Gary's Boring Blog

Tochigi Snaps

Here's an out-of-focus picture of me scoring my penalty in the final.

And here's the souvenir I brought back with me. A rather nasty bruise on the shin, and that was playing with shinpads!

Aaaaaaaargh - NOT AGAIN!

Anyone who has been reading GBB for a while will know that I play football (soccer, if you prefer). I play for a team called the Saitama Jets, and by virtue of being one of the longest-serving and bossiest team members, I also help to organize things. Regular readers will also know that the Saitama Jets have a nasty habit of doing well in various competitions and tournaments, but usually choking at the last hurdle.

Well, as the title indicates, we did it again!!! We went to Tochigi hoping to retain the trophy we won last year. We were also hoping to beat Niigata, who defeated us in January on the way to winning the Saitama Stadium All-Japan ALT tournament.

On the first day, we played well, winning two and drawing one to finish as the top-ranked team. In the knockout stages, we saw off Yamanashi and a local team dubbed 'Japan' to set-up a revenge match with Niigata in the final. We played well, we dominated the game, but we couldn't score, and the game ended 0-0. Just as at Nagano last October, and at Nagano in 2002, we lost in the final on penalties. Definitely a cruel, unfair, barbaric, and inhumane way to lose. Has anyone got a killer instinct they can sell me or loan me for a few months - we need it badly!

Price of Success : (

I received an annoying email this week from my web hosting company, which hosts the gandm page. They told me that there was too much usage this month, and that I may have to pay extra. In more detail, this means that there are too many people looking at the various different files on gandm.com. Each time a visitor looks at a page, this generates 'traffic', and I have a limit each month for this traffic. In the last few weeks there has been an awful lot of traffic, especially from Japanese sites and search engines.

I have no desire to pay more each month than I currently do, but I am also not going to start advertising on the site either. I'm sure you all see enough ads every day that you don't want to see them here as well. I have compressed some of the most popular image files, and I may well delete some pictures from really old posts, especially those of the 'isn't this weird!' or 'hey look at this new gadget from Apple/Sony etc'. I may have to block access to the bloody Bae Yong Jun page as well - it's getting quite out of hand!

Bizarrely enough, I wrote most of this a day or two ago, and then saw that the ever-prescient Mark Hegge has written a similar post.

Wal-Mart Helps You Find Luuurve

What a bizarre story. Wal-Mart in Germany is promoting its stores as places for singles to pick up other singles. They have prepared 'flirting points' around their stores, and on Friday evenings they give single, available customers red bows to put on their shopping trolleys to send out that all-important signal!

Whatever next - banks and doctors surgeries to sell themselves as hook-up joints?

CNN Story
Link courtesy of Jen, Batsish Kevin's sister.

Blooming

Megumi is plumping up nicely, as you can see. We went and looked at the cherry blossoms in the park today with Matt and Yoshiko.

Blimey, she's getting heavier...

Pretty in Pink

Green-Fingered Gary

Megumi is not supposed to lift heavy things, so the job of watering the plants is now mine. I'm a natural!

Spring Again

Here are some flowers from our garden. Pint to the first person who can correctly name what type of flowers they are...

How To Get In and Out of a Car

Continuing the work theme, as Dirk notes, new employees join Japanese companies on April 1st every year. It's funny to see them walking in lines following their boss - they look a little like ducklings, or small children going on their first school outing.

Anyway, the young lady standing next to me on the train this morning was reading a riveting book about how to behave in a Japanese company. One page had a diagram of a car, and explained where each person should sit, relative to their position in the organization. It also explained in which order one should get out of the vehicle, so as to cause the least offence to others!

No wonder there is a kind of ritual musical chairs-style dance every time you put a few Japanese people in a meeting room.

A New Beginning?

Sounds like the title of a Star Wars film, but no, I'm talking about work. The company I work for was recently merged with its parent company, so there will be lots of changes over the coming months. Here is a quick breakdown of the companies I have worked for, and the changes of ownership, I have experienced over the past 5 years.*

I joined Company G just after it was acquired by Company E, at the time the leader in its field in the world.

Less than 2 years later, Company E went bust, and its assets were bought out by Company C (A British organization). My role at the time was to try and sell Company G (now division G), as its activities were not part of the core business of Company C. This was very difficult and somewhat frustrating, and I eventually got fed up and left.

I joined company J, which was owned by Company NT, which itself was owned by Company V (another group of Brits). Company V soon sold its stock in Company NT (including little J) to Company R, a group of Americans. Company R's plan was to clean up NT and then sell it on.

Within a short time, Company R did exactly that, selling NT (and with it, Company J) to the brash, eager Company S. Company S did a fairly in depth review of everything it had acquired, and decided that NT had too many subsidiary companies doing basically the same things as the parent, NT, and the grandparent company (can you say that?), Company S.

So, from April 1st, little Company J ceased to be an independent business entity, and its operations have all been merged with those of Company NT. Quite what this all means I have not yet fathomed out. Will keep you all posted.

*company names have been cunningly disguised to protect the innocent.