First of all, I would like to say thank you so much to everyone who watched and enjoyed my video of the MPKS Koi Show. I’m so happy to be able to share my work with everyone and I hope more people get to see it. Thank you also to everyone who took the time of day to show their appreciation of my work through e-mail or facebook comments. It really meant so much to me and totally inspires me to make more videos!
This past Thursday morning, Shohei from Takatsu Koi Farm left America to return to Japan. He was staying with Devin and I for two months to learn about the American Culture and, more importantly, the English Language. I’m not sure how much of a language you can really learn in two months, but it seemed he picked up a lot more English than we thought he would. By the end of the trip, he was making full sentences. Albeit in a slow, steady manner with a precision characteristic of many Japanese people, he was making full and grammatically correct sentences. My favorite was: “I like Pizza, but not everyday.”
Shohei learned that America really is huge and the people who live here very rarely take a plane to visit another state if they can drive it in under 24 hours. Coming from a country where it is impossible to drive from the north to the south (without the help of boats that is), I could totally understand why this would seem strange-perhaps even crazy-to him.
We enjoyed having Shohei stay over, and he was definitely a huge help to Devin and the rest of the Koi Acres team at the farm. It has now been suggested that this be Devin’s new business strategy: never hire any staff; just keep inviting the children of Japanese Koi Breeders to stay with us so that they can “learn english”….. Thoughts?
It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon now in Minnesota and as I moved forward with my work, I decided to begin updating the databases for the upcoming Grow Out Contest in the Philippines this September (completely separate from our Philippine Koi Show/Kois & Ponds Cup in February). I began searching for the database that stores the information of all the fish that has been entered into the show and…. gone. completely gone. like everything in my hard drive has disappeared… OMG….. The database is fine, I have the templates for those and I can easily start fresh… but the data that had already been inputted!? OMG…. I’m currently in the process of doing everything I can to recover the lost data, but if this doesn’t work then it’s going to be a long night for me…. Oh well…… at least I have something to look forward to….
In about two days, Devin and I are going to Louisiana to visit Purdin Koi Farm. Two years ago when Devin and I got married, Bill and Maureen McGurk on behalf of Mr. Scott Purdin, invited Devin and I to visit his farm and check out the fish. Despite wanting to take up the offer sooner, it seems that only recently did we find a few days on our hands to go. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect and I am beyond excited to go because they will be in the middle of the (2nd?) culling when we arrive. In the past, I have only experienced grading fish, but never the culling process (from a first person point-of-view), so this new experience is something that I greatly look forward to.
Devin and I are constantly in a competition when it comes to Koi, especially when it comes to selection. Naturally, Devin was quick to challenge me to a “cull-off” contest to see who is better at culling fish. Now I know what you’re thinking: I have not a chance in the world to win this since Devin’s already got three years ahead of me in this department. To which my response is this: Beginner’s Luck. 😉
So, in gratitude for the awesome response to the MPKS video, this post is now the “official trailer” to the next video: Devin and Mikki’s Trip to Purdin Koi Farm: It’s a Cull-Off! 🙂
I’ve been absent for a while, but now I remember why I used to love this web site. Thanks , I will try and check back more frequently. How frequently you update your site?