Hang Over Preparation Drink

Seems like an oxymoron eh?  Hangover Preparation...Unfortunately my customer found this in the convenience store and purchased enough for our entire group at 7PM.  Guess he had plans of drinking the night away and this was his way of informing us of this fact. 

I've tried variations of these before and not been that impressed.  I fired one down a year or so ago before retiring for the evening and spent most of the night laying in bed with what I consider to be a massive caffeine high.  I've avoided them since.  To me they taste very similar to a Red Bull.

My Messy Garage

Once upon a time I had a garage that I parked our cars in.  Today, roughly eighteen months into our kitchen, dining and living room overhauls, I can't park anything in the garage.  I travel during the week, then return home on the weekend to work on cabinet construction in the garage.  I have high hopes to finish the entire project by December of this year.  Fingers are crossed!

This is a fairly typical view of the workshop these days.  I try to clean it up after each major milestone (upper cabinets finished, lower cabinets finished...) but it becomes "backed up" rather quickly. 
 

Another Meal in Mito

I'm not even sure where we were dining, but we each had a bib tied onto us to keep our shirts clean.  I usually do ok with keeping my shirts clean, it's my dang pants that end up with stains from Korean BBQ.

A New Washer/Dryer

Humm....We purchased a brand new Washer and Dryer, "installation included". The installers show up bright and early (which is good!) and here's a near verbatim break down of our discussion. 

Installer: Oh, so sorry, we can't install the gas dryer-it's against code to install a dryer in the garage.  

Me: Well, ok, I'll take care of it. 

Installer: Oh, so sorry, we also can't install the washer, the on/off values for the hot/cold water are out of code too.

Me: Humm. So when you say installation included, this equates to you delivering them to my garage and I install them, right?

Installer: Correct sir, please sign here that it was an acceptable installation.

Me: But you didn't install anything.

Installer: We've noted the connections, leveling, placement and final verification as exceptions to the installation on the installation sign off page. Please sign here.

On the brighter side, the dryer just finished its initial run and sang a little song for me. While a lesser man than I would rush out and do all the laundry to hear the song again, I'll wait for Grace so that she can share the experience too.

A Mid-Summer Update

It’s been an interesting year so far. The earthquake in Japan brought my travels to a screeching halt. Whereas in a normal year I might spend two months in Japan, thus far this year I’ve spent two weeks in Japan. I’m returning to the hive at the end of August, one of the hottest times of the year. We’ll see how it goes.  Anytime that I can avoid Japan in the summer, I avoid it.

Since I’m not traveling so much, I’ve been trying to work on manufacturing my kitchen cabinets. I’m nearly completed with the assembly itself, and Grace is nearly done with the staining/poly, so next we move onto the demolition of the kitchen itself. I’m on a tight timeline, my travel swings back into gear in a few weeks, so I really need to finish now, or wait several months to complete it. I’m heading to Japan, Central America, the East Coast, West Coast and the Middle East w/in the next three months. I’ve never been to Central America, so I’m looking forward to it quite a bit. We’re meeting up with some friends and have rented a house for a week, and then we’re renting our own place for a week on a small island. Should be fun!

Moving on...

It's been fair amount of time since I posted.  2010 was a very successful year and I was able to sell a fair amount of equipment.  I'm happy to have sold equipment and happy to have new customers to support. 

I find myself questioning if I being a coward by staying with this job and not taking a chance on a different job that I might like more but makes a litlte less money.

I've done the unthinkable and updated my resume, now I just need to decide if I'm going ot look for a different job. 

Dresden

I was in Dresden Germany early this week working (cough cough) at a customer site. I flew in to attempt to clean up the mess of a colleague. The colleague in question had been a tiny dit dour during past technical discussions with a customer and I was trying to put a happy face on it. I failed. In any case, the scenery was quite nice.

Dresden is a interesting area. I stayed in the historic downtown area. A little reading up on the subject and I learned that the area was literally wiped off the map during WWII. The town has worked tirelessly to resurect itself during the past two or three decades. So it's a town that looks old, but is in fact, quite modern. I believe that the buildings with the dark bricks are buildings that have both old and new brick. The old was burned during the war, the new is just new.

I loved the beer.

Frankfurt

I very much enjoy the open plaza's of Europe.  The open spaces just encourage everyone to come out and stroll and visit.  I found this plaza in Frankfurt over the weekend.  There were flower vendors scattered throughout the plaza, and I found myself wishing that I could buy a few to take home with me.

I had lunch one afternoon when I wasn't working and opted to eat what the locals were eating, brats and fries!  The line was long, but, the payoff was great! 

I had to sneak my camera out to take a picture of the catsup and mustard dispensors.  To extract the catsup/mustard you had to squeeze in the middle, just like a cows udder.  It was very practical, but it amused me very, very much.

