Stella!

The great search.... Last year my wife bought a Stella, which is produced by Subaru and is considered to be a 'K- class' car or Konpakuto car (yep that's compact car). The advantage of owning a compact class car is that they are better on gas mileage (though my lovely Vitz gives it a run for it's money) and they fall under a lower taxation bracket so they overall are economically sound. You can usually really quickly tell that a car is a k-car by it's yellow licence plates (regular sized engine cars have white licence plates). Well last month my wife pointed out to me that she has never seen another Stella when driving around. Since then the search has been on, every time I see a yellow licence plate, I quickly look at the car maker and almost always it is either the Honda 'H' emblem or the 'D' announcing that it is a Diahatsu (Toyota does not make kompact class cars- The third most popular k-class car is probably Suzuki). I have yet to see another Stella. To me this is great- in a country where there are so many cars and a tendency to place higher value on what is a popular seller rather than being unique, it's great to be driving a unique car! The other thing is that it is actually a pretty good car, our previous car was a Suzuki Wagon R which I thought was just slightly better than a go-kart, but this car has some pep and is very easy to drive.

My wife attended a funeral for one of her co-workers' son today. He was only 20 years old and passed away in a car accident. What movie was that line from - "no father should ever have to bury their son"...? I think it was a Lord of the Rings movie- but it always held to me as a great quote, there would be nothing sadder than burying your own child.

On a lighter but also sad note, this Saturday marks my last class teaching at Arai's NL Farm. It's been a fantastic year and a quarter teaching there and I am really going to miss teaching the children there, but the hour long travel time really wore me out last year, so I have to take my chances finding work closer to home.