Hi all. I hope you all had a great holiday. I did, and it seems I’ve been on the road ever since. I’ve just come back from Singapore where I picked up my 4th active project. The additional work must be in an effort to get me to stay as late as everyone else. I’m sure the rest of my team only have 1 project each.
* It’s been a month since I started writing and things have / will change. Now my team is being split up and I find myself back in Telecommunications exclusively. The management title of this 5 man team has been given to someone else, but I seem to be doing all the management work. Before he takes over, in my ‘spare’ time, I have to put together the team direction, work plan, and am basically acting as full time interface to regional organisation. *
Social life is still getting better so I’m finally happy, healthy and active. The biggest problem I have now is that my leather soled work shoes which are great for reducing the static in the office are not the most stable for walking through the snow to work. Very strange to think that only 6 months ago I was whinging about the heat, and now it’s snowing in the middle of the day.
* And now I’m so busy that the only time I can find to write is when I’m stuck at work at 2am. I’m discovering the joys of working across time zones. When I started this project, I understood none of the technical details and was forced to bring in experts from Brussels and Cincinatti to complement the local experts. Three time zones, three languages, and I’m reduced to playing interpreter at 2am. I’ve picked up enough over the 6 months I’ve been working with them to be able to add value technically, but somehow my mind isn’t functioning at the moment.*
What I REALLY Did On My Holidays
The holiday was fantastic. Well, the company and most of the places were. The climate was a shock and New York was just too big. I had 3 days in LA, about a week in Canada and 5 days in New York. LA was apparently colder than usual, but still above 10C. Canada had highs around -10C and was apparently too cold for snow. New York was coldest of all though, in both climate and attitude. The wind chill factor made the lows of -10C seem like -50C, and the lack of friendly people made it seem like 0 Kelvin.
I was dragged around to see all the touristy things – Empire State, Eiffel Tower (oops I mean the… um, statue of liberty), Museum of the City of New York…. but I must admit that the view from the Empire State was pretty impressive. I was told that all the American girls would tell me that they loved my accent, but no one did. They were all too busy to notice that I had an accent. The waitresses only ever seemed to just make it through the order before running off to more important things. There were good parts to my time in New York though. On New Years Eve we ended up ice-skating in Central Park for the count down with the fire works going off above the trees. We got out into the sticks of Harriman National Park and went for a wander through the leaf shaped ice formations for a while one day. Catherine lived just out of New York in suburban New Jersey, which was much more relaxing than the big city (and came complete with live in suicidal artistic ‘Joisey’ite with a ridiculous accent – very amusing guy) but unfortunately we didn’t spend much time there.
I knew before I went that I didn’t want to do all the touristy things. I’ve always preferred to ‘experience culture’ to joining monumental queues (queues to monuments) but I’ve never been able to explain what sort of things interest me. Now I know that it’s doing the things the locals do in daily life that are different from home. This time I got much more out of seeing the New York subway (and finding that it is not only common practice to pass your ticket through the fence for your friend to use, but that it’s legal), riding the buses in LA (and seeing that the drivers can’t actually give change), trying their hamburgers and bagels (missed out on the hot dog), and wrapping up against the cold than I did from any of the monuments.
In LA, my hosts Tim and Chris managed to mix both, we saw the Hollywood sign from the observatory, which had a great astronomy museum. We went Downtown and saw the Bradbury building (where Blade Runner was set) and spent a lot of time in the Spanish markets eating Mexican. We saw typical American street life by walking along Venice beach.
Canada was the highlight, staying with a local family, one of whom, Shauna was an exchange student from my year in Japan, so it was a real reunion for the four of us. She and Chris have two gorgeous daughters so I had my first Christmas with little children and even relaxed enough that they were calling me clucky. Not bloody likely! You just couldn’t help having fun with these two. We were taken all over New Brunswick under the pretence of visiting all the rels, but really it was to get 6 separate Christmas dinners. I walked on water for the first time (a feat we repeated in New York later), which is an amazing feeling. The adrenaline is still pumping from thinking about it.
And yes, the road thing was a major problem. I thought that an intelligent guy like me would get used to the opposite traffic flow quickly, but I came just as close to stepping out in front of trucks at the end of the trip as I did at the beginning. Even at the last, when the taxi pulled up to take me to the airport, I gave Catherine a hug and not really watching or thinking, reached behind me to open the door of the taxi and almost sat on a very surprised taxi driver’s lap.
