Came across an interesting situation of how some people get there kicks in
snow storms.

Was waiting at the Downtown crossing T station today and this guy was
telling all these people that to goto the South Station they needed to
cross to the other platform. Was rather amusing as after I had told the
first couple that this was the correct line they started telling everyone
else.

Doesn’t really need any links to other websites for this piece of news, just look up the headlines and its all there. Today 11 Jan New Zealand is in mourning, one of our last great hero’s has passed away.

So damn proud of being a kiwi!

While it was a pain having to leave NZ so quickly after Christmas, it did mean that I was back in Japan for New Years. Normally everyone will leave to go home to family for this, so Tokyo was relatively empty and just left us orphans to celebrate how we could.

I decided that another dinner party was in order.I came across Cornish Rock Hens in the supermarket a few weeks back, and brought one to try it out and see what was what. Well the initial test of just thrawing it, season and baste with butter in hot oven was a huge sucess. Oddly thou I could not find that many recipes on the net for them, or rather all the recipes seemed to be the same. Stuff with wild rice something something! Time for some creativity.

The theme was Spanish (so why the hell I served a Som Tam salad as a starter is anyones just. I think I was just so excited to see a green papaya in the market that I had to do something with it. There was a recipe in my new 1080 Spanish book for Cornish rock hen, but it was for frying and that was really something I wanted to do. Recipe for the rock Hens can be found here.

After a nice long dinner it was time to wrap up and head out to a temple to see the new year in. Unknown to me there is the temple of the 47 Ronin (long story) just up the road from me. A quick cab ride (cos it was so cold, and my directions are not that good a night with no map) and we reached this wonderful little temple. There was a small fire of cedar going to keep warm and a moderate line of people to ring the big bell.

Tradition is that the bell is rung 108 times at new year to represent the 108 sins of man! It was way to cool an opportunity not to get in line and do it. You are also give a small prayer that you hand back a year later. It was all rather solomn, with huge dignity. All four of us had a go, and later over hot chocolate and marshmellows I found out that the other 3 (even having lived in Japan for so long) had never rung the gong on New Years. Apparently at the major temples its just a nightmare of queuing. Finally got to bed at 4am, but it was a fantastic and very memorable way to see the new year in.

I’m back from the Christmas holiday with family.  I should have written more about it but was just so happy being home and away from it all that writing blog stuff didn’t seem to be on my mind.  Christmas day was spent with my brother and his young family in Auckland.  I was abrutly woken on Christmas day by my nephew demanding I get up to open presents.  Follow 5 minutes later by his mother who was all prepared to let my airbed down so she could open hers as well!

Well folks its now a year to this day and hour I was in a hospital bed trying to get to sleep knowing the next morning was surgury.  I don’t feel like going on about it now, instead I want to see the humor of life.  I have always loved this.  

How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb.  

Its been a year today that I was diagnosed with a tumourous lump on my right testicle. The only known confirmed course of treatment is the removed of said lump and testicle. I knew that from the moment they would not let me leave the ultrasound without talking to a doctor.

And what a year it has been. Life has gone up and down with it. I immediatley had to switch to a life of choices, tests, results and more choices. None of these choices were ones you could put off for few days or weeks and hope another better one came along. It was all about having to make a decision then, with course of events taking shape from that choice.

I get so frustrated now with people who will not make a decision and then put them off until they really have to. If I had decided to wait until it was really bad cos I might think another solutioin would come around, well I probably wouldn’t be writing this.

enough said.

Oh, don’t trust kerpserky anti-virus, they are total rubbish.

Having lived in Japan for over two years now and going back to western countries I am left with the a huge respect for the level of customer service provided to the everyday consumer in Japan.  Its not something you get at expensive stores.  It something you get everyday, to the point where sometimes you just take it for granted, until you leave.

Examples.

During the ‘rush hour’ of 4-8pm at my local supermarket there is an elderly gentleman at the exit. He spends time going it and clearing the shopping carts or baskets that people may have left, the rest of the time he is at the door saying thank you for shopping with us.

At my work building you leave the sky lobby in the lift and make eye contact with the receptionist you will get a bow as the elevator doors close.

On the Shinkansen trains the ticket collectors enter the carraige with bow, and when leaving will turn around and bow back to the carriage.

Whereever you go and whatever you do here you will be presented with this type of service.  It doesn’t cost much to be this polite and in reverse you are polite back, so what cost for social nicesness.

My friend and I often talk about this and contemplate that if we go back to a full customer service role and can afford it I would bring all the staff to Japan just to see how it can be done.  Whenever I chose to leave here it will be a very lasting memory.

Two weeks ago I went back to the hospital for another check up.  I’ve been really bad as after the last ‘all clear’ test I jsut didn’t want to go back for the next monthly check up.  It sounds stupid, but hey you go through this and then you may understand how bloody depressing these tests are.  You must always keep in somewhere in your mind that the results will be "you have cancer again"

I say it again, as I’ve already been through it once, and the biggest lurgy monster in all our minds are those words "its back".  For reader who haven’t had cancer, or been really closely associated it I apologise.  I decided when I was back in the UK that I would change my status depending on these tests.

So. I’ve now upgraded my status, I’m no longer a cancer patient.  I am a cancer suvivor. May sound odd but from my perspective thats a huge change.  It means I can put alot of it all behind me and rejoin the ‘world’ again.  It by no means its gone away, or will do for many years yet and the checkups will probably still be as bad, but for everyday life for me its a significant change.

Hope you understand

Having lived in the UK for a number of years and seeing the organic food movement take off, I myself try to buy organic when I can.  Yes it does cost more, which I think is more a supermarket get rich scheme than anything.  But I do realise that producing organic food is more expensive than the run of the mill food.  More

I’ve written a few entries lately about the trip back to the UK and how annoying certains aspects of it were.  I wrote a few comments on things to two different customer service departments, one at the request of the restaurant ‘Fifteen’ and the other to Virgin Atlantic about comments I overhead from there groundstaff.  I’m totally delighted to say that I got back two very well written emails from each.