There were quite a few butcher shops operating outside the plaza in an area that was reserved for a farmers market.  I'd never seen so many butchers in such a small area.  The the shops were all mobile, and drove away at the end of the day.  I did find myself lusting over all the delicious looking cuts of lamb.  Being a bit of a lamb junkie myself, I loved the low prices and quality cuts they were providing.

Tsujiki Fish Market

One of my colleagues was nearly begging me to take them to the fish market in Tokyo on Saturday morning.  I've been to the fish market perhaps ten times, and to be honest I'm a bit fried on it.  To be a nice guy I opted to take the guy to the market anyway.  I've been fortunate enough to go quite a few times, so I know how to be a decent tour guide.

This was the first time I've visited in the dead of summer, and it was bloody hot and humid.  We hit the market at 5:30AM and by 8AM we were done and settled into a small resturant for "breakfast".  There are lots of outdoor venues to eat at near the market, but my colleage was seeking AC, so we ate inside.  Luckily, he paid!  Anyway, we had lots of sushi and shashimi plus several beers each.  At times it's hard not to like my job!  The fringe benefits can be wonderful.

Next!

I have officially been reassigned to a different group. Since my group had shrunk down to just me (after everyone else had been terminated), I was transferred into a different group. I’m less than thrilled at the placement.

I’m now working for my eighth different manager, during my eighth year of service to this company. Management stability of my product line has never been a strong point of this company.

The group I’ve been transferred into is a group that’s focused on one particular aspect of the industry, and my focus is a different aspect of the industry. The two groups don’t generally mix that well. We all get along, but it’s like tossing apples and oranges together and pretending they all taste the same. We don’t.

I’ve worked for the new manager for two weeks now, and thus I’ve taken to calling this new position “project isolation”.

I’ve broken down and started getting serious about updating my profile on Linked-In, and am about to embark on a semi-serious job search. I’m still pulling a paycheck, but we have another wave of layoffs occurring next week. I’ll survive that round, but I’m not sure about the next round.

I have several sales pending, and if they pull through, I judge that I can survive this year. If they don’t pull through, I’m toast before the end of the year.

The cheese stands alone

And so it was that I found myself in the city of brotherly love last night, telephone jammed against my ear as hard as I could push it, in a vain attempt to hear the voice on the other end of the line a little more clearly as I sat surrounded in a pub with fifty or sixty of my closest chums.

It was near 11PM and I was two (Imperial, of course) pints into my evening. My manager called to inform me that we had another round of layoffs that afternoon. The remainder of my group was terminated. I am now the last man standing in my department. Everyone else has been terminated.

Humm.....I can feel the clock ticking louder and louder. Must perform at a higher level, must sell something, sell anything, must...must...must...

The next one out the door is me. Wonder how long I really have before the axe in my direction.

Parking lots

I recall getting out of the car at a shopping mall one day with my two daughters. The eldest must have been around 12 and the youngest around 8. The youngest automatically reached out and grabbed my hand as we walked through the parking lot towards the mall. The eldest stuck her hands in her pockets and walked a little faster to stay ahead of us.

The youngest asked why the eldest wasn’t holding my hand. I explained that one day, she too would be too old to want to hold my hand, and that she would be able to walk through the parking lots on her own without me. The youngest told me that she would always want to hold my hand, no matter how old she was.

Fade ten or eleven years. The youngest is now living in a college dormitory. I feel like part of me has been ripped off and hidden away.

Now I sit here in our empty house, wishing that I had her hand to hold in mind for just one or two more trips across the mall parking lot. Perhaps she doesn’t need my hand to hold on to anymore, but perhaps, just perhaps, I need her hand to hold on to once in awhile.

Get me outta here!

So I started the New Year off with a bang and came to Japan. I spent one week preparing for customer to visit me at my companies manufacturing facilities’, then one week working/wine/dine/entertaining the customer, and now one week cleaning up all the action items the customer was handing out like cookies to anyone who wandered near our conference room.

I'm tired and I wanna go home! I leave tomorrow after having been here for 21 or 22 days. Too long for me. I prefer the two week trips much more than the three week trips. The food is wonderful, but last night I found myself pondering eating from the local 7-11 just because I haven't eaten there yet. (I came to my senses.) Instead, I went to a new restaurant, one with bright shiny pictures of the food. It was terrible! While I paid attention to the menu before I entered, I didn't pay attention to the clientele. 80% school age children. Last week I was dining on Kobe beef, this week-not so much so. Anyway, the food was pretty nasty, but, at least it was somewhere new where most folks didn't seem to be bothered by my presence.

I'm not sure what I'm going to eat tonight....

