Another Monday, Another Flight to Bangkok

Oh dear, he is back to giving you lengthy restaurant reviews. Suffice to say dinner was delicious and I am sure we will be back.

It's been a scorching weekend in Tokyo, and I am almost looking forward to returning to not-quite-so-hot Bangkok later today. I think if you looked at the weather forecast the two cities probably have very similar temperatures at the moment, but Tokyo really feels a lot hotter. It might just be that I spend a lot more time outside here. I have had a nasty cold all week that is just starting to clear up - I don't think the constant moving from air con to the outside world is really very good for me.

Our weekend was pretty standard with a 6.15 arrival at Narita airport, and home to the apartment by 8.45. Andrew had been out late the night before and so was not in the mood to be woken up. I managed to grab another couple of hours sleep before he decided that enough was enough and we needed to face the day. One thing about living without a car is that everything we do takes takes so much longer than it would normally. We needed to get across to Costco to pick up my new glasses (even though I only ever wear them at home, we figured that seeing my existing ones date to prior our marriage in 1994 it was about time!). I reckon it would probably take 15 minutes to drive to the closest Costco from the apartment. With taking the Subway, Bus and Taxi combination it is about a three hour round trip. Does mean we don't ever buy too much - we have to carry it and that is no fun!

Sunday night we caught up with a collegue and friend from Hong Kong who has recently moved to Tokyo. I like his wife's style... she is happy to move country when necessary for his job, but the rules go like this... Moves only ever happen over the summer. She leaves the house and heads with the kids to the US for six weeks. While she is gone he is responsible for arranging for the packers to pack the house and ship it to the next location. He then unpacks and has the house looking like it should before she gets back. Perfect. I am going to need to learn a lesson or two I think!

I worked out yesterday that we have 14 weeks left in Tokyo (assuming always that the next job does not end up being here). Time really has flown by - the end of this week will mark Andrew's one year anniversary. It has been interesting, but in all honesty, kind of weird too. The Japanese culture is really so unlike anything else we have encountered in Asia. It is formal at times when you would expect informality, but slurping your noodles is completely acceptable. The people are intelligent, but slow to embrace new ideas or ways of doing things. Life is lived by rules, and there is no stepping outside of the rules. Even minor repair works on the footpath require that barriers are put up to ensure that no-one slips into the rough area, a rubber path is laid to show you where to walk, and at least two men with lit up oranage sticks point you the way and bow to you as you obediently follow their instructions on how to safely walk past. Just think how much could be saved if they just stuck with the barrier and a 'take care' sign. Shopping is the national pasttime, and huge amounts of money are spent on designer gear - a Gucci belt on your Armani suit is a sure sign that you have made it. But bizzarely for a nation that appears very with it,　of all the money saved (and the Japanese have one of the highest saving rates in the world) over 50% of it is either under the mattress or in bank accounts that earn no interest. It really is the most 'foreign' of all the places we have lived.

Not sure any more which week I will be travelling down to Melbourne for work - might be the 25th August rather than the 18th. I have learnt that planning just one week at a time is the way to go! We still hoping to be back in NZ for week mid to late September. No tickets booked yet but maybe soon.

Better get started on my Monday morning. Andrew left early for his Japanese class. He used all the milk before he left... guess it will have to be a bagel for breakfast.

Sonia

To Kyla...

Why have you not put anything onto your blog for a long time? Are you still alive?

Caprice

So to the menu from dinner at Caprice.....

I started with the warm Duck Foie Gras appetizer - at least that was after the two teasers. The first was a small piece of salmon with pesto on a spoon. Just a nice mouthful to kick-start the tastebuds. Then a smoking bowl (the cone-shaped plate was sitting atop a bowl of dry ice) with jellied beef and vegetable topped with horseradish foam. Not bad, although Sonia was not keen on the jelly...

Sonia started with a trio of scrambled eggs with truffle. Three eggcups, filled with nicely done scrambled eggs, each topped with a small slice of black truffle...

Not a bad start to the meal.

Then Veal fillet for Sonia, and Veal for me (Sonia's was most expensive!). What I should point out is that mine was Veal Sweetbreads. Nice - and I hope you are all impressed with how adventurous I have become.

Then to desert. The cheese that we say going out looked good, so we settled on cheese (each) and a shared Black Forest something or other. Cheese turned out to be a selection from about 12 different cheeses on a trolley. Each cheese was a significant chunk sliced off the whole cheese sitting on the trolley. Predictably Sonia went for mostly blues, while I aimed for the camembert/brie and goats cheeses.

And.... full.

