Flat3D

Building stuff and moving stuff and all that junk…

Over the past week or so I have been doing a whole buch of things, some of the major ones are outside. Winter is approaching fast and in Aomori that means that the snow will be coming. And that means a LOT of snow. So all the little tasks that have been put off all summer for more “important” things become priority, as if they aren’t done now then they won’t be able to be done until March or April.

I was talking to some guys before Church on Sunday night and Kris was saying how he likes to do manual work because it makes him feel like a man and hard work is the best exercise because going to the gym isn’t enough. I wanted to point out that manual labour means going outside in the cold and the rain and the wind, it means working until you are sore then working more, it means getting bad back and bad knees and all kinds of other stuff. And, for unskilled labourers doing the real heavy work, it often means not getting paid enough for all the work you are doing.

But y’know he is kinda right. It is good exercise and it is relatively enjoyable. but these things hinge on two things, both of which I have the luxury of. The first is that the work we are doing isn’t that difficult. We are, after all, only doing a small amount of it and it is heavily interspersed with doing other things. The second is that we know we won’t be doing it all day everyday just to scrape a living or survive like a huge percentage of the world is today.

The real bonuses to this kind of work though are:
The “satisfaction” of a job done, and hopefully done well. I didn’t rate this very highly when my dad used to drag my brother and I out to help him looking after the garden at home, weeding, mowing, building fences and walls etc etc etc. But recently I have been beginning to appreciate it more. I think I am a little less addicted to saturday morning TV and a little more resistant to the cold and wet these days!
It brings back some nice memories of working with my brother and dad in the garden
It is actually good exercise when you aren’t being worked into the ground by it, and we are far from being worked into the ground!

Anyways, the project we are currently working on is a short concrete wall to mark the edge of the Church property. I thought I would keep a track of it and take some photos and put them up on here as the wall takes shape…

In other news…
This weekend (ie tomorrow) another short termer, Shirley, is coming from NZ for a month. She will be taking my room in the Church and I will be moving into the Elliots house for a month. It’s a good job I don’t have much stuff!
I have also updated the photo gallery with pics from German Night, Autumn leaf veiwing (can’t remember the Japanese term) and a day out and about. I also posted some pictures of the Church for my mum who wants to see where I am living. I will post pictures of the Elliots and stuff sometime when they are all here to take one, and of my room when I get it back!