We had spent a quiet day together doing the garden and spending some time preparing lunch. Little did I know what was going to hit me in terms of learning experience. About 2:30 in the afternoon I switched on the TV. I think we were having a late lunch. There followed a sequence of events that focused me exactly where I needed to be both in the attitude to myself and to others with a certain type of disability.

Naoki Higashida. until this afternoon I had not heard of this amazing young man. I felt I should tune in to Japanese NHK TV, which is our favorite non-English channel with a quality of reporting way above what we see in the West. We have about 600 channels to choose from so why I chose this one at this particular time is a mystery . The same thing happens with travel and the people we meet; we seem to get the timing right on each occasion. I regard this as a real blessing and I seem to be looked after by some mysterious force.

This young man featured on the programme has autism and is looked after by his mother. I enclose some snapshots from the TV to give some idea of the length and breadth of his intellect. He has written a book that has been translated into 30 languages and on watching this TV documentary I immediately ordered it via Amazon prime; it should arrive tomorrow Sunday (yes, you read that right). It is called “The Reason I Jump” – one boy’s voice from the silence of autism.

What is amazing is the number of people throughout the world that have been affected by the book particularly parents with autistic children, who have been enabled to get inside of the head of the autistic person and understand where the problem lies or what the symptoms indicate. I’m really humbled and moved by carers who are driven with a motive that is innocent and altruistic and they go on doing so day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. This type of action cannot be faked. Autistic people themselves have no choice, they have to carry on in spite of gross dysphasia between their intentions and the interpretation of the people in the outside world

In his description of how he sees life, I could see this as an amplified version of how I feel sometimes. For example if I picture something in my head I cannot talk about it at the same time. The vision takes precedence.

with the unwavering assistance of his mother he communicates using a ‘keyboard’  which is in English and speaks in Japanese at the same time. It is a mystery how this works.

he is objecting to stereotyping of his condition when being asked a question by a reporter

he said he was happy although he had no friends

he was invited over to Ireland by this father who had read his book and was moved by it. The father has a son with a similar condition. They met but they did not speak but shook hands at the end

this was the advice he gave to the reporter who asked him about how we should conduct ourselves

looking out of an apartment at a familiar scene.

On an entirely different matter, these are the number of automated attacks made by robots on PC’s in the last week. This shows how essential it is to have protection precautions with your computer especially if you host a website.		Block Count
Russian Federation		74,350,963
Ukraine		26,408,116
United States		21,631,135
Turkey		19,499,390
India		15,741,988
Brazil		10,263,209
France		9,503,834
China		8,034,118
Korea, Republic of		7,133,979
Philippines		6,382,397