Ippoippo

There is one thing about Japanese business meetings that really annoys me.

You know how sometimes, back in the UK, you can end up in some meeting that isn’t very applicable to you (but maybe you were dragged along by your boss or something). You start feeling bored, tired and sleepy. So, what do you do? You may stifle a yawn, fidget around etc……….. but you certainly don’t fall asleep!

Despite the fact it is also considered rude in Japan, it doesn’t actually seem to stop people from doing. Boy did I get annoyed by the ’sleepers’ in the meeting we had last Friday.
Usually, they sit there, arms folded, and just close their eyes and let themselves fall asleep.
Was speaking to my Japanese collegue afterwards about it. He said that he reckons it stems from the fact that teachers in High School here hardly ever discipline anyone who falls asleep in class. In the old days, in the, you would get slapped for sleeping. Now I suppose you only get shouted at, but the point is, at least you are told off.

I just don’t get how Japanese schooling goes from being really good at the Primary level, with teaching of social responsibility (make the kids clean the school, and teach them the importance of keeping the place today), to complete disinterest in what the kids do (apart from the final exam results).

And here endeth the daily moan

PS. Bugger, still stuck in the office at the moment, waiting for a database build. I was planning on cooking something nice tonight. Awww Crap!

Today, I’m back in the main office here in Tokyo, after working on-site for a number of weeks. Got a bit of follow up to do, but it’s nice to have a less stressful day (though having said that, there is still the afternoon to go!).

I see the fallout from Ruddock’s departure has affected the Welsh Rugby team. Good job that I didn’t bother going to pub to watch it (given that I had work today as well). Having said that, the Irish were still the better team anyway.

Mind you, this result cheered me up (Sorry to the English readers of this blog).

One thing, it’s certainly a very strange set of results, and an interestingly open championship this year. Wonder who will win it this year.

At last, Japan finally got a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. The Japanese Press, in a somewhat similar way to the British, puts huge pressure on it’s sportsmen and women.

Until now, Japan has had a really poor Olympics, just like the Brits.

So, with no medals up to that point, there was huge pressure building on the Japanese Ice Skating team.
The most popular team member was Miki Ando, who has a big following in Japan. Nothing to do with her Ice Skating skills , just that she’s a rather nice looking, quite curvy 18 year old lady!!

However, the pressure was always going to get to Ando, and as I suspected she fell a number of times.

However, I was suprised that Arakawa that didn’t buckle under the pressure, and indeed it was Sasha Cohen and Irina Slutskaya who ended up making mistakes.

Of course, the Japanese press is going nuts over her at the moment.

Ohh, and by the, Bogue, your blog did not win a gold medal

Situation in Nigeria (Link 1 and Link 2)

Saudi (Link 1 and Link 2)

Ecudador

Chevron are being quite interesting at the moment, with their talk about moving into other forms of Energy Production. Although publically, they don’t talk about PO being in the very near future… it’s still interesting they’ve started discussing it (though there’s lots of marketting speach so they don’t have to say the dreaded ‘Peak Oil’ words).

Rueters has a good article on Oil Production Rates.

Finally, closer to home (UK home, not Japan home), will the Olympics even be feasible??? Now, amusing at it was to beat the French to it, I personally think the Olympics are a big waste of money when there will be more important things to worry about. It’s just as stupid as the large amount of money that’s being wasted on Heathrow expansion work.