One of the things I’ve become very much aware of is what have I actually done with my life.  I spent my first 29 years in NZ growing up, being educated and then working. I always thought I wanted to travel but certain debts didn’t really make that possible, but I listed to the stories of friends who had travelled and knew what I wanted to do.  Long story short things worked out and the funds were there for me to go and travel.

Many hardships, bad experiences, amazing times, following by stunning times, followed by some once in a life time experiences I have done what I thought I would do and can probably now swap well good stories with my old friends back in NZ.  My life over the last 11 years has been filled with many wonderful and amazing experiences.  I’ve seen and done things than many would just think way off.

I’ve seen the sunrise on Mount Sinai, trekked with the Thai hill tribes, swam in the dead sea, celebrated the Thai water festival, walked over hot coal barefoot, watched spitfires over leeds castle and seen more of life on the earth than I ever thought possilbe.  I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, and been inspired so many times.  I’m also now a two time cancer survivor and see all that has been and just hope I’ll get to see more.

This round of cancer has also given me even more insight.  I lost a few friends with the last cancer and it seems I’m lost a few more thins time.  But you know what at the end of day , those friends who stick around for it are really the ones I love to bits.

d

Well, my last visit to the hospital didn’t go quite as I was expecting.  It was supposed to be a ‘your making great healing and we don’t want to see you for another 2 or 3 months.

That did happen with my plastic surgery team who told me to keep wearing the dressing for the next two months and we will see you next month, but you also need to go back to the dermo team for the full results. We can also tell you that you have Spindle Cell Carcinoma.  Great, I’m out of here!

Not quite.  The dermo team what to run more tests!  As its Spindle Cell Carcinoma which is a tad more aggressive that its main relative squamous carcinoma they want to run another set of tests to make sure it has not spread.  So back for another contract CT scan and another wait until the results come in.  So guess what its the cancer waiting game.  I’m used to it now and spend nearly all of my time doing things that don’t let me think about it to much.  I’ve gotten fairly good at that.

Results should hopefully be all clear and come back in 2 months for a check up.  I’m just a little hesitant as all the way through this I’ve been told it can’t possible be cancer, or its such a small chance it will be cancer, and um it didn’t work out htat way.

I’ll now tell you exactly what did happen as I could say before since it freaked me out to much.  They removed 2cm of my upper lip and then did a load of re constructive surgery to replace the area taken.  I couldn’t look in a mirror to see it as I was so scared it would be bad.  Effectively they cut all the way around my nose and underneath it to move the available tissue into place.  I didn’t even realise myself how much they took until I found all the stiching inside my mouth.  The really did take all of it.  But they have done a truely stunning job of reconstruction and visually its look just like me!  There is still a scar on my upper lip and right now the area is numb as hell, but it looks great!

I was so amazed when I finally looked at it myself a number of day after all the swelling had gone down and now it just a little scar line from my lip to right nostrel,  It almost adds a little mystery to things.  The scar will decrease alot and as for the rest of what they did its all hidden.

So now its just the next step, do I sign off with a stage two cancer or does it upgrade.  As a now two time cancer patient its still all a waiting game.

Today I was searching for something an came across Michelle Malkin site again.  I’ve read her stuff a few times and always left wondering how its possible for someone to actually make money out of the vitriol and also how someone can actually belief there own words.

So anyway I have a fairly open mind so thought I’d have a quick read of her latest work.  Naturally she had to find something wrong with the jobs bill.

Her opening sentence is that even the Associated Press say the new bill won’t create many jobs.  This really got be interested so I followed the link.  Now interestingly the link didn’t go direct to the Associated Press article which is here.

Instead her blog points to this article at the Heritage Foundary, here. (I’ll also be very fair here that the Heritage Foundary does include a reference to the Associated press.

Now very interested I read the actual Associated Press article, and recommend anyone who follows Ms Malkin to read it, as it makes for some interesting observations on fact twisting and dodging, and plain old lying.

The Associated press says the the bill won’t create many jobs because alot of the bill is actually TAX CUTS.  Now what is so very very fascinating is that republicans and conservatives have been saying that job creation will only come from tax cuts.    It would seems Michelle Malkin was very obtuse about the actual real article as it actually completely contradicts what she wants to say.

Small problem thou, some of us actually do read the references!  This is very sloppy blogging, so I think I’ll wait another six months and check back to see if there is any change in factual nature of her writing.  I’m not putting any money on it.

My blog is all over the place, it has computer stuff, and personal stuffed mixed all over the place.  My latest stuff has been really technical and good for others to see as I’m doing something very cutting edge.  But overall this blog is about me.

I’ve not really mentioned that over the last 3 months I’ve been visiting the medical establishment a little more that i would like.  I have had a lump on my lip that ended up in surgury last week to remove.  Tommorow I find out if i do the cancer thing again.  But thats tommorow.

Now is about saying a final good bye to Steve. I still haven’t really accepted he is gone.  For the last four years he has been the voice at the end of the phone I could talk to about everything.  We built upon 5 years of being local friends to four years of being remote.  Our friendship got even stronger with me leaving to take up a new life in Japan.  When I first got here he was always there at the end of phone to support me, just as he had supported me all the time I was in the UK.

I wanted to go back to say goodbye but my surgury appointmet prevented that.  I also wanted to go back to grieve, and say goodbye.  Now I’m left with the remote feeling of grief. I can’t quite get it all out of system yet.  Will see how it goes.

Steve, I miss you so much already, not hearing your voice at the end of the phone is not right.

Rest easy my friend, you did what you said you would and fought to the end.  My love always.

d

Just seen today that MASS has voted in a republican senator, and that spells doom for whatever Obama was trying to do. For some odd reason democrats in the US have no backbone to standup to the republicans.

