Lessons Learned

Awww, I do love a bit of Carrie Underwood!

Anyway, I've been on a bit of a Wiki-kick today (moreso than other days, even though it is my third-most visited site - behind Facebook and Google) and I've learnt about St Augustine of Hippo (or Blessed Augustine, as he is known amongst Orthodox Catholics), Japanese naturalization - very important for me, I'm sure you will agree, and about racism in Japan. Oh! And Japanese weddings. Crrrrazy. Not sure how keen I am for one of those anymore.

Anyway, Augustine seemed like a pretty interesting guy. He spent his life swinging from one extreme to the other - being raised as a Catholic, then delving into Hedonism, THEN becoming a teacher of grammar and rhetoric. He died as a Christian, and an angry one at that - through his life he battled with lust. Don't we all? Most of however, don't care. Anyway, I thought the funniest thing about the whole article was that after 370AD, when he began living life as a Hedonist, is was noted that he was influenced by "hooligans". Yes, there were hooligans, even before 400AD. I like ancient stuff. It's pretty cool.

You can become a naturalized Japanese citizen after living there for five years, provided you're keen to denounce your citizenship to the country from whence you came. Now, this is something of a conundrum, especially when you come from a country like New Zealand. I may have led you to believe, with all my musings about Japan, Iceland, Boone NC and Texas, that I don't like New Zealand. I do. New Zealand is cool, and there's nowhere else like it (except maybe... Iceland, apparently?). Australia's okay, but it's just not the same. What with all that dust, and desert, and those sheep shagger jokes (I don't get them anyway?)...

But I am constantly drawn to far-off lands by this funny thing I've come to know as wanderlust. As are so many young "Kiwis" (just for the record, I HATE the word Kiwi when used as a colloquial term for New Zealander. A Kiwi is a flightless bird, dammit! Not a person!) and that is precisely why so many people I know are scattered from Sydney to Stockholm (interestingly, I don't know anyone who's in Stockholm right now, but Steph's been there in the last month, and Mereoni leaves for Copenhagen soon).

We like to see what the world has to offer us, to test the waters, and then most of us return home. Home is where the heart is, and all that. And what a place to call home. We have it all here - except Sephora, but it seems like a small price to pay when I can drive thirty minutes to some of the best surf in the world, whereas some people in Europe and the United States have never seen the ocean. Another three hours, and I can be at Turoa, getting ski lessons (since I still haven't got around to learning, despite once proclaiming I was the next Bode Miller). Point is, if I were to denounce my New Zealand citizenship in favour of a Japanese passport, then suddenly, it becomes pretty hard for me to come home. Especially as until recently it was a government requirement to acquire a Japanese surname upon naturalization. Now, I'm all for being Miriam Inoue, but I don't know I'll feel about needing a visa to come back to the Land of the Long White.

We'll see, anyway. For now, I'm just earning enough money on My Zoo to buy an animal medical centre so I can start a breeding programme for my Golden Lion Tamarin monkeys. Being a zookeeper is exhausting work, guys!

Haha.