lijunlaopo.com

I haven’t posted anything since Thursday, I’ve been too busy being sick and  generally complaining and feeling sorry for myself.

I never, never get sick, so generally expect I must be dying if I do fall ill.

After having to take the day off on Sunday and spending half a day trying to find a doctor, I finally got some antibiotics that made me really ill because I hadn’t been able to eat anything beforehand.  eww.

Luckily, I am nearly fully recovered this evening… although I have the most awful case of hiccups that is refusing to go away now.  eeggh.  What is going on??

Once my throat had stopped hurting this evening, I dragged Patrick to Wolfgang Puck as I had a few days of eating to catch up with.

The BLTA Pizza there is one of the nicest pizzas I have ever had.  It is on a thin base that doesn’t have that awful pizza taste, and the cheese is light and creamy.  I probably could have eaten the whole thing myself this evening.

I can’t write any more, because my hiccups are too distracting…

We were a little disappointed when there were no more yellow watermelons at the grocery store last night, but bought some odd looking little grapes instead.They are very small so I expected them to be sour, but I just remembered they were in the fridge and tried one, and they are the Best. Grapes. Ever.

They taste just like the gummy grape flavoured lollies, but without the sick feeling that comes from eating too many.

Perfect!

My dodgy Japanese reading skills tell me they are Delaware grapes, from Osaka.

Only 398yen. It’s our lucky day.

We are beginning to get orgainsed about leaving now. I’m going to miss our lovely tiny apartment.We went to the Chinese Embassy to get my visa done today. It would have been a nice walk through Roppongi Hills if it hadn’t been for the fact it was about one hundred billion degrees.

We were running a little late, so had to rush on the way, and I was absolutely dripping by the time we got to the embassy. Horrible!

At least we stumbled across the Hyatt, so we can go back there and book in for our evening that Patrick won in his 10k run last month.

We have managed to get my visa sorted and found a travel agent to book our tickets, so we just need to post off all our excess luggage now.

We’ll be in Shanghai soon! So happy, I love Shanghai. Patrick has promised to buy me another Pearl Tower keyring as the one he bought me when we went on our first trip there has fallen apart.

After all the hard work of lining up and filling in forms at the embassy, we went back to Tokyo Midtown for lunch, as Patrick just can’t get enough of his yuk rubber noodles. Luckily we discovered Manhattan Deli next to the rubber noodle store, so after Patrick finished off his lunch I got to choose mine from the deli.Sweet staff, too much good food to choose from and coffee that stopped Patrick from missing Melbourne just for a minute has convinced Patrick that next time we will just go straight to the deli for lunch.

The weather is really warming up in Tokyo now, luckily the evenings are still perfect.James will not be suprised to hear that we had a very uneventful evening. Because there seems to be a severe lack of cafes here with outdoor seating, we walked down to Shinjuku Southern Terrace, where there are at least a few places for sitting and enjoying the weather… or queuing and enjoying the weather, depending on which establishment you choose.

We were sitting across the tracks from Takashimaya Times Square, which is an enormous complex, full of large windows through which we can watch tiny people wandering about as if in an ant farm.

Finally we came back past the supermarket to pick up some yellow watermelons, but they had all sold out. Seems I will continue to be just about the only person in the world who hasn’t tried one until tomorrow at least.

I have recently come to learn I am generally quite good at making decisions.

When we decided to come to Japan, I was instantly comfortable with the idea, and never doubted it. When I decided to resign, a few people commented on what a swift decision it had been. It didn’t feel like a rushed decision, just a quick one.

I have been lucky so far not to have regretted any of my decisions, even the really swift ones.

I think making a choice is quite a lot like ripping off a band-aid, its all the thinking about it before hand that is the most painful. Once its done, its done and we can go on with the next thing of interest.

Luckily for us, everything always seems to turn out for the best, and I’m pretty sure thats just the way life is.

I can never decide what I want to eat though. Thats different.

I was inspired for this post by the ridiculous amount of choices we are given as consumers these days.

When I bought a phone, I had two colours to choose from, that left me a little flustered for a while. When Michael went to buy his phone a few weeks later he was faced with 20 colours. Luckily he is a boy, so had to choose something sensible like black or white which made it easier.

When I signed up for my Shinsei bank account, I had to select from one of 32 colours of ATM card, now THAT was hard.

I like the Pantone partnership with Softbank for the phones, it has made for some pretty advertisements about town.

If Pantone could strike up a deal with some more companies, I’d be pretty sure to fall for the scheme. Mp3 player, phone, ATM card, water bottle… all perfectly coodinated via Pantone’s colour matching system!

It would make each decision much easier once we had chosen the colour of the first item.