It was March 1982 when of my first visit to Australia. I had engaged construction works of the satellite earth station in Moree, NSW (New South Wales), with two other testing engineers. Our mission was supervision of testing works of the Australian testing team to complete the assembly and testing of the whole satellite earth station system that was shipped out from Japan. On the first day at work site, a chief of the Australian testing team asked me, “What is your nick name?” I had no immediate answer to this question at that time, because I had no particular nick name in Japan and till today. When I was in trouble answering to his question, he said, “We call you "Arnnie", OK?” The reason was that I was putting a cap of Arnold Palmer on that day. I have no objection to his idea. Oh, his name was Carol, but people never call him Carol, but call him Curly, because he had scant hair on his head. I had stayed 5 months in Moree, but probably no one had knew my real name, people just called me Arnnie all day during my stay at that time. One day, an engineer asked to my colleagues, “Is Arnnie really a Japanese?” They just wandered that my English pronunciation is quite different than other two colleagues. From that my first visit to Australia, I had five another chances to visit this nature rich country, all related to my job. I have to confess that every visit was totally wonderful and pleasant ones, meeting with nice people and enjoying real comfortable living there.

(Updated on 16/Nov/'05)