Swings and roundabouts

This week was one of old comforts and old friends and while it didn't result in photos of us with men in giraffe costumes, it was a good chance to recharge the ol' batteries. This was involuntary to some extent; Lisa was struck down with a lurgy on Saturday which kept us home for most of the weekend. You would think it would be difficult to spend much money almost without leaving the house, but somehow I still managed to go from having $1000 in my wallet on Friday to less than half that today. If you work out how, please let me know.

We are on the cruise (we are)

Last week ended almost without incident and contrary to my usual last lurch to the finish line, I found myself at home time with nothing but soft, pillowy long weekend ahead of me. The weather obviously heard me commenting on the seemingly mild Winter and Kobe is now covered in a thick layer of snow; I can't even see out of the windows. The flurry started on the morning of the Friday holiday, when I awoke to Lisa squealing about the snow outside. Sure enough, the cars downstairs all looked like iced cupcakes and a particularly thrilled kid was building a little snowman on one of the soakwells. We didn't let that stop us though - we were going make the most of the break rain, hail or flake.

Gong xi fa cai!

By the time the weekend came around last week, we considered ourselves settled in and nested enough to give ourselves a break from flat-packed furniture (I drew the line when I realised we now have a tea towel drawer) and went out to Chinatown for Chinese New Year. During this pageant of the bizarre, I met my new best friend from Kawanishi (where is that? I don't even know) and we ended up spending a lot of the day with a bearded lady and two self-walking corgis. We don't go out looking for strange, it's just very good at finding us.

Kicking and screaming

No doubt the worst bit about holidays is the horrendous comedown - the first few days of being back in the grind that really hits home how far from more holidays you are. I made my inglorious return to the workplace on Thursday and for the most part felt like a plump Christmas turkey dreading the sound of knives on sharpeners; I'm a captive audience for the next year and at some point I'm going to have to perform. It's reverse (reverse?) culture shock, I keep telling myself, but that isn't helping me feel any less hunted - my head is full of the faces of disappointed coworkers and empty blog posts. Time to do something about the latter, I think.