HK

Hong Kong was good - I start writing this sitting at the airport (first-class Cathay Pacific lounge).

Important things first.

We went to Caprice on Saturday night - in theory a belated birthday celebration. Caprice is the French restaurant at the Four Seasons hotel. Very nice - nice atmosphere if you are prepared to discount the tipsy/drunk Japanese guy at the table next to us when we arrived. Still, they were just finishing and left after about 20 minutes. The other members of his party (businessmen) were fine, so I guess he must have had one glass of wine too many?

Dinner was very good - a good menu (not too much, not too little), great presentation, excellent taste. I kept the receipt with the dishes on, and will post later.

Continued from home...

The earthquake last night was enough to wake me up - 12:30 in the morning. I found this website which reports the earthquakes around Japan.

Pots and Kettles

I (Andrew) just want to point out that it was Sonia that picked a selection of restaurants for Saturday night, and put them in front of me for a decision. None of them was less than expensive. So blaming it on my birthday and my expensive tastes (which I am not trying to deny) is a little unfair.

My Turn

Figured it must be my turn - Andrew has been providing you with restaurant reviews for far too long!

Today is a public holiday in Thailand, and so the office is closed. I've been hanging out working in the Exec lounge at the Conrad all day - they have mangaged to feed me complimentary breakfast, lunch and dinner today. It pays to be in the right place at the right time. I'm currently enjoying the evening cocktails with 15- 20 hot and cold snacks. Plenty for dinner! They even have a georgous bitter chocolate mousse with sour berries - yumm.

My project in Thailand is going ok, but is suffering a bit from very slow testing by the users. The go-live date is looking at the moment like it will be towards the end of the year, with October being mentioned by all the big wigs. We shall see - they will really have to get moving if they want to achieve that date.

The constant travel is getting to be a bit of a drain - more from a feeling settled point of view than a physical exhaustion viewpoint I routinely travel to BKK on Monday afternoons, and then get back into Tokyo very early Saturday morning. Thank goodness for Business Class - I sleep very nicely and cannot really complain. Japan Airlines (JAL) is nothing to write home about - they serve exactly the same meal on every one of my flights, and it changes every three months, but they do provide the best timetable :-). Japan's ridiculous need to fill up most of a page in my passport with a sticker everytime I enter the country is a bit of a pain - the new passport I got in July last year now has less the 8 pages left (it started with 48). Time to get a new one I guess. One great discovery I have made is a thing called an APEC card. Basically it is for frequent travellers, and you get pre-approved for entry into different Asia/Pacific countries. You can then use the Diplomatic or Crew immigration lines. Saves me hours of queuing!

I tried working out of Japan one week not so long ago but just about went insane. The apartment was too quiet and there was no one interrupting me every five minutes. I have decided that working from home would never be my forte - I thrive on the stream of people wanting things from me. The cleaner who wanted to know if she could vacuum now just did not cut it... Once we see what happens with Andrew's job in October a decision will have to be made - I don't think I really want to be away from home most weekdays for too much longer. Please pray for us as we head towards October. Andrew's secondment to Japan is scheduled to end then, and we really do not know what is next. We have been looking at going back to the UK, returning to HK or trying to find something else in Japan, but really do not know what is the right thing to be doing, and where God would have us be next. The current global financial crunch does not make it a great time to be looking for opportunities in the Financial Service Industry, and the recruitment agents really do not seem to have a lot going on.

Holiday plans are also on our minds at the moment, and we are hoping to find a week or so that works for both of us to return to NZ in September. Andrew's contract includes one set of tickets home and it would be a shame not to use them! It is looking like maybe 15th September, but my advice is don't count on it until you see us :-). We would also really like to get up to see Evan and Kirsten in Edmonton in Feb/Mar when we head to the states for Paul's wedding. I am planning, Andrew is procrastinating.... Story of my life when it comes to holidays :-).

Nothing much else of interest happening. It looks like I'll end up in Melbourne rather than Bangkok for the week of the 18th August, but none of you are there so I don't guess you care. I had a great visit with one of my collegues from Melbourne here in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago. Penny was working with us in KL when we were there, and went to the same church that we went to. It was really good to catch up with her again. I miss some of the friends from the church and particularly the home group from KL.

