Here we are again, at the end of another year. the theme, although quite possibly premature, is "all good things come to an end". the reason i chose this theme is twofold - first, i'm at the point where i'm beginning to think about making exit arrangements for JET. i still have significant time on here (a year and 3 or 4 months to go), so it's not like things are changing overnight. but i have to prepare for it so that the impact of my departure is minimized for the schools, the town, and for myself as well.

reason 2 was the one that i couldn't talk about when i first blogged about it. but now that the announcement was brought forward from new year to christmas, i can tell you that it's because the guild leadership is undergoing a change. most of the people in the leadership team (including the leader) have stepped down due to their own reasons, and we're moving towards eventually handing the guild off to a completely new team sometime in the future. it feels like the end of an era, somehow. but i can't deny that we've all moved forward in life. some people have gotten married and/or had kids, a few are choosing to focus on their personal health and careers too. i told them that i would stay on at least until the end of JET because i have excess mental capacity for now, but that will probably change after i look for a less slack job. i feel sadder about this because we've transcended the in-game boundary and become friends in real life too. but that's also good, because it means that we can still keep in touch and maintain our friendship outside of the game. to be clear, i have no intention to leave the guild or stop final fantasy, but i think it's something that i can and should dedicate less time to in the future, ie. play way more casually.

looking back at my posts throughout the year, i feel like i've simultaneously done better and worse than 2021. better in terms of personal growth, worse in terms of job performance and general life. i challenged myself more, by taking the JLPT and going on a long road trip. i've also become more comfortable in my own body (or at least learnt not to care as much) via multiple onsen experiences - but there's still a ways to go there. as for why i feel i did worse in job performance despite another stellar appraisal, it's because i didn't put in as much effort as i did in year 1. it's a tricky situation...i know that i can do so much more, but at the same time, i have to navigate the kids' workloads, along with the teachers' need to fulfill KPIs. i'm going to attempt to work on it by introducing smaller but more frequent assignments next term, and have a bigger change starting the next school year. not going to say what it is yet, in case it doesn't come to pass. but i think it should.

not sure whether this should be filed under personal growth or general life, actually. my point of dissatisfaction is that while i explored areas far away, i didn't explore areas nearer to me. there's supposed to be a really pretty library two towns over, and i've been meaning to visit it. that's just one place in a list of about 4 or 5 that my predecessor left for me. considering that i wouldn't normally visit this area for tourism, i feel that i should make use of the time that i have to be here to explore. i suppose i can make it a goal to visit one new place a month, but that's for tomorrow.

i feel that this year's posts are very "me-centric". on one hand, no duh, because this blog is to record things that happened to me, after all. but on the other hand, i feel like i should be looking beyond myself...like towards the local community or something, you know? do something bigger. perhaps i should have started some initiative earlier on. i feel like there's not much point if i do it now, so maybe what i can do is to join some community activities.

from a "satisfaction/fulfillment" standpoint though, i'd say 2022 was worse than 2021. my overall enjoyment of the job has gone down. part of it has to do with teaching the same content. and as i've mentioned several times by now, i feel like i'm not making much of a difference - like, the kids would have a similar level of english regardless of whether i was present or not. something i remember from this year's JET workshop was advice on deciding whether to stay or go. it went: for the first 2 years, stay unless you have a reason to go. for each year after that, go unless you have a reason to stay. i do have a reason to stay (my favourite class) but it alone isn't sufficient to outweigh all the reasons i have to end JET. as i'm inclined to do, i'm looking for a win-win solution. will blog about it when it gets closer to the date, otherwise i won't have stuff to talk about later on!

summing things up, 2022 has been a good year, all things considered. i feel like it's the stable low-energy state between "wow everything is new and amazing!" and "i must do everything before leaving!" i think i've made progress in all aspects of life (more in some aspects than others), so i guess that's something i can be happy about. in addition, i've become more sure about what i don't want to do, so that's another form of progress. i'll talk about it more in tomorrow's post, so stay tuned!

-random thought of the day: Half of the year-end break is over!-

Work for the year ended on wednesday (a little earlier for me because i took half a day off), and this is now day 2 of the 6-day year-end break. my only cooking project so far has been chicken rice with a whole chicken. it was...ok. not something that i'd be happy with if i'd bought it outside, but it was acceptable for home cooking. my remaining projects are cream soup/stew, steak with vegetables, laksa (if prawns are on sale), sambal spinach, and a couple of cakes. should be enough variety to spread over the next 2 weeks.

as a reminder to myself, here's how my work schedule looks for the next 3 weeks:

full day work on 4 january, half days on the 5th and 6th.

full day work on 10 and 11 january, along with vaccine and probably taking 12th and 13th off.

work as per normal from 16 january onwards.

that means i'm working just 4 days for the first half of the month. not bad, if i do say so myself! i'm actually quite looking forward to finishing this academic year off. good thing that term 3 is the shortest term...only 2.5 months compared to about 3.5 months for the other 2 terms. it also means that i have less than a hundred days, i think, with my graduating classes. compared to the previous cohort of graduating sec 3s in the big school, i feel less sad about parting with this class on a whole, but i'll miss some people more. does that make sense? for the smaller school, i feel...neutral. they're all good kids, but their presence or absence doesn't affect my quality of life in the school too much, i think.

besides cooking, i also have to do cleaning and rubbish disposal. got some cardboard boxes other paper waste which have been lying around for a little too long. somewhat related, i also have to pack for my upcoming tokyo trip in february. it's to meet some guildmates, who i haven't seen in person for more than 2 years. i'm asking someone to help bring some things that i don't use back to singapore, to reduce my baggage woes when it's time for me to leave.

i've got some thoughts floating about in my head, but i'm not quite in the right headspace to organize them now. that's for tomorrow. very briefly for now, i've got science stuff to complete, and the town gave us 10000 yen worth of vouchers to be spent on fuels. those will go to offsetting my gas bills for january and february, but i need to contact the gas company ASAP to make arrangements.

-random thought of the day: The power company gave me 2000 points for the save energy campaign!-

Something that i deliberately neglected to mention in the last post, but on second thought decided that i should talk about after all to reduce the length of the year-end post, is my recontract hearing that took place last friday. in singapore, a "hearing" brings to mind a criminal case, but in japan, it's used in the same way as "sit-down" or "chat/discussion". worried me the first time i saw it on the schedule!

the short version is, it went well. longer version: the schools' feedback was overwhelmingly positive. flatteringly so, in fact. according to my supervisor, the appraisal was almost all 4s (4 being the best on a 4-point scale) and a couple of 3s. this year, i walked in knowing what to expect, so i was able to keep my wits about me and ask what the 3s were for. one was for "activities out of class", and the other was "punctuality in reaching the school". not much i can do about the second one, since the school that gave that particular piece of feedback is 20 minutes away by car, and the policy is that i have to walk back to the town hall from my first school of the day, get the car key, then drive to the school in question. would save me 10 minutes if i could take the car in the morning, but other people need it too. my vice superintendent told me that the school gave this feedback out of concern, for fear of my safety in the case that i would be speeding along the drive. but well...it is what it is. i'm not sure which school gave the first piece of feedback. considering that i try my best to be involved in the kids' school lives (if they'll let me), it's mildly irritating. perhaps i don't do as much as some of the other JETs, who make english boards and other things like that. in my defense, i've tried implementing a letter exchange system in both my secondary schools. it's used maybe only a few times a term, if that. but well...the IT resource person in the office told me about google sites, so that's something i'm looking forward to trying out next year.

