Today I meet with another finacial planner who wanted my business!  I’ve had a lot of them over the last couple of years here in Japan.  They manage to find the westerners and hone in like a cruise missle!

I told them aready that I had things sorted, but out of interest I met and went over the usual spiel

Had a wonderful comment on my previous entry from the people at

http://www.elephantstay.com/

Which got me to thinking that my blog may have been lumping all the people who work with elephants into a similar bucket.  I would like to be clear that there are many organisations that truely care for the welfare of the animals they have, and I certainly did not mean to disbarage them.

Lesson here:  When you are going to do elephant rides etc (which a truely an amazing experience) check who you are going with and choose responsibily.  The money you spend will be used to provide a good home and environment!

For someone who works in IT you never really seen any of your projects turn into something that anyone can look at and go ‘wow thats great!’.  All I generally do is take other people huge piles of crap and make sense of it all.  I guess thats why they keep me.  Not always polictically correct, but results well, well like them!

For me the last year has been really amazing as instead of building software solutions I got to actually be a part of building a house.  That was really different and pulled in all my native skills into something that can be seen.  Managing the building a full kitchen in a different langauge has really made me think about what I learnt at home.

I really did take a blank room and build an IKEA kitchen from it, with all the work done by the wonderful bulders the project had.  I even learnt how to install a Japanese dishwasher with Japanese instructions.  It was so different and so much hard work. 

If you are linking to the building blog you will know I’m just a little part of this building.  But for me seeing that Kitchen become an empty space into one of the most wonderful Kitchens I have cooked in you will maybe understand my passion for this project.

Now however its really time for me to say goodbye to it.  I helped build it and love being there and using it, and oh the bathroom is amazing.  They wondered why we so insisted on certain things and now it so works.

When I was young I found a book on our bookshelf called ‘Jet’ by Sir Frank ThomasWhittle.  I’ve just looked and its well out of print now.  Ironically I never read it.  When I return home I’ll look at the downstairs bookshelf to see if we still have it

So why am I pondering on this subject.  Well a really simple reason, my surname is Whittle, and despite efforts from my family to find where it goes back to we run into a block as 100 years ago being illigimate or a barstard was a huge same, and there seems to have been some creative book work at the time to resolve the matter.  I know the name Thomas is an important name in our family, but why?

We may never now, but to this day I don’t just take a seat on an airplance and wait for the peanuts.  No, I wait for those huge jet engines to wind themselves up to full speed.  If you ever listen you can sit on a plane that is rolling forward on to the strip, positions itself and then they just open the throttle all the way open and let those engines do what they can!

I’m wathing now a documentary about elephants in Thailand and its really making me think.  In 1999 I did was on a tour that included and elephant ride.  Now I look back was I doing a good thing or a bad thing.  My trip was way up in the coutry side where they live next the a river and can bath in the water daily and from what I saw they were looked after well.  But now, I’m really upset.  Did i support and industry that just useses these wondeful animals, or did I help.  After 10 years I don’t know. it seemed like a great thing to do and from what I saw it was not bad for them.  But now after seeing this, I think I just contributed to the explotation of animals.

david

I’ve now had my can of worms for about a month now, and its just totally amazing.  They are sorta just keeping up with my food scraps and it helps I’m not always here.  This week I pulled out a bag of scraps I had frozen for them and oddly freezing it seems to help.  I guess it breaks down the cell walls so makes it easier to digest. 

Last week a put the left overs from a juice session and thats completely gone.  What really is cool is that in the first week I put in the cob from some corn, and it basically all gone!  The only food scraps that now go into the waste cycle are garlic, chille and onion bits.  I think if i put them into the freezer they could probably go into the unit as well.

The level is also dropping so I they are eating away at the bedding they had as well, in a few weeks I suspect it will be feed them as much as possible. I’m also working on getting rid of all the gluten products stored up and what a great way to do it.  Turn what I can’t eat into soil and worm water to feed my other food plants.  This is so cool!

Its now about 18 months since I was diagnosed with cancer and I’ve done the surgury thing and the chemo to get rid of it.  The climb back to life after here in Tokyo was something I really don’t care to repeat and without reading all the blogs entries before not entirely sure I’ve totally revealed just how hard that was getting back to a normal life.

I can say now after the full memories of surgury and chemo are over the worst bit about it all now is the bloody constant testing!  You just can’t forget!  I’ve been on a schedule of approx monthly testing, even with the chemo.  I guess I should really shut up and be grateful that the health care system here is so good.  But wow, its a pain.

I was really naughty and didn’t see them for 4 months as I just hated the whole, prepare to goto hospital have the test and then wait a week to go back again for the results.  You know what, you see everything that feels wrong as a possible spread of cancer.

They let me off with about a 45 day period. um like thats big.  Now my last blood test results are not quite that good.  The CAT scans are fine, so great news there, but the blood tumer results are still higher than they should be.  So guess what, wait until the next test and CAT scan. AGAIN.

I have been faced the last few months with a challedge I never really expected. (well that and how to produce the perfect soggy British Chip from oven baked ones – another story).

Now back to my issue.  In the last few months I’ve been able to help facilitate the transfer of an old team member from the UK to Australia, and more recently another very old team member as well.  When this whole thing came up i thought it was brillant for all of them.  The chance to come and live downunder, how wonderful.

Now in hindsight I realise how hard this can be.  For me down under is just normal, its obviously a bit different from being away for so long, but its an old glove that slips on fairly easily, okay, minus a couple of fingers fitting perfectly, but you get my drift.

For them coming down it a whole new pice of clothing. I realised this when I thought about the adjustments I had to make living in the UK.  Its not as easy as you think.  After moving to Japan, wow.  I want the very best for my old team. If this all works out then great, but it must be a move they and there families all make.  Its not like moving suberbs!

The worms have been in place a couple of weeks now and seem very settled! They are not quite chowing through all the organic matter I produce, which is rather a scary thought of just how much we do produce/throw away and here it all gets incinerated.

As I’m generally away on the weekends it does give them some time to catch up and I’ve been rather bad with the heat and eat, nothing crap, but not much for worms.

I’ve been using the worm water to feed the baby tomatoe plant I got a few weeks ago and its going balistic! I’ve had to redirect it across the blacony now and I suspect with its planted cutting on the other side I’ll have a deck of tomatoe plants. Yummy.

Whats cool is that after its finishes fruiting etc it will be ripped out on join me on a trip down to the beach and turn into soil for the garden. Thats the one drawback of the worming thing here is that there is now real clear way to dispose of the worm castings. Maybe some ninja attacks on the pack next door at midnight. Now that could be interesting to explain to the police if caught!

No house stuff this time.  Something about me now.  Yesterday I got a wonderful email from a very dear uncle.  It contained alot of family stuff which was wonderful, but not part of this blog.  My memory after the chemo is not that good now, but I when someone reminds me I do remember.  After my Uncles email alot of memories came back.  more below.