Connections ( コネ )

This will be a little different than most entries I write, because it's a bit more personal. Those of you who actually know me that are reading this, know that over the last couple of years I had to make a couple of really hard decisions as to the direction my life was going to take. More recently, in the last few months I managed to dodge a ridiculously wide-sweeping layoff that caught a lot of friends and acquaintances off guard. Quite a few people I know are getting uprooted against their will, so in some ways I suppose I can say I'm lucky.

Now with my second annual trip to Japan taking place in a couple of months, I begin to realize something. Although Japan isn't much better in the jobs sector than America at the moment, I've managed, in my time at IBM Rochester, to connect with not one but two different organizations within IBM Japan along with another company outside of IBM due to family business connections. I'm meeting with all three of these groups when I go to Japan, on a purely social basis. It's going to be a blast.

The way I was brought up was to never burn bridges, and I really do want to end up in a job where I can indeed travel to Japan on business occasionally. And having these kinds of connections can't hurt. If I did end up getting hit by the axe, I probably would have tried for JET this year, because I think I have the qualifications to actually get in. But since I'm still employed and the job market is still so tumultuous, I've decided against taking any leaves of absence at least until things settle down. In the meantime I intend to grow my network as much as possible. These are great people that I'm getting to know, and I'm definitely up for opening as many doors as possible towards what could possibly be a dream made reality.

In some ways, not moving out west was actually a better decision. I'm not kidding myself - yeah, it would have been great working for the Regginator at Nintendo. But I gotta say, I think I'm building more Japanese connections from inside IBM than I could ever build there. Weird, I know...