Todays pics were all taken on Sunday, when Sandi, Jeff, M & D & I hit the Muay Thai championships at Differ Ariake, out at Odaiba. So much fun! (zillions more pics to come) Thanks for the tickets, Chisa!

I remember at the beginning of the year writing about my dissatisfaction with life in Japan and how I had decided to try to plug into the foreign community scene some more, to try to get more things happening in both my freelance photography and personal worlds.

In places like Shibuya or Harajuku, I would walk past groups of interesting looking people (Japanese and foreign alike) all hunched over a pile of papers or laptops, excitedly discussing ideas, and it would make me feel so disconnected from the rattle and buzz of this cities' frenetic underbelly of creative industries. Back in Brisbane, that world was my life: making things happen - events, festivals and festival stages, tours, media PR, planting seeds of opportunity, etc etc etc. I realised just how fulfilled that kind of work used to make me feel. I certainly needed a break from the burn out of those last few tours, but I think 5.5 years was perhaps a tad excessive.

Anyway, earlier this year I hauled my arse out from under the radar, and started going to events and parties - often to photograph them (using my existing network of friends and their contacts), and started meeting new people. In that one simple choice, "getting out there", I managed to plug myself back into a vibrant active community of stupendously magnificent creative people who are all about the same thing: getting things done and making things happen. The opportunities being presented to me are so exciting that lately some nights I can't actually get to sleep. I feel utterly alive. Of course, I am also hopelessly weather affected and now that summer is here, the time is right for dancing in the streets.

But this post was never meant to be an ode to how I was lost (erm on holiday) and now I am found. Far from it. It's to talk up the first of the events I have helped co-ordinate with Tiger Music. And to say to those of you who read this blog and need to meet some people and get things moving in their lives, to please revise the notion that networking is a dirty word. Networking is your friend. Networking plants seeds of potential everywhere because you never know how each person is going to pop back into your life with a proposal or suggestion or introduction that could change your professional and personal life. Step into the ring.... (do you like the way my story kinda oh-so-cleverly segues into the pics...?) But I'm going to do that in a separate post now....

I wonder how it's all gonna go?

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