it was a very good year

After a lazy, rainy day, I drove over to S & F's place to dine on a delicious risotto, paired with a 1979 Bordeaux. There was a moment of silence, followed by laughter when I realized that I was sipping a wine that was bottled the year I was born. A warm summer evening, good food, great wine, fantastic company...

hiding under a blanket

Sometimes it's overwhelming just realizing how much there is to do in so little time.

Juggling two full time jobs and managing resources for both is taking its toll. While it's been an exciting challenge, I'm beginning to realize how unrealistic it is to hold down both and maintain my sanity. Reality can be tough to swallow. As much as I think I can handle the pressure, I'm coming to the distinct realization that I'm only one man and can only do so much given 24 hours in a single day. Between deadlines, travel, and accounting for how others fit into my competing demands, it really feels like I have each limb tied to a different horse and they're pulling in four different directions.

Sometimes it's just easier to hide under a blanket, if even for a few minutes, just to collect my thoughts and take a deep breath before emerging from a figurative 'time-out' and saying to myself, "bring it on!"

has it been that long?

i've been such a sporadic blogger that i barely feel like mustering up the energy to write even the occasional entry. the weekend has been gorgeous so far and aside from dinner and a movie at the harbour ('rebel without a cause') at sunset on friday night, i haven't really been partaking. spent the morning washing dishes, then stepped out briefly to pick up some groceries, as well as some long green bamboo stalks for the 2.5' glass vase that sits in my bedroom. came home, made a refreshingly summertime meal of greek-style tabouleh with fresh dill, cilantro, and crumbled feta cheese, then gotcracking on some of the administrative parts of the side project that i'm working on.

happy canada day!
(i sang a silent 'o canada' in my apartment today in commemoration of the event.)

japanese corner store

Day two started with a walk to the nearby corner store to pick up some toiletries. Not being able to read Japanese, I had to search quite hard to make sure that I wasn't picking up a toilet sanitizer instead of a bar of soap.

stimulating...

First evening in Tokyo and it's been...well...an experience.

I think I look too Japanese for my own good as all the locals start speaking to me in Japanese and freak out when I answer back with a helpless look on my face and start muttering out english phrases. I managed to catch a limousine bus (not a prestigious as the name mightsound) from Narita International Airport into Tokyo and then hail a cab to my hotel. two fairly big accomplishments and not a word of Japanese except "arigato gozaimsu."

The minute I arrived at the hotel, I got a call from my friends Fredrik and Sylvi who brought me to a "contemporary performance art show" at this great advertising firm/art gallery at the invitation aof a friend and her husband who's an artist. It was, interesting, to say the very least. one of the performances included a naked man guzzling a bottle of wine while being flogged with whips and barbed wire by a girl in a house coat. and that was probably one of the less risqué performances! One of the other ones was a guy sitting atop a ladder, unzipping his pants, and sipping on a long straw which was held to his genitals while a video camera played the close-up on a screen behind him. Not even after an hour after I arrived in Tokyo,
this is what I was introduced to. Needless to say, we didn't stay long and instead moved to a cool little bar down the street called "Lether Bar" which was owned by a Spanish ex-pat.

After a few drinks and meeting some friends of friends, we went out to a Chinese restaurant and had some Peking duck (delicious) and chinese sherry (absolutely horrendous!). The restaurant was in Roppongi Hills, which is now a cleaned up, more European part of town, but which used to be the red-light district. Appropriately enough, the restaurant is decorated with giant phalluses on the walls, as well as breasts aplenty, and at the bar, an oversized bell carved with a very large vagina looms above diners.

And this was all in the first night.

This is going to be one hell of an trip!