31 January 2008

Ooooh it's a horrible murky old day today! Days like this are so depressing, it's impossible not to feel tired and wiped out when there's no light and the weather's awful.

Last day of January today - I'm pretty happy with how this month has gone (and how fast it's gone!) I've made progress with all the things that are most important to me and laid the foundations for what I think is going to be a fantastic 2008 - can't really write about it all here yet but keep reading, big changes are in store! On the whole I think I've reached a point where I just have to get out and do the things I really want to do, stop just preparing and actually get out there and make my life the way I want it - it's all a bit now-or-never.

30 January 2008

I've been having this repeated flashback recently. I'm in the car, driving, on the roads between Hirosaki and Aji. It's sunny, must be spring I think, everything is green and blue and yellow, and the mountain is still snowy on top but bright and clear in the sunshine. I've got the windows down, so it must be warm. I'm driving home in mid-afternoon, which is odd as usually I would be driving away from home in the afternoon. Maybe I am coming back from Russian on a Saturday, or back from staying over somewhere on a Sunday afternoon. I feel like I have all the time in the world and the space I need, and full of hope, and everything is about to start going just the way it should. I feel content.

I've concluded this is a good flashback to be having! I suppose it's either a mirror of what I'm feeling now, or it's not how I'm feeling now but I'm striving towards feeling that way again. Maybe it has something to do with how mild January has been this year and how I'm looking forward to an early spring - I saw crocus leaves yesterday for the first time.

29 January 2008

I'm making a renewed push with the Japanese - I think it must be something about this time of year! Actually, thinking about it, it's 5 1/2 years since I started learning Japanese now, and I know recently I have settled into a little trough - a mixture of enough to get me by at the office, and enough to communicate with Japanese friends. It's been a long time since I really studied for the sake of it.

Now, however, I seem to have a fair bit of time on my hands, and it would be nice to crack on towards a slightly more versatile level of communication - particularly at more formal levels. I'm going to be focusing on three main areas:
(1) 敬語, my beloved. I have always slacked off about this but really it's just like a language of its own, with certain patterns for certain situations. I can learn these, and be confident about using them in situations where everyone else is! I have a really great textbook and CD set to start me off.
(2) 語彙 - my vocabulary is just far too limited, and my talent for using words I already know to explain things (so useful as a second year JET!) means I never really bother looking words up, let alone trying to remember them! I feel a rolling vocab list coming on!
(3) 漢字 - I used to love studying these, learning to write new ones, trying to remember the stroke order etc. - so this is just for fun! It's back to the yellow books we go...

I'm going to be focusing on this throughout February with the expectation of seeing some progress by the end of the month.

28 January 2008 - The Journal Returns...!

Back in 2006 I took part in a journal-exchange project - there were 11 of us and we each started a journal, which was then to be sent round the chain in order for people to write, stick momentos and do artwork in. Well as inevitably happens with these things several people dropped out along the way and things got massively delayed, but last week I finally got mine back! It was great to see it finished - the journal has been back and forth across the atlantic and even all the way to New Zealand and back! - and everyone took the time to make it really unique and personal. It was also funny to read back on what I'd written 18 months ago before I sent it; I'm glad to say I'm in a much happier place now! And I have a tiny, personal connection with the other people who contributed.

25 January 2008

I saw something on a site today that just screamed hypocrisy at me. It was something someone I vaguely know wrote on the page of someone else I vaguely know, or used to know, or whatever, and it just struck me as completely incongruous to everything I thought I knew about either of them. Total does not compute moment!

But then, I thought - just because people are not how we remember them, doesn't mean they're being deliberately false. And it occurred to me that, in the light of how things have changed, it's hardly any surprise to see that particular thing there now - which leaves me thinking that above anything it's our circumstances that have the power to draw us towards people or tear us apart. It would take little short of a miracle to keep a relationship stable in the midst of wildly fluctuating circumstances.

And what's weirdest of all is the knowledge of how much I changed, and how, in a sense, without meaning to deceive, I stopped playing a role I used to play, and how that might have even contributed ever so slightly to bringing about what I read today. In the end, all of the movements are kaleidoscopic, and all the shifts compliment each other.

23 January 2008

Today we had a full-office meeting at work, where all the department heads (that makes our office sound much bigger than it is!) explained their objectives for the coming year. We have these meetings now and again but I was really struck this time by how much is going on in the company now, and the depth, detail and complexity of the work that some of the other departments are doing.

