Congrats Jas and Chris on your new baby Max!

Well, what an evening on the 27th (Oct). It started at home, watching the first half of Snakes On A Plane (2006) with a can of chu-hi, then taking the subway (that’s another chu-hi can for the 10 minute trip) to Fushimi. Actually it started a little earlier, when I had sushi earlier in the evening with Nilesh (he was game for one plate, I had 5 - could’ve had more but was gonna eat at the hard rock cafe too) at the local sushi train.

Anyway, I walked to the Hard Rock Cafe with Cody, chucked the cans away in the bins in front of Lawson (convenience store), and found three people already waiting inside the HRC. Ashley shares the same Birthday (she organised the HRC meet) and we ate and drank nearly 300 aussie dollars worth of food and drinks (might have been 10 of us there). I had an expensive dish of fish and chips (which included 5 medium-large sized fish - like butterfish), two large large pints of beer, a sex on the beach cocktail and two slices of strawberry cheesecake. There were multiple other birthday parties there (Happy Birthday was sung a few times around the house), and they gave myself and Ashley a badge with a group photo on it :). I later found out that if we went to the Red Rock Aussie pub, drinks would’ve been free… but anyway it was a great atmosphere there. I also got a surprise present of Tim Tams!

We had trouble deciding what to do next (karaoke or go to Shooters - US pub), so we drank a can of beer (black yebisu) on the way to the Circle-K convenience store, where I was treated another big can of chu-hi. We then decided (maybe after 20 mins of standing and chatting) to head back to our place for some drinking games and 4 player Mario Kart. Much fun was had.

Ashley’s photos (I didn’t take any photos myself)

The other night we watched King Kong (2005). I found it to be quite an emotional movie. Brought a tear to the eye. Recommended viewing!

Right now, myself, Steve, Nilesh and Johnny are watching Australia vs New Zealand cricket live via some (free) internet channel I found. Beer, cricket and homemade hamburgers. yum

Well, I’m 23 today. Not much planned except for looking for a halloween costume (might get a tennis shirt and white head sweat band - federer style; or perhaps random animal costume), and heading to the Hard Rock Cafe this evening with friends.

Cheers for the Tshirt Mum! Matches my shorts
Cheers for the Vegemite tub Dad! I’ll never run out of vegemite now.. (cue evil laugh mwa ha ha)

Bought a Pentax 100-300mm lens (new toy) for this event earlier this month.

Suzuka was packed out. It was so crowded there wasn’t even enough room to swing a cat, and so panning on my tippy toes made many blurry photos of the 230 or so I took. Nevertheless, I managed to get a few relatively blur-free photos.

(more…)

Finally done ma tax!

My birthday is just around the corner! Apparently one of my fellow Nova instructors’ birthday is also on the same day, so I suspect we’ll all be going out for karaoke or something on Friday night. Next weekend I plan to head to Kyoto and/or Hiroshima (hopefully the autumn leaves are still falling!).

Evan and Rachel (Aussies) had a going away party the other night. Here are Ashley’s photos.

Last week I worked 7 days straight, working overtime on Saturday and a shift swap with Steve on Friday. The best thing out of the week was that at the local Book Off media shop at Steve’s help shift at Aratamabashi I found a brand new Nintendo DS Lite (handheld) for 15500 yen (a thousand yen less than the normal price), and it’s the first one I’ve seen for sale in Nagoya for four or so months (woooohooo!!). It’s also an American one and not a Japanese one, so the manual’s in English :). I have Super Mario 64 DS which has more features than the original (including some really fun mini games for the touch screen), and a strange semi-crazy semi-dating game which has a heap of various mini games that include holding her moving hand and swatting bees that come near, moving a goldfish around inside someone’s stomach to get them to throw it up (!), and running over people and then catapulting them into the Boss van (!!!) (it’s not as violent as it sounds, it’s very humorous).

Finally watching the great Bathurst 1000

Last Tuesday I had my 6 month (basically 7th due to scheduling problems) observation at Nova. So far so good! Main thing I need to work on is maximising student participation, and to mark a bit harsher (been a bit to leanient).

Due to some other scheduling problems, I had two open lessons on Thursday, in which I apparently got TOEIC trained (an international qualification for the Teaching Of English for International Communication). I’m still a bit confused by the Lesson Management Plan, but that’s mainly because I’ve only had a minimum amount of time with it. Apparently there’s been another schedule mishap and as a result they need someone to work tomorrow. I’ve had two sick days off (no pay) in the last month or so so I’ll be working overtime a half day tomorrow instead of getting the whole day off. Next week’ll be a 7 day working week.

I’m considering buying the Logitech G25 if I see one, but seeing as it’s so heavy, the purchase depends on how long I spend in Japan. There’s no doubt I’ll head back to Aust in March next year. It’s just a matter of what next… a job of some kind in Australia, or come back to Japan… we’ll see how the new job possibility here goes.

What a fun three day weekend.
On Friday, Nilesh and I went somewhere.. my memory is a bit hazy :\

On Saturday, seeing as it was such a good day and that I hadn’t been there before, I went to the top of the Nagoya TV Tower. It was an amazing view from the top; great weather too. It was good timing too because I got there just as people were arriving for a wedding in the observation deck! It was very happy and beautiful.

On Sunday, I got up early, and taking Dad’s advice, stayed and watched the beginning of Bathurst live via the net. Poor Skaife… gotta watch the rest during the next few days. After the first half an hour I left for Suzuka for the F1 GP. I went there with no ticket, only to find out at the gate that there were no tickets being sold (they were sold out)! Nevertheless I managed to scavange myself a ticket for twice the price, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was the most people ever at Suzuka I think. It was so crowded it was very hard to get a good view of the cars. I took around 300 or so photos, most of them blurry, but a few of them (around IMGP0722.jpg and IMGP730.jpg) turned out rather well.

[update]
On the way back, the queue from the Suzuka Circuit gates to the bus depot (which transports people to the train station) was a kilometre or so long, and it moved so slowly it took me around 1.5 hours to get there!! Considering the day temperature was a nice 25 or so degrees, I didn’t take a jumper, but waiting in line while it got dark was rather chilly (maybe 16 degrees).

See the photos here….
Got to go now to watch the bilingual TV news regarding North Korea’s nuclear test….