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[Jan. 10th, 2009|11:18 pm] |
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Tomorrow I turn in my 5 week notice. I'm excited and nervous. Excited about getting this all over with, nervous about how my boss will react. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2009|04:12 pm] |
So, I've been here for a bit over a month now. I don't think I really feel any better about it.
I've been thinking of quitting again. I wouldn't just walk off (I'd probably go ahead and stay until April because I already have a plane ticket in April). People keep saying to stick it out for "such and such" a time and it'll get better, but I honestly don't see it. Even if I can slap together lesson plans, I just don't like teaching. Maybe it's the added stress of all the things they dumped on me right away... Filling out piles of cards, getting ready for parent's day... The support is lacking. Even when my boss gave me a list of games I can use in the class, at least half of them were useless (and there were probably only about a dozen on the list). So much so that the games weren't even in good working condition when she showed them to me because they'd been stuffed in the back for so long.
Working hours doesn't include time for lesson plans. In the morning I'm stressing out over what I can do for each class. It still almost feels like they stuck me in there with no real training.
I've found I've had very little time to myself. In over the month I've been here I've translated maybe 10 pages. That's about as much as I can usually do in two days. I'm not really learning any Japanese, which was actually my main goal. I bought cards and everything to work on but I have no time to fill them out; I end up spending the whole day trying to sort together some sort of plan.
I don't really care about the pay or anything that much. And there have been certain things that have really turned me off on staying (my boss is nice enough, but then out of nowhere she'll say things like, "I'm only showing you this once". I'd only been in the country two weeks!) In my spare time I've been trying to put together my own materials because it feels like there's such a lack. Some of the textbooks aren't even very good. I have at least two that are basically coloring books.
Even four months to vacation is looking like an extremely long time now.
I'm thinking of just telling them I'm having family problems and going home (which is true. I'm not even really thinking about switching to another job in Japan, I'm mostly thinking of going home and helping my mom.) I don't want to tell them right away, but I'd also want to give as much notice as possible so they could find someone else. I really don't want to stay here. Probably the only reason holding me is that I don't want to quit my first job or look like a total flake, but I'm not sure it's very good if those are the only reasons I'm staying. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 25th, 2008|12:43 pm] |
I had a terrible dream last night.
I forget how it started, but we were all in my backyard for a party. There was this ride by the pool that was almost like a tilted merry-go-round. It would go around in a circle and one side would dip under the water. I basically blew it off as dad going overboard again for the grandkids.
There was food and soda and everything and for some reason I arrived late and everyone was already busy playing and stuff. I was hungry so I wanted to get some food.
One of my brothers has a friend that we've all known for a long time, but for some reason in this dream he was very callous. He's not so bad normally. I showed up late, obviously wanting to catch up on the food and drink so I could get in on the action, too, and for some reason if I asked him a question like where something was it was like he had to make a smart remark about it.
So I learned from him that some of the food was over in the corner. In our backyard there's a brick wall surrounding it, and two gates on each side of the house. I don't remember the gate being there for this dream, but maybe it was. I went over to grab some food and for some reason the very corner of the yard was submerged in water, and I just happened to look over and notice my dad was sitting down and his head was under the water.
I, of course, went into an absolute panic. There's only so long someone can hold their breath under water and I had no idea how long he'd been there already. I ran over and grabbed him to get his head above the water. I said something along the lines of trying to tell him to keep his head above the water, and luckily he (raspily) answered me back, so he was alive. Although he's a very big guy somehow I was able to walk him over to another spot to sit. My dad has to take a lot of medications and stuff in real life, so in the dream it was a given that he'd been unable to move to lift his head above water because of a medical problem.
And afterwards, especially with my brother's friend, it was like everyone was more concerned with why they hadn't helped. No one was accusing anyone of doing anything - it was a party and it was understandable that people were distracted. But I was getting so mad with people nonchalantly saying how they hadn't noticed for some reason or another. I was still scared out of my wits because I had just happened to stumble upon it at the right time and in time to help him, which would have only been a short amount of time.
It was like, here this man was the whole reason for the party because he got all this ridiculous stuff together and made food and everything, and he tried to sit down for a short rest and almost ended up killed and no one cared. I was about ready to punch people.
A bit earlier in the night I had a dream about my neighbor. For some reason he moved to the other side of our house, and his daughter (who would be around 21 now) went to live with him again but he also adopted a new daughter (I think her name was Donna). Anyway, it's like he did a bad job the first time so he was trying to do a do-over. It was strange. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 29th, 2008|09:06 am] |
Honestly, because of gay adoptions, I was starting to lean more towards Barack than McCain. However, as most of you probably know, he's putting on that huge, annoying ad today. Which just reminded me how he agreed not to use public funds for advertisement then "changed his mind" at the last minute while McCain kept his word, so now he has money to do stuff like, say, buy up TV time and McCain doesn't. And all of this, "Make history and watch my ad" makes him sound like nothing more than a giant, pompous ass to me (and I don't curse in a non-joking manner very often). But I don't particularly want to go back to someone who doesn't support gay adoptions, either.
