Wednesday 4 June 2003

Raining again

It are raining in Tokyo again. Is it my imagination or has it been a pretty wet spring here in Japan this year? For those of you not in Japan, this won't mean much, but goddammit one of the reasons I came back was to get away from the grey of English weather, and what do I find? Japan is trying to do the same.

So, today was interview day. I don't think I have mentioned before, but I applied for the role of 'Director of Recruitment & Personnel' here at work, mainly because I have been doing the director of studies job for long enough for it to become a bit too straight forward and auto-pilot-ish (well, that and the principal telling me I should). So it was a not entirely unpleasant 2 hour grilling by the aforementioned principal, and also the chap who was the DRP, but has now moved into another role. 3 other people are having interviews and the whole thing will be decided on Friday afternoon, apparently, although knowing how Shane work, this could well mean friday next week or next month. But I am undecided as to what to do if they decide to offer me the job. On the one hand it is a promotion, more responsibilities, new challenges and things to do, more access to people for the mba and so on. But on the other hand the pay increase isn't that great, it is more travelling as the office is further, probably more stress and less dealing directly with people face-to-face (although this is a good thing as well, sometimes). So we will have to wait and see what happens on Friday afternoon I guess. But fear not, regular updates will follow.

Not much to report on the window boxes as it has been raining all day, but I have 'pinched out the new growth' on the olive tree so am awaiting developments re bushiness down below. Also here's a weird thing, on the coffee tree there is a kind of siamese leaf, which is attached to the main stalk at both ends and is growing in a sort of horse shoe shape. Weird.