I heard about Fat Tuesday (the Tuesday prior to Lent – Tuesday 28^th Feb this year) over the weekend and had no idea what it was. Doing some research, it turns out to be the origins of Mardi Gras. I thought I’d share this little tidbit of knowledge.

Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday," has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the "last hurrah" before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That's why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of streetsweepers pushing the crowds out of the French Quarter towards home.

What is less known about Mardi Gras is its relation to the Christmas season, through the ordinary-time interlude known in many Catholic cultures as Carnival. (Ordinary time, in the Christian calendar, refers to the normal "ordering" of time outside of the Advent/Christmas or Lent/Easter seasons. There is a fine Scripture From Scratch article on that topic if you want to learn more.)

Carnival comes from the Latin words carne vale, meaning "farewell to the flesh." Like many Catholic holidays and seasonal celebrations, it likely has its roots in pre-Christian traditions based on the seasons. Some believe the festival represented the few days added to the lunar calendar to make it coincide with the solar calendar; since these days were outside the calendar, rules and customs were not obeyed. Others see it as a late-winter celebration designed to welcome the coming spring. As early as the middle of the second century, the Romans observed a Fast of 40 Days, which was preceded by a brief season of feasting, costumes and merrymaking.

The Beatles’ last two tracks on their last album are pretty stirring songs. Watch the “Grand Finale” on Chris Bliss’ promo page for an unbelievable, jaw dropping synchronized juggling act to these two songs. Wow. Speechless.

http://www.chrisbliss.com/videopresskit.html

I love food. I can’t think of anything I enjoy more than a good meal shared with good friends and good wine of course!

The wine’s having a rest for a month or so whilst I take a break to get a little more fit. But the food keeps on coming. Check out this article on why enjoying what we eat more than making us feel good, it good for us too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/opinion/20brown.html?incamp=article_popular

This year, I’ve joined a new team in the same marketing organization, looking after the positioning and messaging of our programming languages. For some time, each language has been a separate product with its own marketing. As we’ve consolidated the languages into Visual Studio (ok you can still download them for free as the Express products), I’m tasked with providing unified messaging for the languages as a whole. An age old problem and one that will be fun to solve. I’m in the planning stages for that right now, collecting information from internal and external sources and thinking about way to market the languages. Lots of fun and much more broad than my role last year.

A few weeks ago, I had a presenting commitment in Tokyo, Japan – a hangover from last years’ role. I didn’t mind so much as it meant getting out and seeing Tokyo which has always been a place that’s fascinated me. I headed out on the 22^nd and landed in Tokyo on Monday the 23^rd. It was damn cold there and I had to catch a pretty long bus ride from Narita Airport into Tokyo downtown which took close to 2 and a half hours. I enjoyed soaking up the view from the window though. They drive on the correct (left) side of the road there and the Japanese cars were really familiar to me as there are similar models in Oz. I couldn’t believe how built up Tokyo was. It was the biggest airport, the longest airport to downtown commute and the biggest city I’ve ever seen. Train tracks and roads are stacked one on top of the other, buildings start at 4 stories and only go up from there, cars are clean – really clean – and drivers often wear gloves.

It’s a crazy town and it’s hard to describe as a narrative. I was pretty busy preparing for the talk and meeting the local audience marketing folks in the office there so I really didn’t get much of a chance to get out. I stayed near the largest train station in Tokyo and had plenty of shopping around me so I did plenty of window shopping on the first night as I’d landed without any currency, thinking it’d be easy to use an ATM and grab some cash. It turned out that 4 of the 5 ATMs I could find only displayed Japanese characters, and the single machine that had English support didn’t accept my card as it wasn’t issued by one of the local banks! After almost 2 hours of looking, I had to return to the hotel and ask for help. Normally when traveling in foreign countries, I can manage by deciphering the text or deriving some English term from a mixture of the letters/words. With Kanji symbols, I had no clue. I felt clean and safe but otherwise completely isolated.

The people are polite to the point of painful, and as a result I got the impression their real thoughts and feelings had been beaten into submission long ago. I got to know some of the local office guys a little, and I tried really hard to get to know them. Normally I can get under people’s skin pretty quickly but the Japanese people are quite closed and stand by their rituals and traditions stoically.

I had two afternoons where I managed to grab about 3 hours to myself. The photos are in the Tokyo photo album. You can see some shots of the Tokyo nightlife, the skyline at night from the tallest tower in town (from Roppungi Hills) and the imperial palace grounds, taken from the track that runs around the palace (it was closed when I went to visit). I tried to take some shots of the construction work they do there too. You can see how closely buildings are built together, the rotating bat cave like mechanism they use for parking cars one on top of the other and the drink vending machines that are on pretty much every street corner. Great food, great spectacle and a nice place to visit – though based on the trip I had, not a place I could live in for any length of time.

Oh, and I caught another cold the day after I walked around the imperial palace. That’s three colds in 2 months – a new Jason record and one I hope I never break. I’m back in Seattle now and getting into the new role. The weather is turning around and we Seattle played in the Superbowl. The best news today is that U2 won 5 Grammy awards last night for their latest album. Well done boys – I believed in you.

Ok I’m sorry – I’ve been slack, and sick, and a little busy, but mostly slack.

Here we go for another fun filled year of blogging and photographing the adventures of – me – living abroad. I’ve seen how the page renders on slower links and have decided that I’ll make photo albums for blog entries that have photos associated with them. It takes too long for the page to paint when I’ve got 60 photos with each entry. Look on the scrolling photos to the left and find the album associated with the post.

Let’s start off with an example. Whilst on my trip to Melbourne for the festive season, I took some wonderful snaps of the city as I walked around it eating at my favorite café and doing a little window shopping. I met up with Mike Alexander (hi Mike) in the afternoon and we toured the new Spencer St. Station complex before hitting the bar where my farewell drinks were held. A wonderful night was had by all, finishing up in the only way to finish up a night around the Crown, at Fidel’s Bar and Lounge in a private room belting out some Karaoke hits. Thanks to all that came and made my Saturday a constant but mostly pleasant headache.

The flight back was pretty uneventful. I won’t be flying down United again as they go through Sydney and have a long lay-over in LA which makes for an extra 4-6 hours in transit over the Qantas/Alaska version of the flight. I came back from 42.9 deg C on New Years’ eve to Seattle’s 23^rd straight day of rain and about 3 deg C. It was pretty miserable weather-wise but I feel great for having been home and washed liberally in all things homely. I’m all charged up for another year of work and now feel like I’ve come full circle. It was good to get home to my familiar apartment and catch up with Zac and Rick and Candy and Sayuri. I felt welcomed – I felt like I’d come home.

Unfortunately, I caught a cold in Australia on New Year’s Day. I thought it was from really hot weather then dipping in the pool at Kate and Michaels but it stayed with me through my time at Mum and Ron’s and I couldn’t shake it until a few days after my return to Seattle. That was on the back of another cold I had a week prior to flying down to Melbourne so I was quite sick of being sick – I can’t think of another time I’ve had a cold so quickly after another. It was great to stay with Cam/Kirka, Dad/Helen and Mum/Ron during my visit – it was all very familiar and fun, thankyou to you all for putting me up (and up with me)!

Check out the Melbourne 2006 photo album for snaps of Melbourne town and the party.