The problem with having a prolonged break from blogging is … how do you restart? Should you wait for an occasion SO MOMENTOUS that even an illiterate teacup pig would find a way to communicate it to the world:

"I'VE JUST GIVEN BIRTH TO SEXTULPETS AND THE FATHER IS EITHER JUSTIN BIEBER, SHELDON COOPER OR THE RETIRED POPE'S GROOM OF THE STOOL!"

(Just so we're clear that comment was entirely fictitious. Any resemblance to real events, occurring in any country, is purely coincidental.)

Or should you just pick up from an entirely random point :

"WHEN I WALKED DOWN THE ROAD TO GET MILK, I SAW A CAR!!!"

(That comment was rather less fictitious and aren't you all glad I didn't decide to blog that?)

After a few false starts, I have picked a moment when I'm sitting in a gay and lesbian friendly coffee shop in Rochester, USA. Its name, 'Equal Grounds', is testament to their ideology, although they stress this just applies to people, not to coffees, since they have an extensive menu of drinks that includes their own blend. The artsy interior, huge flat screen fireplace and funky mugs for the almond steamer I ordered are enough to reinvigorate even the (blogging) dead.

Back in Japan, the teaching year has finished (the undergraduate year runs April to mid-February) and marks the end of my first year as a faculty member! Frankly, that alone puts any talk of Justin Bieber's sextuplets in the shade. It should have resulted in the MOST GLITZY BLOG POST OF ALL TIME, but I confused my laptop with a teddybear and went to sleep.

Teddybear laptops. That's where we were at, people.

Then there came a new dawn and I remembered my real job was a researcher. Whereupon, I promptly took off back to Canada to write up projects with my old institute that I'd been treating as the unmentionable Frankenstein monster of an unloved bastard teacup pig for the last 12 months.

Then I crossed the border and found a coffee shop.

Hi.