Aquarium

Went to Aquarium located in Ibaraki/Oarai.
Then, I ate anglerfish hot pot as lunch, then we enjoyed hot spring.

It’s been a while/sometime for driving to a bit far place (took 2hours or more) as single-day trip.
I believe this type of experience is helpful from various perspective for human being.

Last week was not good actually.
Maybe my health condition was not good, too, as mental and body health is linked.

This type of experience remind me that forgetting non-good stuff is very important capability of us.
Once we forget, the thing or people, experience itself will disappear in my life.

Kou Machida

I’m not a big fun of Kou Machida.
But I’m reading his book “私の文学史 なぜ俺はこんな人間になったのか?” and find this quite interesting.

What I come to know is he is deep thinker about literature.
This itself might be super obvious as he is professional.
But without considering those background, and I just thinks what he is thinking and saying is gripping.

He is saying true thing is intriguing.
And this is applicable to what he wrote, I think.

Layoff

My company announced 5%(4000 headcount) layoff this week.
This itself is not so special. Same volume of restructuring was done also last year.

But what special is my closest colleague in Australia got impacted this time.
He has 2 month time to decide next step.

Might be selfish but this impact on me as well, and a lot.
Since he is the only co-worker having weekly call and we can have casual talk and joking as well.
And I don’t have those kind of friendly relations with other “foreign” colleagues.

I still have co-worker in other department or ex-team in Japan org.
But that’s a bit different.

I feel sort of depression by this news.

Private

It was relatively busy in this beginning of the year.
While I’m spending my time for the work, private life is getting more monotone.

This Saturday, we will have a bunk bed for my daughters, and sometimes we go out together as family.
Those small update or news is enjoyable, but for some reason, my life becomes monotonous.

Maybe I’m getting more used to everything because of the experiences.
Speed of spending time is also getting faster and faster.

And I’m trying to adjust myself to this 40s life which is already full of routines.

can’t afford

Busy and can’t afford to do something is different concept.
I should be less busier than last year end, as I needed to spend all the free night time for the session in Melbourne.

But I couldn’t spend any time to put some post here.
It’s because there was no room for that in my life.

Today I finished Raising Loop, it’s a adventure novel game.
It’s great game to forget time and play, the plot and story line is engaging.

Maybe now it’s better to use time to replay and think back my life today and recently.

Home Town

It’ll be time to go back to my and my wife’s hometown.
It’ll be over very soon as usual.

My elder daughter go to private school, so 29th Dec is the day to go back.
And my wife’s home town will be first destination as usual.

This is mainly why my wife can leverage laundry machine located in her home.
She is not so comfortable to use the cloth washer in my home.

There’s very limited stress, but it doesn’t mean I’m living in dream world.
Still I’m living with my reality, and I started to notice this reality part will not be changed drastically even with more money.
Even if I’m billionaire, still most part of my reality will be same and I need to spend my time in my life.

I turned 40 this year.
My job carrier is moving toward the finale as half of my career was done.

There’s no meaning in the each person’s life and reality, but still we can discover the meaning (even though it’s not existing).
This might be the next target in next round of my life.

Year End

Really looking forward to having year end and new year holiday.
Everyone will take days off, so it’s very comfortable to take off too.

This weekend we went to Izu for family trip.
The hotel was a bit high class, so it took about 100k yen for 1 stay, though the room doesn’t have dedicated hot spring bath.
Grilled abalone(Awabi) is 5500 yen, but I additionally ordered for my daughter.
My wife and I didn’t experience this kind of gorgeous trip, though I understand this is not so/really high rank.

I’m not motivated for the work at all this week, we are just counting time for year-end vacation.

Business Trip

Business trip to Melbourne was toughest trip abroad ever.

I felt like I’m just an Asian who cannot use English, especially for listening.

Anyway I could finish my 2 hour session with 33 people.
16 survey response indicate the average score for overall session is 4.
(5-excellent, 4-above average, 3-average).

I just want to take rest as year-end and new year.

Dry Run

Have completed the dry run with my current team for the Cisco Live session.
One feed back from closest colleague is participant might feel it’s too much for 2 hour session.
I was feeling so a bit during my practice, though I hid ~10 slides during my practice and time adjustment.

Maybe I need to consider if I can omit the slides further, so that I can take more time for remaining slides.
Still I have 7 days, so should be enough for final phase of practice.

Current enrollments is about 30, and expecting more in last 1 week.
I need to be normal and natural during my session as I did enough practice.