Romance ensues

"You're definitely management material," Lisa said, her tone suggesting this wasn't a good thing at all. By this stage I'm sure she was sick to death of hearing about the mid-year seminar by this stage, but politely listened until the end anyway. The short version is that everything went extremely well and that I'm well cut out for shameless self-promotion and withering flattery of my "underlings". Nevertheless, I was quite happy to spend the weekend doing things as far from work as possible, specifically on a river and with several cheeky monkeys. My brain still feels like an overworked muscle (to say the least); it's obviously not used to hard work.

Barely holding together

Lisa's parents arrived on Friday, in remarkably good spirits given that their plane was delayed approximately 22 times. Like all our visitors, their trip so far has been a whirlwind sweeping through Kobe and the greater Kansai area. Hundreds of temple tickets flitter around in the twister, along with the occasional "all you can eat" dinner receipt. If you listen carefully, just for a moment, you may hear some words carried on the howling winds:

God, my feet are sore.

The dumpling king, a tale in 2 parts (Part 2)

We left off our tale "last week" with Dave having just arrived, me wondering how I was going to last the week without squeaking to a halt like an unoiled tin-man and you unsure as to what "the dumpling king" refers to. Now that the lads have finished their whirlwind trip (Dave having bid farewell and left for Tokyo this morning), I'm sitting in what now seems to be a very empty, lonely apartment; it seems like a good time to conclude the tale. Theirs weren't the only goodbyes this week, as you will see.

The dumpling king, a tale in 2 parts (Part 1)

I'm not sure how busy and tiring I thought being a tour guide was going to be, but I don't think I came within a bull's roar of it. Correct answer: bloody busy, stupidly tiring. It's been fun, but in a too-much-all-at-once movie marathon kind of way; by this stage of proceedings I don't care whether the good guys win, I just want to go home to bed. Like all movie marathons, this one has some good stories to go with it. Let's go get the inevitable McDonald's breakfast and I'll share the highlights.

I'm going to pretend I've been virtuous and not skipped out on my blogging duties - this is "last week's" post. Part 2 will be posted once I'm back in the swing and can no longer stand "Blog notes.doc" watching me from my desktop (very soon).