Hello everyone and welcome once again to your monthly Trev
Report. This month's report is brought to you by Aréka, makers of
"Kafe-latte" naturally flavored coffee candies. Buy a tin today!
And now onto this month's report!
Signe (http://www.signerse.org/ ) is
doing well. We are actually in America right now for a three week
visit to Washington state, and California. For the last week we
have been at Signe's parent's house in Nordland, WA (near the
scenic town of Port Townsend, WA). My dad came up from California
to celebrate the fourth of July with us and we have had a few
great parties while we have been here. We are going to be
attending two weddings in the next two weeks. Danielle and Johan
are getting married 7/10 in Olympia, WA and Signe is going to be
taking the pictures for the event. Signe's mother will also be in
attendance as the musician (Signe's mother, Paula Lalish, is an
amazing harpist). Afterwards we will be spending time with Scott
Francis's family on the East side (Redmond/Bellevue area), and
then head to my Uncle Floyd's house to stay for a few nights and
visit the Else (my mother's maiden name) side of the family
living in Washington. After that Signe and I will head down to
the Bay Area in California for about 5 days, which will be very
busy. The first couple of days we will be having dinner with our
friends from No-Name Anime (http://www.nnanime.com/ ) and
FanimeCon (http://www.fanime.com/ ). I will
also be heading down to my old place of work, RedOctane (http://www.redoctane.com/ ) to
say hello to everyone at my favorite company in America. We also
plan to have lunch with my Dad a couple times as well. After all
of that I have to get into the roll of Best Man for the wedding
of Mike Chu (http://www.mhchu.com/ ) and Tina.
That will be great fun since I haven't been a Best Man before.
After that we will head up to Seattle for one more day, stay with
Brian Jennings (http://www.bdjnews.com/ ) and Frank
Webber and then head back to the land of the rising sun! Signe
and I are bearing well through the trip. The usual ups and downs
of traveling are happening to us, but we are getting through them
just fine. I am very glad that we are in this thing together. It
is making me feel a lot better to have Signe with me through all
of this.
Work
is going fantastic! I have been selected to be a Jet Programme
(http://www.jetprogramme.com/ )
Tokyo Orientation Assistant (TOA). That means I will be one of
the people that new JET programme participants will see when they
step off the plane in Tokyo, and I will be helping out with the
first of two 3000-person conferences to be held in Tokyo when I
get back to Japan. I really miss working with large events like
FanimeCon, so I am really looking forward to doing this one too!
It is a weeklong conference starting about 3 days after I return
from America. I will be running two panels (Japanese Popular
Culture, and Driving In Japan) as well as introducing 24 new
programme members to the wonderful world of Shimane, Japan
(shimane.jp/ ). I
can't wait! As for school, I unfortunately had to leave for
vacation during the last month of the first semester, so when I
get back it will be summer break. The next time I will see my
kids will be second semester in last August. I miss being at
school and am really looking forward to getting back into the
swing of things. I can't believe that it has been almost one year
since Signe and I started the programme. With any luck I will be
on it for many more years to come.
Well, going to a country where nobody speaks
Japanese at all doesn't help my language skills all that much,
but I have been keeping up my journal in Japanese everyday, which
helps, and I bought a couple study books for the trip, filled
with good intention, but most of you know how that goes (studying
while on vacation isn't one of my strong points). I also signed
up for the Advanced Japanese Language Course offered by CLAIR
(http://www.clair.co.jp/ ),
which is the parent organization for the JET Programme. I am a
little scared about taking it, since it is all in Japanese, but I
intend to do my best! In any case, I will just keep going at it
and try my best. I know that given enough time, I will be able to
improve.
Last I checked my precious computer is A-OK at
home, waiting for our return. Since the last report nothing too
drastic has been happening. I am still playing Achaea (http://www.achaea.com/ ) whenever I
get a chance. It is a really fun game and good to play when I
just want to space out and relax. Besides that, everything is
solid as a rock. I had to reinstall Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/ ) because of
something I messed up, but that is about it. I really want to get
into playing around with programming again, but it doesn't seem
in the cards. I have a pretty good feeling that I will never
enter the computer science arena ever again, but we will see.
Like I mentioned before, I will be presenting a
panel on Japanese Popular Culture at the Tokyo Orientation, but
it seems that I am very out of the loop these days. I don't watch
any TV anymore, except for foreign movies, and I don't even read
that much comics. I subscribe to Newtype, and that is the only
way I can find out what is popular with the kids/fans in Japan
right now (Gundam SEED, and Full Metal Alchemist are the really
popular ones at the moment). I am a little worried about doing
the panel, but I will get through it somehow. I would love to get
back into anime and comics, and all the nerdy cool stuff I used
to get really excited about, but there aren't too many people I
know that are into those things these days, and one of the main
reasons I liked it so much was because of being around others
like me. Oh well. I am sure it is just a phase, who knows, I
might be right back into it all again next month, we will see.
That's about it for this short but sweet Trev Report from the
old US of A. Be sure to check us out on the World Wide Web at
http://www.trevreport.org/ for
more fun. Until next time this is your friendly neighborhood Trev
signing of and wishing you all a fair well!
Yours,
trv