hey all,
So tonight marks night number 4 under the new roof. I've given up trying to sleep in the bed room. The first hour or so of having the air conditioner on is no problem. But after that, when it phases into active and passive modes it sounds live a lawn mower turning over. I've called the management about it, but they referred me to the realtor or the owner. Since I didn't have the owner's number, I called the realtor. I'm sure this is the kind of call they love getting.
It has me really pissed off. Saturday night I barely slept, but there were other excuses for that. Sunday night and Monday I was able to put up with it until 2AM and 4AM respectively, but tonight I'm just going to sleep in the kitchen.
The thing that really has me going about it, aside from just not being able to sleep in my own bed room, is that on Friday night while waiting for Michi I started to read Dogs and Demons by Alex Karr. The author has spent the better part of 30 years in Japan, and as he sees it, he is tired of seeing a country he loves go down the drain. The title comes from a Chinese story about an emperor who asks a painter what is difficult to paint, and what is easy to paint. The painter says that dogs are difficult, but demons are easy. Why? Demons are fantastical, and you can get away with anything, while dogs are encountered everyday and thus people are less tolerant of strangeness. In terms of Japan, Karr sees Japanese companies and governmental agencies spending huge amounts of time, energy and money on pie in the sky projects, such as putting concrete embankments on all the major rivers for flood protection, while at the same time failing at such mundane things as burying telephone cables.
In my case, this means having a TV I don't want and don't necessarily need IN THE SHOWER, and having a toilet that will warm my bum if it is cold and spray water to clean me after using it, BUT having an air conditioner that is so loud that I can't sleep in my own bed room. Why and how is it possible for a supposedly technologically advanced country to fail at these things?
I can't complain about Japan the way that Karr does, which is to see the whole system as broken. I think some things work really well, for instance, payment of health insurance, taxes, rent, phone bills, and utility bills can usually be done at ANY convenience store. No need for stamps or envelopes, checks, etc. Just go to the nearest Seven Eleven with the money and you're done.
I still don't have internet, but hopefully that will change in the next few days.
As for school, we've been having the parents stay out of the rooms for our classes. So far, it has gone really well. The kids are motivated, and are trying hard. And it seems they spent a good amount of time over the break studying, because they can answer questions about the material and use pretty decent complete sentences to do so.
I guess tomorrow will be the real test, because we are starting new material for all of our subjects, and we will be learning new vocabulary, etc. My boss has informed me that almost all of the parents will be watching my class tomorrow when I teach them chemistry, and I'm a little nervous about that. The kids are doing well with the material, but it is always hit or miss whether the kids will show off or clam up when a bunch of people are watching.
I've only had one student show up for my PM class this whole week. The boss and I had discussed reducing the number of times we hold the class from 5 days a week to 2 or 3. This would ease the class load on the teachers, and also give more free time to the students. Compared to other schools, our students come more often, but it seems our test results are not as good. So clearly coming more often is not helping. We're planning on trying some different approaches to try and fix the issue, and of course, I could always use the extra class preparation time.
Cheers,