I had one of those when I grow up I want to be like you moments. My job does at least involve a variety of work, and at certain points in the past two-and-a-half years it's felt very challenging, but I think I have it down now, and it's not really one of those jobs where there is a new flood of work arriving from any particular direction. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for some high-flying department-managing work-is-my-life position, and at the moment the lack of stress suits me quite well, but I may well be up for more at some point (although, all things considered, I am more likely to go the self-employment route eventually). It would be nice to be very good at something, or be very passionate at something, or be very good at something you were passionate about - I wonder though if getting paid for it doesn't somehow dull the passion?

22 January 2008

Someone tried to follow me home last night.

I missed my normal train so got one to the main station and then instead of getting straight on a bus, like usual, I thought I'd walk as the weather wasn't too cold. Walking down through town, past the next bus stop, I was aware of a guy slightly behind me and to my right. Maybe it was my becoming aware of him that pre-empted the whole situation? I sped up, he kept just behind me. I crossed the road, he crossed too. I slowed down to let him get ahead, he waited in a shop doorway. All those creepy things you wish you were imagining. Eventually he came and walked right next to me and asked for my number (at least that's what I think it was, it wasn't exactly native English) and I told him to get lost before running dramatically across the main road and jumping on a bus that had just pulled up, heart racing.

And all this, in the middle of town, at 6.30pm, with loads of other people around. I wasn't really scared he would attack me, maybe just try to take my bag or something but still. Home safe and sound and just a little creeped out...

21 January 2008

Today is a proper British rainy day. Not a thunderstorm, not a hurricane, no hail and snow lashing against the office window. Just gentle, fine spots and dribbles, pinging against the outer glass and running down to the ledge. Outside the whole of West London sits under a soft, calming, bunny-gray cloud, and Hyde Park is throwing up a little mist. The tinkling and plopping of the rain is so therapeutic; it makes me glad to be indoors beavering away and not outside fighting against the elements. Days like this remind me of uni, of libraries, of stacks of journals with places marked and an afternoon of swotting ahead. It's easy to be industrious when the rain is pattering away at its task along with me.

18 January 2008

Something really freaky happened today... I reached the end of my to-do list at work! This might have happened once before, but not in January, surely! Last year I was studying for exams half the time, and during November and December was putting off whatever work was long-term enough to focus on cramming for the exams; today I am officially caught up! Maybe I will even fish out some of the totally obscure and virtually shelved miscellaneous jobs, or print off some funky labels or something. It's a similar feeling to getting that new Paperchase journal home and opening it to write for the first time, like I've been given something perfect, something whole.

I suppose it's only time, after all. You make plans for it, fill it up with stuff, or it gets taken over by unexpected events or invaded by that long list of lingering should-dos. All time is blank until you act in it, and until it's passed you can always change your mind about how to spend it. But this moment here, in the present - it is still perfect, still replete with potential.

16 January 2008 - Making Plans

Today I met F for our normal Wednesday English Conversation lunch. We've made two dates - one to make chocolates for Valentine's Day (and pizza!!) and another to visit Canterbury (her husband really wants to go and I've never been so hey!) Recently a lot of plans have been being made; there are several uni-meetups in the works, a load of birthday parties, and a couple of other random days out - altogether I don't think it'll be hard passing the winter months. It feels like everyone's made the same New Year's Resolution - to spend more time together, meet up with old friends - and maybe it is that January feeling, and people want to make events to look forward to? Whatever it is, it's nice - I'd like to make it through the next two months in as cheerful a way as possible!

15 January 2008

Got home from work to the smell of fresh tomato bread, just finished baking... My evening-self was most grateful to my morning-self for getting up 10 minutes earlier than usual and being organised enough to put the bread on timer so it would be ready for when I got home! Been quite domesticated recently, have been making soup each weekend to take for lunches at work, and what with making my own bread and all. And I read somewhere that the oil in fish is an anti-depressant, so I concluded that it must make you happy, and have been trying to eat lots of fish in these cold dank winter months. This morning there was a full-scale wind-and-rain onslaught, and three of us turned up at work at the same time and simultaneously screamed "I hate this country!!!" At least snow is pretty. Impossible to drive in, but pretty. And hey I'm not driving at the moment anyway...

