Holy
January 27, 2003
Holy Smoked Salmon Batman! Has it been almost a week already?
Today, well, technically, last night at work a dilemna popped up. I taught this one man earlier in the day and he told me he was taking six lessons, mine being the third. After my break, I was curious about his other three classes so I opened up his file to see what the teachers after me had written about him. Instead of seeing three comments following my own, I only saw one. Fair enough, perhaps he had decided to not be crazy and stuff an extra two hours of English into his somewhat deranged brain (he was kinda weird). The strange thing was the first line of the comments started with, “Dear Superman”. Teachers at the company are not your normal bunch but to write something like this into the comments which are read by teachers and other staff is just not very smart.
Ok, I thought, MAYBE the student used this line in the lesson and the teacher thought it would be informative to write this out for other teachers. I know I write what students say just to show some examples of their abilities or to highlight some errors that the next teacher may want to work on or be aware of. I read the rest of the comments and they were even weirder than that.
One line I remember went something like, “I know you fuck dogs and drink whiskey in the morning”. Then some other crap about not knowing where Superman is. Then it ended with something like I will mess up the newspaper editor. It was signed, “Louis”. If we keep to the Superman theme, it should’ve been Lois, like Lois Lane. Who knows. Maybe this person wanted to frame a teacher called Louis? Anyway my dilemna was should I just ignore it or should I tell someone? If I ignore it, the next person who read it would probably have to do something. Conveniently enough, my trainer was sitting very close to my booth so I motioned him to come over and take a look. He wasn’t very impressed by it and he took down the name and the student’s number and he went “upstairs” to what I believe is some sort of torture room for misbehaving teachers. Near the end of my shift, curiosity got the better of me so I opened up the same file. Not to my surprise, the comments had been replaced with, “.”
I guess it wasn’t really a big dilemna. I think I did the right thing because what the person wrote was unprofessional, unconstructive, and just plain fucking stupid. I know that particular student was somewhat of a pain in the ass to teach but he tried very hard and he was quite friendly. My hypothesis is that this teacher probably was leaving Japan soon, was rather bitter about the job, hated this student, and just decided to write some stupid comments to pass the time and vent. I hope the poor student didn’t end up taking the rest of his lessons because this teacher was being a dickface.
I don’t feel very happy about getting someone in shit but no matter how bad the environment can be, it doesn’t help anything to be more destructive.
I hope he doesn’t hunt me down and write stupid comments on my webpage.
Success
January 21, 2003
Tonight I fixed the door. A couple months ago, I had trapped myself in the washroom one night because the knob wouldn’t pull back the latch and let me out. It would just spin and spin. I was standing there naked thinking, “Oh shit. When the locksmith comes, I’ll be naked and happy to see him.” I got Eri to pass me some screwdrivers and pants through the window from the outside, in the apartment corridor. I pried it open and took it apart. For the last couple of months, when we used the washroom, the door could at any moment swing open because there was nothing holding it to the wall.
Tonight I got bored and I took apart half of the door and finally discovered how the locking mechanism works. I was able to fix the door.
I am now a certified locksmith.
Still, I fear I will be alone in the washroom one day and thinking the door would open when I want it to. I fear I will once again be spinning the knob aimlessly while this time, wondering who would pass me screwdrivers and pants. Shudder.
Things To Come
I’m working on a bunch of things I hope to bring up soon.
Here’s a preview of Livingspace II. It’s not as linear as the first one. This layout took quite awhile to draw, not so much because of the lines in photoshop are hard to put down but it took forever to measure my apartment. By the way, the dimensions are very very very accurate. Each pixel represents one centimeter. I think the whole thing is off by less than 10 centimeters, 15 at the most. I was pretty anal about making sure it was realistic. The blue rep walls, yellow are windows, and red are doors (including sliding doors, closet doors, and the main door). The smaller rectangles are the washroom and closet while the bigger spaces are the kitchen, den, and bedroom.
It feels like home
January 17, 2003
This morning, well, at 11am, someone rang my doorbell. I ran up, threw a shirt on, and opened the door. To my surprise, I see two old japanese ladies standing there. Now, I still don’t speak or understand japanese but I knew just from looking at them that they were the equivalent of our Jehovah’s Witness! They asked me in Japanese if I spoke Japanese. I said no. Then one of them started speaking in English!
“Excuse me, one month ago, I gave a magazine to a woman in the house. Is she out?” - She whips out a magazine from her handbag. “Yes… grumble grumble” “oh, can you give this to her?” - She hands me a new magazine, Watchtower. Oh wonderful. “Yes… grumble grumble” - I close the door now.
Much like home, a soliticing religious person has awoken me from slumber. If there were a god, surely, these are the people he would smite first.
Woohoo!
January 16, 2003
I am now the proud owner of a Wacom Intuos 2 drawing tablet. It’s terrific! I can now start a bunch of stuff that has been dumping around in my head. Actually before that, I really have to practice because it’s quite different from the one at work and doodling on paper. Woohoo! Oh yeah, I didn’t pay anywhere near the price listed on that webpage, I paid about two hundred. Not too bad I guess.
