On bonds and brothers

I miss Sand. Yesterday we were both sick of everything going on in our different messy lives, and started daydreaming about being in the same place, calling in sick, buying a shit-load of candy and chips and staying in, watching series and movies all night. It sounded absolutely glorious, but obviously there was no way that could happen, not to mention that the only flight from Porto to Stockholm that day was 19 500 SEK. Eek! We'll have to wait until Sand comes back for Christmas, but at least then we'll be able to be truly lazy together.

Poor Sand. When she comes back to Stockholm next August, chances are that both Knives Chau and I will be gone; me in Japan and Knives in France. O will probably still be around, and Max too, but our little gang won't be complete, and it's hard to say when it will be again. It might take years, who knows? I guess it's one of those growing-up things - the people you've always had close and been used to being able to count on always being there are suddenly (physically) so far away. I think emotionally we're still holding it together, but change kinda sucks sometimes.

Hemingway and I met up after work and talked about stuff, and while it was tiring and awkward, I think it was good in the long run. I'm not much for fighting, and I think we're both happy that it's resolved. Obviously it'll still be a bit of a transitional period where boundaries need to be figured out, and the changing of roles and stuff from when we used to date. Hemingway doesn't always make that distinction, and I guess I'm bad at not telling him to knock it off unless it really bothers me. Otherwise I'll just let it persist, kinda like when toddlers play with dogs and the dogs are too nice to do anything about it other than just lie there and look disgruntled.

There's a new Japanese woman at work, dubbed humorously as Norimaki-san, who's being taught the business by Anime boy Yohei, and she's one of my new favourite people at work. The first day I met her, one of the first things she said was "Man, I want a beer. Aren't we allowed to drink beer on the job?", and today she went on to profess her love for beer before going home, as well as talking a bit of smack about Karate Husband.

"He's pretty hard to understand right?" she mumbled to me after he'd asked me in his usual unclear way if one of our beers was selling at all.
"I understand even less of his Swedish," I admitted, and she agreed.
"I'm studying Swedish now, and when I came in for my interview, he was speaking Swedish to Shan, and I couldn't understand a word! I wondered how Shan could, before I found out that Shan had been working with him for 20 years. At that point they could probably just communicate through sign language."
"Or telepathy," I replied.
"Yeah! Karate Husband actually told me it was a waste of time to study Swedish. He said 'I haven't studied at all!', probably wanting me to go 'Wow, that's impressive!', but all I wanted to say was 'Oh, so that's why'."

I'd totally dig going out for a beer with Norimaki-san sometime. She seems absolutely awesome.

I have my little family of people at work that really seem to care about me, and it makes me really happy. Like today, when a customer asked me for some hot sauce, Anime boy Yohei whipped one up from scratch on the spot ("Do you want me to make one? I can make one! Does she want it soy-based or mayo-based?"), making both the restaurant look good (for having such dedicated chefs that they just whip anything up in a matter of seconds on request) and making myself look good too, for taking care of the whole sauce exchange in Japanese in front of the rather impressed-looking woman I was helping out. Then, as he was leaving and I had my back to him restocking the drink fridge at the counter, he made sure to pat me on the shoulder to properly say bye before leaving, which surprised me to the point where I could only really get a weird noise and a 'later!' out. When I came back to work on Monday he greeted me with a sunny 'Long time no see!', which makes me go all warm and fuzzy at the thought that my absence was not only noted, but that my return was treated as something nice like that. The big-brotherly affection is really one of my favourite things about work. Our ten minutes together with maybe three minutes of conversation before he goes home are one of those highlights of my day, and I can say that in a completely platonic way. I really like having a Japanese big brother.