Wonder if I'll make it back...?

It's been, paradoxically, both a productive and a frightening day. After a leisurely start and breakfast kind-of with the Cat, I made my way to 神奈川県, and read a fun part of that 2nd Murakami book. When I got to work, our visitors were all there, working away without any fuss. Which is great. Meant I could crack on with The Paper.

But a short spell of the kind of day-long panic attack feelings I've been having so much of recently quickly got worse. I've spent almost all day with a sore chest. And not on the right-hand side either, if you get me.

In the last 36 hours, I've discovered a thinning patch on top of my head (curiosity and a webcam got the better of me), white hairs in my beard (not blonde), and now a tight, sore chest.

Feel a bit better relaxing on the train, but don't want to go through the prolonged torture of not knowing if I'll still be alive at midnight.

This is nuts.

I think a lot of it is delayed reaction to the madness of recent weeks at work, plus sorting out a flat and associated stuff with every spare moment, plus never getting a holiday, plus being paranoid that the Cat is going to try and rush things again and/or take over the new place. that last one probably isn't fair but with no-one to talk to about this kind of stuff, it quickly gathers momentum in your mind.

feel like shouting, but what? and who at?

Alive

Today was one of those rare days when loads of things went well.

I'm fully prepared for not to be like that but I'd like to at least pay tribute to what went right, after a shaky start.

after the too-long early telecon, I woke the Cat up at the right time. I later learned that he was happy about it.

when I got to McHida, Starbucks was open, so I went in and got a frappuccino and hot chicken sandwich.

My iPod played all the right stuff on my way to work.

I was focused about finishing my article when I worked this morning.

It dawned on me at lunchtime that thd article deadlind wasn't tomorrow, but in 7 days' time.

As I was getting ready to send an e-mail to TW about the flat, the Cat rang and texted to say that the landlord had accepted my application! Next step is contract, said he!

I rang TW to impart the good news. This led to the sort of entirely reasonable question0you get from a man who's supposed to leave for Honolulu in 4 days...

When DHB asked me if I'd verified the exact flag values during the real-time check, I was able to confirm that they were right, even though I'd done it on the fly.

I bought two Haruki Murakami books months ago and selected which one to read first in no particular order. I finished early this week. The second one picks up where the first left off.

There followed another meeting by telecon, then more contact with the cat and then I came home late. But met the Cat at the station for tantan men.

As I left the train station, I felt alive for the first time in months...

I've had a particularly odd day...

For a start, it began with waking up at 4:00 a.m. when the Cat came to bed, and I woke up. This time, because I needed to...

There was a conference in Chiba (way out east, near Disneyland, and beyond IKEA; see a previous post), which — thanks to the way things have been going recently at work — I was in NO way ready for. So I got up to do some "quick analysis", so I'd have at least something of interest to present.

Ended up not being very focused, and ran right up to the wire in terms of when I had to leave. The job I did on shaving my chin was not what one might call exemplary...

The journey was uneventful, but slightly bizarre because I got my laptop out on the Keiyō Line from Tokyo to work on the presentation. On the plus side, I've now mastered getting my slides remarkably swish, I must say :o)

The talk was uneventful, as befitted the content. But Satoshi was there, and it's always fun to have a chat with him, because he never goes for the small-talk angle. DHB, myself, Cristina, Loraine-san, Hiroaki, Satoshi and SK all went for lunch in the nearby restaurant complex -- a Chinese place with very nice set menus -- and then I had a head-stagger about checking the instrument commanding, cos we have a visitor in charge.

So, I had this moment where I was sitting on the steps in the lobby, with my shiny laptop, accessing the commanding of a spacecraft on the other side of the city, in Tokyo.

I could not have predicted this life. But I'm quite amazed that it's mine. Even if I find out tomorrow that I've somehow ballsed it up, I still had that moment.