following that, we talked about my recontract. my wish to stop after the 2023 school year is now on the record, although the exact details are fuzzy. see, my plan is to end school, then use up my remaining leave (will probably have about 1 or 2 weeks, 3 if i'm lucky) to prepare to move to my next destination, so the exact end-date is uncertain. they said that they'd sponsor my trip back to singapore, which is a relief to my wallet. we'll discuss the details next december. hopefully by then, i'll have a job offer lined up, or at least be fixed on a destination. thoughts about that will come in the year-end post.

last thing we talked about: the level of english in the schools. it is nowhere near where i want it to be. again, i feel partially responsible that the sec 2 and 3 kids still have trouble stringing simple words together to form a sentence! repetition is really not a good way to learn. the plan right now is to see what i can do in my last remaining year. hopefully i can keep the interest up in all my classes.

finished rewriting the letter and sent it out today. it should reach before new year, but the post office said that the snow in akita might delay things. good thing i included an apology for lateness in the main body! although it took disproportionate amounts of time and effort, writing was really enjoyable. i kind of have a mad idea to write birthday cards/letters to all the kids next year, but it's a massive undertaking. on the other hand, it would be a great bonding thing, plus it would help me use up most of (if not all of) my letter sets.

oh, i almost forgot. my old supervisor who sat in on the talk also told me to do some cleaning around the house, and leave it in a condition that would make the next JET want to live there. shouldn't be too hard; a lot of it is actually deciding what to keep and what to throw away. actually, there are clothes that i've brought, but have literally not worn even once in the 2 years that i've been here. those can be considered for disposal, i guess. i should get the bulk of the sorting/disposal done next summer, then it'll just be area cleaning and general maintenance until i leave.

guess that's it for now. half days tomorrow and wednesday, then year-end break until next tuesday. might work on wednesday, then take thursday and friday off for a 5-day weekend (the monday after next is also a public holiday). i'll probably do a holiday cooking forecast, to make sure i remember the ideas and ingredients. but that can wait until the next post. for now, i need a shower and dinner.

-random thought of the day: Feeling oddly melancholy.-

Every christmas/year-end, my supervisor (well, officially ex-supervisor, but she's now like the JET supervisor advisor because she's the only one with the experience) will invite me to her house for a party. this year was no exception. i made red ruby for dessert. it was much easier than i'd thought! the only labour-intensive part is dicing the water chestnuts up. i followed an internet recipe and didn't test it beforehand. big mistake! it turned out way too sweet. should have halved, or even quartered the amount of sugar recommended. well, now i know. i also entertained her son a bit. he's...4? 5? now, and - forgive me for being blunt - he's a little spoiled, i think. but well, first-born and only child for now with doting grandparents, so i can understand. he'll be getting a sibling sometime early next year, so that might help him grow out of it sooner.

my letter plan didn't go smoothly. at first, things were looking great; i spent my free periods on friday writing it, finally completed it after several drafts, and even made it in good time to the post office. just before i joined the queue, i made the decision to check it again at the very last minute. good thing i did, because i realized that i'd gotten one of the kanji of the recipient's name wrong! sending a letter with such a huge error would have been an unimaginable faux pas. so the plan now is to rewrite the letter and send it on monday. sad thing is, i'll have to correction tape the new year's card, because it was one that i'd made during the JET workshop. the post office people tell me that it should take 3 days (barring unforeseen circumstances), so i'll still make it in time for new year.

i've got a 5% off coupon for the supermarket. thinking of going into the next town, but also feeling lazy. will probably go after hanging the laundry out. primary goal is to get a replacement toothbrush, and probably some vegetables.

-random thought of the day: Big cooking plans this coming week!-

Planned out my time off for the holiday season today. my goal for the start of next year is not to go to the office unnecessarily - something i did both this and last year. i'm working a total of 3 days from next monday to 09 january, so i imagine there'll be plenty of time for rest in that period.

got a question about ethics for you all. is it wrong to take time off strategically to stretch the time you're out of the office? legally, i don't think it's wrong; people can take leave any time they like. singaporeans even look up the public holiday forecast for the coming year and plan their leave days based on that. but from a moral/ethical point of view...let's say i have a day with 5 back-to-back classes. is it wrong for me to take leave on that day and leave the other teachers to handle the workload? if you're being a paragon of virtue (or a stingy boss), you'd probably object to it. you know, don't leave your colleagues in the lurch and whatnot. personally, i don't think it's wrong. leave days are private, after all, and one is at liberty to decide how to use them. having said that though, i won't do it too often, unless it's something that i really hate doing.

the reason that thought came about was because i was looking at dates to get my 4th COVID vaccination. my original plan was to do it on 04 january, then take the next 2 days off. it would have been a win-win-win, since it links to the weekend, school wouldn't have started yet, and i'd just be deskwarming on the days i planned to call in sick. but that plan was thwarted by the vaccination place not accepting reservations on that day. so...get vaccinated on a schoolday it is, then. have to call the vaccination hotline to book a slot.

in school today, i noticed a poster about COVID discrimination. it was saying not to shun people who'd recovered from COVID. and it occurred to me that there are so many kinds of discrimination in japan. based on race, gender, gender identity, HIV status, nationality, indigenous status, age, weight, disabilities, looks, tattoos, the list goes on. my question here is, why can't the japanese people apply the lesson across the board? it's not a quantum leap from "discrimination against x is bad" to "discrimination is bad, full stop", isn't it? and yet, it seems like every time a new thing comes about, there have to be workshops, campaigns, etc. to remind people not to have biases against those who are different, and to have empathy. i'm fortunate to be in a town where discrimination isn't that prevalent (or if it is, i don't know about it). but really...you'd think they'd learn! or maybe that's the right way, and discrimination is not talked about enough in singapore.

2 more days until the end of the week. my top priority is to finish writing the letter to my friend's in-laws, and mail it out by friday. after that, the science assignment. i'm about...halfway through? should be able to finish that by the end of the year, or at least before the new school term starts.

