Back to a dreary Japan...

Yes, we had a pretty boisterous lunch-party at a friend's house on the 28th...
It was, I'd say, more of a "ladies' party"...
The husbands, the men that is, stayed at the sidelines and watched the ladies yakked and roared...
It was a good opportunity for us husbands, to connect and establish rapport...
And for me, it was particularly refreshing to get to know the children of my friends...
The boys, handsome as they are... and the girls, pretty and charming...
It will be a joy if I can meet them again in the future...

After the party, we took a taxi in the rain to KLIA...
As in most of our travel back to Malaysia, the midnight flight was tiring and taxing on our senses...
How long more can we take this, I sometimes wonder...
Thankfully, we managed to fly back home safely to Japan...
From a pleasant temperature hovering around the high 20s (as in 28 or 29 degrees Celcius) in Malaysia, we were welcomed by a windy 6 degrees at Kansai International...
From there, it was another 5 hours by highway bus before we can get to our front door...
It felt good to be home again, after two weeks of moving around...
But wooh, how cold the house was...
We set the heater thermostat to 18 degrees, but still it felt cold for me...
As in my daily practice, I took my blood pressure before heading for my bath in the evening...
Wooaah... my eyes almost popped out of their sockets when the meter showed 154/92 with a heartbeat of 86...
Was it the greasy, cholestoral-packed food that I so happily gulped down in Malaysia?
Apparently no, as the weight scales showed 62.8 kilograms with 16% fat... (thank god)
My doctor had mentioned that the blood pressure reacts to cold weather, so perhaps my body had yet to adjust to the sudden cold...
Good thing that on the next day, the blood pressure indexes were back to normal at 113/78 with a heartbeat of 72...

The weather forecast is for colder weather on this last day of 2010...
The winds are howling, and there is a layer of ice on the pond...
Good thing, the goldfishes are not frozen yet...
The frigid weather is to continue until early 2011... brrrr...

Anyway, we have been spending our year-end-year-beginning days in Malaysia for the last few years...
Perhaps we may go for new year prayers at the local shrine tomorrow...

Happy new year to anyone reading this post...