citygirrrl about town...

genius

citygirrrl is writing this from tokyo - another business trip to my favourite city.  so far it's going well, although i'm really homesick and can't wait to get home to spacemonkey.

what i like here is that everything in tokyo works the way it’s supposed to…  for instance, the soup spoons are a different shape.  same volume, but smaller and deeper so that (a) it fits in your mouth so you don’t need to slurp and (b) it doesn’t spill back out.  not the most exciting of examples, i'll admit - but i do appreciate a well-crafted spoon...

the telly set up is brilliant.  dubbed programmes are broadcast with two sound tracks, so that you can elect to watch either the overdub or the original engrish.  genius!  means i get to enjoy my favourite dramas without needing to be 1,000,000,000 times better at my japanese.

i'm not having a lot of success with my communication, which makes navigating particularly hard.  streets aren't named as such, instead you identify the district and block.  despite that, we made it to the office after a wee detour and some pretty hot directions from me – the taxi driver got badly lost and we managed to recoup using my sesame-street level japanese… this journey is brought to you by the numbers 2, 4 and 1 and the word for “left”…

sweetness

spacemonkey and citygirrrl celebrated their first anniversary this month!  what a difference a year makes...

by september last year, i had been largely single for a very long time indeed.  certainly, i hadn't been in anything remotely approximating to a serious relationship since the late nineties.  after a few disastrous dating experiences (well, I thought they were disastrous.  everyone else seemed to think they were pant-pissingly hilarious...) i had finally reached a place where i was happy to be on my own; occupied with friends, family and hobbies, and focussed on my career.  perhaps reaching this level of confidence in myself is the reason why everything changed.

because then, i met spacemonkey.

i'd always been kind of puzzled as to why i was never able to settle down, when all of my friends had done so; why i never felt a connection to anyone special, why i never found someone to love... and now the answer is clear: it's because all that time, i had a spacemonkey somewhere - waiting to find me, waiting for me to find him.

to celebrate making it though a whole year of surviving my constant blathering, OCD, propensity to nag and generally being a bit mental, spacemonkey arranged a surprise weekend treat for us.

we had a long bike ride to york, and an afternoon ambling around in the sunshine, and then we stayed at the quebec hotel - very fanceh - in the 'sherbet suite' (geddit!!??).  i was then spoiled even further with a romantic roof-top dinner at harvey nichs.  to add to the excitement, we rounded off the celebrations by signing all the paperwork on our new house.

so this, really, is the reason i'm so contented.  not because of the surprise trips, and the spoiling rotten; not because he contacted every jeweller in the country in order to track down a replacement for my lost bangle - nor because he made a difficult and unnecessary trip to london in order to leave it on my pillow.  not because he's taught me to ice-skate, and ride pillion, and eat my greens (sometimes...).  not because he found us a beautiful home.  but because he loves me, enough to live with me and my wacky ways.  and because my life would not be complete without him.

if a movie was made of your life, what would the soundtrack be?

So, here's how it works: open your music player, put it on shuffle, press play.
For every question type the song that's playing.  When you go to a new question press the next button.  Some songs will fit perfectly. Some songs won't. That's life.

Opening Credits:  Seven Years - Norah Jones
Waking Up:  Super Duper Love - Joss Stone
Falling in Love:  Close to Me - The Cure
Fight scene: Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
Breaking up: Give My Soul - Lab Rats
Getting back together:  You Belong to Me - Citygirrrl Demo
Secret Love: Easy - Lionel Ritchie
Life's okay: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm - Crash Test Dummies
Mental breakdown:  Insomnia - Faithless
Driving Flashback:  Jumpin' - Todd Terry
Partying: Now We Are Free - Gladiator feat Izzy
Happy dance: Star 6 & 7 8 9 - The Orb
Regretting:  San Francisco Bay Blues - Eric Clapton
Final Battle:  Nightingale - Norah Jones
Death Scene:  Someone Like the Moon - Pulp
Closing credits 1:  That's How You Like It - Beyonce
Closing Credits 2:  Nervous Breakdown - Carleen Anderson
Closing Credits 3:  Sometimes We Cry - Tom Jones & Van Morrison