-random thought of the day: It got colder earlier this winter!-

Conflict arising from cultural differences is something that commonly happens to JETs, but i've been fortunate to experience only a few minor cases so far. the most recent one was not really a conflict per se, but more of an english translation problem. so, here's what happened. some time ago, i got a message from the head of the human rights centre. it was an invitation to attend an event. as part of his message, he wrote "i want you to bake a cake for the event". considering he's not in my chain of command at all, my immediate thought was, 'who the hell died and made you the boss of me?'. but then, he's been nothing but kind and polite to me since i've been here, so this was uncharacteristic, to say the least.

the expression "i want you to..." is also taught in schools here, by the way. i expect that's where he picked it up. the direct japanese translation is "...してほしい", which is used to make a request to another person. it's casual neutral-ish in japanese (ie. suitable for use between friends, but not to superiors), but "i want you to..." has a demanding tone in english. so what happened was that when we met in person to discuss the details of the event, i brought it up and gently told him that a native speaker would not use it in that way. instead, phrases like "could you..." or "would you please..." more accurately convey the tone of a request. at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, i think the situation was handled rather well! relations weren't hurt, the message was conveyed successfully, and there shouldn't be a repeat case involving the same phrase.

also this week, i received a letter from my friend's in-laws in akita, along with a big box of apples which i believe they grew themselves. they're juicy, crisp, sweet...my ideal apple. reading the letter (well, being able to read the letter) made me realize how far i've come in my japanese learning journey. while i'm not yet good enough to use it in a professional setting, i think i can communicate effectively with native speakers. i'll write them back, along with a new year card that i made during the JET workshop. i used to send christmas cards, but stopped after JC. doesn't seem like a big thing among people i know. well, new year's cards are still big in japan, so why not? i have to get it in the mail by 25 december for it to arrive on time. seems doable.

just yesterday, i stopped myself from making an impulse purchase. my trip to the stationery stores in kochi city didn't turn up any of the nib units i was looking for. in addition, the pilot explorer is no longer available in the singapore store that stocked them previously. so i wound up looking at the website of a company based in the US. the total bill came up to USD 150 (including shipping), which is about SGD 200. decided to give myself some time and mental space to sort my finances out first before committing to it. odds are i'll get it by the end of this year though, especially since i have one pending assignment on the science side.

on that topic (shipping, not science), i realize that in some cases, shipping can be more economical than making a trip down to the store. the thought was brought about by my recent kaldi trip. out of curiosity, i looked up their shipping charges, and found that they charge about 900 yen to ship orders below 6500 yen. it's free above that. on the other hand, going to my nearest kaldi would cost me about 1500 yen in tolls, and between 1500 to 2000 yen in petrol. not to mention the time taken (about 2 hours total). so yes. unless i have other business where i must physically be in the city, i think it's better if i ship stuff over, even more so if i wait till i have a big enough order to get free shipping. good to know!

this coming week is the last week of term 2. perhaps it's because i'm still working so close to christmas/year-end, but i don't feel the holiday spirit. well, there's about a week to go, so there's still plenty of time.

-random thought of the day: Need to get corn.-

Back in another life, i once posted a status on facebook, along the lines of "how can you feel happy and sad at the same time?" i forgot what made me post it, but one of my judo friends replied, "when your girlfriend tells you that you're bigger down there than your brother". it cracked me up then, and still does now.

anyway, a more SFW answer is "finding something that you'd lost, and not being able to justify buying a (better) replacement". so, i found the missing mechanical pencil in my car on the morning that i was supposed to go to kochi city. still ended up buying parts to make a new one though. hear me out - i'm going to recycle attachments from the old one. the reason i bought a new body is because it was available in matte black with a smooth finish. i think the design lingo to describe it is "satin finish". it felt good! also, the body holds 4 attachments, so i'll reuse red and blue from my current pencil. then, i'll add 2 more, one for purple lead, and did i buy a pen attachment with purple or green ink? one of those, anyway. i felt less guilty when i was reminded that the clear body i'm not going to use any more only cost 110 yen. i suppose i could repurpose it as a gift for a student, but we'll see.

the 2 days of workshop are over! this year's speakers and activities were more interesting than last year, but overall i feel like i had a slightly worse experience, logistics-wise. for one, the information about needing a car parking space somehow didn't make it to the hotel. so i had to park about 200m away in a public parking space. i mean, it's claimable, so i'm not worried in that regard. but it was annoying when the hotel told me that there wasn't anything they could do. also, i think they put me in a smoking room by mistake. it smelled like cigarettes, and there was an ashtray on the table. but well, it was only for one night, and it wasn't THAT strong. also i was too tired to argue or request a swap. the advertised onsen turned out to be smaller than i expected, and also because i didn't want to walk back to the car to get appropriate clothing, i gave it a miss. on the plus side, the hotel provided free breakfast. 3 bread rolls (with marmalade and/or strawberry jam), some salad greens (shredded cabbage or lettuce and a single spinach leaf), and a hard-boiled egg. water, coffee and tea too, of course. nothing fancy, but hey, it's free. i've never been much of a breakfast eater, but it was a nice change.

it's my second year attending the workshop. i appreciate that the prefecture organizes these things to help us teach english better, but i still feel it's like trying to push against an advancing tank. my schools still teach english the old way, ie. brute force. the idea is that if you write a word out enough times, the spelling will sink in. the problem with that is the kids don't associate meaning to the word. like, the speaker tried teaching us the words for apple and strawberry in spanish by repetition only. i don't think i remembered them midway through the presentation! i'm thinking of suggesting changes to the english teachers in one school, including getting rid of some of their performance-based tasks. most of the kids aren't up to that level. it feels to me like the teachers are are doing things just for the sake of doing them. one of my colleagues said it was the difference between teaching material from the textbook and using the textbook to teach. i like that analogy very much. but at the same time, i know that the teachers don't have it easy, with admin duties and all in addition to their teaching load. maybe the best solution is to hope for them to transfer out, and for another teacher to come in and inject a breath of fresh air.

my friend was telling me that the kids in his town were on their winter program, a part of which involved reduced school hours. it was a thing in kochi city too; kids were out and about by our lunchtime break. but in my town, school hours remain the same. i wonder if this is a remnant of the town's rougher days. a senior colleague at the office told me that some 10 or 20 years ago, there were discipline problems in the schools. so perhaps the long hours were enforced to minimize trouble caused outside. this is purely conjecture, by the way. just letting my brain wander a bit.

including what's left of this week, i have 7 more school days and 9 working days in total before the year-end break. due to some overzealous shopping during 5% discount sunday last week, i'm probably good through to the end of the year, as far as food's concerned. complementing that with a kaldi trip, i now have ingredients to make chicken rice (with a whole chicken), sambal kangkong (well, spinach), laksa, and rendang. goodbye, diet plans. well, i suppose portion control will mitigate it. also thinking of getting the 4th vaccine, probably just after the new year break.

-random thought of the day: Settle leave plans this week!-

Don't really have enough content for a proper full-on post, and i'm not really in a blogging mood now, but i figured that i should write a little to put some things on record as reminders for myself should i want to go into greater detail in the future.

first, there's been some news. that's all i'm going to disclose for now, because the consensus of the parties involved is to keep it under wraps until a later date. i'll speak about it in more detail in the end of year post; the embargo should have been lifted by then. but as far as this post goes, i'll just say i know my theme for this year.

second, workshop. one night stay in kochi city, and my side quest of getting stationery. maybe go to the kaldi in aeon mall, too. i'm hoping they let us off early, so that we have a bit more free and easy time. the other singaporean JET says he's finishing his term next summer, so this is probably the last time i'll meet him? unless we specifically plan for something in the future, of course.

third, temperature. was it this cold last year? it's ok as long as the sun's out, but trying to do anything after sunset is next to impossible. not to mention how early and quickly the sky goes dark! it's like, midday sky to pitch black in the span of 20 minutes. it's only going to get worse in january/february, so i figure that i should get in some longer-distance cycling while i still can. from watching the soccer and baseball kids train, the secret seems to be layering. although i don't know how to layer such that i'm properly insulated while starting out, yet won't overheat in the middle of activity once the blood has started flowing. guess i'll have to experiment on that front.

last thing, cooking. i made a lemon drizzle cake for the office with the lemons that my ex-vice superintendent (who's now in another department) gave me. gave her a couple of pieces too. i'm actually surprised how lemony it turned out! didn't expect it to be that strong just from 2 small-ish lemons' worth of zest in the batter (and juice in the drizzle). might be the limonene; smell is a huge part of taste, after all. the tupperware that i put the cake in for her came back to me with another 2 lemons. i want to make it again for myself, but a whole cake is really too many calories. knowing my less-than-stellar impulse control, i'd be likely to finish it off in one sitting! unless i freeze quarters, or give some away to the neighbour. we'll see.