So it's time to look at third party candidates. I've always hated that we're one of the most powerful nations in the world but we only get "two" people to choose from to be president. It shouldn't be that way. We should encourage people to vote for what they really believe in, not who they think "has a chance". They call it a wasted vote if you vote for a third party. I think it's a wasted vote to use your vote to support someone you don't truly believe in.
Other presidential candidates:
Cynthia Ann McKinney More Info Green party
Abortion - Strongly pro-choice.
Gay rights - Supports same-sex marriage, transgender-inclusive employment, voted against "Defense of Marriage Act of 1996".
Supports gay people serving openly in the army.
More info on her stances.
She has some controversies surrounding her that I don't necessarily agree with, but from what I see I actually really, really like her stances overall. I may very well vote for her. Voting record.
Alan Keyes More info Independent
If you don't know who he is I'm going to be pretty straightforward about this. I hate this guy. He says gay couples adopting children would cause those children to turn to incest.
You can look him up if you want, but I hope it's more to see who he is rather than actually wanting to vote for him. Voting record.
Ralph Nader More info Peace and Freedom
His stance on the issues.
Supports gay marriage, gay rights, has a problem with women being treated as second-class citizens in PE, pro-choice.
I like Nader as well as Cynthia. He also has quite a few things I agree with and most people have probably heard of him. Voting record.
Bob Barr More info Libertarian
Believes in states deciding about gay marriage, against gay marriage personally but believes in getting government out of marriage, doesn't believe in "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", wants to ban gay adoption.
I find him to be a bit of a mixed bag. More info. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|10:52 am] |
Voting histories of the candidates.
I think it's something important to look at before anyone votes. I don't like going by what people say. Politicians are politicians. They'll say one thing and do another, and most the statistics they pull out of their butt are made up (I recall one that said something like 101 million families would be left out of McCain's tax cuts. If you take the population of the US and divide it by three you don't even get 101 million families. And if you divide it by 4, assuming most people have closer to an average of two kids, you have about 75 million families total in the US. Now, I believe according to statistics the average family has 3.8-ish people, and that would leave us at about 80 million families total. So how the hell could his tax cut miss 20 million families that don't even exist? Whut whut?)
One thing that makes me nervous about Barack is that he barely has any voting record and I can't see what he actually does VS what he says he'll do. On many of the policies he's never even had to vote before, so how can I know what he really stands for?
There are a few things I do have some opinions on and people can agree/disagree however they want.
McCain
Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
Honestly, it sounds bad but I kind of think of hate crimes as one of those strange things we added to the law to try and appease people. If someone stabs someone else 20 times I'm pretty sure you can always call it a hate crime of some sort. I don't think they did it out of love.
On top of that it's always made me a bit nervous. Sure, I'm a gay transsexual and I'm a lot more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than a lot of other people, but I don't really think if someone shoots me that it's any more important than if someone shoots a straight white man. Shooting people is wrong, period.
I have some similar thoughts about having differences between murder and attempted murder. If one guy tries too shoot someone and misses, and another shoots someone and hits, why should guy #1 get less of a punishment just because he's a bad shot?
Everyone up for President and VP roles is against gay marriage (I know McCain wants to leave it up to the states and has voted against making an amendment banning it. I was surprised that Barack isn't really any better on this issue since he's supposed to be more liberal). McCain doesn't support gay adoption (something I really don't like about him).
McCain didn't believe in hiring based on sexual orientation.
More info on McCain.
Although there isn't as much of a record to look at, Barack says he is against gay marriage, for civil unions, for leaving marriage up to the states.
More info on Barack.
The thing is that people say what will get them votes so I hate going off of that. For example, during the debates, both McCain and Barack claimed they sent letters about the oncoming collapse of the economy beforehand. However, McCain did send a letter but the problem he pointed out wasn't what caused the collapse, and Barack sent his letter after the collapse. In reality neither of them "foresaw" exactly what was going to happen. That's why, whoever you're voting for, I highly recommend looking at what they do as opposed to listening to what they say. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 25th, 2008|10:38 am] |
I'm getting pretty darn irritated right now.
My computer broke down about... Tuesday? My hard-drives are both fine and I have a couple things I need off them. We have all the wires we need to hook them up and grab everything.
So why don't I have my stuff?
