fitter, healthier, more productive — back to work today, with the breathing & the lack of fever & absence of dizziness…

wordpress 1.5 — came out last week & as of a few minutes ago you can consider me upgraded. i’ve just done a quick & dirty kludge of the existing template/css into a theme for the moment, but it looks to be working. some things may be broken somewhere, but it looks okay on a quick once over… go to whoa (including time spent backing up existing wordpress 1.2 installation & database & reading instructions while kludging together theme) for the whole deal was less than an hour… will start turning on new features as i get time to play with them…

people have said — it’s important (as well as compulsory) to have health insurance in japan. i agree. & was labouring blissfully under the expectation that my health insurance had been taken care of (as promised) by my employer. well, a couple of weeks ago sumie had asked me if i’d received my insurance card yet, & i realised that i hadn’t. so i called one of the administrative people at my employer, who were very apologetic about the fact that my insurance hadn’t gone through for some reason. but not to worry, because they were going to fix it asap. okay. oh, except, uh, well, it’s going to have to be backdated until october, and all those payments are going to have to come out of your next pay. fine. whatever.

then this week i got sick… the sweaty, dizzy, shivering, now sweaty again kinda sick… sick enough to agree that a visit to the local doctor this morning was a good idea… called administrative person at my employer asking where my insurance card was. it was posted yesterday & should arrive today. fine. told administrative person i was going to doctor. administrative person wished me good luck. sumie took me to the nearest clinic, who said they would happily treat me, but i would have to pay extra because i didn’t have an insurance card. but, if i brought my insurance card back when i received it, they would give me a refund. okay then. visit doctor. have nasal swab test for influenza. eye-wateringly negative. just a bad cold. okay. go back to waiting room. get called to pay bill. that will be… 43,400 yen please. excuse me? (as of 15 seconds ago, 43,400 yen is about AUD$523… this for basically a standard consultation plus an eight inch cotton bud getting stuck up my nose.)

pay bill. stagger home feeling lightheaded (combination of virus & medical expenses). find envelope in mail from health insurance provider. envelope does not include membership card. envelope does contain a certificate of coverage. it says my coverage starts from 1 march. check email. read message from administrative person expressing wish that i feel better soon & detailing the list of clinics that i can go to in accordance with my health insurance. there is one clinic on the list. it is not the one i went to. read second email from administrative person. it explains that if i don’t go to the only clinic listed as the one i can go to, then i can go to any clinic. uh, okay…

send email to administrative person describing salient points of situation with respect to continuing lack of insurance card, size of bill, stated period of coverage on documents that i have received, clinic attended & asking as politely as possible what the fuck is going on. receive no response by mid-afternoon. call administrative person as follow up to wtf email. am told they are looking into it & will get back to me as soon as possible. obviously, it was not possible by close of business today.

so, yes. having health insurance in japan is important. also, knowing how your health insurance works is important. i may have just spent five hundred non-refundable bucks on a handful of aspirin…

dum-de-dumb — rainy. kinda sorta. just enough to make you carry an umbrella. not enough to prevent you leaving your umbrella in the coffeeshop. just enough to make you kinda pissed about having to walk back & retrieve your umbrella when you’d really rather be opening the front door with the keys you’ve just pulled out of your pocket…

still — cold. tired. mon. o. syll. ab. ic.

on the other hand — home now. warm (not raining) home.

say what you like about the evil empire — but the whole vbscript/wmi combination is staggeringly cool… (& sure, maybe it’s a kludgy implementation of things you could do better/more easily years ago with [insert scripting language of choice] on [insert platform of choice], but still, it’s cool…)

just gets better & better — work, that is. our team’s being reorganised at the moment. early days, but it’s looking great. new ideas, new processes, new enthusiasm, maybe even some new opportunities… plus, they continue to pay me. can’t say fairer than that.

a question for mr computer expert — you mean to tell me it took you two weeks to figure out you needed to install a different keyboard driver? [slaps forehead] th@t’s much b3tt3r…

currently reading:

• Alain Lissoir’s Understanding WMI Scripting
• David Allen’s Getting Things Done
• Soseki Natsume’s I Am a Cat

currently wearing:

• business shirt
• tie
• pajama pants

uh oh. hands up everyone who turned the PC on before they finished getting changed. again.

would you look at that — i took a day off last thursday to accompany sumie to one of her scheduled check ups where i got to see the ultrasound for the first time… it was amazing… the baby was doing some kind of little baby dance, waving hands & feet around like womb dancing was going out of style… & we got to listen to the heartbeat, & yeah, it was just too cool… of course, at the present moment we remain, in practical, logistical terms, completely unprepared… (although we do have a stack of baby-related catalogues… mail order be with us & defend!)

medical science suggests — approximately 450 grams. 25 centimetres tall. 23 or so weeks. genki. not obviously a boy. too early to be certainly a girl.

congrats — to linda, for passing her first MCAD exam the other day… (resistance is futile…)

this is no excuse for not going to the gym: your new towel (of which you were ever so proud) has gone a bit moldy… (this may, however, indicate that you have ample room for improvement in the area of towel-related hygiene…)

still employed — as of the end of last month i find myself (yet again) formally off contract while simultaneously rostered on for activities in december… i’m sure the paperwork will catch up at some point…

headphone philanthropy — my headphone problem was neatly solved on friday via the generosity of one of my friends at work, who had a spare pair of sony headphones that he gave to me… they’re neat — lightweight, decent bass, don’t annoy the crap out of me by falling out of my ears…

a belated no to boxy cars — after a few more days considering the whole boxy car thing, i’ve gone right off them… we went for a couple of test drives today, & we’ve pretty much settled on the honda fit… now it’s just a matter of finding one with the right spec (preferably in the right colour) at a reasonable price…