The beginning

The beginning of the end:

On Friday the 24th August 2018, after a hearty bowl of Vietnamese noodles from Cô Thành and an overpriced coffee with Reg on Kao U Fong plus a cheeky egg tart on my way back to the office, I send the email - the email I had been planning to send for the last 4-5 months - to my manager.

A few seconds later, a new email appears in my manager's inbox, with an attachment and title reading "My Resignation".

OK OK perhaps I'm being a tad too dramatic for describing my resignation from a job I've worked at for a mere 3 & a half years. 

But this resignation isn't just a resignation from my current job. It's a turning point in my career, in my life. After 8 years of jobs in full-time, 'normal' or (what Chinese parents would seem) 'safe' office positions, I'm about to become a TEMP. 

And I won't be working in a city. 

I won't be even be using EXCEL (at least much less than I need to now, I think). 

....but until then I still have to serve my 3 months' notice. 

So - gonna binge on the duty travel, take full advantage of the last of my business class travel experiences, enjoy the remaining days of city life and my city salary, and prepare for the next chapter. 

For Winter Is Coming. 

Japanese drama musings...

On Monday's Terrace House episode, Taka shaves his moustache to appeal to a girl on her birthday who had told him that she wished he was a few years younger.

On Tuesday at a colleague's farewell dinner, we talked about one of our very young-looking colleagues and joked about how he looks about 10 years younger than he is.

On Wednesday I bump into this young-looking colleague at work wearing a mask. "Do you have a cold?" I asked. He mumbled something, took off his mask and revealed that he was growing a moustache 😂😂😂

No Friends On Powder Days

Moiwa, Niseko.

Part 1: No friends on Powder Days.

I stopped to listen, but all I heard was silence, the sound of my own heavy breathing, and a nagging in the back of my brain saying I am fuxxked. I was fuxxked. I saw a river a little further below me, and recalled Julian telling me just before we split that one needs to be careful of valleys and rivers in this area. I dared not go any lower. I had followed these skiers tracks, but that doesn't mean they weren't also fuxxked, but they're also now long gone. I checked Google maps on my phone - I was well and truly way outside of the ski area. In the middle of nowhere. Below me a river. Fuxxed.

Thankfully I had the backpack, full of water, food, charger and an extra layer. But that was more for peace of mind, and extra support - I wasn't in real danger, unless there were bears around. And more importantly, for cell phone signal. I sent the group chat a googlemap screenshot of my location, while at the same time venting my anger (at myself) in text message form, and got reassuring messages back. Thank God for friends who cared. 

What I was upset about was how I ended up in this situation, how stupid I had been to follow random skier tracks, to not have familiarized myself with the trail map beforehand. The sense of regret of having only done one run before getting myself into this shit was heavy, as well as the overwhelming sense of loneliness, and tears welled up several times under that weight. 

Walking through powder in snowboard boots while carrying a snowboard is not one of my favourite activities. But snowboards come in handy in order to climb uphill to avoid falling into the river. 

After about an hour, several Googlemap checks, and wanting to metaphorically strangle myself for such stupidity, I finally got back to civilisation - a quiet road with a few hotels along it. Another 15 minutes walk I was back at the ski resort. Drenched in sweat, snow and shame. 

I had goggles on so my friends couldn't see me tear up when I saw them after my little walk in the woods. 

Part 2: Trailblazer

After a couple runs back on the slopes, we were back indoors de-icing our neck-warmers and goggles and filling our stomachs with greasy noodles. 

Stomachs filled, jackets dried, but still no sign of the boys. It's been almost two hours since we last saw them or heard from them. Then a screenshot came. Almost the exact screenshot I had sent earlier when I was stuck in the woods, but from the boys. "We are here lol". WTF!?

They had ended up in the same exact spot as I did! Chimaki and I were in tears and almost on the floor in the middle of the floor laughing and crying and dying from laughter. I feel bad for saying this but I was kinda happy and found it hilarious they ended up there, and didn't feel an ounce of bad for them at all at that time. The difference between us and me was they were 5, whereas I was alone.

Moreover, there were people just as stupid as me! 

I suppose that's why we are friends :D

FML

Plastic

Decided to publish this braindump of questions related to plastic that I wrote a few months ago...

Is plastic actually recycling in Japan?
Is it burned?
Are different types of plastic recycled differently?
Or are they really DOWNCYCLED?

I've also heard different that even within Tokyo, different wards handle plastic differently.

The documentary "A Plastic Ocean" was properly depressing and discouraging.

Also this...
http://www.gregtodiffer.com/a-plastic-overload-at-7-11/


Some plastics can't be recycled - like Bakelite. Many more could be, but aren't. In fact only about a seventh of plastic packaging is recycled - far less than for paper or steel. That rate is lower still for other plastic products.

