Whither This Blog?

I’m not sure what I want to do with this blog. I haven’t mentioned it here yet, but I got the job in Japan that I was applying for. Ever since August, I’ve been keeping notes elsewhere about the process of applying, planning, etc. Their primary home was on Google+, to a limited circle of people who had opted-in, because I was talking about it a lot and I didn’t want to annoy people. Now that the job is a reality, it’s a major part of my life, and I want to move it to a more public forum. I’ve been mirroring the G+ posts (but not their comments) to a private blog over on WordPress.com, so I’m trying to decide if I want to make that public and keep blogging about Japan there, or import them over here, or what. Now that I write this, I feel like the latter is more appropriate. This is still my life, after all – it’s going to be about Japan quite a lot, but it’s me, my life, and this is where I write about my life. Some of the G+ posts have been very short, but hell I don’t write here much at all anymore, and they don’t have to be essays.

So…should I do a redesign in honor of the new journey in my life? I’m not sure I need some of the stuff that’s on the sidebar, especially the Netflix “at home” listing – I’ll have to suspend my DVD subscription while I’m there! (And possibly the whole thing, but I’m going to try to get a U.S. based IP address through VPN so I can keep watching Netflix and Hulu.)

So yeah, I guess I will import the stuff over here, with special tags to indicate it or something. It’s my life, and this is where I write!

Edit: Okay, everything is imported on my site. But since you can’t import to LJ, and I’m not copying 80 short posts over by hand, LJ readers will have to look at those posts here. Actually, anybody looking to catch up should go there – just remember it reads backwards to August!

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Warmth

Ordered a winter coat from LL Bean today. I realized that while my winter coats here are fine for a suburban lifestyle, they won’t really do for being on foot all the time in the city. So the new coat is actually necessary!

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Confirmed

JASS confirmed that they got my confirmation that I want the job. “Will email you about immigration and so on later.”

I don’t think I can buy my air ticket until February, though. That’s the earliest I’ll be able to get an apartment, most likely, because Oak House doesn’t usually know availability more than one month in advance. I’d rather not have to spend several days in a hotel while waiting for my apartment to become available – if it’s available on the 4th rather than the 1st, I’d rather fly out there to arrive on the 4th, rather than spending two nights in a hotel. (Yes, two nights…let’s get used to time zones now, shall we?)

I’m also thinking that I should shift my posting over to the WordPress blog I started. So far it’s just been postings copied from Google+, but I could taper off here and let that run wild. Then again, I already have a blog that’s been around since 2001, so I could just make that one into a Japan blog. I don’t know…need to have my coffee before I can think about this.

The 6,000 frequent flyer miles I purchased have posted, though, so I can technically book my flight at any time!

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Terabytes

So…how much is memory these days? I’ve got a 1TB backup hard drive, but I’m scared to bring it in case something happens. Always have a backup of the backup, right?

Hmm, I also bought my wife the same 1TB drive months ago, and she hasn’t even taken off the plastic wrap. Maybe I can borrow the ~400GB I’ll need from there. I can’t imagine she will fill up the rest in a year…famous last words, right?

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Finally

I GOT IT!!

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Reservations

“One-way awards are not available for Star Alliance itineraries online. To book one-way award travel with our Star Alliance partners, please call United Reservations at 1-800-UNITED1.”

Oh…okay. I would much rather have the ANA 11:20 flight than the 12:20 United flight, so I guess I will have to call them rather than booking online. ANA has multilingual video on demand with subtitles in many languages, United has stuff in English, no subtitles, and you can’t choose what movie you want when you want it. I only need one way, so I will buy my extra miles, and then call to book the ANA flight. I hope there will be award seats left on any ANA flight in the first week of March!

Hopefully I will get the notice soon so I can hurry up and buy the ticket before seats run out! I will definitely pay to upgrade to Premium Economy, too.

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Snacking

If these are the “Japanese-style hot dogs” available in Canada, I am totally getting hot dogs in Japan. Love these!
http://www.japadog.com/menu_En.html

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31st

So they’re supposed to tell me by the end of December, right? AKA the 31st? AKA it is now 12:27am on the 31st there? AKA I should be hearing from them in 24 hours, right?

I am not actually expecting to, though…I think this will get pushed to the beginning of January!

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Screening

Woke up to the following in my email:

Subj: health condition
Hello Meredith,
We are now screening candidates and need your health condition just in case.
Please reply very soon.
Thank you,
Rumiko

So I immediately sent back:

Hello Rumiko,
I have no health problems. Thank you for asking.
Meredith

It’s not the answer yet, but it’s a good sign, I think, yes? :)

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Fading

Still nothing. Really thinking now that I did not get it. I know it’s not the end of December yet, but shouldn’t they have contacted me by now if I got it? I think everyone’s assurances that I would get it had me convinced…but now I don’t think so anymore. I just wish they would tell me something, so I can either rejoice and make plans, or grieve and move on.

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