APPENDAGES! (2 Months)

You can see my baby's gaining some arms and legs, and even a head! The lines on the right represent his/her heart beat.

The baby might be born during Japan's golden week holiday, giving us our own little Golden Child.

I did the impossible, I joined Facebook

Oh yes, it's very true. I've been Facebooked! I've got 11 friends so far - who are people I can actually call friends (with a touch of family). Now I can make contact with people without the usual hassle of being EXTREMELY lazy with e-mail. It's not SO much better, but it is by just a touch.

A LACK OF KI
I started practicing Aikido again last month, and I couldn't be happier. I go for two or three times a week, practicing two hours a day. One hour is devoted to Ki Training, which is pretty sweet. We learn how to move people by using the least amount of our own energy as possible.

After that is an hour of Aikido, in which somethings I already know, and much I don't. Everyone there is pretty cool. In an Aikido class, the atmosphere is pretty relaxed and jovial. The teachers are especially funny.

Once a week, I also take a Ken and Jo class, that is a sword and stave fighting class. We've been mostly working with the stave so far and it's pretty complicated, but extremely fun.

I've missed this week's Aikido classes because of working over time and helping out the wife. My body misses it terribly. I need to stop being a lazy baby, and start practicing on my own regularly.

THE BATTLE'S NEARLY OVER...
Well, Meg's been officially fired. HOORAY!!! Now all we have to do is wait for them to give her back her pension book and other items. I need her government pension book in order to sign up with the insurance at work, which will be very necessary for when the baby comes. Just waiting...

Until laterz...
Mike, the RocketRat who can move mountains with the lightest touch.

Companies You Hate to Hate

EVERYTHING IS HAPPINESS IN JAPAN. LET'S ENJOY HAPPY!

If you're Japanese, and when you work for a major Japanese company, just keep this simple idea in your head:

You are a slave.

No, no. No, no, no...let's rephrase that:

You are a happy and loyal employee who would never leave the company until the company was ready to let you go, which is, suffice it to say, never anytime in your future.

Such is the experience of too many Japanese people.
Such is the recent experience of my wife.

FROM BAD...
She liked her job, working for Ayura make-up company. It was extremely tough work, but she came back happy that she was working there. That was until a few weeks before she became pregnant. She works for a company comprised of mostly women - which causes quite a number of problems (understood from first-hand experience). She works for a company comprised mostly of women customers - which adds the that number; and things just simply started to become too much.

...TO WORSE
After getting pregnant, though, things really went down the toilet. Her energy completely vanished - which is no good for a busy company with tons of customers each day; customers who demand attention no better than babies. On top of that, her nose became super sensitive, where she feels like puking because of any small, yet distinctive smell - which is no good when your surrounded by very strong smells at a make-up counter in a department store full of make-up counters.

When you are Japanese and want to leave a Japanese company, you ask, they say 'no' and then you stay. It's that simple.

My wife initially said that she would work until she was eight months, but found it all unbearable, and changed her mind - opting for the twenty-days notice. This decision through the sacrifice into the volcano too late. It became a battle with her supervisor, her area-manager, and indeed her company. Insultingly guilt-ridden statements tried to shame her into staying. There were some misunderstandings which somehow became personal insults. Declarations of how my wife's being selfish for getting pregnant mixed with threats of lawsuits where thrown at her like pea soup from a demonic possession.

Eventually, they gave up and fired her. Meaning that this is still not yet over. Their shame-tactics have a little bit of a hold on her right now, but that's fading, thankfully. She has to get her pension stuff back from them and her area manager wants to talk to her, probably to try to convince her to come back.

I'm very proud of my wife. She overcame a lot of personal obstacles to get, keep and continue to work for this company. She put a lot of blood and sweat into become a great employee, one better than many who have worked there for years. I'm equally proud of her for getting out, no matter how (even though she's not completely out yet). This undue stress was killing her and could have potentially harmed our baby, and family always, ALWAYS comes first!

Oh lookey at the baby-wabey!

Where's baby?

There you are!

JESUS CHRIST! (Or, 'Holy Zombie Jesus'!)

In the past couple of years, there have been a flurry of Broadway hits flurrying to the stage; Cats, Hairspray, and Crazy For You to name a few. And now, Jesus Christ Superstar is entering the scene.

I never liked this particular musical. In fact, I've loathed it ever since I first got a glimpse of the movie. Plus, the creepier, and often crazier of the Jesus sect has been slipping in, under the radar. Mormons (who, technically, I can't even call Christians by any sense of it), and Jehovahs are flooding the streets as much as they can. Images that adorn homeless shelters and feeding places give that old-timey feeling of accept Jesus into your heart or burn. So, in the back of my head, the introduction of this musical seems a bit seedy to me.

However, the visuals of the Japonesque version look pretty cool. Everyone's done up in Kabuki-style makeup. Pretty bad ass.

And besides, I've always said that if Jesus was born in Asia, he'd have been a Buddhist.

Coolest Used Car Lot EVER!

Yee HAW!

A Cute 'Trailer'

Though the robots are a bit, well, robotic, I enjoy the designs.

Citroen Transformer Spoofs

Tee Hee Hee

Yet Another Citroen Transformer

Another Citroen Transformer

The Original Citroen Car Commercial

The director of this video was, I've heard, originally slated to do the Halo movie

Megger's Preggers!

For the past couple of weeks, my wife Meg has been feeling weak, well, pretty much all day. She felt sick when she smoked cigarettes that she could never finish. Everyone thought it was a cold, even a doctor she went to see. No medicine she took seemed to fix this issue.

Then came the random pregnancy test, and she got the two lines. After a year of "Let's have a baby", she had only recently decided it wouldn't be in her best interest to get pregnant right now. It would cause problems at work and she didn't want to be sick. A second pregnancy test - and even a third a little later on, for factors of disbelief - confirmed that the indication of two lines indicating pregnancy from the first test was indeed accurate.

That night was right then full of panic.

"I don't want to be sick!"

"I'm not supposed to get pregnant during the time I work for Ayura! They don't 'allow' it."

"What about money and insurance? (Of which we have neither, right now.)"

After exhausting herself, the new day came as well as a new attitude. Things were once again shining bright in the world of Meg. We've told quite a bit of people and things are full of the happy!

Well, that's all for now...
Laterz...

Mike, the soon to be the father of a litter of little RocketRats!