The most bizarre experience of the trip had to be the return of the wallet. Catherine is notorious for losing things and getting them back. I’ve seen it happen a few times, but this was amazing. She lost it outside a dinghy diner in Boston where 10 big rough black guys were waiting for a bus. One hour later it was back in her hands, with nothing missing. The old lady who had picked it up had phoned the police at exactly the same time as the policeman Catherine had hailed down was radioing her story in.
New Year
Since it may be some time before I’m ever in Japan again for the year-end (I will hopefully be back in Australia for the next Christmas/New Year), I might as well take some time to write about it now. Let me introduce the Ghost of Christmas Past who will take us back 9/11 years to the times I was here for Xmas.
On my first visit I only went to school a few times, but I was sent one Saturday to show me that Japanese school is a 5 1/2 day event. At lunch time we headed home to find a cake waiting in the shape of Santa’s head. I looked at the date on my watch and realized, for the first time, that it was Christmas Day.
Two years later, I was living in a city and the signs of Christmas were all around. Major department stores put up decorations and sometimes even a christmas tree. The major difference is that here, Christmas is a romantic time to spend with your partner, while New Year is a religious time for going to temples and spending with the family.
Both years I was kept up watching TV until midnight on New Year’s Eve and then joined the traffic of the entire city heading to the local temple to throw money, clap three times and make a wish. I can’t remember what I wished for so it probably didn’t come true. Next morning I would wake up to a special breakfast. The family always breaks out the best crockery bentou boxes for this formal occasion and the food is also special. Looking at the fish, mushrooms, soggy vegies, and pickled plum, I invariably realised I wasn’t as hungry as I thought. Maybe that’s why my wishes never came true – I refused to honour the gods by eating mush.
Instead I tempted the wrath of the ancestor’s spirits by eating the stack of mochi topped with a mandarin laid out in offering. This offering is a mini pyramid made of two stones of pounded rice and the manderin. The rice, called mochi, can best be described as stretchy rice. Although they undoubtedly make most of it with machines these days, the traditional process is much more interesting. A special kind of rice (I always knew there were 2 kinds of rice – white and brown – but finding out that there is also long and short grain wasn’t as surprising as finding out there is rice for sushi, rice for noodles, rice for mochi, and of course rice for rice) is poured into a large stone crucible and pounded with a large wooden hammer, much the same way as we chop wood. A brave and agile young lady risks putting her hands right where the hammer is going to land to knead the rice between smashes. Sometimes they put grass in as well to add flavour, and sometimes they dip it in kinako (powdered wood?) and sugar before eating. It’s one of those foods that you either love or hate, most non-Japanese being on the hate side. I love it – but most of those non-Japanese still have the gall to call ME fussy.
There’s no such thing as stockings filled with presents, but when the family gathers for the big festive lunch on New Year’s Day, each relative brings a ‘otoshidama’ for each of the children. This printed envelope hides some cash that let’s the kids know which uncle/aunt/grandparent to call favourite for the next year.
One of my favourite parts of New Year is playing with the spinning tops called ‘koma’. These come in all shapes and sizes, but the best is a cone about 1 1/2 inches tall with a nail pushed through the centre. You wind a long cord around in a special way and throw. I got to the stage where I could catch it in my hand before it hit the ground and bounce it from one hand to the other. That was still a long way from the people who could roll it down the cord to their other hand or even bounce it on the cord. I’ve long since lost the knack so I guess I’ll never get there.
While on the subject of Japanese interpretation of western festivals… ‘Why have one addictive western commerical festival when you can have two?’ In Japan, Valentine’s Day is a day when girls give chocolates to the guys they like. The favour is returned one month later on White Day. And as if that wasn’t enough, the typical Japanese mentality says that giving *the* guy chocolates is way too obvious so they should be given to everyone. The excuse used is that it’s just in case some lonely soul gets left out. Of course, that means that the guys have to give out the same amount of chocolates as they received, and if they don’t know who they received them from, they have to cover their bases by giving some to everyone. A windfall for the chocolate and card companies, but I guess they’re just making up for the fact that Easter is not celebrated over here. I’m not telling how many I received, but I like to think it’s because all the girls know I don’t eat chocolate.
I’m dying to hear from you all. Please write.