Saturday, October 31, 2009

Socks for your gadgets

I've just known that Apple released iPod socks.

They have different plain colors for each iPod models.


Here are another socks called "funky fone sox" from the Britain.
I've found it at one of the airport shops before and I loved it at first glance.
It is originally made for cell phones but it fits for every little gadgets.
And as I presumed, it was perfect for my iPod nano.


Since my mother-in-law is in a hospital, I spend more time at home.
I enjoy finishing some house chores listening to my favorite music and songs
and sometimes English language programs with my iPod in my jeans pocket.


Sunday, October 25, 2009

This and that

While going back and forth between home and the hospital where my mother-in-law has been staying, I just completed my task as one of the staffs of a group of volunteer interpreters yesterday inviting a guest speaker from Greece. She made a wonderful presentation for us in English on her country starting from an ancient history to the present. Using beautiful slides, she had never made us bored or tired during her three-hour-lecture. There were, of course, some participants who have been there, and for the one like me who have not been there yet, her story was fascinating enough to learn more about its history and feel some day I would love to visit her beautiful country full of historical stories and heritages and breathtaking nature. No matter what it is, it is time consuming for the staffs to organize an event for a group of people but when you accomplish it, we learn it is worth doing it.

Right after this event was over in the evening, I hurried to the hospital to help my mother-in-law taking a meal in her room. She had a surgery this past Wednesday and hopefully will start an exercise moving her leg pretty soon.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

She is in a hospital


(image from the Japanese site)

My husband's mother, who has just celebrated her 94 year-old birthday in the previous month, slipped and fell down on the floor and hit her right side of her thigh so hard. She was not able to stand all by herself in a few hours owing to a hard pain.


(image from the Japanese site)

She broke her joint between her right leg and hip. She will have a surgery to plant a metal joint. It sounds awful but she has to go through it so that she won't spend the rest of her life all in bed. She has to wait the surgery for about a week to reduce a side-effect which should be brought about by one of the daily medicine she's been taking. It disturbs blood from stopping.


(image from the Japanese site)

We don't know in deed what has happened in our life tomorrow.
She has been in good shape as a whole without any serious inner organ problems and has been enjoying her daily life especially taking care of our garden from fallen leaves, weeds , trees and flowers. And all of a sudden, she has to face with a big difference.

How do the aged people in your country spend their daily life and what changes do they have to face with all of a sudden?
Do they want to live with one of their children's family ?
Does a single parent live by him/her self?

Anyway I've been busy visiting her everyday at hospital besides doing my house chores and my volunteer work.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Typhoon No.18

Typhoon No.18----we number typhoon each year instead of naming them.

The typhoon No.18 was so scary because it was one of the biggest ones for the first time in ten years and it was the first one in two years that landed on the Japanese archipelago. Usually once a typhoon reaches on the land from the sea, its power weakens to a tropical storm and leaves to the Japanese sea. But this No. 18 was different. It kept its power and brought many damages here and there while it were moving up to the northern part of the Japanese archipelago.

It first landed on this Nagoya area early in the morning. It brought with strong wind and huge amount of rainfall. The horrifying sound of wind and rainfall made me awake. Since we closed most of the window shutters, I poke outside from the small window. Jesus, the rain and the wind turned to a huge monster and were hitting all the trees and beating the neighboring houses. Gee, better not look outside. That was terrifying. I turned on TV and watched the weather report and all of a sudden, the electricity went out. It was past five in the morning and still dark. I picked out the flashlight and went back to bed where my husband unbelievably was sleeping without being disturbed the scary sounds. I woke him up but he just spoke to me, "It's all right. We are safe." and went back to sleep. How come he was so confident. I tell you I really felt nervous during the next few hours.

As the rain and the wind got weak, I learned the typhoon was getting away in the distance. I opened the shutters and got outside to check if any part of our house was damaged. I should have taken some photos of our garden just after the typhoon. We didn't have any trees fell down but there were the ponds all over. There were no serious damage in our neiborhood.

Since the typhoon hit our area very early in the morning, the every transportation in this area had stopped from every first train and was informed on every local radio and TV news which helped people leaving home to work from getting into confusion. Then it was really sorry for commuters in Tokyo area because the typhoon hit this area just around the rush hour , that stopped many parts of city transportation systems.

This typhoon brought about many damages to many cities and towns. And I am sorry this typhoon is not the exception that had some people dead and injured. It was so distressing. We are so helpless before the wild nature and who made the global abnormal weather over these years and who should be blamed for and what we should do about it. We've got to think it over before it is too late.

Some photo images from the Mainichi daily news.
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/photospecials/graph/typhoon18/

Friday, October 02, 2009

Busy night airport



I love driving whether it is daytime or night.
It's fun to see how my car navigation system is leading me to the destination.
I left home 7:30pm and got to the airport 45minutes later.
Then I enjoyed strolling around the shopping center and went out to the deck to see the airplanes taking off and landing.
Many airplanes mostly from Asian different cities land here at Chubu International Airport between 8 and 10 o'clock. I love watching the busy airport and I love to waite for my husband in the arrival lobby than to see him off in the departure lobby. It took quite a while and finally he showed up at the gate -----but only with his carry-on baggage. Cathey missed loading his luggage at Hongkong for transit.
He got used to this kind of mishaps after all but isn't it funny what a "luggage priority" sticker for?
Priority for mishaps? Haha! Anyway it's good to see him in good shape.
His luggage arrived home in the following afternoon.