Spruce Goose Sluice.

Spruce Goose Sluice.
Originally uploaded by decentred.

Off sick today (not entirely true - I am sick, but, being both stubborn and a bit dim i thought that I'd be ok to teach 8 lessons when I could barely walk across the room this morning), so I've spent the day watching QI and drinking a horrible-tasting (and thus patently healthy) mixture of lemons, ginger and chillies. Ouch.

I took this photo the other day, on the way to work. There's a lot of water round here. It's not like home, where theres not much run-off (spot the GCSE geography term), round here only sewage pipes are underground because of the earthquakes. Power and phone lines are all on poles, and the gas (as far as i can tell) is distributed in huge bottles, rather than being piped directly. This makes obvious sense, but i don't know that it's completely true, because Nova sorts out all the bills in the house - all we do is stick the little reciepts in a box!

This sluice gate is one of many round here - but there doesn't seem to be a pattern to the level of water in the channels - it doesn't seem to be related to the amount of rain, or the level in correspinding places. It may be in order that the newly-planted rice fields are suitably covered in water, or (perhaps) just because there's some bloke in the city office who rolls a dice/flips a coin every few days, then gets roaring drunk and goes round Nakatsu pulling all the levers on the sluice gates.

It's anyone's guess, really...