I’m free form journalling here. Need to think about what direction my life is going to take next. I’ve been back in England for just over a year and today is the anniversary of being at my job.

The job was supposed to be a stop-gap job to get a base to grow out from. It enabled my family to come live with me and save for a better future.

It wasn’t supposed to be for a year though. I was trained today in some new techniques and the trainer said when he came it was for a stop gap position and this is his 13th year. It’s statements like this that worry me.

My daughter recently had her third birthday and will be attending school starting a year in September. We need to get her name down for a school at least a year in advance and perhaps more realistically a couple of years before she was born.

We’re living in my hometown in a small (cozy?) flat. As my wife is Japanese, jobs that she would want to do are scarce in this small town and it looks like a move is necessary. She has a degree in Chinese and speaks Japanese and English.

But what to do? Get her a job in London first and follow her? Look for a job whilst working? How do I attend interviews? Quit the job and look for a new job? How will we survive without money?

I’m going to spend the evening brainstorming.

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I’m on holiday and we had a picnic in the local park in the shade of a tree which was lovely. Brought along a couple of beers and some wine. A sort of impromptu blossom festival.

I still don’t understand why the Cherry Blossom festivals so prevalent in Japan aren’t more popular in other countries. Granted we have no cherry blossoms here but don’t let that stop you. Sit in warm sunshine under beautiful blossoms drinking alcohol. What could be better than that?

Did you know I have a daughter called Isabelle? Here she is again, this time in black and white.

Her progression in England has been interesting to watch since coming back from Japan. She appreciates the difference between English and Japanese. She’ll talk differently to me than to the wife.

She particularly llkes animals such as cats, dogs and sheep. When she sees a dog she’ll cry out “Dog!” to me and then turn to mum and say “Inu wan wan” – Dog woof woof in Japanese. If that carries on and we hope it will it’ll be great.

omorrow Mrs Quaisi’s mother is coming to stay for a month. I’m really looking forward to it. We get on well and it will be her first time to see Isabelle for almost a year.

I spent a month and a half last year away from her looking for a job in England and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

I couldn’t sleep properly, was a bawling wreck from the time I left them at the gates to the plane and rushed into a job I thought was temporary but I still haven’t managed to leave.

She’s only with us for a month but I have to make sure it feels like a year because parting is awful.

Cars eh? We bought one after months of heated debates about whether we needed one and the drain on the finances they could be. A V reg Renault Megane. We’ll pick it up tomorrow.

I can’t drive and have rarely had the inclination to. I enjoy sitting in the back seat of a car or bus listening to music or reading a book instead of negotiating past boy racers, Sunday drivers and the general mentalist public.

I just bought some insurance for it. I actually sell home insurance and thought I’d be great at noticing the tricks he’d choose to upsell me things I didn’t need as I’ve been trained to do at my jobs. Not 30 seconds in and I was floundering.

Who’ll represent you in an accident?

I have no idea.

You have no idea?

And it went downhill from there. I found my insurers through one of the big compare websites. I went on confused.com and felt the need to have a cold shower afterwards. I felt dirty for sponsoring the ads that plague our TV. To compensate I went to the cheapest quoter’s website direct so they wouldn’t get the commission. Sticking it to the man!

Many people tell me they can’t wait to get out of the UK. That they hate the culture, the chavs and the weather.

Well yesterday confirmed that despite its many flaws, England still has a special in my heart. A day walking around in warm sunshine topped of with a visit to a park running around with the kid and eating ice creams. Can’t really beat that.

I spend all day wishing I was on the computer and then when I get home I wonder what I should do.

Falling in love with Linux. Actually Ubuntu. Actually Eeebuntu on the eee pc. It’s great getting to know a new operating system. I’ve dual booted it before on other computers but always switched back to the default mac or pc os because I needed it to sync my ipod or some other reason.

On an Eee pc, I only need it for surfing and a bit of text editing and other tomfoolery so it’s really fun getting to grips with the terminal, sudo apt-get installing new free programs. My favourite os is still Mac OS X but I really want Linux to get more appreciated. And it suits my price point.

I’m also thinking about a career move. The job I’m in now was a stop gap job for getting the wife and kids out of Japan and back with me as soon as possible.

Unfortunately the stop-gap has become a permanent position. I don’t use any of the language skills I trained for over the years and although I’ve learnt to sell things people don’t want to people who don’t need them it’s not fulfilling my purpose on the planet, fulfilling me mentally.

This blogging malarkey really started something you know. I read so many blogs and my mind has opened and been intrigued by so many things. I got a love of photography from reading jaw droppingly beautiful photoblogs like Sushicam, it rekindled my love of computers from videogames because of lifehacker.com. I tried at the start of my blogging endeavours to emulate Tony Pierce’s Busblog and whilst those endeavours may have subsided in the last couple of months, I’m trying to reignite them now.

Yoroshikuonegaishimasu

Here’s a sunset photo I took at the local park when I went recently.

Anybody else have young kids and manage to get any work done at all? Going on photowalks, studying and reading all seem to be things I can only really think of after 8:00 when my kid falls asleep. By that time all I want to do is curl up in a ball and cry after speaking to the massively uniformed general public for a living.

Have you seen my friends ask but I haven’t.

Time management is something that really interests me in theory but is hard to put into practice. And whilst I write out to-do’s on separate pieces of paper to be brought back to life when plucked from the inbox, they seem to lurk there untended to until they’ve passed their expiry date. My inbox mostly doesn’t overflow more vomit matter onto the remnants of space on my desk.

Playing with lights in a dark room is more fun than the inbox.

I have a 30 minute rush hour bus journey twice a day, where I usually listen to my radio and scan feeds on my phone. Perhaps that could be put to better use. But how can you work, study or even relax next to a babbling semi-homeless guy with a dog? Better stick the earphones in and listen to rich guys talk about macs.

How to make Japanese kids eat cabbage with Zelda related goodness. The art of styling Japanese lunchboxes into depictions of art

[Via The Guardian

After showing the wife she pointed me towards more Kyaraben like these kyaraben here.