-random thought of the day: Hoping my stomach behaves tomorrow.-

Shouldn't have bragged about knowing where my things generally are a few posts ago. it's true what they say, "singapore lang buay sai oh-loh eh" translated from hokkien, it means "singaporeans can't be praised". once you praise a singaporean, they will go out of their way to prove you wrong. best thing is, it's not even a conscious effort! it's like the universe goes, "ok, that's enough pride for you", then proceeds to mess you up.

so as you may have guessed, i lost something. to be specific, i seem to have misplaced my favourite mechanical pencil. it's one of those customizable ones from pilot, where they sell a body with however many slots, which are meant to be paired with various attachments, like gel pen ones in different colours, or mechanical pencil ones in different lead widths. the one i made isn't super special...it's just a double mechanical pencil. the thing i liked about it is that i used red and blue leads in the attachments, which allowed me to do colour coding on the fly. useful for breaking up a sentence into its parts! like, red underline is for nouns, blue underline is for verbs, etc.

the annoying thing is, i don't have a super clear idea about where it might be. after eliminating all 3 schools and the office, my last 2 candidates are at home or in the car. of course, there is also a non-zero probability that i dropped it somewhere unknowingly. i recall not being clear about its whereabouts even before the kansai trip, which means that i most probably didn't leave in in osaka or kobe. well, no use crying over spilt milk, or lost pencils, as the case may be. i will give myself one more chance to look for it over this weekend. failing that, i'll get a new one in kochi city when i go for the JET workshop next week. if i'm getting a new one, i'll upgrade it. right now, i'm thinking of adding a third attachment that's just for a regular mechanical pencil, no fancy lead colours. maybe i'll see if that opens up my selection of pen bodies too. which reminds me - i should check on the availability of black nib units for my pilot capless. i have 2 stationery shops in mind, and aeon mall as the last resort. that should make my trip more fun!

-random thought of the day: Sleep early!-

JLPT did not go well. even before the test, i realized that i didn't print out the health declaration that candidates were supposed to submit at the venue. that's how i learnt that anyone can upload documents to a server and print them at a convenience store. cost me 20 yen though. considering that the NUS print shop used to charge 3 or 4 cents a side, 20 cents is a ripoff. but i suppose people will be willing to pay more when they're desperate. i also forgot to bring a watch, so i stopped by a daiso and bought one for 500 yen. good thing i did that; the exam venue didn't have a clock. it was way more reassuring to know how much time had elapsed (and how much time was remaining). pace-wise, i think i did ok. finished my first pass of the questions about 70 minutes in, out of 105 minutes total. that left me about 30 minutes to go back to the blanks and check through everything.

regarding the test itself, i'd say there's a 10-15% chance that i pass. breaking it down by section, i'm pretty sure i'll pass the reading and listening sections, but fail the combined grammar and vocabulary one. failing any section results in an overall fail, by the way, regardless of how well you scored in other areas. the thing i took away (other than the fact that i need a better study plan and way more commitment) is to trust myself more. i had at least 2 questions which i answered correctly at first, but later changed the answers to incorrect options. i'm just hoping that my fail isn't a borderline one that correctly answering those two questions would have resulted in my passing the test. that would be severely annoying.

perspective check! this isn't important, in the long run. my deadline to get JLPT qualification is by the time i leave japan. i have another 2 attempts at taking the test before then. also, this doesn't affect me in any major way, like, i'm not going to lose my job if i don't pass. me failing might not be the worst thing, as i plan to use this as a teachable moment for my kids. i've mentioned before that japanese society believes that failure = bad, so i want to use my actual experience to show them that it's ok to fail, and it's what we do after the failure that's the most important. it happened with my driving license conversion too. i wouldn't say that it's ironic...more like it's appropriate, that i'm learning this lesson over and over again. or maybe i'm just noticing it more because i'm paying attention? at any rate, it's important that i don't forget, considering failing at something i wanted to succeed in put me in a slump that took over a year to recover from. i really have  to have multiple exposures to failure from now on. that way, i can internalize this lesson and become more resilient.

for now, i think i need to wind down a little. i'll probably resume studying after i know the results (end-january). in the one-in-a-million chance that i pass, that'll be one less thing on my plate. but i'm not going to place too high hopes there. moderating expectations, being realistic, and all that. in the nearer future though, science videos. or rather, collating questions this time round. will give myself a week to decompress before i let them know that i'm ready to resume work.

-random thought of the day: Half a year till the next test!-

Hard to believe that i was in kobe just this morning, and now i'm back in kochi, fresh out of the bath, and feeling relaxed. i did a lot of things and had a lot of thoughts over the past 4 days. time to break out the 10 sentences per point rule. there's a twist this time, in that i'm going to list out the major bullet points first, then go down the list and fill them out one by one. i figure that this will help me stay on track better.

- driving

as you may know, i like driving. that's why i thought it would be a fun challenge to drive to osaka and kobe, instead of taking a plane. i drove 795km in this past week alone, the bulk of which was just getting to and from osaka. i quite enjoyed myself! although it's a pity that the quality of the roads in rural japan aren't as good as in the more urban areas. i found myself thinking, multiple times on the journey, 'i wish i was doing this road trip in my civic'. it's hard to go fast (and to look cool) in a kei car.

- osaka

i didn't do much in osaka, just stayed a night and collected my passport. the hotel room i booked turned out to be a cubicle/capsule in an onsen resort. i should have guessed that rooms don't go for 2999 yen! it wasn't bad, by any means...just not what i was expecting. not sure that i would dare to book such accommodations if it weren't japan. the bath facilities were amazing, though! there is this electric seat in the bath where you can feel an electric current. i didn't dare sit down there - probably because mixing electricity with water sounds like a really bad idea. i actually would visit (and maybe stay over) again, if i had business in the vicinity.

- passport collection

the process was fairly straightforward; i was in and out in about 10 minutes. the difficulty is finding the place. turns out that the singapore consulate-general in osaka is a small office located in a building owned by shimano. yes, the bicycle gear company. so you have to clear shimano security before going in. it seems like a one-person operation. lucky i remembered to bring my passport!

