Happy New Year!

I have disappeared from the face of the blog recently, for which I apologise*. I always find the period running up to Christmas very busy and laced with deadlines, and this time it was no different.

I relocated across Japan, started a new job, applied and got a working visa at the very last moment, went to a conference, prepared for an intercontinental trip back home and set myself up to start experimental work in the new lab. The end of 2009 was a busy time for me.

I am now back from Christmas holiday at home, fighting jet-lag** in Japan. The time at home was also busy, with family obligations and many things to “have to do”. I am glad I had a week afterwards to just rest and recover.

Someone wrote on a blog recently “I am making a resolution not to make any new years resolutions.” I am not making any either. For me the time when the days are the shortest in the year is the time for sleeping, resting and hibernating. It is not a time for reflection and planning.

It is much better done in spring. In the last 3 years I made my resolutions some time between February and April, with days getting longer and some hope in the air. I am planning on reviewing the past year and making a plan for the future one around this time this year too.

So now it is back to New Life for me in my New Job. I have recharged my batteries and let go of the remaining anxieties, which were still lingering in my system at the end of the year, even though the old job was finished. I have finally came to terms that the nightmare is now over and I can start anew with deliberate forgetting of the bad things that happened in the previous year.

Happy New Year 2010 everyone!!!


* How very Japanese of me! I started thanking people a lot and apologising profusely here. It was quite funny when a doctor back home wished me luck - by my country superstitions you are not supposed to thank for such wishes - but I forgot about this and thanked her... She admonished me (very seriously) that I should not be thanking her, to which I apologised. I am changing, I am not me any more, we do not thank or apologize routinely in my country, I am becoming Japanese... Oh, no, now my husband will leave me!

** Fighting bad east-ward jet-lag with a scientific method of avoiding and exposing myself to light according to sleep research derived British Airways jet-lag calculator.