Convenience is killing us. Or just me?

If tap water is perfectly safe to drink, why does my colleague buy bottled water everyday? 

When I ask him about it, why do I feel appalled when he says "it's just one bottle per day, it's not going to impact the environment that much."?

Why do I die a little inside every time I see someone using plastic bags when it's totally unnecessary?

Why am I usually the only one among my friends that carries a reusable water bottle? And a reusable shopping bag?

Why do I feel like no one around me is the least bit bothered about how much unnecessary plastic we use?

Am I the only one who saves and washes and reuses resealable plastic packaging (from cereal or dried fruit packets)? 

I'd probably consider myself minimally conservationist, but definitely not "militant level". 

Is it really that hard to refuse a plastic bag or plastic straw? Do you really need it?

Just off the coast of California, there's a huge patch of plastic debris in the ocean known as the "great Pacific garbage patch". This patch is twice the size of Texas. There are about 3-4 such plastic islands in our oceans. 

There are 500 million plastic straws being thrown away by the United States alone every single day.

By 2050, plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish, predicts a report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in partnership with the World Economic Forum.

Part of the reason is that plastic use has increased 20-fold in the last 50 years, and it's continuing to rise.

But we also don't reuse nearly as many plastics as we could, causing them to go into landfills that can then pollute the oceans...It's "equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute."

Am I the only one (among my family, friends, community etc) that is actually genuinely concerned about all this? 

Do people just not know what's going on?

Or they know, but, and this is the scary part, don't care enough to change their habits? 

How can knowing something as appalling as this not make one change just even a tiny bit of their habits?

x

My "Grand American Tour"

OK...perhaps calling it "grand" is a bit of an exaggeration to describe 4 trips in the USA within 6 months. But I'm certainly making good use of the ESTA.

Finding time to stop, breath and digest all that Korean BBQ.

And it has certainly been memorable.

I've done 3 out of 4 trips so far and I

...went to Costco for the first time.

...used Lyft for the first time.

...had a lot of good Korean food.

...shopped at Target for the first time.

...visited friends I haven't seen in years.

...haven't had such a substantial hangover in a very long time.

...got to eat proper Vietnamese food.

...re-enacted a scene from the TV show Master of None.

...was told that I have a hole that leads to the abyss on my back.

...spotted a Trump bumper sticker (somehow a part of me thought perhaps Trump supporters don't actually exist..but they do!)

...ate too much junk.

...fell in love...

...with two golden doodles.

...had a #hashtag created for the non-existent wedding of me and a new man-friend.

...have never been asked 'how are you' so much before.

...am starting to be accustomed to how chatty servers & waiters are in the US.

...at too much full-stop.

Shopping for tampons and make-up in Target after Pho fo dinner

My pen pal, and insects

I should blog more often. 

Why, I ask myself, when I have virtually no views on this speck of an interweb space that is this blog?

The reasons are pretty simple. 

1. I don't have very good memory when it comes to remembering events (or anything really) - so I want to write down my thoughts & events etc before I forget them and be able to look back and remind myself of some of the things worth noting and remembering. 

2. I'm not very good at talking about myself or articulating my own thoughts and stories on the spot - partly due to reason stated above. Also I'm hoping this will make me a bit better at telling anecdotes. I was having dinner with my friend "Cheese" the other day and he had a ton of ねた. 

(side note: ねた is the topping for sushi, the fish...but also means "joke material". Cheese wasn't having lots of sushi) 

3. There's so much to learn, but I won't learn unless I remember - stuff to learn from myself & my own thoughts & mistakes, as well as writing stuff that I've learned from elsewhere. 

I've just been listening to a new NPR podcast about penpals - but before going into the stories, one of the speakers said how modern correspondence between individuals us become so mundane - phone conversations are reduced to "Yes" "OK" "I'll be there in 5 mins", and letters are hardly exchanged

So maybe this is me trying to improve the quality of correspondence there is out there. Even if it's correspondence between the current me and future me..  

On a completely unrelated note, a friend visited from Thailand and brought me some special snacks. So I brought them to a barbecue at one of this summer's surf sessions. It was the first time I intentionally ate an insect, ever. When I opened the bag and peered in, I did think it was pretty disgusting. After a minute or so, and after my friend popped one in and didn't puke, I tried one myself. It wasn't as bad I thought it would be - kind of like dried lightly-crunchy beans, a bit earthy after the artificial flavouring fades.

I offered it to the uncles and grandpas around me - with mixed reactions. From upfront refusal, to describing the snacks' flavours as "floral", "natural" and even "matcha". The younger men weren't as adventurous. They had to janken to decide who's going for it. Not unlike frat boys drawing straws to see who has to go chat up the fat chick at the bar. Except instead of a fat chick, I'm the weird chick who brought bugs to a barbecue.