- kobe (general)

kobe is probably the biggest and most famous city in hyogo prefecture. side note: it annoys me, that the prefecture names don't always match up with the names of their capitals. there is a strong chinese influence, probably because it was one of the places where chinese immigrants were first allowed to settle. the city wasn't that crowded, but i felt a vibrancy and life that is missing from my rural neck of the woods.

- kobe (food)

due to the chinese influence, there were many chinese dishes available. from dim sum like xiao long bao to bak zhang, and even full-blown chinese restaurants! i didn't eat much though. somehow, i found myself a little reluctant to eat in public. i don't know why, either; perhaps i haven't done it in such a long time, it feels foreign and weird now. i did try kobe beef sushi, which was nice but expensive. there was also an abura soba (dry ramen) shop, which is only the second or third one i've seen so far. i also learnt that kobe is famous for chocolate. i went to visit a famous chocolatier's shop and bought ruby chocolate-coated raisins. they were good, but not super special.

- parking prices

whenever i go to the city, i always feel so grateful that parking literally anywhere in my town is free. the city parking rates are scary too - the worst i saw was 300 yen per 10 minutes, no upper limit to the fee. that translates to $18 an hour, by the way. to think that i used to balk at parking prices in singapore! well, for balance, parking in the city is more expensive in japan than in singapore, but the reverse is true for suburbs and rural areas - as rural as you get in singapore, anyway. so i guess it just depends on where you live in japan.

- meeting my professor

originally, my mission was just to collect my passport and go back. but my professor mentioned that he'd be in kobe for a conference around this period. since it was on my route anyway, we arranged a dinner. that was yesterday, and apart from him and me, my russian postdoc (who's now a professor in another university), my junior (who's now a postdoc in the lab), and a current phd student (who joined the lab after i left) also joined us. we caught each other up on the last 2 years over a nice steak dinner. in a strange parallel, he's also been baking - but pandan cake instead of bread. that's something i've been wanting to try! my former postdoc is now married, and she gave birth not too long ago. the meeting left me with a full stomach, and an even fuller heart. i hope the next time we catch up won't be after another 2 years.

- an interesting encounter

on my second night in kobe, i went to this yaki udon place for dinner. the main draw for me wasn't the noodles, but the fact that organ meats were offered as mix-ins. i tried beef liver and either stomach or intestine, i forget which. the liver is not something i'd go for again, but yes to the stomach/intestine. so while i was there, i uncharacteristically struck up a conversation with a salaryman who was a regular customer. he helped translate the menu for me, and we had some nice/funny conversation with the other patrons too. nobody offered to buy me dinner or take me on a road trip, like scary JC friend has experienced, but i figure baby steps. i can't remember whose quote this is, but someone said, "a stranger is just a friend you haven't made yet". i'll try to live by that more, within common-sensical limits, of course.

- japanese study

i finished up the remaining 2 practice papers while in kobe. the results were not exactly encouraging. there are still so many kanji that i don't know the reading of, words that i don't know the meaning of, and my reading speed is still too slow. don't have high hopes of passing. well, failing the first time isn't the end of the world, but it'd be much better to pass in one shot. i still have tomorrow for revision, so i'll use the time to brush up on my weak areas, and attempt the listening section.

- future direction

during the dinner with my professor, he asked about how long i intended to stay in japan, and what i wanted to do in the future. so i told him about the IP plan. he suggested that i look into data science and integrating it into IP work - patent searching, for example. i don't know if that's a path i want to follow, because computing is not my thing. but i figured that there's no harm in taking a look. preliminary googling has turned up that java (which is different from javascript) and python would be promising starts.

- thoughts about my kids

since they asked over dinner, i also shared a bit of what i'm currently doing. showed them the video of my favourite class doing their dance item during last year's sports day. it's going to sound weird, but i felt proud when i talked about them! if only they would allow me to choose what classes i wanted to take upon recontracting! interestingly, my former postdoc said that she couldn't imagine me interacting with or teaching primary school kids. see? i told you kids and me don't mix.

- organized chaos (the glove story)

i'm the kind of person who knows where things should be, despite the overall area looking like a mess. you should have seen my lab space! yes, i'll admit that it sometimes makes finding things more difficult than it should be, but it works for me. well, since the weather got colder, i wanted to use my thicker gloves. i must have turned my room upside down searching for them before the trip! i was sure that they were in there somewhere. while i was in kobe, i had the temptation to buy another pair at the conveniently-located uniqlo, but i resisted because i knew that they HAD to turn up. ends up i was right; they'd fallen off the shelf in the closet space, and were on the floor. it took a torchlight to see them. go me for not wasting money!

- budget woes

which leads to my budget for the trip. i've definitely blown it...i withdrew 25000 yen in cash, and have like, 5000 remaining? that's excluding the purchases made on my credit card and the tolls on the expressway, among other things. i'd say that the saving grace here is that no money was spent unnecessarily. and thankfully, i have adequate savings which can withstand a small to medium hit once or twice a year.

- superficiality

osaka and kobe are more populated, so i thought i'd give the dating app thing a try while i was there. set up a bare-bones profile (no pictures, but with real age, height, and weight) and searched for guys near me. there was one like, 80m away, so i assume he was in the same building. there was another guy further away who listed himself as looking for chats and friends, so i dropped him a message - just a simple "hi". his first (and only) reply was (translated) "aren't you way too fat?" for all the moral education that they teach in schools, all the lessons about how discrimination is bad, every human has value and is precious, to consider others' feelings, this was unexpected. and yet...not entirely so. ah well.

- 377a thoughts

didn't bother watching the debates, because it's all a big wayang. i do not, even for a second, believe that all the MPs from the ruling party suddenly grew a heart and felt compassion for LGBT individuals. it's worrying, because now their bigoted feelings will fester in silence. the opposition's decision to lift the whip (ie. not force its MPs to vote in a particular way) was brave, although it did show that some opposition MPs place more emphasis on abstract religious concepts than the actual suffering of their fellow man. disappointed, but expected. but at the end of the day, i'll take the win. i've blogged about my thoughts on gay marriage before, so not going to do the broken record thing here. but really...civil unions with benefits identical to marriage!

- comfort zone

it's only when i leave my town that i get the feeling like i should be doing more in all aspects of my life. guess it's because leaving this small town reminds me that there's a much bigger world out there. related thought...it might also be because i'm getting too comfortable here. i mean, the work is brainless, i've basically tackled all the challenges of daily living, and my stress test results always show that i'm feeling restless because my work is too easy. need to find myself a consistent challenge, something i can do semi-regularly. will have to meditate on that.

