I have only brought three books with me. Three books seemed to be enough when I had to try to find room to pack these in my rucksack last night. If I had thought about this I would have realised that three books is never enough. I like to read. I read about three books per week. This is during an normal week when I work and have other commitments. If I’m not working I can easily go through a book a day. I’m going to be away for more than three weeks – how could I ever have thought that three books we enough?

I’m a compulsive reader. The sort of person who gets so desparate to read that I’ve caught myself reading the backs of shampoo bottles. I’m already more than half-way through one of my books. I have this fear that it will be finished soon. Everytime I pick it up I think to myself “20 pages, I’ll just read another 20 pages”.

Marty has just offered to let me read through the linux kernel source code. This is not the sort of reading that I like to do. He has also told me that there is a bookshop in the airport that sells some English books. Once we get to Japan hopefully we will be so busy that I won’t have time to read.