journal features

a fine visit

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2010.01.02

We're back in Tokyo, but Kenny had a great visit with his cousins.

It was one of those visits where the two smallest boys—aged 2 1/2 and almost two—were pretty much inseparable. They spent all their time playing, squabbling, running around and terrorizing the adults at meal times. And they influenced each other.

Thanks to the gimme-gimme nature of Kenny's playing style (he's a daycare child), Ta-kun wound up toughening up a bit over the course of the week. At first he kept running to his mum whenever Kenny stole his toys, but slowly he began to steal right back. And both of them seemed to benefit greatly in vocabulary and speaking confidence: Ta-kun has been a bit slow to speak (he's not a daycare child) but by the end of our week he seemed to be making more clear sounds. And Kenny is now able to string together words in primitive noun-verb sentences. He sounds like me when I speak Japanese!

This was the first trip in which he didn't need to breast feed to take off and land successfully. A fine milestone.

rand()m quote

One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.

—John Boyd, US Air Force