C. Buddha's Hasty Musings

Work screed alert: If my writing about work at a large Japanese electronics company doesn’t tickle your fancy, please take a minute to bite me (I’m tired of e-mails dictating what I can and cannot write about, particularly ones from “Japan experts”. Go and kiss chrysanthemums somewhere else.).
Now then. Suppose that you were late for work on the first day of the new fiscal year, and that you walked into the office as your co-workers were halfway through the “morning exercise” routine. Would you:
A. Enthusiastically do jumping-jacks with the rest of the sheep while moving toward your desk
B. Sit at your desk and wait for normalcy to return while starting up your PC
C. Upon seeing the madness as you entered the room, quietly slip back out the door and lurk in the john for a few minutes
D. Run into the room, scream “FIRE”, and run back out
I am not a total ovine quite yet as I chose B. A guy who sits close to me opted for A, and another opted for C. Now that I have had my ass chewed off for choosing B, I wish that I had instead chosen D. A brand new senior manager made a point of getting in my face about not performing the exercises, which would be fine except that he did it out loud so that everybody could hear, a full-on drill sergeant dressing-down. Luckily, the general manager, who is a great friend, stepped in and squashed the whole thing, ending with “Anybody else who can do the work Justin does is entitled to ignore the exercises as well, hell I might stop doing them myself.” As flattering as that statement was, about 50,000 red warning lights went off in my head at once and all I could think of was getting out from between two duelists. The room was silent. Nobody in the office is coming over to chat today. It’s days like this when I really look forward to my future life in Thailand, perhaps tending a herd of water buffalo or chasing flocks of birds away rice paddies with the kids.
I wish I had kids already. I would go home tonight and sit with them at dinner and they would ask what I did at work today. I would say, “kids, today daddy became a pawn in an inter-office power play!”
“Wow, coooool” they would reply.
Then I would relate to them all that happened today in detail and what was to be learned from it all. Which is, of course, “if you ever walk into an uncomfortable situation, scream ‘FIRE’ at the top of your lungs and run out of the room as fast as you can.”

Today is the last day of another fiscal year here. This is the first non-work related thing I have written this week. I am in spreadsheet mode and have no brain cells left for blogging. But I have much to write stored in my brain. Will attempt a post later in the week.

It is just past ten o’ clock and I am stewing in my own fumes. I ate a plate of spicy Thai pork for breakfast and it is now overly apparent that the secret ingredient was garlic. Normally I would have no complaint as the breath of death keeps perky morning office assistants at arm’s length until well past lunch, but today I have a meeting. With bigwigs from overseas. Overseas as in, “garlic novice” overseas. Heh.
I have popped a lemon cough drop in my mouth and it now feels as if I could marinate a chicken in there to make some exotic chinese dish. Hooray for honey-lemon eucalyptus. This should do the trick as long as I keep a lozenge in my mouth at all times.
Except that now I’ve started burping under my breath. Garlicky richness erupts from the depths… Guess I’ll show up at that meeting with some stakes and holy water just to get into my role – wouldn’t that be a first! I’ll completely redefine my company’s approach to hostile negotiations…