My brother has it hooked up to his computer. Which... Has a few webpages open and iTunes up. That's it. Is he kidding me about buying new wires to connect my hard-drives to my laptop because he can't turn off his computer for fives minutes so I can grab my stuff? He isn't even on that computer 80% of the time, he's always browsing forums on his laptop (that way he can watch the big screen TV at the same time). He tells mom he's doing important stuff (I guess if browsing the TAPS forums is important) and she doesn't know any better and thinks he really does "important" stuff on his computers. He might do something important about 1% of the time. The rest of the time he's only posting on forums.
So here I am without my main e-mail or my previous e-mails from my employers when I'm moving in less than a month because he can't be bothered to let me hook up my HDs for a minute. I can't even buy stuff to forward it to my apartment because I don't have my address because it's on my old e-mail account. I'm not sure if I could copy all my settings over, but at least I could recover the information I already had. I'm leaving for a very long time in less than a month. You would think I could at least get my vital information over my brother using his iTunes.
I already bought myself an external hard-drive with almost everything backed up on it, it's not like I have tons of stuff I need to move.
Beyond that the other day I had re-installed just about everything I could (Photoshop, the scanner, set up AIM, already had NJStar, found a new FTP client and re-downloaded Eudora even though I don't have the info yet...) and I was setting up FFXI again. Unfortunately, Playonline wouldn't work. People had posted complaints about Vista's drivers having issues with it. I'd rather not do much to fool around with drivers.
So I waited about nine hours for him to take a look at it. He looked for about ten minutes and said he didn't know what to do. He didn't even try to look up the problem. I don't know why I ever bother waiting for him to do stuff, I always end up doing it myself anyway.
So I typed in Playonline and Vista and... Found they had a version of PO downloadable for Vista. Why that didn't pop up the first time I was looking around I don't know, but if he had even tried to look he probably would have found it.
I am getting very irritated looking at his iTunes and webpages when I need to know what my address is and I need to get my work visa. I'd kind of like to start getting things sent to my apartment so I have what I need when I move there. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 16th, 2008|02:04 pm] |
"A bucket of chicken, a watermelon and ribs..."
Am I the only one who is extremely confused on how that's racist? My family is white, my brother married into a Vietnamese family, and we all like chicken, watermelon and ribs. What does it have to do with being black?
For people who are wondering what this is about...
Personally, my favorite comment is:
"I have a dream
That some day we can all go back to enjoying Watermelon, Fried Chicken, and Ribs without a single thought about racial/racist connotations."
Because I seriously would never connect any of those to any race whatsoever. They're such staple foods. Just about everyone I know likes them. When I see that "fake food stamp" I think "it's a jab at what Barack will do to the economy".
EDIT: Makes more sense now, but am I seriously the only one in the world who hasn't heard of this stereotype? @.@
EDIT2: Yes, this is about where I realize I'm about as dumb as bricks when it comes to racism. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 4th, 2008|01:51 pm] |
I'm getting pretty pissed off at my mom at this point.
This morning we've just been informed that my dad is being accused of hitting Samantha (who doesn't even have anything to do with the court case, and she's pregnant). Obviously he did not hit her.
I told my mom to call her on the phone, tell her she's being recorded, and ask if she even knows that this accusation is being made. There's a good chance Samantha has no idea that they made up this story about her getting hit and being sent to the hospital because of it.
My mom isn't doing anything. She doesn't want to call because, "What if she says he did it?"
...So what? She's going to testify to that either way if she's willing to lie about it on the phone with you. It changes our situation none.
I'm so sick and tired of them sitting on the sidelines doing nothing and talking about how awful the others are. She won't even do something to try and protect my own dad. What if she calls Samantha up and Samantha says, on the phone while being recorded, "Oh, that didn't happen"? They would have no case. We'd have no worries. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 25th, 2008|05:45 pm] |
Went to Carl's Jr. with my niece and dad. Usually I go because there's a big playpen thing there, and if there's no other little kids I end up going in with my niece.
But there were other kids and my niece was having a blast. So I actually talked with my dad for almost the entire time. It was actually pretty nice.
My mom has always been the over-protective type, so of course my going to Japan to work isn't sitting well with her.
My dad is more supportive/helpful. He's talking about getting the computers set up for phone/video stuff, figuring out how to ship my things there, getting everything done and ready... He seems to understand a bit more that this is another step to where I want to get in life.
One of the things he mentioned was how he left his home when he was 18, and has probably only spent about 6 months with his family ever since. I've never really met his side of the family, save for one time when his sister visited and once when one of them wanted us to take their daughter in because she was "running wild".
It feels a lot better after talking to him. With mom there's no doubt she doesn't want me to go and it feels like she's not really going to help me do anything. With dad it's more "We'll get all these things done".
Anyway, I told him my goal is to try and save about $1,000 a month. I won't make a lot of money, but if I scrimp maybe I can do it.
It was pretty nice. It'd be nice if we got to sit down and talk like that more often.