In other news, I've put in an application, with TW's help, to rent a flat in McHida, close to the train station. I'm quite excited about it, but prepared for it to not work. Things which require applications in Japan often fall flat on a technicality or a whim, so I have to not get my hopes up. He says, with a window open on Ikea's website....

And I just found out from pandagirl that its DB's birthday tomorrow. In the midst of all that's going on at work (not listed, cos I don't want to depress myself), I had to suggest a postponement and then a massive birthday blow-out.

Standing up for myself in a way, I suppose. But I do feel a bit bad. But I think it's in his interests as well.

Either way, what a day. Oh, and I came straight back to the Cat's place after the conference, did a load of laundry, then went to sleep. For three hours!

Cool :oD

"...but typhoons are EXCITING!"

This time of year, summer is trying to assert its muggy self on the population of Japan (including itinerants like me). The warm, water-laden air pushes in from its winter hibernation spot. But occasionally, like today, the cold air pushes back. Then the temperature drops, sinks past the dew point, and kersploosh!: Out falls all the water.

Witness this morning: McHida train station, and the weather is lovely. Brisk, a bit hot, but lovely sunshine. Get as far as Fuckynobby, and the sky is not far from being coal-coloured. And the wind carries such a strong smell of rain. At that point, I'm wondering if I can make it to work in time (coatless and brollyless) without getting thoroughly and utterly soaked! Exciting! And the smell of the rain gets stronger and stronger with each 100 yards I walk. Fortunately, I made it, but 45 minutes later, there was the kersploosh!

It's finally passed, and now I can see the mountains again. Lovely :o)

Project RestrictedFacialHairGrowth

comes to an end tonight.

Here's the finished product:




Celebration of Wednesday has been mooted. And as I'm feeling nearly burnt out, I may combine both feast-days into an all-inclusive, parity-of-esteem beer-drinking at a local 居酒屋 (or "Staying and Drinking Shop") in MacHida.

Might, in fact, be rude and vulgar not to.

GrrrRRRRRR!!

My boss comes here, depriving me of horriday, gives me a good dressing-down, sorts everything out, then we're fine. Then, just as I'm being a good boy and being grown-up and sorting everything out, in the middle of a shite week, I get another dressing-down e-mail with three -- count 'em -- three sequential exclamation marks. Do fuck off!

Add to that that the Cat is being an uppity (sp?) drama queen, despite my Krispy Kreme trip lastnight, and never lets me get to sleep until he's ready, plus the fact that I haven't had a weekend in weeks, without any let-up in sight, and I really am close to the end of my tether.

What, as our American cousins would say, is with these people?

I go home....

Café blog

I'm sitting in my semi-regular Doutor café at 淵野辺, with the traditional mocha ("eru size" today) and the leptop open, going through e-mails in the dave-is-uncontactable calm of the coffee-shop environment, killing time before the next bus to work. I know it's only a mile in, but I've been travelling since before seven o'clock, so I like this little pause in the day before work really gets going.

I slept yesterday. A lot! The cat and I slept in til 2 pm after watching a marathon of Six Feet Under til the not-so-early hours of Sunday morning. Then I went back to the bedroom about 6pm to read my Murakami book, and ended up drifting off again. Cue me waking up at 11pm when I hear Himself putting on American Beauty (same script-writer and score-writer as SFU, I learn). Which we then mostly watched, before he went for a bath (he doesn't get up til 4 hours after me most days) and I went back to bed. I drifted off again to the strains of Ambient 2 coming from the living room, and woke when he hopped into bed at a somewhat-incredible 4 am. Thanks to forgetting my earplugs at the office during the last move, I couldn't quite shut out the snoring (I'm sure I do much worse, but I luckily sleep with someone who seems impervious to noise). So at 05:02, I went toilet (in the toilet, obvi), and at 05:52 gave up on getting back to sleep.

