I was there doing everything from work in patent attorneys, promote and organise gigs for European bands, work on early LMSes and LCMSes, international legal research, company formation, business consulting, etc. I even wrote the marketing slogan for Nissan Diesel which appeared in all their adverts for about 4 years -

Nissan Diesel - Driving Innovation

^{think about it.....}

As you can see I'm a bit of a jack of all trades and master of none. That extends to everything that I do. I rush to learn about things I don't know about knocking off the top three or four layers before moving on.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
^{Pablo Picasso}

And here is some beer that I brewed. I drank it - all gone - yum! I plan to make cider (hard cider) too. I have about 14 apple trees on the edge of the city and next year there should be enough to make a big batch. Am going to be making a press with a friend over the winter ....or possibly spring. See how it turns out. I've been collecting rare apple scions and grafting them to rootstocks to that I can guerilla plant them on brown land throughout the city. Give it a few years and there will be orchards where factories and docks used to be. I've also been planting willow and hazel which can be used for basketry and fencing. Willow and hazel fencing is so much nicer than concrete and brick. I also scatter calendula around - they self seed and It makes for a really beautiful "weed" - like giant orange daisies.

I'm a big music fan - pretty eclectic in my tastes and like most genres. At school and college played in bands, originally as a bassist and later a singer - ended up organising events and doing distribution in Japan for European bands in my spare time. it's hard to pick out a favourite band. I tend to like individual tracks rather than just favour a band. I don't really want to put a list of things I really like as I feel I would be doing certain songs I like a disjustice. there is one song that I think sums up a lot of genres really well and that is Rock and Roll Queen by The Subways. It is short so it is is pop, it has clichéd lyrics, it has noisy guitars so it is rock, it is singalongable after one listen, you can go wild to it and you can dance to it. Simple and hypnotic. Whatever you do don't ever listen to any live versions of it as they make it into a 10 minute track and it destroys what makes it good - A yell of "I'm alive - Weeeeeeeeee!"

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And to finish here is a list of my favorite books

• Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
• The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Most Beautiful Woman in Town - Charles Bukowski.
• The Doctor Strangelove Game - Paul Strathern
• Excession - Iain M Banks
• Paddington at Large - Michael Bond.

All the books (except Paddington ofc) are pretty hard to get into but once you get past the first chapter I found they draw you in.

_{Books I like}