Tomorrow I fly home, so I can sleep in an extra hour in the morning. Thank goodness. I'm whipped. I think (haven't calculated) that this is two 80-90hr work weeks in a row.

I think I can, I think I can...

Imperial Palace

I took my customer to visit the Imperial Palace. I should get a second job as a tour guide of historic Tokyo. (A tour guide that doesn't speak the native language.) I could just make things up about the tour....

hummm...

Time flies...

I'm tired. I had hopes that I would come back to work this year with a renewed sense of energy and excitement. I haven't. I'm just weary and want to do something else. I haven't sold anything in nearly 18 months. I can hear the clock ticking (my career expiration clock) in the background. Tick tock, tick tock.

I prayed for a few years that God would help me find another job, but at the same rate of pay. I think my prayer this year is just that I need to find another job. I suppose I should start looking, but I don't really even know what else I would do if I wasn't in this line of work.

I've been in (night/distance) school now for almost three years. Last term was a complete bust. My father had a stroke so I spent a lot of time dealing with that, and no time dealing with school. For the first time in my adult life I earned a "F" in a college course. I tried to bail out of the course, but wasn't able to since I had missed the dead line.

So all in all, this doesn't look like a very exciting way to start the year.

Again?

I was home for just a few brief days after my last trip to Japan. Like home for two days and then back on the road. The good news is that I still have a job, the bad news seems to be that I'm absorbing all the travel that my terminated co-workers previously handled. While they didn't travel all that much, their little travel times, combined with my massive travel time, is equating to no time at home for me.

This week I'm back in Japan (after spending last week in California) where I'll stay for four days, then head back to the US on Friday morning. I leave here Friday morning, fly to CA, then present materials to our customer this Friday afternoon. Humm.....customer presentation after about thirty hours of being awake....bad idea.

Ema

In the Shinto religion the Gods are called "kami". Kami represents the spirt of the earth, the wind, mountains, so forth. When we die, the Shinto regligion believes that we become those spirts, the kami. Today one form that the Shinto use for their prayers to the kami is through Ema. Ema's are smalled wooden plaques upon which the living can make their prayers to those that are departed for good fortune, success on a test, and so on.

To me it was very similar to the candles in a Catholic Church.

Onsen-Scrubbing down

For many years I’ve wanted to experience a Japanese Onsen. (Check out Wikipedia if you want more information.)

I wandered into the Onsen entrance and parted company with my shoes and stuffed them in a locker. I check in at the front desk and they give me another key that straps to my wrist. This is a key fob, not an actual mechanical key. I opt to purchase access to the Onsen and access to the “bonus” floor so that I can experience further leisure activities. The bonus floor has extra saunas, extra ponds, chair massage and food that I can purchase should I be struck with the munchies.) They give me two pairs of jammies, one set for the main floor and one set for the bonus floor. My main floor jammie color is blue, bonus floor jammie is brown. I take my two outfits, plus two sets of towels, and head for the mens locker room.

While I had an idea of what to expect, it is still a bit shocking to walk into the men’s locker room and find that almost everyone is buck naked. Naked and talking, naked and drinking, naked and scratching, just naked and hanging out and shooting the breeze with each other, or not talking at all. Just…..being…..naked. Some of the men are watching golf on a big screen TV, with their jammies on, and some are sitting in towels watching the golf, some are sitting and reading, some dozing. Humm…. Just how comfortable am I being naked with a bunch of other men? Suddenly, I’m not so sure.

I opt to change in to my jammies and grab a sports drink (one swipe of the key fob) and pretend to watch a bit of golf while attempting to not hyper ventilate. I am the only Caucasian in the spa. I’m trying to read the printed material that they gave me when I checked it, but it’s no use, I know I’m really tense and stalling for time to avoid the unavoidable. The printed material gives me the layout of the Onsen, but it doesn’t give me etiquette of the water world. I putter around and continue stalling and then I head back to my locker, remove my jammies, grab a small hand towel and head into the spa area. I know enough of the Onsen etiquette to hold the towel in front of my precious bits, but that’s about all I know.

Immediately upon walking through the door I find an above ground well with water flowing into it from an overhead bamboo water pipe. There are small wooden buckets with long handles floating in the well. I notice that some of the men are wringing out their wet towels and since mine isn’t wet, I opt to dip it into the well. Strike one! One passerby gives me a semi-dirty look and makes quite an elaborate show of taking out the water bucket and pouring water onto his private towel. The whole time he’s doing this we’re looking each other in the eye. Ok, ok, ok, I understand, I fouled up the water with my clean and dry towel. I mimic him and head out towards the open spa area.

Entering the open spa area, I can see many different soaking tubs, each one containing a couple of men. Immediately to my left I notice six rows of small booths, for lack of a better term. (Check out the pictures here, http://www.galenfrysinger.com/onsen_japan.htm to get a rough idea of what I’m speaking of. This isn’t where I went, but you’ll get the general idea.)