14 January 2008

Not entirely sure what to write today. I have started doing a bit of writing about Japan, for a sense of release (and, if I'm honest, nostalgia). I find London so uninspiring by comparison - sure there are parks but the nature here is so controlled. I miss mountains and rocks and sky everywhere and more than anything the great, rolling, angry expanse of sea on windy, cloudy days like today. I never got bored of the sea - sitting by it, watching the sun rise over it, listening to it - it's so great and strong. All that power to move, to kill, to support life, in constant flux.

Actually, talking of the sea, I just remembered something. This was the first picture I posted on this blog, and I remember very clearly the day I took it. I had gone out to Senjojiki (a formation of volcanic rock jutting out into the sea) and was walking about on all the rocks, getting as close to the sea as I could, striding over channels of seething, swirling water, watching the waves crash against the slabs of rock. I was only five minutes from the car, there were other people around and I knew I was safe; but I felt totally alone, like I had passed through a curtain onto the stage of the sea, and suddenly there was nothing else. I was swallowed up, at least figuratively, at least for a while.

It's 4.30pm and not quite dark - another couple of weeks and I reckon it'll be light to walk home in...

12 January 2008

Yesterday I took it into my head to go swimming at lunchtime - NOT the best idea to be trying to get a train into London at 1pm on a Saturday when Arsenal and Chelsea are playing at home. The train was absolutely packed, cheeks against the window, sardines pickled in beer. Football is not one of those things I get, at all, really, but that train was just proof of how obsessed this country is with it. I suppose having that many people in the same place rooting for the same group of 11 people must be a bit of a rush, or a sense of belonging at least.

So I made it to the pool, thinking there couldn't possibly be anyone left in London as they were all at the football, but it was packed! Must be all the new year's resolutions I guess, and everyone happens to want to pursue them on a Saturday lunchtime. Note to self: swimming on a Saturday lunchtime = bad idea!

11 January 2008

Missed a couple of days there - oh well, no matter!

I have this Big Thought pending but I'm not sure how to go about writing it down... it's about ideals, the ideals I hold against which I measure my life's progress. I wonder where these ideals come from? I don't even know clearly what they are until my life takes some huge deviation and for whatever reason I find myself thinking this is not how I thought it would be. A lot of the time I think that's a positive thing, that the deviation is a result of one of my individual characteristics, and those events are what makes my life unique. In many ways I think my life has pretty much stuck to the straight and narrow, semi-professional hoop-jumper that I am; but in other ways, for better and worse, I have done things I never intended.

I think I have been harbouring regrets about those things that fall on the worse side of the equation, and felt uncomfortable about the conflict between the things that have happened to me, the things I have done, and the image I had of the way things were supposed to be. Today, though, I had lunch with a buddy from work who said there's no point regretting things. I think that's right - for better or worse, my unplanned happenings are an equation, they are my life, and without them I would just be some fairy-tale princess living to a plan with no life experience or depth of character.

If there's one thing I would really regret, it's making the same mistakes over and over. Life may not go to plan, I'm not even sure I have a plan, my ideals are probably irrelevant since "mistakes" are all part of the positive process of living and growing.

9 January 2008

Things I would rather be doing than being stuck at work:

• making birthday cards (so many birthdays coming up! How did everyone manage to be born at once?!)
• doing some painting at home
• getting caught up on that pile of letters to be replied to
• chilling out, maybe having a nice relaxing bath with that new honey bath stuff from Christmas
• singing along to some really old cheesy songs!
• baking something yummy to bring for lunch tomorrow
• Japanese (although to be fair I could be doing that here, but I'm not!)
• out for a walk taking photos

Still, it's nice not to be stressed out of my head at work. I just find that once I'm here it's like the office is another planet, and I forget about the rest of life, and by the time I get home I can't be bothered any more! I should try and do at least a couple from this list when I get home tonight...

8 January 2008

Pfeh. Two consecutive days at work and I'm exhausted! It felt so good to get home tonight. I'd left the breadmaker on the timer and so when I got home there was the lovely smell of warm tomato bread just about to finish its cycle...
Work is much less busy than last year, having a few year-end dilemmas but nothing that can't be sorted reasonably easily. It's crazy how work just takes over your life once it starts again, everything has to revolve around it, no matter how (un) important the actual job is.
Still, it pays the rent for a delicious-smelling flat to come home to.

7 January 2008 - Croydon Skies

These photos are from yesterday - I went out for a stomp around the playing fields. It wasn't wet but the grass and the ground were so springy. There's not much to look at this time of year (not in Croydon anyway, not that there's ever much to look at in Croydon!) but being quite high up it's a good place to look at the sky, which was full of wintry majesty.

