I'm in the middle of a 3 week Spring Vacation right now. And I'm bored out my mind. If I had more money to spend this month then I guess it would be better...
Yesterday was
beautiful weather (I was in a short sleeved t-shirt and a cardy and was still warm riding on my scooter) so I took Sherbet out to see the cherry blossoms (sakura) since they'll be finished in a day or so. I take her out with her lead but.. of course.. cat's aren't that good at going for a walk. I kind of put her on some grass and she wonders around. I can't pull her and walk around or anything. She still gets very scared of new places and so she cried a lot, but I think if I keep taking her out she'll get used to it. I want to take her to the beach in the summer.
When I'm out and about in Japan, I do stand out, and so people do tend to stop and stare at me for a while. So, a white girl walking a cat... needless to say, we had a lot of people come talk to us and stuff. So, by the time we got home, Sherbet was very tired and slept for most of the afternoon and evening. Which gave me a lot of time to sit and do what I want.
Usually this means watching tv shows on my computer... (from www.surfthechannel.com ) but the show I wanted to watch was on the BBC iPlayer. And the problem with that is that you need to be in the UK to be able to watch things through it. The thing on your computer that says where you are is called your IP address. But there are websites that give you things called proxies, that you type into a programme on your computer (in my case, FoxyProxy for Firefox) which makes websites think that you are in a different country. If this wasn't tricky enough, a lot of the free proxies on the internet are already being used by loads of people, so when you use them, they don't work. In the end, I just went and paid for VIP membership (it was about 12 pounds) and I now have a British proxy all of my own.
SO, proxy in hand, I ran over to the BBC iPlayer site to watch some good tv... but... I found very little. The thing with tv when it's on the tv is that you just watch stuff because it's there. Would you really see a video for Eggheads or Cash in the Attic and say "omg! I've not seen this one! I want to watch it now!!!" ... if you are saying you would, then maybe you should get out more
After a bit of Have I Got News For You, half an hour of Michael McIntire (that I had remembered seeing before) and a bit of Biggest Movie Mistakes... and then I was bored. In this day and age, we can see tv shows from all over the world, as soon as they are aired in the country.. I watch loads of American shows, British shows too right here in Japan. But.. this culture is taking away our ability to just sit and watch something that's only semi-good. Does the BBC really think that people will choose to watch videos of Antiques Roadshow? Will this mean that the BBC will have to make more quality shows, ones that we would choose to watch? I dunno...
(I've only been on the iPlayer... it seems my proxy isn't fooling 4OD or the ITV Player.. if anyone knows the reason, let me know!)