Friday was a very long day for me. I got up at 5:10 AM to prepare for a BBC spot. Left at 5:50, Naoko and Zen were already up but sleepy. I did BBC in the morning, talking about the stress tests on banks in Europe, and then I went to work. It was my last day working on Issue 99 of our magazine, and I wanted to get it done. Got lots of things done, the whole while listening to Neil Young’s “After The Gold Rush” on the iPhone; took a taxi home at 10:30 and it turns out I listened to the release 15 times through! I got home at 11:00, ate dinner, had some gin and tonics, stayed up until 1:00 watching old Space: 1999 episodes, hooray.
Saturday I was pooped so I tried to sleep in. Zen had to be up early for his fun day, so he came into my room, gave me a kiss, and then closed the door so that I could go back to sleep, so nice and loving. At about 10:20, my high school friend Margaret came with her husband Larry and he three cute little girls Katie, Emily and Ally. They participated in the Fun Day stuff, then we went to have some cold drinks, and played in the park, then they went off. It was a short visit, but very fun. After that, Naoko and Zen and I went to eat Indian food, yummy. We chilled out in the afternoon, they then went off to Codomo Club and I did computer stuff and work, just chilling out and wasting time. In the evening Zen and I watched an episode of Space: 1999 together, it seems like he likes it.
Sunday – Yuping is visiting from Taiwan, she came over in the morning, then we went off to the softball event. It was the last game of the season before summer break, so it was a day of “parent-child competition”, where the junior and senior team players, with their parents, were split into three teams, and we played a mini tournament. Naoko and Zen were on one a that one once and lost once, Zen was the catcher, and when he was at bat he got three hits (but was always out at first). I was on a team that lost twice. I was only at bat twice, but struck out each time (dads get a handicap rule – we start with two strikes). No action in the fielding aspect of it, but I had fun doing something out-of-doors for a change.
After that we went home, chilled out, went swimming (Zen and I), had a wonderful dinner with Yuping (see picture), played the monkey game and Uno poolside, looked at the full moon, chilled out chatting while I played guitar, and then went to sleep. I heard Zen speak Chinese a fair bit, it was so rewarding – all those years of Chinese are paying off, he really can use it to converse with people, and he understood some of Yuping’s stories, like her story about the kid who went to school without his school shoes – but wore slippers instead.
Monday we woke up to massive rains. Zen and Yuping and I left the house at the same time – Zen got dropped off at the school nearby and Yuping and I took the bus to go to the train line so that I could go to work and Yuping could go to the airport to catch a flight back to Taiwan. The buses were slow, of course, and were delighted to have a choice of three buses to chose from – the traffic had backed up the crowded front bus so that they were one after the other. We took the middle one, which proved to be the first to arrive at the train station (although it was kind of stinky). On the platform we saw train after train come in just crowded with people, barely any got off, so barely any could fit in. Then there was a message that the trains were going to be delayed 10 minutes. I saw that the situation would only get worse, so I squeezed in. Yuping opted to wait for a less crowded train (fat chance), so off I went.
Later I found out that Yuping had missed her flight, so we got to spend another night with her, nice. I got home early, we ate dinner, and then had a nice time playing games (monkey game and Uno again), and also playing guitar and chatting about stuff. Great fun.
Margaret, Larry, Katie, Emily and Ally came for a visit.
Margaret, Larry, Katie, Emily, Ally, Naoko and Zen - strike a pose!
Zen’s Saturday lunch
Zen eating rocket tosai
Zen with his softball friend
Zen and Kenta
Heeeeere’s Yuping, with Naoko’s yummy new dish of lemon chicken
Yuping and Zen and Naoko
Zen has funny sleep poses
action sleep
Sundown, yeah
Sundown