The week started off a little weirdly. After a reasonably good sleep and not feeling too groggy, I had a really weird dream about my friend Jen. The details (much like almost all of my dreams) have already faded into nothingness, but it was odd enough that I took note of it.

This week I pre-enrolled in a basic Japanese course at Polytech, got my textbook and had my first class yesterday. I was hoping to have a bit of a refresher on the material that I had covered back in 2005 when I did JAPA101 at Canterbury. It turned out that the course I had selected was even more basic than I thought it was going to be – it doesn’t even cover any kana (Japanese writing) at all. Still, it will regulate me practicing at least some Japanese before I go to Japan, which has to be a good thing, right?

I spent some more time this week in at the software place I mentioned, continuing to set up my computer with the tools and codebase and trying to get everything running. It’s a bit of a struggle just having everything set up right when it comes to software. Kind of makes me wish I could just have the machine set up for me when I go to jobs like this, so I can focus on the actual coding rather than the mucking about getting things set up – it just seems like a colossal waste of time. Anyway, I got some other work done as well, including sorting out some hosting stuff which was a bit more interesting and let me play around a bit with the hosting management tool for my US server.

This week I also went into the bank to sort out my accounts (I was hoping I could go back to having a student account when I went to Japan… apparently not). I did a few bouts of shopping, had my golf lesson and coffee session with my Grandparents on Wednesday and then nine holes today, met up with a bunch of people for catching up and talking, had pizza night, watched some shows… I also did a lot more online stuff than usual, which was a little peculiar because I do that a lot. I wrote a whole lot of emails and talked to a lot more people online this week – I guess it was just one of those weeks. I got to talk to Anastasia and Lea after they had been to their masked ball, which was pretty cool. I talked to my friend Alison up in Hamilton midway through the week, we’re still trying to sort out whether or not she’ll be able to come down to Christchurch or I’ll be able to fly up to the Tron. On Friday I also went and had a drink with Belinda, who works for one of my Dad’s companies and I have been liaising with over some of the work I’ve been doing. Mostly I ended up talking about myself, my background and that kind of thing, which was odd because it’s not something that I usually do. Still, was good to get out and talk with her for a bit, get to know her a bit better. Yesterday I also got to go into the Arts Centre and see Hera playing live again, which was lovely. I also got to grab some food from the stalls at the Arts Centre, which I haven’t done in ages and was also pretty awesome. ^^ Today of course I also had family tea around at Mum’s, and got to talk to her and Dace for quite a while.

I spent some more time with Ian on Friday and yesterday doing game stuff, that was pretty cool. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with him since he lives so close, just getting towards the end of the day and having someone to grab some souvlaki, or pizza, or whatever, sit down and talk some crap, or watch some TV. I’ve introduced him to John Doe and The Pretender (which is essentially John Doe’s predecessor) and it’s been fun going back and watching them again. More so the Pretender I guess, since I watched John Doe again semi-recently. It really does make me think about how much the idea of “you can be anything if you want to” influenced me growing up. I still think that way – if I want to be something, I can. It’s just a matter of finding the right path and putting in the time to do it.

This week is also the week of travelling friends – yesterday I went and picked up Rach from the airport from her stint up in Auckland doing some work. I’ve been talking with her on and off online while she’s been up there and it sounds like it’s been an interesting trip. The other friend of mine I got to see this week was Robbie, who I haven’t seen in far too long. The last time I was properly living in New Zealand I was seeing him every week, catching up over coffee and just generally talking about life, the universe and everything. We went out and had dinner at Little Saigon, then went over to Hoyts and saw Michael Clayton (which, incidentally, was nothing like what I was told and was very good). Afterwards we went back to Dad’s and just talked for ages and I was reminded that Robbie is possibly one of the most emotionally significant friends that I have made, and his insight, perspective and general awesomeness are all things that I treasure about our relationship. I miss him when I am overseas, and since he’s something of a ‘man about world’ himself, I don’t know how often we’re going to coincide in the coming years, which makes me sad. However, I know we’ll find a way to see each other every now and then, to reconnect and catch up on all of each other’s news.