A friend of mine has just begun what I intend to begin next year around this time, namely go to Japan and study for 2 years at a language institute (Japanese) there. He’s got a blog, in English even, here: http://brandtjapan.blogspot.com/

There’s only really one thing that could totally demolish all my plans to do this thing, and that is the “IRS” issue. I had a company for 1.5 years which, despite a decent pay, barely broke even. Right now, I’m about to send in the papers to a “$100/hour” auditor who will fiddle around and determine just how much I owe. My bet is ~20 grand SEK (which is ~$3 US grand), but there’s no telling, especially since, due to my terminating the business, I am now obligated to “buy out” all the equiment (i.e. my new computer and so on). Although about a year ago, I did promise that if I were eligible student aid for the 2 years, I would go no matter what, this truly is the determining factor in the end.

So here’s to hoping. Hope with me please.

I just bought a regular home phone earlier today. Bye Skype, it was(n’t) fun. I ended up using my cell phone 100% of the time in the end, because Skype gave me crapshit quality 99% of the time, and it was a major pain to keep the computer running just in case someone wanted to call. It was neat to have a US phone number, and if anybody wants to call me, I will have that number for awhile longer, so just lemme know and I’ll turn it on for you, but otherwise, I’m done with it all at least for now.

Once I move to Japan that might change. I might reenable my phone number and all that stuff, so people in Sweden can call me still, like mom.