This was a pretty good week, but the best was that today was Naoko’s birthday. This morning I woke Zen up first, and we gave Naoko her birthday present, a necklace Zen and I had picked out for her. She woke up and got lots of kisses from us and got her present, she was so happy. I had a full day at work but managed to get away from an event I was at and head home. A huge accident had happened on the highway, my 20 minute ride took 1 hour and 20 minutes, but I got home and picked up Zen and Naoko and we whisked off to the Brazilian restaurant on Sixth Avenue just in time for our reservation. We got a nice place near the window and ate tons and tons of yummy barbecued meat. Great! Zen was super well behaved. When Naoko was gone the waitress came out and said that she could bring us a piece of cake and the waiters would come along and sing Happy Birthday to you, and sure enough that’s what we did. Naoko was so suprised, and I’ve never heard it sung in Portuguese before, but there it was. Went home and Naoko and Zen went to sleep right away, although I am still up doing stuff.
The week was good. Last Saturday we tried Zen out at a Japanese kids school on Orchard Road to try out some lessons, one in the morning and a more advanced one in the afternoon. Zen did very well and he was very attentive and seemed to enjoy it a lot. That was great. Between lessons we slipped away, went down Orchard Road, saw Naoko, visited Singapore Airlines, HMV, a jewellery shop, and then to buy shoes for Zen, finally to the school again. Whew!
Sunday we went to see Ratatouille, and also to do lots of errands, Zen’s swimming lessons, and some other stuff.
Monday I met an old friend at the Prince of Wales after work to talk and drink beer and listen to his stories. Since I last saw him, which was at a live show in Osaka, he has become a PhD candidate in linguistics and is studying tribal languages of Southeast Asia, meeting tons of interesting people and living a very interesting life. I quite envy and have a lot of respect for him, it seems like a lot of fun, although pretty rugged. Talked to the owner of the Prince of Wales about playing a set of music at the pub, he’s asked me to come in on Sunday night. Let’s see how that goes, should be fun.
Tuesday I worked until midnight, Wednesday I worked from home, Thursday I went to Ikoma after work and got home late only to pick things up again, and today I was in the office doing things all over the place like mad, crazy. But at least it’s Naoko’s birthday.
Funny story – the other day I was playing Black Sabbath riffs on my acoustic guitar in the living room. Zen was in the other room, but he must have heard me because he came into the room and said “Papa, is that ‘Iron Man’?”