Notes for Expats on Scottish bands touring internationally and features on Scottish music, sport, film and the life written by and for Scots around the world. More →
Billy Williamson reports from Yokohama: Ennui (noun): boredom, tedium, listlessness, lethargy, lassitude, languor, weariness, enervation; malaise, dissatisfaction, melancholy, depression, world-weariness, Weltschmerz. Sums it up, eh?
So I am back working in Tokyo this week, for obvious reasons; and because my team in Japan work incredibly hard for me, I was sitting at my PC near them at 9.20pm pretending to also work hard when I received an instant message from a colleague in New York – a Brooklynite with a [...]
Last week, Mrs Williamson – a medical professional – educated me on the “Glasgow Coma Scale”. This is used by doctors worldwide to assess the level of consciousness of a patient and is named because of its invention in the University of Glasgow. Surprised that Glasgow has expertise in head trauma? No, me neither.
Such an emotional game. Billy went through the same emotions we all did. And he wrote about it as it happened from a bar somewhere in China. Maybe it’s too soon, but in time you will want to relive this game through Billy’s live updates that follow. Because that feeling that we could and should [...]
I can exclusively reveal the shocking truth behind the release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted murderer of 270 people on the Pan Am flight 103 which was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. It is part of a desperate attempt by Tartan Army member, and Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill MSP [...]
The full story can never be made public, but I had to leave New York in a hurry; angry people were looking for me. I left my apartment with just a few minutes’ warning carrying nothing except my passport, the Williamson cats, and Mrs Williamson (she didn’t want to go).
The other week I was playing in a football tournament; one of the opposition teams was an Arsenal supporters team. We gubbed them 3-1, but one of their players made a comment afterwards regarding the standard of the SPL: “We were unbeatable in England, so we’d never lose a game in Scotland.” I suggested that [...]
Billy provides live updates as he watches the Scotland v Norway game in Hong Kong. Noon: I have come out of hiding this week and crossed the border into bandit country – aka Wan Chai – Hong Kong’s drinking and, well, “other things” district; less well-known, it is also the midpoint of a not-so-recent 12-hour [...]
Recently I upgraded to the new iPhone 3GS and it’s an amazing piece of technology. How amazing? Well, the other day I was typing the outline to this week’s column; I typed “Faddy fit”, and the iPhone changed it to “Daddy fit”. Too bloody right, I thought – Norway, who’s your daddy? Faddy’s your daddy. [...]