6 January 2008 - The soldier, the sailor and me.

After yesterday's ponderings on friends for life, I got to thinking about one-time-only friends - those people who walk into your life and, by some twist of circumstance, only stay an afternoon, or a day, or a week. I was looking through some old journals for something and came across my travel journal from the trip to Russia in 2004. By pot luck I ended up in a cabin with a soldier and a sailor, both Russian, and we spent three days travelling between Irkutsk and Khabarovsk playing cards, chatting and generally making an effort to communicate - this was no small feat considering our lack of a common language but we must have spent a lot of time with a dictionary, because I have stacks of information and anecdotes (and all the rules to this particular card game) in my journal. Even though it was only three days, we were friends - laughed, talked, ate together the whole time, had this big emotional parting - and although I'll never see them again I've never forgotten their kindness or the fun we had.

I met a lot of people on that trip, that's the glory of travelling alone I suppose.

5 January 2008: Friends for life?

Recently I've had a lot of involuntary reminders of the value of really good, really old friends. I have this new awareness of the difference between friends and friends for life - those friendships that grow close and sometimes grow distant but always grow close again after a while, people I am not prepared to let fall away completely. Today I called one of them for the first time in ages, a friend I haven't seen in almost two years; and yet it felt just like always. I consider myself quite a loner really but there are a precious few friends who mean the world to me and whom I hope to always be in touch with. Some of them are right under my nose and I am grateful to them for their recent actions and for helping me see how important they are, and make the most of the time with them.

4 January 2008

Today was the first day back at work after the (rediculously long!) holidays - it was fairly quiet in the end, and good to get some bits of work cleared up before the recommencement of the ruckus on Monday. Work is certainly a lot more straightforward now that I'm not having to study any more.

I went for a walk in Hyde Park at lunchtime; everything was sufficiently dead and wintry, but it struck me that underneath the surface, things were resting, germinating, waiting to spring back into life. Just like New Years Resolutions, I guess. After all, spring is too late to decide to get that bikini bod for summer, and all the real changes have to start under the surface, while it's still dark and cold.

3 January 2008

First loaf! Had a trial run of the breadmaker today (went out specially to buy ingredients and then found I had an almost full set at home from my last attempts at hand-making it!) It's a mini breadmaker which is designed to take up less space, and makes a smallish square loaf (about the size of half a normal loaf of bread) but it does have a setting for a bigger loaf (I think small and often and fresh is the way forward!)




Anyway, here it is sitting in its tub:

And here, if the upload gods be willing, is the finished loaf, all warm and scrumptious:

So I do hereby pledge to make all my own bread from now on, and make some mighty hearty sandwiches from it too! It also has a "dough" setting so I'll be able to make pizza again (lacking an airing cupboard which is essential for all dough-related activities)....

2 January 2008

Today we went to have a look around Croydon Airport, as was. Believe it or not, this little patch along side the Purley Way used to be 'the premier civil airport of Great Britain' according to the Croydon Airport Society website (http://www.croydonairport.org.uk/). Today the remaining buildings are mostly used as offices, but there's a bit of a display in the main hall, and some plane models. Most importantly for us is that this is the airport used in the Poirot film Death in the Clouds, set in the 1930s when the airport was at its busiest.

In other news, I have two new toys for Christmas: a breadmaker and a portable DVD player, so I've been catching up on some movies (and taking advantage of the extra few days off work to relax!) May try to make some bread tomorrow...

New Year, 2008

It's the first day of a new year, and everything feels fresh and perfect - so perfect I'm almost afraid of spoiling it!

This has been my first new year alone since Cambodia four years ago, and my first in the UK since before Japan. I stayed in, but had the perfect view of all the fireworks in south London from my top-floor window. I felt a bit lost going sales shopping instead of heading up to the Iwaki shrine for hatsumode; this new year (like much of last year) definitely feels like an aberration, despite the fact that I've been spending it in the country in which I was born.

I wandered into town this afternoon, just to see what was going on (and take advantage of cheap DVD sales!) and the whole world seemed hungover. From the neighbour getting in the car in his dressing gown, to the fat sleepy cat on next door's windowsill, to the heavy sky too dull to even drizzle, everything seemed droopy. Even town was subdued, it got dark early and I made the most of seeing the Christmas lights for what might well be the last time. Still, I got what I wanted, had a contemplative walk home, and everything still seems perfect, and the year holds all sorts of potential.