Hello everyone,
I hope you are all good and healthy!
I’m ok, apart from when I feel on the edge of a mental break down or like a two year old toddler throwing tantrums! I’m fine, I’m fine, everything is fine!!!!
I’m living with Nathalie, a colleague from Rowing, for the past five weeks and we are still doing ok (I guess!).
We cook and eat, we work, we cook and eat, we work, we work out, we cook and eat, we drink G&T, we go to bed. We repeat this every day from Monday to Friday. On Saturday is house-cleaning day while Sunday is brunch-day, so we just eat two times instead of three.
Lego Architecture - Tokyo provided some joy during quarantine
Living with someone is not easy, that’s the main reason I’ve never done that and obviously, having my first attempt at it while being in a lockdown, stuck in Tokyo and with all the related stress is at times a little bit too much, but sometimes is also nice to interact with another human being during the day.
The good news is that I found a new flat closer to the office and I will move in on the first week of May. I’m upgrading from 16sqm to 31sqm and I’m not sure what will I do with all that space.
The joy related to moving was being able to do shopping online from Ikea, however putting together all the things I’ve ordered will not be joyful at all
Pretty ironic that at the moment I’m paying the rent for 2 flats in Tokyo but I currently live in Nathalie’s house!
The flat I’ve lived in since moving to Tokyo is in Setagaya, just 3km away from the Equestrian Park, and very close to my two favourite neighborhoods, Shimo Kitazawa and Naka Meguro. But with the postponement, commuting to the office for one hour each way for 13 more months was not going to be very pleasant, so I found a new flat only 500m from the office, on the island of Tsukishima.
The process of building man-made islands in Japan started in the early 1900’s when the country was developing and Tokyo Bay has changed completely since then.
The view from Harumi island, where the office is located
Working from home is not fun, at least for me, and it's not easy to switch from working in an open space sharing the same table with all your colleagues to sitting on the couch staring outside the window. Also, there are a lot of things that need to be sorted for the postponement and, with the COVID-19 situation, a lot of processes have stopped.
Since the lockdown we started having Skype meetings twice a week with the Equestrian Team, and, to accommodate all the time zones of the Competition Managers, the meetings start at G&T o’clock (6pm JST).
In Japan is very common, almost a tradition I would say, to have meetings to discuss topics for another meeting, or to have a meeting to discuss if to have a meeting.
Last week on Monday we had a small meeting to discuss the agenda for a Wednesday meeting that was to prepare a meeting on Thursday. My mind was completely blown.
Something that really made me laugh is that on our first team meeting we spent three hours on Skype and after that my Japanese colleagues had another meeting to discuss why the call was that long. The discussion lasted for 30 minutes
A couple of weeks ago I received an email and the subject was “Postpornement”, obviously a typo, but that sums up entirely all my feelings at the moment...just 450 days to go!