Summer is already here, though -- at least, by British standards -- so the morning was sufficiently light that I could get up and start making myself ready for the day. Project Jawline-Up Beard seems to have withstood its second brush with the razor (note the absence, in attached, of neckular hair). And I have to say that lastnight I felt positively blissed out by the amount of sleep I got since Sat night. Feel much calmer today, too. Shows the power of refusing to go out and about on Sunday just because you feel you ought to on your day off, ね?


A beard, earlier today. From the office (too embarrassed to do it at the café).

First day sans jacket

Not quite the scorcher yet that it was shaping up to be earlier, but warm in Tokyo Proper none the less.

Journey's given me enough time to listen to Maximo Park's new album, and the My Architects one that I fell asleep to lastnight. Two beautiful albums that I've fallen in love with.

Golden balls to Golden Week

2120
So, here I am at the dead of twenty-past-nine, on a train platform just beyond the vast Tokyo border feeling more than slightly hacked off that Golden Week has been ruined by:
a) having to work on two more national holidays because of the duty rota,
b) having to come in the rest of Golden Week because the boss mis-scheduled her trip, despite having lived here herself,
c) working last Saturday AND this one,
d) people asking inflammatory questions about why I don't have an apartment yet. (Hint: you lot dropped us in it with unready software and no training, then keep overloading us, with stuff that isn't that important, every time we almost get our free time back... etc.)

I'm coping by listening to My Top Rated on the iPhod (lots of Nineties - Hi, I'm old.), contemplating the long-term prospects of the relationship I'm in, and planning what kind of apartment I want, wondering where & when I should go on holiday ("whether" is long sealed, by the way) and trying to figure out how to claim my life, sanity, and communication with my friends back.

Light-hearted stuff like that...

Wonder how the Cat is today after his spat with the Rubbish Boss yesterday (and subsequent mentor chat with the drag queen)...?

Massage from the single-mould unit

It's a bit ridicularse, I know, to be paying what I am at the Wochenlig to avoid the commute...

But as I'm doing so many CO weeks to make up for March away, and then the Incoming keeps arriving every time there's a windy of opportunity, the sensible alternative of actually finding a place of my own in McHida has never yet been possible. Maybe next week, eh...?

Eerie quiet in Machida

I woke up this morning — the last day in this particular stint at the Wochenlig Mansion — to find no noise outside. Nothing. There's the gentle rumble of distant traffic on the main road (presumably between 横浜 and 八王子), but nothing else. It's weird. I don't remember the New Year being like this, but then I didn't wake up here...

It's been too long since this blog was last active. And much indeed has happened. I've been home for a month (well, back in the UK for a month — wasn't a proper holiday!). And at the moment, the bosslady is here. But I'll try and drop in the occasional entry each week, which was the point of this thing when I started it... er... four years ago(?)

I'm doing considerably more e-mail-type admin than I used to, getting less sleep (partly because I'm travelling in each day from the Cat's place when I'm not in Machida). But I'm living a broader life than I used to in many respects. And I'm listening to a lot more music (both from the Cat's enormous collection, and from my own purchases in Book Off and iTunes). I watch Mino Monta in the mornings, I got my first grey hair (to be posted) the day after my 30th in March. And I'm finding my voice at work (sometimes a bit too loud, probably). Which is not to say work is going brilliantly, but it is at least hopeful. I'm not massively up-beat this morning, because I've got to go to work (bosslady presence plus need to work with her on my first mission project). But the Cat also is working, so no plans would've survived anyway.

I do need to get back to the gym, though, as my health isn't the finest at the moment, and I think a dose of regular (proper) exercise would help enormously to destress.

Listening to Snow Patrol's Warmer Climate right now, and it reminds me — local-radio style — that the weather is indeed getting warmer right now. Looking at mid-twenties for the rest of Golden Week (today is Constitution Day, I bereave, followed by Boys Day tomorrow).

CO week is now Fri-to-Fri, too, so there'll be sod-all fun tomorrow. Have to enjoy what I've got! :oD

Lotsaluvv,
Me

I got in touch with one of my first new acquaintances