What a weekend – a lot of things happened, and I finally can blog about it.
First, last week I wrapped up negotiations with Kawasaki, and from April 1st I will now work directly for them, effectively cutting my staffing company out of the loop. Negotiating with a giant company like Kawasaki was not easy – they are very comfortable playing hardball – but thanks to some good conversations and some well-placed people I am very happy with the contract that I signed. I’ll be under this contract for the rest of the year, and we’ll discuss a new contract towards the end of the year as we evaluate how 2012 goes.
This month I will have to ease out of my former employer’s grasp and move into Kawasaki’s (hereafter shortened to KHI for Kawasaki Heavy Industries). Hopefully my current employer isn’t too pissy about the change. My contact person at the company seems cool about it, though, so it should work out OK.
Now that I have a job lined up for the rest of the year I could go ahead and pick some holidays. Part of my contract was a ton of paid holidays – I get 22 days a year. I signed up for some time this summer, and we’re already booked for a trip to Hawaii to visit my cousin and her family for a week or so. Then I got some time off for the winter holidays, and we’re planning to spend the time in Bali doing the relax thing. 2012 is the year of the beach, I guess.
Not only did I wrap up the new contract, but today we picked up our new car. We decided to take it for a spin to the new Costco in Tarumi, and it did great! Kuniko really seems to like the car – it is a lot more comfortable than the old Mazda Demio that we had. As for Costco, we were pleasantly surprised. It is a nice one, and despite being there in the middle of the day it wasn’t completely swamped. We’re hoping to visit more on weekday evenings when there are fewer people.
After coming back we also had a visit from Mr. Tojo down the street. He and his wife had attended an oyster festival near Himeji, and he brought back a bunch of oysters still in the shell for us. We already had dinner cooking, but we still fired up the grill in a slight drizzle and grilled those oysters up. Yum! With our dinner we also opened up a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate the new job and new car, and now we’re just taking it easy this evening getting ready for the work week ahead. It was a big weekend…