-random thought of the day: JLPT in about 36 hours!-

Need to get some thoughts out of my head, and my ducks in a row before the trip. whoever thought of that idiom, anyway? i imagine it must have been some duck hunter. google turned up so many different stories about its origins that i'm not going to bother going down that rabbit hole.

there are about 48 hours remaining until i start the drive to osaka. in that time, i have to:

- wash the car

- withdraw money and change denominations

- clean the house

- settle rubbish disposal

- mail out an amazon return

- do a load of laundry (might push this back until after the trip)

- get souvenirs for my professor and the lab

- pack for the trip

- put more songs into my phone and create a playlist

seems like a lot, but about half the tasks can be done in no time at all. the time-consuming ones would be washing the car, cleaning the house, and doing laundry. because i'm not going to be at home for the next week, i want to get rid of all biodegradable waste on monday, which is rubbish disposal day. also, as a reminder to myself, i absolutely must pack and bring my old passport. they won't give me the new one otherwise, and i'd have to waste time, money, and leave to go down again.

some other things to update you all on...we had a welcome party for the new staff members in the office. about half a year late, but COVID forced us to postpone the original plan, which was to have it in july. i was quite amused at one particular conversation. the new vice-superintendent was asking if i had trouble adapting to the food in japan (despite me being here for almost 2 years already), and that led to a conversation about food that some people can't handle. coriander was brought up as an example, because some people have a genetic mutation that makes it taste like soap to them. he was trying to describe it to me, because he only knew the japanese name and i didn't. he was like, "you know, it's a herb or vegetable used a lot in southeast asia, like in thailand..." after establishing that it was coriander that he had in mind, i added, "yeah, it's used a lot in singapore too" and he followed up with, "oh? have you been to singapore, then?" i froze on the spot in a mixture of disbelief and amusement! my mid-level boss came to the rescue and reminded him that i was in fact singaporean. if i'd had my wits about me, i'd have said "oh yeah, i've been there before. nice place!" pretty sure it was just a slip of his mind, but it was funny nonetheless.

in less happy news, i found an old news article about my late coach. at least, i think it's him; the name and age both check out. the person mentioned in the article got in trouble for uh, inappropriate relations with minors. i have no idea what the conclusion was, though i don't think there was a conviction - else he wouldn't have been able to coach us. the article had said that sentencing would be at a later date, but i didn't manage to find any follow-up to it. with that piece of background info, i'm seeing the cryptic warning that my teacher-in-charge gave me so many years ago in a new light. but, i will stress again that to the best of my knowledge, my coach never behaved inappropriately towards me or anyone else. i suppose that's the end of the matter. not like i can ask my coach about it any more. and even if he were still alive, i wouldn't bring it up.

videos about tesla cars have made their way into my youtube feed. i have to admit, i'm quite taken by them. first and foremost is the cost savings - charging a tesla to full costs about half the price of a full tank of petrol, and you generally get more mileage out of a full battery than a full petrol tank. next and less important are the quality of life features like touch-responsiveness, auto-drive, auto-park, etc. combined with the overall appearance, it looks so futuristic! but i don't think i'd want to use auto-drive, unless i'm stuck in rush-hour traffic. after all, the fun of driving is, well, driving!

i do have a concern though, about the connectivity. the car downloads software updates (there's a sentence i never thought i'd say), which means that it's vulnerable to hacking. the thought of everything going unresponsive while travelling at high speeds is quite scary. of course, this is me speaking without having done my homework about the car's security features, so i'm sure that they have some manual override or safety features that i don't know about. for fairness, i should say that tesla isn't the only maker of electric cars; ford and chevrolet also have fully electric models. there's relatively little talk of electric vehicles made by japanese brands, but some googling has shown that they exist. perhaps they still haven't taken hold in this part of the world. however, cars that are powered by a hybrid of petrol and electricity are plentiful, so perhaps it's only a matter of time.

with what's left of today, i think i'll focus on the house cleaning. rain has put a damper on the laundry plan, so i'll probably do packing and music uploading too. seems kind of trivial, but it's a quality of life thing. i want my first road trip to go well. i'll buy the souvenir (probably some snacks) and wash the car tomorrow. everything else will be settled on monday, just before i leave.

-random thought of the day: Need to squeeze in study time during the trip.-

Felt really tired yesterday, so i went to sleep early-ish. good thing today is a public holiday, so i could sleep in a little. i typed "repay my sleep debt" at first, but deleted it because i don't really have sleep debt now. i guess it's just the weather. i did have a strange dream though, about the older BPS brother. in the dream, i was living in the bishan house, and he told me that his mother had kicked him out. there was something else about him being secretive not wanting to tell me something, which is actually quite par for the course as far as these brothers are concerned. i don't remember how the dream ended, though.

gave the super-fluffy omelette another go today. despite whisking until my arms were sore, it still turned out pretty much the same as the first time. don't think i'll be doing that again in a hurry, if even at all. too much effort. i also made ginger chocolate for the office this past monday. to be exact, it's actually ganache (known in japan as "生チョコ" - nama choko, or raw/fresh chocolate) pieces made with ginger-infused cream and with bits of ginger mixed throughout. i felt that it was lacking in ginger flavour, but the people in the office seemed to like it. i think what i'll do differently next time is grate the ginger, instead of mincing it by hand. also bearing in mind that the next time i make this will be for kids, i'll probably go for a mix of milk and dark chocolate, instead of pure dark chocolate.

decided to explore my japan options further, so i googled for more IP firms in the osaka area. my search turned up 3 prospects, and i'm most hopeful for the one that invites applicants to send inquiries to them in english. bonus is they're part of a group that has an office in singapore! there was another company that listed "in-house english conversation enrichment/support" as a staff benefit, which i thought was quite amusing. it's actually the company which i'd most like to join (just based off the impression from the website) because they offer flexi-work, exam leave, and some other nice asides. it seems to me like they are the most supportive of their staff going the patent attorney track.

before all that though, the big questions i have to answer are: (1) is this going to be useful for me? (2) how relevant will this be to my future career? yes, it's hypocritical when you consider my current job, but the plan has always been to go back into something science-related (that isn't teaching) after JET. for question 1, i'd say that it would be useful, because if nothing else, it's work experience. maybe i'll prove myself to be able to handle working in "real" corporate japan. or i might regret leaving the slack life. either way, it'll allow me to find out more about myself. question 2's answer is a bit more complicated. it's relevant, but not entirely. let me explain. it's relevant in the sense that it's in the right industry, ie. my resume will show that i worked for however long in an IP firm. at the same time, the IP laws in each country are different, so the practices will differ as well. but i figure that the core principles are more or less similar. one reassurance is that i'm eligible for a refund of up to 5 years of the pension fund money (CPF) that i paid, so if i decide to leave after a year, i can still get everything i'm due.

just took a look at the patent attorney qualifying exams in japan. as japan usually does, it offered various breakdowns of the candidate demographic. it blew my mind that some people took the exam for the 21st time and above this year, especially when i know that this is an annual exam. the oldest candidate is over 70 years old! they also posted the questions for the legal and technical sections, and i was able to get the gist of what most of the questions were asking for the chemistry option. it's actually about undergrad level. admittedly, i've forgotten a good chunk of them, including fischer projections and entropy calculations. but the knowledge is regain-able with some study. the big problem, however, is how to express it in japanese. i'm fairly confident that i could pass the exam if i was allowed to answer in english, and even more so if they gave me the questions in english too! but my japanese vocabulary simply isn't up to scratch as far as technical terms are concerned. also, assuming the test paper is all the candidates get, they won't be allowed to refer to a periodic table. i think that while it wouldn't be impossible for me to qualify as a patent attorney in japan, the process will take far more effort than it's worth. so here's the plan: i'll send some emails out to the IP firms i have in mind. i expect that most of them won't reply, or if they do, it'll be a polite GTFO. but hey, no harm in knocking on more doors.

having said that, i think i should work harder on finding employment outside of japan. if my eventual goal is to end up qualified as a patent attorney, i'd be better off doing it in australia or singapore. i saw that one potential IP firm has a more or less permanent ad up on jobstreet, which makes me worry that they're another revolving-door company. worse is their website isn't advertising any vacancies at all. my top choice for singapore (the firm that my junior is now in) isn't hiring chemists at the moment. with luck, that'll change by 2024.

