(no subject)

Work have agreed that they will pay me to spend 20% of my work time studying Japanese. Obviously I think this is a really cool thing (and it's got to be good for the RSI too). It feels a bit odd writing about it here, though, because from my point of view it's been somewhere between possibility and probability for some weeks now so it doesn't feel like "news", and coworkers reading probably know about it already; but on the other hand I don't have so many cool things happen in my life that I feel like I can let one slide by unheralded.

The deal here is that this is part of the company's implementation of an idea from Google, that if you allow your staff to work 20% of their time on private pet projects then (a) they're happier and better motivated and perhaps even more efficient in the 80% of the time they're doing the 'real work' part of their job and (b) if you're lucky they might come up with something cool that the company can make money from. I'm a bit of a special case here because really the 20% time is supposed to be for some technical project or other, but since I'm already fairly good at Japanese and the company thinks it would be useful to them it's been permitted.

I like it because (among other things) it means I have a greater incentive to study more consistently. I'm looking at arranging some tuition anyway, but I ought to be more disciplined about the vocabulary-learning drudgery.

In other news:

• I have a filing cabinet (thanks to DaveK for helping me move it into the flat); I was expecting to only half fill it but in fact my files fit (comfortably) into all four drawers.
• The garage fixed the alternator belt for free and refunded me the money for the wiper blade they didn't change, so they're sufficiently back in my good books that I expect I'll go back next year.
• I've already started my Christmas shopping. Fear my organisational skills!