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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Monday, July 1, 2002 |
 The word is out! I got the first email sent to me from this weblog today. It was from Wendy's sister, in New Orleans...
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To Gokurakutombo after the meeting. Or perhaps that should be, 'A little chat before Gokurakutombo'; I get the impression that the drinking and eating is the main business of the evening, in the opinion of most of the members. Mind you, compared to normal, this evening's consumption was remarkably restrained...
One amusing thing about Gokurakutombo of late is the two boys who work there as waiters. Both of them were elementary school pupils when I first came to Etajima! Even now, I can still only see them in school uniform...
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Right, let's see how this meeting develops. Notes right from the centre of
the action...
Well,a good start, with 3 whole people here...
The conversation's moved (swerved) onto tofu...
...and on to used-to-be-famous stars who've spoken in Etajima...
Of course. Ask the members to take some responsibility, and there's a
chorus of buck-passing. All I'm asking is for some to make notes about what
we talk about at these meetings. Mind you, given what we do talk
about, this might be best avoided...
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Great. Just got an email (and phone call to boot)asking me to help with
moving everything from the computer room tomorrow.
Well that's
something to look forward to, then...
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An International Club Meeting tonight. As ever, expect little, get even less. Still, I'll have my Clie with me, so I can post to the weblog if things get too dire. The wonders of modern technology!
By the way, the bets are on for just what tangent the conversation will go off on this evening...
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Great. Having cleared up, it starts raining again when?
Correct. The moment I leave the office.
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During lunchtime I took a look at Blogger (www.blogger.com). It's a web-based
weblogging system, similar to Radio (which is what I use for this
weblog, although Radio 'lives' on my computer rather than being
web-based). Anyway, it looks rather good; I'm going to explore further.
It's always good to have the option of separate weblogs for separate
things, and unfortunately at the minute Radio doesn't cope with this in
a way that satisfies me.
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I had to decide when to take my summer leave today. I know it's already
July and all that, but to be honest, I hadn't even considered summer. I
had some vague thoughts of going to Kyushu, but that's about as far as I
got. Anyway, I chose two days- basically, randomly- and I'll take things
from there.
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Of course, the heat and lack of air-conditioning was a good excuse for
getting nowhere with the Navy article (again). To be honest, I wrote
more in the first half of the football match last night than I did
during the whole of last week- it's just too busy here to be able to
concentrate. I did beat the article into shape a little, but it still
needs some work. Not to mention translation into Japanese. And when's
the deadline? Friday.
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'Ours is not to reason why...'
For some odd, unfathomable reason, the
air-conditioning was turned off around 11 o'clock. The office seems to
be the warmest, most humid place in the whole building, and so it
quickly became like sitting in a swamp (not that I know what sitting in
a swamp actually feels like, but anyway, it became pretty much like what
I would expect sitting in a swamp to be like...). Even the people who
wear jackets when the air-conditioning is on 'because it's too cold'
were complaining that the heat and humidity were unbearable.
Anyway,
around 3 o'clock reason prevailed (so there's a first!), and the
air-conditioning was switched back on. The fact that nobody was doing
any work whatsoever might have been a factor in the decision...
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This being the first day of July, there was the morning meeting at 8.30.
The number of people going to this gets less and less every month, I'd
swear. I'm sure that when I first got here there were about 100 people-
the hall was full- but now, there are only 30 or so people going. I told
Nagareda to come up with me, but even he disappeared somewhere between
the office and the meeting hall...
Nothing much of interest came up,
apart from the formal announcement (not that everyone didn't already
know) that the gappei was being postponed. For how long wasn't
made clear; the Japanese kyushi is a splendidly ambiguous word.
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In fact, not the sort of morning one would normally associate with July
(at least not an English July... or then again, on second thoughts
perhaps one might). A miserable, humid morning; it was good to get to
work and cool (and dry) off in the air-conditioning.
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Again, a very rainy-season-like morning this morning. The rain was so
loud that I couldn't hear the radio!
Walking to work would have been
folly in such weather, so I headed off to the bus-stop, but in the end
the rain slackened off, and so I walked to work, one of the few people
around. Even the elementary school and junior high school children were
fewer than normal, so much so that I phoned Wendy to tell her to check
whether the junior high school had the day off.
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 8:14:34 pm.
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