Day 4/366. More white goods purchased. School clothes for the little guy picked up. 1% of 2024 is already over…crikey.
.: 2024 – day 4 :.
Reply
.: 2024 – The end of Singapore :.
Day 3/366. Not a bad day. The two months’ deposit for our apartment in Singapore was – with minor agreed deductions – returned. Helpful. A friend who was holding my last few items in Singapore has found a buyer for most of them.
We picked up a vaccum cleaner, a microwave, a rice cooker and a washlet.
Additionally, after a painful hour on the phone we ‘may’ have an Internet connection in two weeks’ time. 300 meg rather than 1 gig fibre – due to the age of the property – but wired and open. This means I can use my own DNS and set up proper firewall rules.
So ‘getting there.’ Next will be my ‘spousal visa,’ a local bank account and then some form of employment.
.: 2024 Day 2 :.
Day 2/366. Got the little guy’s Nintendo Switch repaired, got him some new shoes and ordered a new duvet.
After the earthquake yesterday a horrendous air crash happened at Haneda earlier today. 2024 is shaping up to be bloody.
.: 2024 :.
Day 1/366 of 2024 is over. Thoughts so far on the plus side:
1. Family. Japan was a great move for the family.
2. Mental health. Japan is much better for overall mental health than latter day Singapore.
3. Environment. Four seasons which you don’t miss until you don’t have them. Mountains, oceans and forests you can lose yourself in.
4. Costs. Rent is 75% cheaper and a beer is 50% cheaper minimum.
On the other side of the equation:
1. Absolutely dire for my old career. Very few US and EU firms run an APAC business from Japan so getting hired here for a regional role will be tough. So a rethink is in order after the 4th of January.
2. Tinkering and crafting. Unlike Singapore where apartments are concrete and steel Japanese apartments are very lightly constructed to deal with earthquakes. You can’t install patch panels or run ethernet as I did before. Additionally, woodworking with power tools on a balcony will be impossible and whole home audio will just annoy the neighbours so that’s out.
Overall getting out of Singapore was a smart move and we should have done it a year earlier. Costs were becoming ridiculous rents almost tripled, visas for mid-career jobs became hard to obtain.
So let’s see what 2024 brings. Right now it’s a big question mark over everything but at least the financial bleeding has stopped.
.: Covid19 Conspiracy Prats :.
So it looks like the covid19 conspiracy wallies have just caught another one. Sadly one of my own family has joined the tin foil hat, anti-science “it’s all a conspiracy” brigade.
I spoke with him today and it was literally like talking to someone with Stockholm syndrome. Peer reviewed studies don’t seem to matter to matter to him.
How do you persuade someone who gets their ‘information’ from dodgy charlatans pedalling bullshit to hoover up online ad revenue and oligarch funded online hate factories that they are deluded to the point of mental illness?
I’m just going to avoid the daft prat until he rejoins the rest of us on planet earth. However, that being said he is refusing to get vaccinated so our next encounter may be at his funeral…
.: Plastic Jesus :.
After watching it several times over the years I hadn’t realised that Cool Hand Luke was a Jesus parable. You live and learn…
.: A different approach :.
So after a bit of a rough patch last year I have been running sales for a friend of mine at his little company. Its been very interesting work selling and managing 8 different IT products, working at your own pace, trying out new things and seeing how they work. An added benefit is I have been able to soend more time with my son and watch him grow and also that I’ve been able to kitesurf during the north east monsoon on the occasional weekday.
Taking a van across the border to Desaru in Malaysia during the week is an amazing experience. There is no stress. The beach is empty. Its just a small group of guys of various levels of competency with 4kms of beach to themselves. Its awesome.
As a result of these trips my kitesurfing has improved a lot. Its cross onshore or onshore wind that blows at around 12-15 knots with gusts up to about 20. Also, there are waves that get up to about 2 meters or so and some nasty chop. I am not the greatest kiter out there and I did find it really challenging at the start. When you are used to riding on flat water it can be quite difficult to pilot your kite through sets of waves without bogging down or becoming airborne. However, after a few runs I really started to enjoy myself. A lot of it in part to my Shinn Monk kiteboard which is insanely fast and handles the chop and waves really well.
It was on the second trip this I learnt something else. I really like to ride with a lot of kite power. I was riding my 14 meter in about 20 knots at times 2 inches away from maximum depower. When you have lots of power everything instantly becomes much easier, much faster and much more fun. I’m really looking forward to a few more weekday sessions before the end of the season.
.: To heir is human…part 1 :.
In a few days time my son Matt AKA ‘the Gruber’ will be exactly year old. It will be a year to the day when I rushed my then girlfriend now wife into hospital for what was supposed to be a natural delivery but turned rapidly into an emergency caesarean section. The first thing my son did after being pulled from his mothers tummy was give the paediatrician a solid right to the jaw. It was this point that I realised I would love this little man forever.
Since he was born its been a massive rollercoaster of a journey and I have learned a lot on the way not just about childcare but also what having a child actually means. Considering we have been having babies for millennia the dispassionate practical information out there is surprisingly disparate, spartan and based more on emotion saturated opinion than hard facts. So I thought I would start writing a little run through of what its was based on my experiences and those of my wife with ‘the gruber.’ So here goes.
When my then girlfriend first found out she was pregnant she did what most normally level headed career oriented women would do and freaked the fuck out. She sent me a message while I was at work and said we ‘needed to talk.’ We had been living together for nearly 2 years at that point and as any man who loves his woman but due to his own bumbling and stupidity occasionally makes the occasional ‘miscellaneous infraction of domestic duties’ and may have reason to question himself.
Thus, with some trepidation I returned home to find the woman I love in the kind of emotional state that would suggest she had found the secret compartment behind my bookshelf revealing a selection of size 10 stilettos, whips, chains and some grainy video footage of precisely ‘how’ I paid off my student loans quite so quickly after college. Anyway, she then informed me with much gravitas that ‘she was pregnant’ something which she expected to be an enormous bombshell. Instead I simply replied ‘Oh thats great news! When can we tell my mum?’ then she burst into tears. After she had calmed down and realised I wasn’t about to pack my bags and head off into the sunset at the prospect of being a father we could get down to the logistics of what being a prospective parent actually meant (which we will get to in part 2).
.: Wakeboarding :.
I think its a fair thing to say without my weekly regime of wakeboarding for the last year I think I would have gone insane. Working for a startup is tough but for 2 hours a week I get to switch off and just ride. No emails, no text messages and nobody bothering me just me, my board and some obstacles to attack. Its very cathartic.
.: Back in action :.
Life is a funny old thing. We yearn for stability but everything is mutable and transient.
Its been almost a year since I stopped training – work and socialising having taken over – in that time I gained about 10 kilos lost interest in my diet and anything physical activity other than wake boarding.
I went from riding 40 kms a day and running every other day to doing nothing. Now a year later I find myself back on the path to redemption having quit alcohol 3 weeks ago and corrected my diet. I am down 3 kilos and sleeping well again. I didn’t know this previously but I used to get bouts tachycardia when I slept. That too has stopped so its all to the good.
So lets hope that we continue in the same fashion.