Archive for 'Musings' Category
Why this job is awesome
17 June 2008Teaching at every elementary school in my town sure means something for when I go out. I can’t without running into a student. No big deal. But what it also means is that I run into a lot of parents without really knowing who is who. Again, no big deal. But one of my friends has a daughter that just started school this year. And I had my first class with her grade yesterday.
My friend just emailed me and told me that after her daughter got home from school yesterday that she would not stop talking about how great my class is and how awesome it was.
Deep Mysteries Abound
13 June 2008I love the conversations I have at work.
“Eric, is Friday considered the weekend in America?”
“Nope.”
“So, only Saturday.”
“Nope, Sunday too.”
“But Sunday is the first day of the week, right?”
“Yes…yes it is!”
“So how can it be the weekend?”
Hmm… how indeed.
Allergens!
12 June 2008I have no idea what happened by something is in the air and it is drying out my eyes and making my nose do that little sniffle thing that never quite goes away until you stick something too far up your nose so it kinda hurts but kinda hurts in a good way and then you sneeze out a mess of disgusting shit.
I think I hate all the seasons, haha.
My world for a toenail clipper
16 May 2008My toe hurts.
I don’t know if I believe in “karma” but I’m starting to realize why the concept came up in the first place.
I’m sure I’m not unique in my thoughts, and that is what makes me hesitant to put words to paper. Or 1s and 0s as the case may be, but that’s not nearly as catchy. It seems easier to do nothing rather than deal with the claims of intellectual property theft, but then again roughly four minutes or so of silence is copyrighted so we might all be fucked.
Anyway, the reason all this came to me is because of the aforementioned stubbing of my toe this morning. See, a few days ago as I was picking at my toenails as I’m apt to do while watching TV I messed up my pinky toenail right wicked. So I’ve been walking around a little funny at ties because my toe hurts like crazy.
But I’ve been telling everyone I stubbed my toe.
Now this lie doesn’t even register on the scale of one to burn-in-hell. But the point is that I kept mentioning how I stubbed my toe and then it happened. Almost as if by thinking of something enough it was able to subconsciously happen.
A Pointless Revelation!
30 April 2008You can’t rewind games.
I’m playing 龍が如く (released as Yakuza in the States) and if you talk to a character twice in a row, like in most games, they say the same thing over and over.
This feature in games is sometimes ridiculed and I myself always prefer when a character can say a few different things. But it never occurred to me until right now that this feature is just like rewinding a movie or flipping back a few pages in a book to reread something for further clarity.
In all cases it is a bit jarring, but sometimes necessary for your enjoyment. Can’t believe I’ve never thought of it this way.
Waffle Surprise
10 April 2008I don’t know if it’s the getting caught in the rain while biking the past few days or an interstellar virus, but I feel like a bag of awful. And that’s not a bag of awful waffles. Actually I don’t know how awful a bag of waffles could be.
I’m not looking forward to having to redo my lessons for tomorrow. While I have a lesson that works for my opening class (What’s your name? Bingo!), it only really works with twenty-some people. The biggest class of the school that I’m going to tomorrow is sixteen. Even if I scale the bingo board down to a 4×4 instead of the 5×5 I’m using now, that’s still more than the amount of people in the class. Well, I guess I could put a free block on each one and make up some names that I’ll pretend to be and make the kids ask me questions… Hmm…
Waffle.
I have no idea what’s going on
7 April 2008Today was the opening ceremony for the new school year. This involved a lot of standing around, clapping and me only getting a tenuous grasp of what is going on.
Basically the principal at this one school is leaving to another school, along with some other teachers. The new principal here was the principal at one of my other schools. All the teachers are shuffled around entirely and aside from the fifth grade teachers becoming the sixth grade teachers I see very little rhyme or reason to the changes that actually took place! It’s bad enough that with 9 schools I’m incapable of remembering names of teachers but now “sixth grade male teacher at School X” could very well be replaced with first grade female teacher from another school.
I am going to be so confused this month!
Take that, Mother!
26 March 2008All those years of saying I have shitty hair. PAH!
Japanese girls found my hair to be extremely さらさら. Take that!
…
Sigh.
R.I.P. Gary
7 March 2008It really is marvelous how one man can have such an impact upon so many people. I highly doubt I would be sitting where I am right now were it not for the work of Gary Gygax. Dungeons and Dragons influenced so many things. What led up to me falling in love for Japan’s culture was a simple 8-bit game which drew inspiration from D&D and other things inspired by D&D. It’s really mind blowing how one simple product can filter down history and directly impact lives.
Truly a great man.
Amazing Fucking Grace.
22 February 2008I swear it seems every month there’s something that Japan embraces so hard that it almost hurts. I have heard Amazing Grace so much this month. I can’t explain it. It’s just being used everywhere. Did I somehow not notice it before? Why am I noticing it now? Why does everything play Amazing Fucking Grace?