Nowadays updates are coming in batches. Ah well, I'm too busy living life instead of writing about it. This update is a bit of a diary style update, probably more interesting to me when I’m 67 then to the rest of the world. Will mindspill still be up when I’m 67?

The weekend after returning from Japan was a very eventful one. On Friday I flew to London for the best concert line-up I could ever dream of in the last 10 years. Anathema, My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost were all playing together to celebrate Paradise Lost's 20th Anniversary. The fathers of doom death metal playing together in the same gig, at the Forum in London. It was such an event that a couple of hardcore friends from home, Cyprus and Finland also came to London for the gig. We were a group of 6 dottians, 1 Finn and 1 Romanian. The concert was fantastic. I had very low expectations from Anathema and was positively surprised them. I was very surprised by My Dying Bride as they are quite peculiar live. Their stage presence is quite atypical and they played many old songs which was nice to an extent, but a bit surprising. I'm very curious to see them live again. Paradise Lost were good, but not really surprising. In the end the 3 bands came out on stage together and opened some champagne, soaking us wet since we were at the very front.

After the gig we spent the rest of the evening looking for a watering hole, but we only managed to get a single drink from the only two pubs that were open. I spent half of the night with my friends, and the other half travelling to Bratislava for a wedding. I arrived at the wedding place at 1pm and the wedding started at 2pm. Just barely had the time to pee and have a quick shower.

Slovak weddings are long. Very very long! The wedding started at 2pm and finished at 4.30am the following morning, but we only managed till 3am. There were some interesting traditions during the wedding. First, before the mass, there was a small reception and the bride and groom came to greet the guests and formally thank their respective parents. After mass at the local churc, we returned back to the hotel for the wedding dinner. We were seated at the most multilingual table, with 4 languages spoken at a time; Slovak, Hungarian (the wedding was in the Southern part of Slovakia were most people speak Hungarian), English and German.

After the starter (prosciutto crudo with parmesan shavings and melon), the waiters were carrying the soup plates and dropped one plate on purpose. All of a sudden, people rushed from their chairs and started jumping on the broken glass. Few minutes later the bride and the groom came with a broom and started sweeping the glass. (Traditionally only the groom does this). Each time they were almost finished, somebody hit their dustpan and they had to start all over again.

At midnight the bride stepped on the dance floor, and people start paying money to dance with the her. Each guest danced for a few minutes until the next paying guest took over. Traditionally, towards the end of this dance, the groom has to pay for a dance. Other guests then pay to dance with the bride, forcing the groom to up the ante for the final dance.

On Sunday I went to the in-laws to say hi, and have some delicious Slovak food. Say that I’m guided by my stomach, and you’d be saying the sacrosanct truth. I had to take a 3 hour bus at 3.30 in the morning to get back to the airport on Monday, but it was worth it. The duck, red cabbage and dumplings were delicious!

On Tuesday there was another concert. Nile came to play in a small pub in Dublin. There was an overwhelming majority of tall people at the gig, and I felt a bit like a dwarf amongst them. I enjoyed the gig even though there were some morons who threw things at the band. I never saw this happen before, and it was quite disgraceful. The band was understandably pissed off at this too.

Last Saturday we had a big BBQ in the house. A troupe of Italian friends of M, came over for a visit to Ireland, and we prepared a BBQ in their honour. Apart from the Italians we also had a German corner, and an East European corner (formed of 2 people). We supplied pork chops, chicken wings, kebabs, jacket potatoes filled with cheese and bacon, sausages, homemade pizza, bruscetta, rice salad, potato salad, leaf salad, more sausages, pineapple and melon (bbqed). In addition to this the guests got their own food too, so we ended up with loads of extra food. We probably have enough for the rest of the week. Well since summer only came in the last 2 weeks it makes even more sense to live now, before hibernating in winter.

Clever as ever, the Japanese have combined an animal shelter with a teahouse to create the Tokyo phenomenon known as “cat cafes.” To understand why the Japanese would pay ($8-$12 an hour) to play with someone else’s cats, you have to ... (continue reading at Josh Spear)

Yes the inevitable had to happen. I'm back from Japan. It was a wonderful holiday, everything went according to plan, and we got to see as much of Japan as possible in two weeks. We started out with a couple of days in Tokyo, then went on to climb up Mt. Fuji. Luckily the weather was cooperative on the mountain, after the torrential rain we previously had in Tokyo.

After Fuji we went to the cultural capital, Kyoto, with a side trip to Nara. From there to Hiroshima and the island of Miyajima. Finally in the end we visited Beppu in the South Island (Kyushu) and Yudanaka near Nagano to see the snow monkeys.

Hopefully I'll have some time to write a bit for meaningful comments about Japan, instead of a list of place. At the moment though I'm having a sever attack of post holiday blues.