We have our differences, yes, but I always thought they're both good parents. I'll be 26 years old before I leave (about a week), so it's about time I went out and got work. Not that I was sitting around doing nothing - I did get my B.A.
We're figuring out how we're going to ship my computer and monitor and stuff. The monitor is what I'm most worried about. It's a 30" LCD monitor. We'll definitely be buying insurance.
I'm a little worried about getting my HD through. Think they'll care that I have illegal music on it? |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 24th, 2008|09:19 am] |
For people who don't know yet, I just got accepted for a job in Japan last night. I'll be teaching children English in Hiroshima.
I wanted to talk to my mom/dad before I actually accepted. Mom doesn't really want me to go. She, for some reason, thinks if I make one Japanese friend or something I'll be able to become fluent.
I really want to be worried, or scared, or nervous, but I can't. My mom will jump on it if I am. So I have to act like I'm confident about everything and know exactly what to do. I have to keep all this nervousness about levaing home to work in another country all bottled up.
I'd really prefer it if I could say I was nervous and get patted on the back and told it'd be all right. We'll figure things out.
I already knew I was going to have to do that, though. I'll just have to get there on my own and figure out the program. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|02:00 pm] |
Been busy lately. Sending out job applications and setting up interviews.
I've never had a job interview before. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 29th, 2008|06:56 am] |
I had some crazy weird dreams last night. One was about my family.
Somehow we ended up at the same restaurant/outing as one of my aunts (this aunt has two sons).
Her younger son, who had gained a bit of weight in my dream, was asking us what he did because he didn't have anything to do with this family divide really. No one answered him and there was this awkward silence as he was ignored.
Just as he was about to go sit down with him mom I couldn't take it anymore. I can't remember if I just called his name or what, but I went over and hugged him (a brief, very distanty kind of hug).
Now, for some reason even though she has 2 sons, she had "3" in my dream. So there was another person at the table but it wasn't his real older brother. So I asked where he was and went to try to find him.
That's the part where it just got super weird. His older brother looked nothing like he used to. Instead he'd gotten a sex change (and apparently an ethnicity change in the process) and now called himself DK, which makes no sense whatsoever. Anyway, I managed to find him somehow, but I can't remember exactly what it said.
In another dream there was some sort of huge contest going on. Whoever got to Jack-in-the-Box first and had a good idea for what to rename it as would win a huge prize. People participating were all in one spot and would have to try and find/race to a place where they could put in their suggestions.
I remember I went ahead and went along with it, and I got to the place (for a race/treasure hunt, it only took a couple minutes to walk there) and was in the middle of the line for telling them my suggestion. The only problem was I didn't have one. They got to me and I had no suggestion to make yet. I fumbled and spat out "Cracker Jacks", and mumbled how it was already taken though.
I managed to get out of line and step to the side to try and think for a bit.
I remember being very frustrated that I was there already but I couldn't come up with anything. |
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| Japanese Lessons: The Basics |
[Aug. 24th, 2008|03:34 pm] |
Before you start you should know both Hiragana and Katakana. If you need a little more time to memorize them then keep doing that and come back to this later.
( The Basics ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 20th, 2008|04:11 pm] |
People taking the Japanese lessons, I'm done with the next lesson but it won't be posted until the 24rth. Make sure you memorize your letters (at least have the Hiragana down). |
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| Writing Practice |
[Aug. 6th, 2008|11:59 am] |
I have set up a board that can hopefully help people study Japanese.
Here you'll be able to write Japanese along with other users on an online multi-user board.
Note: I won't be in there all the time, of course. I haven't decided how I'll set it up yet. It may just be on an appointment-like schedule.
Up to 5 users should be allowed at once. I'm hoping to be able to use this so I can see what people are actually writing, and correct them if something is off.
EDIT: Having now used this with someone, it's actually a pretty good tool. I will probably be including the link in later lessons. If you want to arrange a meeting you can contact me on AIM at Emeryl Tekutsu.
Keep in mind I do other things, too, so even if I'm on all the time (I leave my computer and AIM on the entire day) I may be busy or may not be there. You can always leave a message and I'll see when I can get back to you. |
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| Setting your computer to be able to read and write Japanese. |
[Aug. 5th, 2008|02:08 pm] |
First off you should download an IME. Read the directions and install.
Microsoft Global IME.
If that link doesn't work then go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and search for "Japanese IME".
You should also install Japanese on your computer.
There's some very good guides here that include images of what you should see.
I personally have my settings under Regional and Language Options (on XP) set to Japanese both under "Regional Options" and under "Advanced". This is because some BL games won't work unless your computer is set to Japanese.
It's actually not too hard to set it up.
EDIT: As ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) loveless_chan kindly pointed out, you can go to ajaxime.chasen.org if you can't install IME. |
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