-random thought of the day: Shower, then sleep.-

Odd sounds are coming from my laptop fans. guessing that it's wear and tear, and/or dust buildup. more worryingly, i've had a couple instances of blue screens when i quit final fantasy. just praying that it holds out for as long as i'm in japan. if it gets worse, i suppose i can try removing the bottom panel for a deeper clean inside. ultimate worst case: buy a laptop here, or if the time and place work out, buy one from singapore and bring it in. i REALLY want to avoid that though, because the plan is to upgrade my desktop once JET is over.

my plan for having a restful sleep last night and a productive day today didn't work out. for some reason, my sinuses got badly congested last night. it was bad to the point where an airtight seal formed, and i could only breathe out of my mouth. had to hold my breath even to swallow water, because the displaced air couldn't just escape like it usually does. let me tell you, that isn't a pleasant feeling. so the sinus problem ended up waking me up multiple times throughout the night, and i slept on and off until noon today as a result. it seems to be better now, although there's still some pressure in my face and behind my eyes. makes me wonder why...maybe atmospheric pressure fluctuations?

as i was lying in bed, i watched an NHK documentary called "the professionals". the synopsis said that this episode was about a patissier who closed his shop at the height of its popularity, which i found to be a bit misleading. see, he did close his shop, but he did it at age 65, and the shop had been around for about 20 years prior. in the time it was open, it enjoyed consistently high customer flow, so i don't think the shop was necessarily at the height of its popularity when it was closed. but anyway. minor nitpicking aside, his story is quite fascinating. he went to france at age 25 without knowing any french. that's brave as hell. through a series of events, he met a french master chef in japan, who took him under his wing and his career took off from there. it makes me think that success is also dependent on meeting the right people at the right time. the documentary also told the story of him and his wife, how they work together, and that he gave her a kidney.

under the right circumstances and conditions, i could probably be persuaded to open a F&B shop. probably the most important thing for me is not having to interact with customers. i'm the kind of person who can't sustain social interaction, unless it's with people i like/am comfortable with. maybe instead of running the full shop, i'd be better off messing around in the kitchen, while the admin and customer service parts are settled by other people. just leave me alone to experiment with food, i guess. i might even go to the extent of not offering a fixed menu - what you get depends on what's fresh at the markets that day, and what i feel like making. although the thing is, you don't get to be that eccentric unless you have an established reputation. maybe i'll consider it when i have less to lose.

for now, kansai trip in 1 week, JLPT in 2 weeks, JET annual conference in 3 weeks, and that should be the all the big events of 2022 done. i can't help but feel like i'm forgetting to blog about something. well...if i can't recall it now, it's probably not important.

-random thought of the day: Double batch of brownies tomorrow!-

Lending weight to my hypothesis that i'm dehydrated is the fact that i have an ulcer forming in my mouth. google tells me that ulcers can be due to anything from vitamin B-12 deficiency to HIV. i'm more inclined to apply occam's razor here and choose the simplest (and most probable) explanation - that i'm not drinking enough water. the plan right now is to see if it'll go away on its own with increased water consumption. failing that, it'll be time to break out the salt.

we're starting the transition into winter; the cold after stepping out of the shower is becoming uncomfortable, and fleece is a necessity now. probably because people use more energy/electricity in the winter (due to heating needs), my power company is running a campaign where they'll give you points (1 point = 1 yen credit) if you use less energy this year than you did a year ago. to be specific, you have to have energy savings of 3% or more to be eligible. and then, they'll do a lucky draw to determine the prize tier. there's 10000, 3000, and 1000 yen tiers. i used 167 kWh last january, so i'll have to use 162 kWh maximum to be eligible. considering that i was billed for 276 kWh just last month (WHY!?), i have my doubts on whether i'll be able to make it. but hey...it didn't cost me anything to enter the draw, and so it's really just a bonus if i happen to be eligible and get picked. i'm also not going to do anything special towards the goal; just live normally and maybe be more conscious about leaving lights on unnecessarily. definitely not going to go auntie mode and go all out to get in the draw, like investing in alternative heating methods, for instance. just for perspective, if i were to buy kerosene and a heater, it would most likely be a net loss unless i won the 10000 yen prize.

seeing as the JLPT is approaching, i did my first practice paper yesterday (minus the listening section). scored 57/75, which is 76%. it's not truly indicative though, because i didn't do it under strict test conditions. i found that i didn't have the mental stamina to get through it in one sitting, and i didn't even consider the time limit. i blame the distractions around me in part, but more importantly, my brain hasn't been exercised enough. this year's stress survey showed that what little stress i currently have is primarily due to feeling bored/having excess energy from being underutilized. the people at the accursed IP firm called it "capacity". i'd say that my capacity is 5% full on a typical day, maybe 10-20% when things get busy. i think i'll need to do more than what i'm currently doing to maintain my brain's sharpness. i've tried crosswords recently, and while they're fun, the clues become kind of repetitive after a while.

but i digress. the mistakes i made in the practice test were mainly in the grammar and reading sections. i asked my colleagues to explain why certain expressions were used, and they couldn't. i'm not upset though, because it's the same for me in english! like, how do you explain that in english, you put on and take off clothes, but take on and put off responsibilities? why don't the puts and takes match each other? i have to admit though, it was kind of annoying to see them take one look at my mistake and go," yeah, that really doesn't fit in the sentence". the annoyance comes from jealousy, i guess, that they can do that. but to balance it out, i can do it for english while they can't. they also told me that they estimated some of the reading passages to be at university entrance exam level, which made me feel a little better about getting some questions wrong. still, it feels too borderline. i'm especially worried about the time management part. the assessment book which i'm using for practice gives recommended time allocations for the questions. for the easy kanji and grammar ones, it's 30 seconds per question, ie. you either know the answer or don't. there are 2 more practice papers in the assessment book, and with my other workbooks, that should last me until the exam.

remember that i was asked to help organize a speech contest earlier this month? the results are out, and we're now preparing prizes for the participants. i was tasked to translate the standard japanese certificate text into english. for some reason, my brain jammed at "優秀". i was stuck between "good" and "excellent", both of which i felt were not appropriate to express what the word actually means. an SOS to the singapore JET discord turned up alternatives like "outstanding" and "exceptional", among others. i ended up using those 2. mildly worried that i couldn't think of those words by myself. they're not unfamiliar by any means, but i just couldn't recall them. i do think that my english ability is being continuously eroded as i stay in japan. but with my foundation, i'm sure that picking it all back up will be easy once i'm in a primarily english-speaking environment. on the bright side, my japanese is improving purely passively. the JLPT practice test had one reading question based on a flyer promoting an event. thanks to seeing so many documents of a similar nature in the course of my work and daily life, i breezed through that particular one.

also this past week, i was fountain pen shopping. remember how i said that i wanted to focus more on snap-cap pens? i saw the hongdian black forest pen, and decided that i wanted one each in black and in blue. it's really nice; simple understated design, no trim rings or shiny parts. in addition, i also got spare nibs in different sizes. no regrets (yet), and i think that i'll end up using them fairly often. short day tomorrow, then maybe doing something for the soccer team over the weekend. and with a public holiday next wednesday, i'm looking forward to a restful lead-in to the end of the year.

