ChanomiTalk

Recently, I visited Taipei. It is a very busy city. The first day I had to attend a formal dinner. I discovered that according to Chinese custom it is necessary to toast a lot in order to be sociable and thank the host. As a consequence, I had to drink a lot and felt a little unwell. Fortunately, I recovered quickly and the next day was invited to a Yoga class. It was fun but required all of my attention and energy because the motions were extremely difficult and the temperature in the studio was intentionally quite hot! The next day, I went to get a massage. I spent two full hours getting a foot massage and a full body massage. The foot massage really hurt! No wonder the name of the business was Kungfu massage!

One of my hobbies is that I like to cook and the area where all of the staff meet where I work there is a fairly large barbeque set and one of the managers makes his breakfast there everyday. He seems to be a very good cook and the other day I mentioned on how wonderful the butter smelled when he would make breakfast. He uses a special type of butter. It is firstly, organic, and secondly is only made from May through to September. It comes from the first Spring grasses that the cows eat which is why it is only made during those months. To compare it with something would be the first pressing of vigin olive oil. It can only be bought at Health food stores and is fairly limited in supply so my manager always buys quite a few boxes and freezes them. He has never baked with the butter but I am sure it would difinetly add to the taste.

When I lived in Japan I worked as a scuba diving Instructor in the Izu Penninsula. I really loved it there and miss it very much. In Japan, the ocean is divided into sectors and each sector is run by one of the fishing unions. The fishing unions decide where one can dive and also on which days. Whenever one pays for diving in Japan there is always a fee that is paid to these unions. A blanket rule when diving in Japan is that the divers can not take any fish, shell fish or shells. One day after I had finished diving I was in the Harbor area ready to take my gear off and I was approached by 4 elderly fishermen. They were very curious as I was the first foreigner that they had ever met. They asked me if I would dive in the harbor area for a type of shell called “Sazai”. These are barbequed and taste absolutely wonderful! I told them that the law in Japan was that I could take nothing out of the ocean. They all laughed at this and told me that this area was theirs and that if they said it was OK then I could do it but only if they gave permission and that they were waiting for me.
The sazai is everywhere and withing 10 minutes I had about 20 very big ones. After I got all of my gear off they were waiting for me in a type of hut on the beach with a big barbeque in the middle. Within no time they had all of the shells barbequed and while eating they passed around an enourmous bottle of sake and when it got to me I pretended to drink from it! When it was time to go they thanked me very much and there was one fisherman who had remained silent the whole time and then finally asked me if all foreigners had such big noses! I replied that mine was average and that there were many people with bigger noses!

When I worked on the tugboat the farthest place I went to was Johnston Island. The tugboat would carry both jet fuel and automobile fuel in a very large barge that we towed out to Johnston Island. Johnston Island is a small island between Japan and Hawaii and although there are some Military personnel there it was mainly civilian contractors when I went. The Island was used to store all the poison gas and other hazordous materials from the first World War all the way up to the Vietnam war. When on the island one always had to have a gas mask with you at all times. All of us stayed on the boat instead of going on the island as we didn’t want to be there in case there was a problem. The people who worked there usually signed up for a 2 year contract that they could renew and other than alcohol and tobacco everything was free! If a person didn’t buy those items they could save a lot of money since the pay was very good. For many years a person there did not have to pay stae tax but eventually everybody had to pay the Hawaii state tax. At the end of each year you could go anywhere you wanted on vacation and the flights would be free! Talking to many of the staff there, the usual plan would be to work for 5 years and save up all your money and then you would have enough for college or for buying a house. From what I was told they don’t use the island as much anymore but that there is always a group of staff there because of all the dangersous materials.

For about one year I worked for a tug boat company as a deck hand. One of my responsibilities was that I had to make dinner whenever the ship would be out to sea. Usually the longest we would be at sea was 4 days but occassionally we would be out for up to 10 days at a time. The tug boat that I worked on was a “supply ship” style of tugboat which meant it was bigger than usual tugboats. It could carry 9 crew along with the Captain, First Mate and Engineer for a total of 13 crew. The one I was on only carried 2 deckhands, Captain, First Mate and the Engineer. On my first day I was asked about if I wanted to cook and I said yes because along with actually enjoying cooking I knew that I would get out of a lot of dirty jobs if I was the cook! The gally in the boat was amazing! There were 2 walk in freezers and 2 walk in refridgerators along with one normal refridgerator and freezer. There was every possible cooking tool and utensil imaginable along with lots of cook books. Nobody but me wanted to cook! Along with making dinner I always volunteered to make breakfast and lunch and would try to make what each person asked. By doing this the crew would not let me be transferred to another boat! Another thing that I did while we would be away at sea was that everyday would be somebody’s “day”. That person got to pick whatever they wanted. I couldn’t believe how some of the very, very experienced crew turned into little boys when they got to pick what they wanted. Since I had so much time on my hands I made everything from scratch! I also made sure that there was always too much so that there would be leftovers and in the year that I worked there I never had any problems with any of the crew. I was always in charge of purchasing all of the food for the trips and was told on the first day by the Captain to always buy the best of everything! Nothing economy. The tugboat was actually being used by the Tesoro oil company so they paid for all of the food. Because of that job I really enjoy cooking now and often buy different cook books and enjoy going into kitchen and cooking stores. I hope to some day have a real nice kitchen but it will be very hard to beat the one I had on the tugboat.

今、図書館からメールをしています。
先週、オーストラリア東部は、大きな台風に見舞われました。

そして、ほとんどのメールも電話も繋がらなくなりました。
明日の午後、直るそうですが、それまでインターネットで（図書館以外）何も出来ません。
スカイプは、図書館のインターネットでは出来ません。

インターネットが直りましたら、すぐにご連絡いたします。申し訳ありません！
よろしくお願いします。

レベッカ

3月のはじめに、実家の宮崎に帰ることになりました。
現在引越しの準備をすすめているところです。
日本で引越しをするとき、何社かの引越し業者に見積もりを依頼します。
私は４社に見積もりを依頼しました。
見積もりの際は、あらかじめ何社かに依頼していることを伝えると、より安くしてくれるのです。
営業マンたちは、あの手この手でお客を取ろうと必死です。
他者の価格より安くしようと電卓をたたいたり、上司に電話したりします。
ある会社は、新米（1年以内にできた米）1Kｇをプレゼントしてくれました。
日本人の主食である白米、しかも新米をプレゼントしてくれるなんて、
なんて素敵！




でも残念ながらこの会社ではなく、他の会社にしました。
私が引越し会社を選ぶ際に考えたのは、

①安全に運んでくれるかどうか
②価格
③接客態度（礼儀、愛想、相談した際の対応、
教育された人が運んでくれるのかなど）です。

追伸；頂いた新米は、納豆と一緒においしく食べようと思います。