Saturday January 29, 2:14 p.m.
Almost done with my blogging for the day. Yesterday, I had been expecting to meet Swank for her first Friday session at Espresso Americano in Roppongi Hills. I waited 45 minutes past our appointed time of 10:30 before I decided that she was gonna be a no-show. Swank had always been dependable so I figured something was up. And sure enough, once I called her up on her cell, a profusely apologetic Swank informed me that she'd completely forgotten about the date since she was so accustomed to her old regular meeting day of Mondays. Still, I enjoyed my time at the cafe although the blueberry muffin was dry as dust.
My internal decision to leave Speedy's in June must be having some psychic effects. I've had quite a few cancellations over the past couple of weeks. The Grandmas are largely gone from the picture, Medicine Man will be AWOL for at least a month, and Miss Sony didn't renew. Also, I've been getting a couple of requests for private lessons from different sources. One of them, an acquaintance of Mr. Jyuppie, has started a dialogue with me via e-mail for lessons. If everything works out, I will be meeting him this Friday in Akasaka. The other potential new student is an acquaintance of Mr. TOEFL. Like him, he's also a veterinarian. Pretty interesting.
That little televised exposure of us last Saturday on "The King's Brunch" has had some mild benefits in that one new person had come for the one-coin session on Friday. However, that possible appearance of comedian Sanma Akashiya is looking pretty unlikely now. Thought that one was looking rather too good to be true.
I had another good session with The Journo last night at the juku. He's been coming up with the war stories. A couple of days ago, Mt. Shin-Moe on the border of Miyazaki and Kagoshima Prefectures blew up spewing so much ash and sand. The Journo had just come back from covering the volcanic eruption and even admitted that there had been a chance that he wouldn't have been able to get back due to the tie-up in traffic there.
Currently, the big news eruption is the crisis in Egypt. Looks like Hosni Mubarak is living on borrowed time. Tunisia should re-name itself Tinderbox. I'm wondering what the Final between Japan and Australia for the Asia Cup will be like tonight since they're playing not too far away from the revolutions.