NJMatsuya Photography

As usual, work has kept me from performing any kind of update lately.  Due to, shall we say, “internal reasons”, one of my colleagues is on indefinite leave.  What this means in the long, I have no idea, but in the meantime it has effectively doubled the workload for the Tokyo office and that has greatly reduced my free time.  Lunches are rushed or eaten at my desk, I work longer hours, and there always seems to be something that needs to be done.

In one sense, the challenge is not all bad – I find myself doing new things, or trying to solve established problems in different ways since we are now supporting other overseas offices.   So, for the short term, it’s sustainable.  The downside to it all is that I literally feel tethered – I step away from my desk, and am already replying to emails on my blackberry one minute later in the elevator.  I leave the office, go home, and continue work from there.  The amount of emails I’m getting have at least doubled, till it feels like I’m ALWAYS replying to something –  before I’d maybe send out 30-40 messages a day, now up to a 100.

No doubt things will settle down at some point, but I do hope that folks in the management can settle on how things are going to turn out sooner rather than later…

Today’s my first full day off, with nothing planned (though I did spend an hour or so this morning going over work email).  The rest of my day has been a lazy one, just doing a bit of grocery shopping, and going through the final season of Battlestar Galactica. 🙂

I have been doing some cooking too, believe it or not.  Not today, but I’ve been doing a bit of baking recently.  Food-wise, I’ve tried my hand at a few “rough-and-ready pizza’s”, and for dessert, I’ve whipped up a couple of apple pies.  To my surprise, everything turned out great!

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 The pizza was indeed rough and ready – I grabbed the crust recipe off PW, the sauce recipe from allrecipes (with some personal customizing), and the toppings consisted of bacon, green olives, mixed cheese, and pesto.  I made a total of 4 pizzas (2 on one day, and 2 on the other).  The first time I didn’t make too much sauce, but turns out that that was actually good – the second time I made TOO much sauce and I learned that leaves the center of the crust a tad too soggy.  Gallery below!

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The apple pie was something I was especially proud of.  The first pie I made turned out pretty decent – I ate most of it, but shared perhaps half with a couple of friends that visited.  With the second pie though, I brushed egg white on the bottom of the crust and used foil around the crust to prevent excessive browning.  This turned out (visually at least) picture perfect!  I say “visually” because I didn’t taste this second pie.  You read that right – I actually passed on eating that delicious looking pie.  What came over me?? 😮

Actually, I brought in the second pie to work.  I left on on the counter of the common area and left a note telling folks to help themselves.  It was gone in 30 minutes, so I guess it must have tasted alright. 🙂

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For those interested, I grabbed the recipes for both the crust and the apple pie off allrecipes, tweaking to add a tad of cinnamon, and also pouring in the sugar/butter paste over the apples before creating the lattice crust.  The crust by the way, is dead easy (makes 4 individual crust or 2 double-crusts) and can be made and frozen ahead of time.  For those of you without a rolling pin, a bottle of organic Sangria left over from Christmas works just fine. 😉

Oh, and there was a small amount of crust left over – I flattened it out, filled it with some spam and cheese for a “hot-pocket” type of meal – delish, but definitely not for the weight conscious!