Been a funny old day today. Everything’s been out of context. Started with being woken by my mobile. I get an average of one phone call a week, so it startles me even if when I’m already awake. My friend had a puncture, meeting might be delayed. I can sleep in a bit. Tired after last night’s coaching call, finished that at 1.30am. It’s almost the end of the course, more change there. Good change. Change is good.
But hang on, it didn’t start with that phone call. No, it started with what happened the night before. It was about 11pm, and I was unpacking my bag. Earlier in the day a friend of mine (another student) who I’m probably not going to see for a long long time after this week handed me an envelope: “Look after it, and open it when you get home”.
When I did open it, I gasped. Inside was a beautiful handmade card with a lovely message, and inside that, a number of bank notes. I was stunned, and tears came to my eyes. This was an act of supreme generosity, utterly unexpected. I was completely thrown by it, and spent some time feeling lost in the kitchen talking to myself.
I contacted them, communicating my feelings. They reassured me. Boy am I grateful. Thank you so much.
This act of generosity made me think a lot about giving and receiving, and reinforced for me the importance of giving in my life.
This afternoon I was on Three Seeds business, Three Seeds being our online publishing company. Met up with our marketing adviser, who, in a nice way, pointed out all of the flaws in our plans. I was very grateful for that – better to hear it from him than someone whose business we are looking for (or the judges at next week’s competition final). We need to do some serious thinking about where we want this business to go. It would be a shame to bring it so far (we’re now in testing) and not see it to the launch. It’s a shame we lost two months to the first company we approached, but no doubt the reason for that will come to light in due course.
Tonight I’ve been starting to pack for Japan. I move out of here next Tuesday, but will be heading down to London on Friday for a rather special meeting with a high-profile businessman from Japan (I hope I can still speak Japanese!), so basically I need to prepare for the move now. I’m taking a lot of stuff to the charity shops: stationary, kitchen ware, small bits of ‘furniture’, books, women’s clothing.
Whilst I’ve moved every year since about 1999, this is the most important move yet. I won’t be coming back to live in the UK for a long time, so decisions need to be made about stuff that means a lot to me, but has little practical use, or can be bought in Japan for less than the cost of postage to Japan.
I’m down to about ten books. Ten books that have changed my life in various ways. All the rest have gone to Oxfam. I have quite a few things that have been given to me as gifts by friends over the past 15 years, but serve no purpose other than to look pretty and remind me of them. It’s tough parting with these things, but I know that my relationships with these people are not ultimately contained within these objects. It’s time for someone else to provide a temporary home for them.
I’m so glad that the vast majority of my photos are digitised. If my collection of 20,000+ were in the form of prints and negatives I really don’t think I could justify shipping them over. As it is, they just occupy an eighth of my Macbook’s (320GB) hard drive. Handy that. Hurrah for technology.
*Twinkle*s getting closer. 15 days. Can’t quite come to terms with that. Kind of scary. It means we’re getting married soon.
This morning I did a bit more wedding organisation. Booking rent-a-cars, and a hotel for *Twinkle* and I in Windsor, where we’ll stay the night before she returns to Japan. It’s all going to happen so soon. In a month she’ll be back in Japan, and I’ll be back here at Sheffield, learning how to teach.
Ho hum.
Well, best be off. I need to sleep – tomorrow is my last day working for CILASS (probably!). A group of people from Hong Kong have come to the UK to tour learning environments – I’m one of the Sheffield Students providing the student p.o.v. on the IC.
Nighty night.