All About Me

Finally! My very own Blog :) Its raison d’être? It doesn’t really have one other than to entertain whoever cares to read about the things I find interesting.

To understand my blog (and why I mention random stuff in between talking about food), I should give you a brief timeline of my life thus far:

Birth – early 1990s: The good old formative years. I was born in Japan but moved to Perth, Australia at the age of five. I am basically an Aussie but my parents’ cultural idiosyncrasies well and truly rubbed off on to me. I have my father’s German cynacism, pragmatism and love of smallgoods, whereas my mother bestowed upon me a wealth of Japanese self-righteousness, fondness for innovation and kitsch, as well as a need to acquire pieces of Louis Vuitton. I grew up an artsy kid with an above average aptitude for studying but lack of real career direction.

Mid 1990s: On finishing my undergraduate degree (in Arts much to my parents’ horror), I accepted a scholarship to do some research for a Masters degree. I am forever grateful to the Japanese Government: 2000 AUD per month and largely unsupervised!! I lived in a foreign students’ dorm with a gaggle of other gaijin students and aside from some cursory sessions of studying and researching, we mostly devoted our time fighting for our right to paaaartay. It was sad being away from my lovely man (now my husband) but should anyone ever be able to build a time machine in my lifetime, I would definitely liked to be beamed back to this period; at least for long enough to visit Shibuya Loft and eat all the food samples handed out at the department stores.

Late 1990s – Early Naughties: Doing a doctorate seemed to be the natural progression on returning to Perth but my father told me to get a real job. I therefore started work in the PR/Information section of the Japanese Consulate. Great real job… The amount of work involved pretty much depended on the sort of Consul-General stationed there at the time. My favourite couple of years involved a CG who was last stationed in Bangkok and had an endearing colonial attitude. Being driven around in an E-Class Benz from function to function was kinda cool. Sadly this all ended with the downward turn in the Japanese economy which meant a succession of CGs that actually wanted us to earn our living. Happily, I was able to complete a degree in computer science beforehand and got knocked up before things really went downhill there. The last I heard, they were still trying to hire people at 1998 wages. Hello? Perth mining boom?

2005 – Onwards ho!

My computer science degree meant that I could build websites AND have people take me seriously! I said good-bye to the Consulate and headed for Dodge. I freelanced for a while but as my hubby and I teamed up with a business partner, I ended up working full time for our own web development business. The pros of having your own business are still outweighing the cons but in our game, it’s always a matter of staying one step ahead of the rest.

And the saga continues…

2 Comments for this entry

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  TzeTze

  February 18th, 2013 on 1:42 am

  I just stumbled upon this blog by chance after a random Google search (a last-minute “HOW DO I COOK KONNYAKU” panic), and wow! So much food…and similar taste (eating basically everything, trying veggie & vegan now and then). I’ll take some time to read through some posts tomorrow, am looking forward to it! :)

  Reply
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  Monica

  February 19th, 2013 on 12:11 pm

  Ha ha! Don’t you love what Google serves up sometimes? I’m glad you stumbled over and learnt how to cook Konnyaku :) Hope you visit again!

  Reply