hey all,
So today was a much better day than yesterday. I stayed with the class that I taught the first time I came in to demo teach, not the little hellions that I had yesterday.
The class went really smoothly, for the most part, and I also brought a lunch today since I was expecting to be there for a long time. They actually let me go early, which was excellent, but I do have to come back in next Saturday.
And then, of course, the Monday after that I start teaching for real.
I've got my last five days of work at my old company, and I'm in a little quandary as to how to pay for my last school lunches. As far as I know, my schools don't know that I'm leaving, and my company has asked me not to tell them. (My guess is that they want to find a replacement first, and then inform the schools, but still. If they can't find one, then they still have to explain at some point that I've quit.) But I normally pay for school lunches at the end of the month. So, how do I insist on paying for one or two days worth of school lunch before the end of the month, without cluing them in that I'm leaving?
One piece of random news I ran across is about squatters in Amsterdam. This is been legal for many, many years, but apparently a new law has made it illegal. In my own experience, even when I was living in Amsterdam two years ago, the Dutch police still evicted squatters from several buildings, despite it being legal to squat. So what gives? Now that it is illegal to squat will the police stop evicting people? The Dutch have an infamously negative attitude towards their police. I wonder what will happen now that the police have to evict people from their homes. There's already been news of riots in Amsterdam.
One last bit of commentary. Now that I'm commuting a pretty decent distance to work (from Eastern Tokyo down to central Yokohama), I get to read the announcements on the train LED boards as I ride. It seems like everyday, there is some train that is delayed because of 人事故 or "human accident," the euphemism for someone jumping in front of a train. I know I've mentioned it before: Japan has half the population of the US, but the same number of people commit suicide in each country, i.e., the suicide rate in Japan is double that of the US. When I've spoken with one of my Taiwanese housemates, he has also mentioned that Taiwan has a very high suicide rate. Recently, even the Prime Minister of Japan (Mr. Kan) has announced his intention to create a government group to look into the problem. Aside from costing the country a lot in terms of human life, the economy, etc, it isn't really something you want your country to be famous for. "Yeah, more people kill themselves per capita than in any other post-industrial country in the world."
Cheers,