Part of me thinks, you know what let the republicans back in power. They should be able to finish the job of of making a class country in just one term. What used to drive me crazy is that the die hard republican base are the same people who will suffer under a republican government. They won’t care about those with less than them as they are too worried about how less they have.

Let me put this into another prospective. George Bush passed the bill that reduced the extremely rich taxation. Umm who exactly did that help, oh those who already had loads of money and just didn’t want to pay tax. I guess it might have helped the economy as they could afford to give bigger tips to the taxi driver. Where the fuck does give the rich a lessor tax break help the economy. I’m lost on that.

Obama has not been much better either. The stimulus appears to have gone on all sort of non substantial things. Where is the money to build bridges, trains, ports or anything that counts as infrastructure. Sure some may takes year be realised, but why are we not hearing about that.

Alas it seems my dad was right. The democratic (losely used here) wnat to do this and that to help people and not put the money into things that matter, that would be building infrastructure etc. I consider myself if you want to classify it a liberal, or probably a swing vote. Give me a good conservative argument, not pushed by lack of facts politicebs and hey I’m listening. But I’m also not that happy with just throwing money at no apparent cause.

But back to my american colleagues. you now have have the bed you made and can now sleep in. You are already owned by china so wake up and smell the yum char.

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I was fooling around with wordpress the other day and came across the template that is now used for this site and it suited exactly what i wanted. I had been looking at using wordpress for my blog system for awhile and almost converted a few month back but Serendipity came out with a new version so I upgraded. And really there is nothing wrong with Serendipty and I loved using it, but I finally went with wordpress as it has a huge number of options.

I’ll evolve the site more now that I’ve finally switched and see where it goes. So whats up in Tokyo, well its gotten cold, but my new apartment is south facing and stays nice and warm almost all the time from the sun. I hope it won’t be horrendus in the summer! The sun will be alot higher in the sky so maybe it will balance itself out with the balcony and double glazing.

I’ve become a complete fan of double glazing. In my old place with just a single pane of glass you could stand by the window and fell the cold coming off it. Here you can’g feel a thing. After the sun goes down you can still feel the heat coming off it. Last weekend I was near the window and put my foot on the metal surround and was shocked how cold it was! Tonto and I are living in a very comfortable bubble here!

Oh, if your wondering he is curled up in a little ball in his bed. The food has kicked in so its time for a sleep. Although it will be walk time soon and I’m sure he will be ready for that.

Well apparently half of what you donate to the red cross is going somewhere completely else.  I went to contribute to the aid in Haiti via the red cross and got this on the web site.

Your contribution will be attributed to all our activities in Haiti, approximately half of the budget for which will be dedicated to the victims of the earthquake.

what the frack is that about?  I’m off to find another place to give my money to.  all they have to do is contribute 51 percent of my money to help and they will be far better than the red cross.

Does the word shame mean anything?

Over the last year I’ve been hearing alot about Tyranny and Freedom, often mixed into the same sentence.  I’ve heard similar topics going home.  They all seem to condense down to that key issue:

If you don’t agree with everything I believe and want then you must be a

(a terrorist, liberal, conservative, progressive, homosexual, straight, immigrant, Arab, Asian, western, environmentalist, (put here anyone you disagree with), Christen, Islamic, Jewish, just keep putting more, cos I’m our out, or rather can’t be bothered listing more, there is so many that people want to object to.(oh, we could start on color as well, but my point is now made).

What happened to just being different from someone else, because if you really think about it we are all uniquely different from each other.  Nearly all of us have different DNA.

I think in a way the modern media is responsible. I won’t use the word blame as the new world of instant communications and access to world events is just a natural evolution of where we are as a species.  We now have near instant access to all the information we could possible want to feed our fears, and unfortunately there is no shortage of people or information that is quite happy to feed this.

In my early life time there was limited communication and you really had to go out of your way to find information that may feed your specific paranoia.  now its just search and click. 

What i think is a little sad is that its just so readily available now.  Want to hate your neighbour for mowing his lawn in a diagonal well fine the site and there it is a how community for you.

more after the fold

Well 2009 is over and all I can say glad its gone.  It was overall not a very good year, and just before it ended there was one last low punch.

I got back from a wonderful Christmas with my family in NZ to the news that a very good friend of mine was in hospital in a serious condition.  24hours later the next call was that he had passed away.

Steve was one of those very rare friends that you acquire if you are lucky. I first met him when he interviewed me for a job at my current company.  We become friends shortly after, and then very good friends after that.

While I left the UK I never stopped talking to him and we became even better friends over the distance.  He became unwell while I was still in the UK and went on medical leave.  What he had eventually took his life, but he fought all the way.

I hope in the next few days to be able to return to the UK to say goodbye properly to a very dear friend.

The domain name change is now complete.  The new name of footsteps.co.nz has been moved to the team in New Zealand who specialize in early childhood education.  They approached me in 2009 to ask if they could use the domain name.

I was deeply reluctant as I had used the footsteps name for 9 years and was quite comfortable with it.  My first thought was how much would they pay and what were they doing.  In my reply to them I specified i would only give up the domain name to a really good cause.

Well as it happened they did have a good cause.  I have few causes that I dontate to, well two really, one being cancer research, as its well its part of my life as a cancer survivor, the other is investment in child education.  I myself have four sponser children and was delighted to get a letter the other day that one of mine has grown up and left the program to continue her education.

 The Linmark Team, or now as they can be Know Footsteps team in New Zealand provide child education and work hard to provide it to all children.  They are certified by the New Zealand education board and want to do the best they can to educate our children.

It is with profound respect and privilege that I can something to help this. 

The domain name of footsteps.co.nz  belongs with them.  The give our children new footsteps into the world by education, and that is how it should be.

You can still get to here from there, and they keep a link to this site.