New Years, Kaiya’s 1st Birthday and New Homes

It’s been a month since our last update and lots of things have happened. First, my parents and sister came out for Christmas and New Years to see Kaiya, Sharon and me. It was a bit cramped in our 1,500 square foot rental, but we had a good time. Gifts were exchanged, meals eaten and Kaiya got to know my side of the family a bit more. It was sort of a shame that just as she was really starting to bond with them, the visit was over.

We had a quiet new years in the house, and we made calls to the Fredas and the Bishops at Midnight (their time… 9PM our time).

About two weeks after that, we had a nice 1st birthday event for Kaiya at Thai Saytay in San Leandro. We rented out most of the place and about 35 people came to have lunch. The food was good, the company was better and much fun was had by all. We had a few friends come over after the party to check out our new TV and have a few drinks. I’ll be putting up some pictures of the event shortly.

In other news, I’m settling into my position at Capcom. The new management is implementing several changes and new processes (I’m part of this new management). I’ve just returned from a week in Osaka, working on the coordination of better communications between Capcom’s US, European and Japanese marketing organizations. I also had the opportunity to meet most of our producers and our worldwide CEO. The trip was very productive and I’d forgotten how much nicer Osaka was than Tokyo (I’d liken it to San Francisco as compared to New York… slower pace, more interesting culture, cleaner, less densely populated). These meetings will be held quarterly so I’ll be there at least a week every three months.

Lastly, while all of this has been going on, Sharon and I were casually looking for homes over the last few months. That casual looking became a bit more deliberate when our landlord told us that once our lease is up at the end of February, he’s putting this house on the market. In other words “you’d better be ready to get out”. Honestly, this was fine by us as we hate this neighborhood and the house was only meant to be temporary anyway.

As luck would have it, we found a house we liked in Union City. It’s 2,600 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3 car garage on a 7,500 square foot lot (big for around here). The house was built in 1996 and is in good shape. We’ll be putting in a few upgrades to make it a bit more the way we like it (we’ll be revamping the entire kitchen for example), but it’s a good starting platform for us. We close on February 24 and we’ll start the move process on the 25th. That should give us about four or five days to complete the move before our lease is up and that will be plenty of time.

We’ve added some pictures in the gallery of the new house. Apologies in advance as they’re pretty bad. We left our digital camera at home and instead used a disposable camera to take some pictures and had digital prints developed. Anyway, they give you some idea.