A new year in life

Well, I've now passed into the final year of my 30s, with little fanfare but with renwed hope and a desire to do more. Yesterday itself was fairly stressful, as I hate interviews, so I was feeling very nervous before hand. As it turned out, it wasn't bad at all, and I even question why they bothered. I was in a room with an old, urbane Japanese man, who spoke flawless, Oxford inflected English, and a rather pretty young woman who would act as my mock trainee. It lasted 30 minutes, and for that time I spent about 10 minutes doing a trial lesson on Introductions and small talk, and the remaining 20 minutes was mostly taken up with the old man seeming to luxuriate in the fact that he could speak jolly nicely, and so will do so, thank you very much! I mean, surely it would have been more cost effective to invite all of the potential trainers for some sort of seminar type affair, rather than spreading it over the whole day, and tying up not only the old don and his colleague, but also one of our Account Executives in the next room, who's job was to come down stairs and collect us from reception, then bring us to the interview room and then go sit in the room next door (he was completely bored out if his head, he said). Mind you, I think this kind of thing goes on a lot in Japanese corporations. The process is far more important than whether or not it's the most efficient or effective way of doing things.
Anyway, that was my birthday. In the evening, Miyu had cooked me a yummy leg of pork, and had bought me Jamie Oliver's new cookbook, which I'm really looking forward to trying out.