Cleanly breaking weeks with travel seems to work great for me: It creates a neat time-bounded window, or a context if you will. But long-distance travel — which can span days — are a lot fuzzier. These journeys can form their own chapters.

This week in data:

• Leon wraps consumed: 0
• Hours slept: Not enough. :(

In my case, a chapter involving some extremely pointy elbows and my rib-cage on the the first long leg of my journey back: Being allocated a middle-seat is the opposite of winning the lottery. And it involved some extremely tasty soup (at the pop-up Tin Kee) in Hong-Kong airport which almost made up for everything else...

Long-haul flights get the travel out of the way, but, after you’ve done one or two (ever) they aren’t exactly exciting. You learn rules, tricks, optimisations to make the lost time easier to manage. You begin to trade these with your fellow travellers: This route has better food, this seat is easier to sleep in, this airline is much cheaper, this airport is to be avoided at all costs. Long-haul travel becomes a part of the identity - and not one I enjoy embracing.

Anyway, more importantly, my local Lawson is closed for refurbishment - I hope they finally fix their coffee machines.

Back to work, and head-first into a little bit of framework investigation. Going straight in after returning was a bit ambitious because the jet-lag is not being kind to me this time around and I can’t stop yawning. I even did my ritual park visit and everything to no avail.

First language class on Thursday. Went well. Jumped directly into hiragana which I had not expected to be writing. Need more practice!

Mt Fuji made an appearance through the office window, which was a welcome surprise!

Checked luggage and baggage carousels are pretty good and reliable these days, moreso with tech like air tags, so I don’t understand why folks do carry-on luggage and make embarkation/disembarkation a real chore for everyone else.

Health markers going the right direction. 🤞

Walking around at the weekend I randomly stumbled upon an outdoors concert and - gosh - firstly I’m impressed at how energetic the performers were considering their state of dress and how utterly bitterly cold it is right now - and secondly - maybe it’s a stylistic choice but it really didn’t sound in tune...

And I spent a decent chunk of the rest of the weekend doing viewings. I’m pretty set on the area I want, but, I’m not set on any of the places I’ve seen yet. Maybe next week will yield better results.

Watched a few movies on the plane back but I don’t have enough space to review them properly, so here goes: Girl, Interrupted (1999): pretty good, Coup! (2023): great, Transformers One (2024): wonderful, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024): ok.

All that lugging around furniture last week + my bags on the way back seems to have messed up my arm slightly...

Have a good week!