October 10, 2000

I've let myself get caught up in the currents of my life lately. Seems like I'm both permanently busy yet chronically idle at the same time - I've so many things that I'd like to be working on but never have the time to get to them. Finding myself sitting around doing nothing at school only serves to intensify this paradox. It's odd to have to while away the hours here knowing full well I could be better employing them elsewhere - there's only so much time I can spend doing my own thing before the other teachers begin to get resentful. Upon returning home, I'm engaged in the rites of simple existence: cooking, cleaning, shopping and the like. I suppose this sort of thing falls into the 'productive' category and that it is a part of everyone's life, but I still reserve the right to complain about it. Any free time after that I get to spend with Kaori - and despite it being what you would have to classify as 'non-productive', I consider it a worthwhile waste of my time.

Knowing that things are sliding back into a regime after the carefree days of summer might be part of the problem. Things lose all sense of perspective when you have heaps of time to deal with them. Summer is perfect for using up obscene amounts of time on simple things - spending the day haphazardly cleaning the house is hardly a chore at all. It's having to do it between coming home from school and going to teach English conversation in the evening that sucks. Worse still is knowing that you also have to go shopping and cook dinner in the same interval. Things are tough all over, I know. I'm not upset in the least about all this, it just happens to be on my mind as I'm sitting here.

What's upsetting is that Kaori's going to be busy preparing for her upcoming exam which means I won't get to see as much of her as I have been - ostensibly leaving me more time to focus on my linguistic pursuits. There's no better way to soothe the pain of being apart from those you love than curling up with a nice English-Japanese dictionary and a pack of kanji cards. Give me the grace to accept the things I cannot change and all that jazz.

I've also got to try and get back in touch with the ALT community - I've no idea what's going on these days. Not that that is anything new. I just never got around to getting in on the new information network that replaced the previous one. I've been far too lax in getting to know the new ALTs - and equally lax in keeping in touch with the old ones. I doubt anyone's casting stones over it; if they were in my shoes they'd likely do the same thing. As for the new folks, I'm finding it difficult to become a part of that group. They're not to blame for it, I know it's all to do with me and that there are other veterans who feel the same way. It's so strange to hear them saying the same sort of things we did 2 years ago. I suppose that's what it is: it's hard to sit around and not tell them how we dealt with it when it comes up in conversation. The last thing I want is to end up spouting off about Things Japanese - I know listening to pretentious windbags always annoys the hell out of me.

Is that really likely to happen? Probably not. I like to think I'm careful about that sort of thing. Granted, what I think and what other folks think is rarely the same - I reckon all this is just me having a little bit of free time and letting my thoughts roam free for a bit. The decision to spend most of my time with Kaori lately needs no justification as far as I'm concerned.

October 12, 2000

Another day of roaming the halls at school. The kids are currently engaged in something that translates as 'free study' - which doesn't really seem like studying at all, if you ask me. Ergo, no classes - which in turn means heaps of free time. It's still too early in the morning to attempt to wrap my mind around Japanese, so I'm hiding out in the computer lab. Again. I did make it to school on time today, so I think I should be alright.

Kaori's whole family has come down with the flu. Nothing too serious, just enough to give them all that dazed zombie-like expression when walking around or the befuddled look when you speak to them. It was actually kind of fun being there for it. On a slightly more serious note, The rash on Kaori's hands which had been clearing up (thanks to two weeks of not immersing her hands in hairstyling products) is coming back - and it appears to be spreading. I don't like that one bit. I've been trying to tell her that perhaps a different profession might not be such a bad thing, but she's determined to at least get her license. What good is having a hairdresser's license if you can't use your hands? She just got a bottle of something labeled 'The Pollution Solution' from a family friend - I'm really not sure what it is or is supposed to do. Still, if it helps...

Must remember to get my photos developped and scan them in. This is turning out to be quite a dense block of text; something which for some reason is a daunting thing to come across on the web. Seems that even articles and stories I've found are split up into bits and pieces that can be knocked off in a minute or two. The old television 'sound bites' have evolved into multimedia bites of a kind, I suppose. You can't really knock folks, though. Some of the things I've stumbled onto have been really amazing from time to time. Then again, I've also run across some serious wastes of bandwidth. Finding some of these pages sort of forces me to wonder whether or not I'll ever come anywhere near the cutting edge of programming technology. Well, no. I don't wonder that at all. I know that for a fact. To be perfectly honest, I was kind of figuring that if I didn't make it as a writer, I could always fall back on my extensive PC/XT computing knowledge and program for a living.

Ha ha.

Minimum-wage labour looms ominously on the horizon with echoes of "Would you like fries with that?" sounding across my bow. I guess that joke needs updating - these days it's more likely to be "Would you like whipped cream on your double-strength frozen americano mocha latte?" or some such nonsense. Regardless, the world requires more than dry wit and self-professed intelligence from people these days. Damn. I always figured that being literate, creative, open-minded and sociable would take me as far as I wanted to go. Guess not. Apparently, I should have studied economics instead of English. I suppose it's fairly obvious that the world today doesn't have as much use for Middle-English romantic poetry or historical Icelandic sagas as it does for tax shelters and hostile takeovers. Then again, there's always somewhere in between.

October 13, 2000

Friday the 13th. I wonder how many folks are making note of that fact in their respective diaries. I wonder how many people are putting off important events for a day or two 'just to be on the safe side'. Superstitions are funny. I was thinking this morning about just how many rites and rituals we perform every day that are based purely on superstition. It's got to be quite a few. I was reading an article in Scientific American the other day and I came a cross an article on 'memes' and how they play an intrinsic role in the shaping and defining of both personality and culture. Basically, a meme is an idea or concept that is passed from person to person through shared experience of that meme.

