Wow, my body has been Super-Ill today, it’s been mightily impressive. My nosy is bleeding it has been blown so many times. My throat is raw, my tonsils large making swallowing something to be avoided, my legs and back totally ached out. Energy levels are somewhere in the bicycle shed below my room.

Good thing it’s only my body and not me that’s ill.

Soooooo excited about Life! I got a phone call today about a plan for a New Year road trip to Scotland with friends. Stay in a cottage in the highlands, Edinburgh for new year… only thing is, we have to get *Twinkle* here, which will not be easy as the flights from Japan are so so so expensive now. Thus, a massive project is soon to be launched with the aim of getting her here on her birthday, Christmas Eve.

I finished THREE website projects today which have been hanging over me for months. Just been putting them off. Luckily I get paid for all that work. 🙂

Oh, and met up with a couple of business partners to draw up our official business proposal to secure £1000 of funding towards the launch of a project we’re very excited about… there’s also a chance that we’ll get £5000 worth of professional business advice from a local company that has helped UK businesses raise over 2.6 billion pounds, and has had a direct beneficial effect upon 4% of the British workforce. We need a fabulous business proposal to win this 10-day course, and we think we have one! …There’s just so much money in the UK to help new businesses get off the ground, it’s staggering.

Japan soc continues to be fascinating, and is taking up far too much of my time – hurrah!

Anyway, amidst all this there’s been mist and fog clouding my year ahead. Return to Japan? Stay in Sheffield? One passion competes with another, competes with emotion, competes with business sense, competes with changing values attached to time and space. Negotiating these torrid currents is very tricky, and that’s even before they interact with other flows! The white water ahead looks very exciting, even if the destination cannot be seen.

And the more I do, the more I feel detached from exam results. I’m really enjoying my course for what it is on a daily and weekly basis. I’m loving reading books, I’m loving giving presentations (can’t wait to try out those cheesy new transitions in Keynote 08!), I’m loving the translation, I’m loving the debates. I’ll do my best in the exams, I’ll pass the course, everything will be OK.

There’s just so much to be thankful for and happy about, I just can’t help but smile. And blow my nose again.

xxx