Category: Slice of Life

Is Jet-lag Contagious?

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"Tired Son" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO2000
 “Tired Son” Cedar Park, 2016

Hello, how’s it going?

Today the kids and my wife have been struggling with jet-lag. For the past month or so they have been in Japan, which is 14-hours ahead of Texas so it’s quite a severe time-difference! My youngest son didn’t sleep a wink last night, but took a long nap this afternoon, and in the photo above you can see my oldest son sleeping at around 5pm. We had to wake him for dinner. 😴

But my sleep schedule was affected immediately by them being home, and I stayed up til 1 AM the night they arrived, and then tonight I am up way past my usual bedtime again… which leads me to believe that jet-lag is highly contagious! 😝

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Working from home

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"Laptop Guardians" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/80 sec, ISO6400
 “Laptop Guardians” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！How’s it going?

Today I worked from home and I got a lot done! It’s funny but I thought I was more productive in the office, but I was cranking away at home from 7:30 AM all the way til 4:30 PM! Well, except when the cats came into the office and shut my laptop, the proceeded to lie on top of it! 😸 I guess they wanted me to take a break and give them some attention.

Tomorrow night my family returns home from their long stay in Japan, so I did a lot of clean-up around the house. Actually, the house isn’t messy but I vacuumed and gathered up all the socks that are strewn about the floors by the cats. They love to grab socks out of the clothes baskets.

I’m looking forward to having my family back at home. For the past week I have been with a massive family at the reunion, so when I came home to an empty house (besides the animals), it was a little shock. It’ll sure be nice to get back to normal life again. 😄

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Gotta Play Catchup

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"Cat vs. Converse" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.5, 1/500 sec, ISO12800
 “Cat vs. Converse” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！Hello, how’s it going?

Well, I’m back at home (arrived this morning at 1 AM) and back in the swing of things. That means I am back to work and also I have a few days of just myself and my three girlfriends. In the photo above, you can see one of them playing with my shoe. I think the shoe will be okay – Converse hold up pretty well against cat claws… so far at least! 😾

It’s funny, but I’ve only been gone a week and the kittens have grown so much! They look like small cats, not kittens anymore. 😵

While I was on vacation for the past week, I didn’t have time to keep up with my daily blog posts. Most of the days when I returned to my cabin on the ship or to the bed at our guest house, I was too tired from drinking and partying with the family. 🎉🍹 However, I did take plenty of photos. 📷 Now I need to go back and write those posts, which I will back-date.

I’m not sure how they will appear in rss feeds, but at least they will be ordered correctly here on my blog. But, just so you know, the blog posts from July 24-31, 2016 will be back-dated. 📆

I hope you had a nice Monday… at least as nice as Mondays can be. 😜

おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

Farewell Party

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"Fun Family" Miami, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/120 sec, ISO6400
 “My Crazy Family” Miami, 2016

The final day of our visit to Miami was wonderful. It started out with a leisurely morning with our cousins playing games and then half of us split off to do some sightseeing at Coconut Grove, and the rest stayed at home. I opted to stay home, and helped get ready for the evening party. I went with my mom and cousin to deliver food, extra chairs, and set up tables at the nearby church’s dining hall which we rented out for the party and because I got a preview of the party-to-come, I was pretty excited!

"Farewell Party" Miami, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.2, 1/60 sec, ISO6400
 “Farewell Party” Miami, 2016

As is typical with our family, the party involved dancing, drinking, and lots of yummy food. There were patties, curry, stew peas, rice and peas, oxtail, jerk, etc… And of course we had to spice it up with fresh Scotch Bonnets! 🔥 Plenty of Red Stripe was also consumed. 🍻

"Such Good Food" Miami, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4, 1/125 sec, ISO2500
 “Such Good Food” Miami, 2016

I mentioned before that the Leesang family likes to dance and tonight we had an instructor teach how to do a couple different dances at the beginning of the party. Check it out below!

Our family is also pretty into the Pokémon GO! craze too, and there was a gym at the church so several people had fun outside battling to take over the gym. Another fun family activity, actually!

It was a lot of fun hanging out with the extended family and taking lots of photos (I shared them in our private Facebook page) and I have to say the X100T was perfect. I got a lot of people asking me about the camera too… many people thought it was a classic film camera. 😄 What I love about the camera is that it is so fast and discreet. I had people smile, took their photo, and it was over in a split second and we were back to partying. That was such a great feeling… to not have the camera be such a big deal. The “snapshot life” is a great place to be.

Anyways, the party was a blast! We ended up leaving at around midnight and then the party continued back at the house, with the younger generation playing boardgames til the wee hours of the morning, while a few of us opted to go hang out in the pool.

I finally hit the bed at around 2:30 AM… it was a great day!

Note: This post was written on 8/7/2016

Hitting the Beach on Grand Bahama

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"Beach Colors" Port Lucaya, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/340 sec, ISO200
 “Beach Colors” Port Lucaya, 2016

Today we visited Grand Bahama and docked at Freeport, then took a taxi to Port Lucaya to shop and hang out at the beach. 🌊 There were plenty of water-sports 🏄 to take part in, but several of the family decided to ride the Banana Boat. They said it was super-fun! I decided to just relax on shore, and swim 🏊 a bit. It was a hot day and the water was nice and we saw a lot of relatives who made the journey over to the same beach.

Back at the ship 🚢, we showered and then went to a family get-together in one of the lounges. 🍹 On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we reserved the Outrigger Lounge for a couple hours and the family members passed around the mic  and everyone introduced themselves, mingled, and listened to some family history. It was fun, funny, and touching, because we also took pause to remember the family members who had passed away recently (and no-so-recently). 🙏

One fun activity we enjoyed was a “Family Trivia” game, where you had to answer questions about family members, and get signatures. For instance, one of the items was “Who has the longest hair in the family?”. You can see in one of the pictures below one of the kids measuring my mom’s and my cousin’s hair. It was a good activity for the younger members of the family to get to know everyone. 👍

After the gathering, we all headed to the Crossings restaurant where we had dinner each night as a large group. The food was pretty good, and we ordered double-appetizers and entrees! It was fun to visit with the immediate and larger family. After the meal, it was time for karaoke 🎤 and then dancing 💃 at the Dazzles night club! I think we may have hit the Sky Club Casino 🎲 as well, but don’t quote me on that. 😝 And then midnight buffet anyone? 🍔 Of course!

When I arrived back at my cabin, there was a cute towel-animal waiting for me. A nice surprise and a good way to end a wonderful day.

"Bahamian Sunset" Atlantic Ocean, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/8, 1/220 sec, ISO400
 “Bahamian Sunset” Atlantic Ocean, 2016

Note: This post was written on 8/3/2016