Reading over that last sentence, it might be best if you just check it out for yourselves if you're interested. Remember what I was saying about pretentious windbags? Let's move on.

Be forewarned: the following is some fairly personal information that I'm dishing out here. I wouldn't normally put this sort of thing up for public perusal, but it's so peculiar that I figured what the hell. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I seem to have come down with a urinary tract infection. Those who have had them will know what I'm talking about: the whole burns-like-hell-as-I-pee thing. "So, what's the big deal?", you're asking. "Folks get infections all the time." Indeed. The funny thing about urinary tract infections is, well, apparently males don't get them. Period. Speaking with the doctor and having to relate a great many personal facts about recent events in my life, the doctor said it was the only possibility he could think of. The only thing he said I have to make 100% sure of is Kaori. I told him that I was sure there was no way she'd been fooling around on me - after having had surgery and all - but he said to ask anyway. I can't wait to see how this one's going to go over. Regardless, today I received the first shot in the ass I've had since I was a kid - I always assumed they hurt. Hoping things clear up soon. I'm already dreading my next trip to the john.

October 16, 2000

Turns out that I don't have a urinary tract infection after all - kind of. General consensus is that I managed to contract cystitis (sp?) - also quite unusual, but not totally unheard of. Joss was kind enough to point this out without laughing too hard. Went back to the doctor this afternoon and he said that he figured the same thing, but he was just waiting for my urine sample results - bacteria count zero, he said. Which means I should be as right as rain in no time.

I'm blaming the whole thing on general exhaustion and phsyical abuse. I've been thinking about cleaning up my act in order to get my brain in some sort of shape for the exam in December. This seems like a perfect opportunity to get started. Speaking with Eric this weekend gave me a few ideas for studying and he suggested a few books I should pick up. He also showed me some of the translation work he's doing - converting an old Nintendo game called "Fire Emblem IV" into English. It seems like an interesting project, but I could never really figure out the reasoning behind the whole emulation thing. Why have a super-powered light-speed HAL of a computer and then use it to mimic a Commodore 64? I don't get it. It seems to me like you're opting for less bang for your buck.

In other news, I spoke with Tetsu on Saturday and he mentioned that he might have found both a job and some interim employment for me. Mobility and stability in one fell swoop - gotta like that. Tetsu owns a small English school which just happens to be situated right next door to an Internet company of sorts - what sort he couldn't say - that was considering hiring someone to make web pages in English and Japanese. I figure I would definitely need to learn the ins and outs of a few more wares, but I have a feeling that won't be too much of a problem at all. Ergo, in keeping with current superstitions, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and knocking on wood.

October 19, 2000

One dilly of a day at school today. Hiroshi, everyone's favourite problem child has been on a rampage. This morning he set off a fire extinguisher in the 3rd floor hallway, picked a fight with another kid in the bathroom and I just caught him using the wall-sized heater to melt the ice in his drink, taking swipes at anyone who came near. His homeroom teacher picks him up regularly from the police station after he's been detained for various offenses and he shows no sign of change. Granted, I've no idea what the cause for this is, but the kid is only 13 years old. Things aren't going to improve from here on their own.

Whatever. He's a work-related problem as far as I'm concerned. Sound callous? Maybe - saves me a lot of stress, though. If he starts hanging arond my house and causing problems, then I'll deal with him.

I feel like I've spent an inordinate amount of time on trains lately. Despite tiresome rides and inconvenient scheduling, I still have a certain affinity for trains. Train rides provide a good opportunity for thinking, catnapping, people watching or vegetating. There's something about the gentle sway of the car punctuated by the dissonant staccato of the tracks below that soothes me. I tend to slip into a semi-lucid state of consciousness and let my imagination run free for a while. I really should make more effort to record some of these thoughts - train rides have provided me with both the concepts for Hotaru and My Father is a Waste of Bandwidth - though I still have to move past the conceptual stage at this point. I seriously believe that I'm using up far too much brain power studying these days.

October 24, 2000

Ugh. Tuesday. Elementary school visit today followed by an English conversation class. A hundred-some-odd kids trying to either punch me in the nuts, ride me around the school or worst of all, try to stick their fingers up my ass - closely followed by an almost two hour session of trying to extract any amount of English from a half-dozen older folks. To be honest, the conversation class is usually up & down, but when hot on the heels of the elementary school visit it can be decidedly less than fun. Doesn't help that this weekend was less than recuperative.

Kaori and I had what I suppose you could call our first fight on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Details are not important, but we ended up on the phone until 3:30AM, after which I was feeling too tense to sleep right away so I stayed up and smoked for a while. The one positive aspect of the incident is I managed to produce a couple of poems (which will be posted shortly) before the main event began. Yesterday was almost a repeat performance, but we staved off the demons and stayed up way too late sorting things out and making up. Of course, that meant I had to catch the 7:30 train out of Karatsu to get to school; tired and slightly hungover is no state to be in when faced with a billion or so high school students - meaning that I didn't get a minute of peace the whole ride.

To sum things up, I'm tired and I want to go home but I can't until late tonight. Life is hard. I'll just buy a No Fear Tshirt and all will be well.

I came across an interesting statistic: the price of a gallon of gasoline to the price of a gallon of Starbuck's coffee = 1 : 4. Harper's Index, love it.