Like Andrew said in his last update, we are off to Hong Kong for the weekend which we are looking forward to. Trying out a cheaper hotel option this time - hopefully it will not be too much of a dump - staying at the Conrad kind of spoils you for budget accomodation :-). We will head off to our old church on Sunday - they have moved to a permanent building since we left, so it will be good to see where they are now. Andrew also has interviews with a couple of different people at one of the other insurance companies in HK - please pray that these will go well. Other than that, I am sure there will be another restaurant review as we head out on Saturday night for Andrew's delayed birthday dinner. His theory is that with a cheaper accomodation for the weekend he can use the saved money on an exceptional dinner. We shall see.... Other plans for the weekend include a return to my more excellent nail lady, and some more highlights in my hair - some things just are not the same in Bangkok or Tokyo!

Till next time....

Sonia

Heat

It looks like we have now moved past the rainy season. Today was hot - up to 32 degrees according to the forecast. While we were out for lunch it did feel hotter at times. Particularly as we walked home, which triggered the need for an ice-cream from the 7-11 in the building.

Lunch was at Union Square, an American brasserie in the Tokyo Midtown complex. Not bad, although not cheap. We did sit outside on the terrace and enjoyed the view over the park and the people walking by.

Of course the ice-cream did then necessitate a proper workout at the gym - what goes in must be worked off.

Back to the weather - the forecast does mention rain around midnight tonight, before going back to being fine for most of the week. Temperatures up to around 29 degrees most days this week. Ouch.

Next weekend we will be in HK - flying down Friday night and back on Tuesday. Monday is a holiday in Tokyo (not sure of the reason), so a good chance to get away for a short break.

Always be sure of your point

I thought last night (after writing about the new PC) that I needed to be prepared with the receipts when going back to the Apple shop to sort out the memory. Just as well I checked. Despite asking them to put 8 GB in the machine, they only put 6 GB. And I only paid for 6 GB. So in the end I decided to stick with it and see how things go. If it performs ok with 6 GB then we'll have avoided spending the additional money. And I can always upgrade if it ever gets too slow. Right now it does not seem to be in any particular danger of this speed a problem, but to be fair I have mostly just been downloading the software and getting things installed. Over the coming days I will start to do some development and then we shall see. Loading up the web/application server software, the development tools, the database server, and the browser (for testing) will put some load on, and that will really be the acid test.

Macs

Not "Big Macs", and not referring to Dad either...

Today is a milestone in this blog. This is the first entry that has been created on a Mac instead of a PC. Yesterday we set off to Ginza to find the Apple store. A very nice building, shaped a little like a Mac computer. We left after half an hour or so with a receipt for a PowerMac. After a walk around (while they fitted the extra memory), we got back, collected the enormous box, and went home (in a taxi).

For anyone who is really interested, the specifications are:
2 x Xeon 4-way 2.8GHz CPUs
8GB Ram
320GB Hard-disk
Dual video card

Actually I have just noticed that although we paid for the 8GB memory, the system actually thinks it has 6GB. Tomorrow I will have to go back to the shop to find out what's going on.

Then today we needed to get a monitor to go with it. I had resisted buying the Apple Cinema display. While it's very nice, it's also extremely expensive compared to other brands. We went out to Akihabara - where the guy went mad a few weeks back and stabbed a number of people at an intersection. I am sitting in front of a 26inch wide-screen Samsung monitor. Actually the desk is a little too small - I end up sitting closer to the monitor than is strictly comfortable.

The next task will be to learn how to use the Mac - everything is just that little bit different to a Windows PC. Should be interesting.

News

Well, not that much to say right now. Have just booked a flight to HK, planning to be there over the weekend of 19th July. The Monday is a holiday in Tokyo, so I will catch the Friday afternoon flight down and then back on the Tuesday. That gets a long weekend with one extra day of holidays. Not that the annual leave balance is a problem - I have a few days outstanding.

Went and got a haircut this evening after work. The nice girl doing the chopping took the opportunity to practice her English, which at the same time challenged my Japanese capability. We established that Japan has lots more history than New Zealand, but that NZ is a really good place to go snowboarding (one of her customers is heading that way soon). Also that my hair is very nice (I don't understand why), even if it's gray.

Now sitting down in front of the TV (some useless movie is showing) and eating a bowl of instant noodles. Not the Maggi noodles of olden days. Instant noodles here can come in a big bowl, with about 5 different sachets of ingredients to mix in. Since I have no idea of what they are (one is an anemic white paste, two others are sauces of some kind), I generally empty them into the bowl, poor hot water over the top, and hope. These ones seem to have come up ok.

Spring

Well, in view of needing to write more frequent updates, I tried to keep my eyes open today. Turns out that spring has well and truly arrived - there are plants and greenness everywhere!

Walking back tonight I noticed that the plants have been let grow for a little bit too long - time for the caretakers to get out and about with their choppers and do some weeding and tidying up!