I head to the back row of booths and select a spot near the corner. I very carefully ease my 240lbs onto the Lilliputian stool and drape my private towel across my lap to cover up the precious bits. Ok, now what? With extreme care, I am able to view, from edge of my eyeball, that my fellow shower buddies are hosing themselves down with their own private shower wands. Ah ha! I get it. Rinse down with these! Each stall has its own wand. There’s a petal to push to turn the water. I turn it on and start rinsing. Private towel falls to the floor. The water turns off automatically after ten or fifteen seconds. I turn it back on and hose myself down. I squirt some soap into my hands, get lathered up, and then rinse it all off, start to finish in about sixty seconds.

I steal a glace at those sitting around me and notice that no one else has finished, so I lather up again and rinse. 90 seconds start to finish. No one else has finished. I collect my tasty bits towel from the floor, rinse it off, wring it out and lay it across my lap.

I again watch my scrubbing mates and observe that everyone is really, really into washing them selves. I scrub again, and again and again. I scrub between my toes, behind my ears, every where that I can reach. No stone shall remain unturned eh? I see that my next door mate is standing up to rinse off, so I try that too. Not so good. I loose control of the magic wand and hose down my next door neighbors. Tasty bits towel falls on the floor. I hunker back down and put conditioner in my hair, which I never do, just to kill time. Notice that tasty bits towel is back on the floor. Pick back up, wring it out, toss it back over my lap.

After a solid ten minutes of scrubbing, I can’t take it anymore and I get up and head for the soaking ponds, covering up my tasty bits as I go with my hand towel.

Sleep? Who needs sleep?!?

I'm back in Japan this week. I flew here yesterday after spending the weekend in Ohio.

Everyone thinks that international travel is so exotic. In my case, that’s just not so.

My first bus ride (1:15 in duration) wasn't bad. I sat next to Grace, so the seats weren't quite so confining. (Time awake= 3 or 4 hours)

My first flight yesterday (2 hours) found me with a seat mate (coach) who aggressively wanted the entire arm rest and quite a bit of my reading space as well. Sleep time = 20/30 min. (Time awake= 6 or 8 hours)

Second flight (12:30 hours, in coach, in the back of the plane) found me wedged between two snoring, arm flopping, seriously leg twitching, burping, farting men. Sleep time = 20/30 min. (Time awake = 20 or 22 hours)

Second bus ride (2:00) wasn't horrible, but wasn't great. I was worried about missing my bus stop (a very bad thing when you don't speak the language!) so I tried to keep myself awake (Time awake = 22-24 hours) but kept nodding off.

I grabbed some dinner after I checked into my hotel. I'm sure everyone around me was pleased to be seating next to the foreigner who smelled like a goat, but I didn't care. I just didn't care.

I went to bed around 10:30PM and slept until about 3:30AM. The AC in my room is more of a theoretical concept than an actuality. I had it down as low as it would go, on the highest flow available, and it was still very warm in my room. The AC is just enough to take the edge off. I swear I always forget that when I'm staying in small hotels here. AC=reduced heat/humidity, not AC=total comfort.

Tick Tock

It’s hard to believe, but the majority of the department I've worked in the past four years will be terminated tomorrow afternoon. I will be the last man standing from this project. I’m not sure if that’s entirely a good thing or not, but I’ll still be collecting a paycheck, so I count it as primarily as a good thing. I was the last man standing from the last project too.

The layoffs were announced three weeks ago while I was visiting my folks. I was contacted by my manager, who requested that I return to the home office “bright and early” the following Monday morning for an “important discussion”. Having rode the layoff train a couple of times in the past, I opted to just tell the manager that it was ok to fire me on the phone and save us both the hassle. He laughed, just a little, and said that I was safe “this time”.

A summary of our subsequent discussion goes like this: “Sell something, sell it within the next twenty four months, or your fate will be the same.” This gives me a little breathing room, but not much. It usually takes about 18 months to process a customer from first contact to receipt of a purchase order.

I had a very awkward discussion with one of my departing colleagues last week. I most humbly requested that she transfer any electronic documents of interest from her laptop to my portable hard drive. Without bating an eyelash, she politely told me to stick it. Can’t say that I blame her either! How awful, not to just be terminated, but to be terminated and then be forced to hand all your work over to your colleagues on your way out the door. It’s the real world, but sometimes it’s an awkward world.

I have another colleague that I need data from, but I’ve opted to have our IT department hold his laptop (as well as the other lady’s laptop) after his termination rather than have yet another awkward discussion.

I tried to say goodbye last week, but it just didn’t work out. At some point today I’ll craft a goodbye email and send it into the void.