Unwanted Update
January 15, 2003
I fear if I don’t update about once a week, I will let it slip and my dear webpage will burn from the smell of an entry dated months before. Therefore, I am updating, against my imagination and writing skills, to keep the place smelling new. Sunny messaged me, “man..i’ve been reading your updates… are you going to make it back home alive????” What a kind gesture from Sunny, he was asking about my well being. I’ll admit, my past updates have been… less than fuzzy and indeed, I felt like shit at times over these past couple of weeks. Let it be known that I am a survivor and I was just bitching/venting. I’m doing quite well.
My dear family has sent a nice little care package and my sister sent a crate of Godiva chocolates. Eri mentioned, “We’ll never finish it.” WRONG! I am the chocolate incinerator. I devour chocolates faster than it is made. Woe to Willy Wonka! I will purge Purdy’s! God help you Godiva! We opened the box today and already I ate about half a dozen pieces. Muhahaha.
We haven’t done much lately. The lack of money may be a reason. My income is pretty good considering what I do, but when split among two hungry hungry hippos of a couple, it doesn’t last long. That’s ok. I get paid today!
A reason why I’m not updating as often as before is because I have a whole slew of things I’m working on right now that are diverting previous energy away from my webpage. I’m writing a mini script for a story dealie and I’m also visiting a whole bunch of blog sites to look for design inspirations. I’m soon to pick up a drawing tablet because my hand/mouse coordination is simply not good enough for pixel pushing. Hell, I can’t even play a decent round of Quake 3 anymore - Dennis can attest to that. I’m reading a coles notes version of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (great stuff). I’m lending a hand doing some research into an international trade dealie. And, Eri and I are working on a puzzle featuring a bunch of dogs. It’s all cutesy and all but it’s fucking difficult to differentiate the fur of one dog from the next. We’re about half done.
Anyway I hope all goes well for all who come here. Write me a few words dammit! Hast the world forgotten about me already?
Not Dead Yet I’m Afraid
January 09, 2003
Once again I am updating after a night of not being able to sleep. This is becoming a disturbing pattern. My circadian patterns have evolved beyond that of normal man and have become… INSOMNIA-SAPIEN… the new order of human. It’s not like I drank anything with caffeine in it too unless they have a nasty habit of spiking orange juice with speed here. Unfortunately I had to wake my fat ass up at 6 this morning to fucking work. Fortunately, I only had to teach four lessons which is like they’re paying me to sit around and draw in my notebook and read. Unfortunately I was way too tired to enjoy it and the latter half of today’s shift seemed like skiing through the Sahara.
Time has no meaning anymore… today it’s Thursday and soon it will be Thursday again. And again. And again. And again. I am losing it…
Second
January 04, 2003
Fact: Jasmine tea does to me what a double grande triple swirl super loaded coffee at Starbucks would do, it suppresses my sleep urges all night. I came home last night after spending a few days at Eri’s house. I came home with a cold too, which was the main reason I wanted to come home in the first place. As hospitable and generous Eri’s family were to me, I still felt very much like a guest and just couldn’t get myself to relax. I enjoyed the cooking though and the visit to the temple on New Year’s Day but yesterday I decided that if I wanted to fight off this cold invasion, I must return home and barricade myself. Eri will be coming back in a few hours. My nose has been the victim of a mucus onslaught and sneeze raids for far too long. My eyes feel like I haven’t blinked in a week. My throat is telling me, “I’m about to be sore! Save me!” Blech. And it’s stupid cold too.
Art Bell is once again retired at the end of last year. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s retired and/or gone off the air. It’s sad (again). He’s been having back pains for a long time now and because of this, he’s cut down to only a few nights a week for the past while. His successor, George Noory, is a pretty good host so the show will be in good hands. I have to admit that I’ve lost interest in the show since summer. The guests and topics aren’t as fun as they used to be. Since being in Japan, I’ve only listened to the show once and only for 15 minutes. The time zones make it too difficult. They even killed the original webpage because it wasn’t made by the corporate giant but made by some guy in the middle of somewhere (Art made it a condition of his return to have the little guy continue to be the webmaster). Now that Art is gone, the little guy webmaster goes with him. Sad.
Ech. I have a lot of things to do but I don’t have the energy to do it right now. Instead, I’ll play some Final Fantasy 1. That’s right… ONE. Woohoo!
First Update of the Year
January 01, 2003
It’s still technically true that the last update would be my last update of the year although I am updating within a few days. I am at Eri’s house and our countdown into this new year was quite modest. We’ll be heading out to a temple early in the morning.
This New Year didn’t feel much like a new year either. Actually, it’s almost exactly how my last year’s new year was run in, here in Eri’s house. Much like last year we’ll be heading into yet another mysterious year not filled with hope but instead with news of terrorist attacks and inevitable ‘wars’ and hatred and killing. Ooh la de da.
Happy New Year? Only for the ignorant.
