thinking and wondering

"so won't you take me for a ride
and let me know I'm still alive
somtimes I wish I didn't have an answer or a clue to anything
all this wondering, and this thinking, and wondering what I'm gonna do"

- King's X

cheesy toast

managed to begin the day by sleeping in and making misaki run late. i'm determined to have a good day anyway. cheesy toast is good. um, that's about it really.

wednesday

worked. did stuff. and stuff like that.
felt pretty good, especially after listening to sean lennon and ben harper on the way to work.
managed to end the day by upsetting misaki with my lame japanese comprehension. it started well..

fixed!

Got the car back yesterday, and it's good as new! And for much less than Toyota quoted us originally to replace nearly everything in the vicinity of the impact. Very glad to have that over with. We're planning to go for a drive to an onsen for a weekend soon to relax and put it out of our minds for good. Feeling good now.

happy birthday Dad!

Today's my dad's birthday.
Sorry I didn't call this morning, and I guess it'll be a bit late by the time I get home tonight, but I hope you have a really nice day. Happy birthday dad.

car

Today's a national holiday, which means that Misaki's at home with Tyler, but I'm on my yway to work anyway. At least we got to sleep in today. And the car's in being fixed. Yay! I think it might be finished today, or tomorrow or something. Finally an end to the whole saga. We're going to drive to an onsen for a weekend after we get it back.
Hungry. Time for breakfast.

sunday

Went to a mates house to meet his 2 month old daughter with some people. Very cute. Had a few beers, a bit of a chat, some delicious sushi and a really time all said and done. Caught up with Masako too. She was toting some really nice pics from Aus and England. Really nice. It's cool to see pics like that and think 'hmmm.. that'd be a really nice place to live - hang on a sec'. One day.

washing

it's the weekend. It's cold. We're going to have trouble drying all our washing so Misaki's just gone up to the coin laundry. Why do we have so much washing to dry? Tyler had a bit of a yak last night, maybe from coughing too much, or maybe from eating something bad, but he's fine, no probs. Thing is, after expelling half his dinner in the bed, we changed the sheets and gave him a shower, and then he brought up the other half. (this is really lovely reading isn't it?) So we're on a washing mission. For a little guy he eats a lot. Here's something you don't need to know - if you think nato smells bad while your eating it, you don't want to know how it smells after you've started digesting it!
cold

er...

Had bacon and eggs for breakfast. Quite enjoying my morning so far. I'm going to get some time to work on my projects today, so maybe that's why I'm actually quite relaxed. Nothing's getting to me at all today, it's great. Pot of coffee for company. Groove salad providing musical accompanyment. A nice weekend planned - taking the car in to be fixed on Sunday and heading over to a friends house to hang out.

thursday

Had an open house at the school. Quite good really - met lots of people. Then had to grab a few quick beers afterwards with the lads. Another diligent day, all said and done. Fell asleep listening to Spiderbait on the way home and had to walk back in the rain from the next station. Didn't mind really.

wednesday

Had to leave early for a special meeting about an open house the school was planning for the next day. Then had to head over to the other campus to teach there until late. Then had to grab a few quick beers afterwards with the lads. A very diligent day all in all.

umami

Read this: umami. A point is made about language governing your perceptions and interpretations. I've often thought the same. It's late, better crash. bye

diligence

Decided today that I should make an effort to write something here every day, reguardless of how mundane or uninteresting it might be, for example: "woke up. picked nose. worked. came home. ate. picked nose. went back to sleep."
Somedays interesting things happen, so just to be prepared for that eventuality I'm training myself into good habbits.

Here's todays thought of the day:
My spelling is noticably deteriorating after only a few years in a non-english speaking country.

And another thought for free:
Japan isn't such a great place to study japanese - no time. Or no energy, hard to tell the difference really.

Most interesting recent activity:
Made tacos for dinner last night. (you know things are getting bad when you have to start talking about what you eat)

One more bonus thought:
I noticed an ad in the train tonight for one of the biggest name brand english schools in Japan - Nova. Couldn't read all the details, but the price looked like 200,000 yen. That's the best part of 3000 bucks, I guess for a year's lessons. That's pretty serious about studying english, even if most people do get the money from loan agencies.

Ed on the Farm 2003

Decided it's about time I got a link to Ed's hilariousness on the farm up finally. Here it is:

Ed on the Farm 2003

I am debian

find out what kind of OS you are

www.debian.org

that's much more betterer

Took the car somewhere else for another quote today. Less than a thousand bucks! So they don't feel that the support bar is bent enough to replace, and it's a little worrying how they can do they whole job for less than toyota quoted us just to paint the bonnet, but it's so cheap that I'm not asking any questions. It's not damaged structurally and the air conditioner and radiator are fine too, so as long as it looks ok when we get it back I'll be well chuffed.

When it's all fixed up we're going to clean it up a bit (it's festy as inside - full of Tyler's toys and stuff) and go for a weekend trip somewhere.

prang!

I've done it again - I went and drove our beautiful car into some nob who decided he had the sacred right to force his way through the traffic in front of us. Naturally, becuase the front of our car connected with the back of his, the insurance companies will probably find us at fault. Maybe we could have avoided it if instead of giving him the horn in anticipation of him perpetuating his nobishness, we had just stopped abruptly. But stopping suddenly is exactly what he did before even completing his turn through the traffic because as could be expected, he didn't actually check to see if the road he was turning into was clear. It wasn't, he had no where to go, and he expected me to hold back and allow his royal self to wave the rules of right-of-way. Well, we were only traveling at a brisk walking speed, so his car isn't really damaged. The front of ours has definitely looked better though. Took it in for a quote yesterday, and it was highway robbery! I guess he based it on the assumption that the insurance would be covering it, so he estimated a price which would cover replacing pretty much the entire front half of the car, for about $AU4K. The bonnet's bent, the front grill's pushed in a bit, and the support bar across the front's sitting at a bit of an angle, but the radiator fortunately wasn't damaged, and nor was it's mount. There's a small dent in the top of it's outer casing though, so he suggested replacing the entire thing. Also the compressor for the air-conditioner is conveniently located between the radiator and the front grill, but fortunately it also appears to me not to have been damaged. He feels that an alluminium pipe connected to it is bent, and so, guess what? Yep, better replace half the air-conditioning system too. Having the replacement bonnet painted to match the car is also quite expensive, but I'm ok with that. What I can't abide is the fact that almost half the total cost of the quote was labour! It's all neatly itemised on a nice printout, like 'removing front grill - $50, looking at car and scratching chin - 1 left testicle'.
Well, live and learn. People driving like that has been one of my pet hates for a long time now, but I've allowed myself to become a victim of it. Should have just stopped as soon as I saw him start trying to push through, but it happens so often here that you never expect any grief from it. At least we're fairly well cashed up at the moment, so it's not going to be a problem for us, but it just had to happen right at the same time as I was thinking of finally upgrading our poor old pc. Bugger.

thankyou sony

Just invested no small amount of money in a pair of sony headphones. They are good. They're a closed back design, which does mean that the people around me can travel in blissfull ignorance of the free-sprited chaotic tones causing the bones of my skull to resonate at low frequencies (I think my sinuses cleared up significantly the first time I used them), but the up side is that it also blocks out ouside noise so effectively I can immerse myself in my own private world of musical appreciation and forget all else around me. Definitely money well spent. A lot of money well spent.