-random thought of the day: Interesting when you meet your students' parents at work.-

Dehydration and lack of sleep gives me headaches. so the fact that my head hurts now probably means that i haven't been drinking enough water or that i've been sleeping too little. in this case, it's probably the former. thinking about my water consumption, i realize it's decreased now that the weather's become cooler. i think i'm hitting maybe between 1 to 2 litres out of my 3-litre daily minimum target. need to drink more; perhaps that'll reduce the urges to eat too.

the last update was last week, so i've got a week of stuff to catch you up on. despite saying that my busy period is over, i still ended up staying late a couple of days last week, because one kid had his eiken interview scheduled later than the others and he wanted more practice. that aside, i've also been staying back out of my own volition to watch the soccer team training. now that it's approaching the winter-y season, the sky gets pitch black before 6pm. as a result, all CCAs end earlier. i find that it's a good opportunity to have extra interaction with the kids without eating too much into my personal time.

more than what's been going on in my life, there've been things going on in my mind. first is the thought of ending JET. it's still early, but i've been thinking about things to do to re-settle back into singapore. but as i was running through things that i needed/wanted to get/do, i realized that i wasn't (and still am not) looking forward to going back. as a believer that one is in control of one's own happiness and well-being, this doesn't sit right with me. fixing this problem is simple enough - in theory. i could (1) relocate to somewhere where i'd be happy, or (2) change my thinking about singapore. #1 represents the high-difficulty "big risk, big reward" option, and #2 is the safe "fall-back" alternative. within the realm of possibilities for #1, japan still exists as an option. but if i do stay here, i don't think that i could go into IP. maybe i can think of alternatives, where i can use my experience in an academic environment without going into hardcore science again. i realize that the language barrier is a really effective passive screening tool. like, if i wanted to apply to a japanese university (even to say, their international outreach department), i'd have to be proficient in japanese to at least a business level, if not native proficiency. while i know the language well enough to survive in japan, i'd consider myself at maybe 40% proficiency relative to a native speaker, which i doubt is good enough for working here.

on a related note about chasing one's happiness, i saw on facebook that my JC classmate had finished a year in africa, and was planning to go back to singapore, probably for a break before the next big adventure. back when we were in JC, she was the quietest one out of the 5 girls in the class. if you had asked me, 17 years ago, what she'd be doing at age 34, i'd probably have said something like married with kids, working at a stable job or being a housewife. i mean, she had a steady boyfriend and they looked like they were going to get married, settle down, the whole nine yards! but, here she is now, travelling the world with her husband and having a blast, by the looks of things. she's not with the JC boyfriend now, by the way. i think they broke up either towards the end of or after JC, but i don't know why. her experiences are really interesting. before africa, i believe she was in south america. those are destinations way too far out of my comfort zone, so i'm not exactly envious of her in that sense. but i do think she's really brave to live like that. i remember catching up with her at a reunion that one of our schoolmates hosted some years ago. she said that she couldn't bear the thought of working a 9-5 job day in and day out, coming home to the same HDB flat and just letting life go by (words to that effect, anyway). i wouldn't mind a daily routine, since it's kind of what i have now in japan. but the difference is that there's so much more to worry about in singapore.

since the topic came up, i might as well use this chance to explore if there's really so much to worry about, or if i'm exaggerating the problems. probably the most common worry among singaporeans is not having enough money. there was literally a movie made about it 20-some years ago - it's called money no enough, or 钱不够用. it's kind of sad to see that the situation has only deteriorated since then. in my case specifically, my biggest worry would be the ability to afford housing. considering i'll probably be living alone, or at most with only one other person, i'd say a 3-room flat would be enough for me. going by recent figures, that would set me back $300000 or more. that translates into a monthly payment of about $1000 for 25 years. considering that i can only buy a flat after turning 35 years old, i'll be paying until i'm 60! the other worry would be healthcare. like, if i were to get sick and require costly care and/or treatment. i suppose insurance mitigates that to some degree, but i'd still have to pay part of the expenses out of pocket. apart from those major things, i suppose how much i spend will be proportional to my wants. like, if i travel frequently, buy tons of material things, etc.

actually, i realize that compared to most of my peers, i am saved a lot of headache because i don't intend to have children. i don't have to worry about the associated costs of having a child (school fees, other expenses). perhaps an even bigger relief is that i don't have to think about leaving anything behind for anyone when i die. i mean, sure, it'd be nice to give surviving friends and relatives a little something extra, but i wouldn't be obliged to leave an inheritance for anyone, or be concerned about how people are going to live without me providing for them. i guess it's kind of selfish, but it's a load off my shoulders to know that i only need to worry about my own survival for as long as i'm alive.

back to more immediate things, seasonality hits again! the supermarket now has a whole section dedicated to fish roe. i bought something called 子持ちヒラメ (komochi hirame), which means "child-bearing flounder". it's a steak of flounder, complete with roe sacs. according to my online research, it's traditionally used in hotpot. i've been throwing it in the rice cooker to cook together with the rice. that preparation is good too! having grown up eating fish roe, the thought doesn't really gross me out. the eggs don't particularly taste of anything, but i've heard that they're really nutritious. on the other hand, their reproductive counterpart 白子 (shirako, or soft roe - basically fish sperm) tastes metallic. i've only had it once or twice, and i don't think i've acquired that taste yet. it's usually sold in huge packs in the supermarket, which is a deterrent to buying them as i worry that i'll end up throwing most of it away (hence wasting money) in the event that the flavour doesn't agree with me.

made the choco-banana cake again for the other school's culture festival yesterday. it went down well, i think. i realize that my cooking repertoire is increasing. a few colleagues at the town hall have said that i can/should consider selling my baked goods professionally. they're probably just being kind. besides, i don't think i want to do that. the pressure of making the business succeed would spoil my love for cooking/baking, i think. separately, i tried making a very different kind of omelette from memory, based on this video i saw many years ago:

it didn't turn out nearly as tall or as fluffy even after folding, probably because i didn't whisk the eggs hard enough, and didn't let it rest off the heat before finishing and plating. should have checked the video again before trying it! but the crispy exterior was a nice texture change from the usual unbrowned french-style omelettes i make to practise my technique. bonus: the crispy exterior meant that nothing stuck to the pan this time! besides, you know what they say - there's no such thing as a bad failed omelette. if they don't turn out well, they become scrambled eggs, which are still delicious! i'll probably try making it again soon, but with better technique.

thinking of my JC classmate made me check out the most recent issue of the CJC yearbook. there was a dedication to an ex-vice-principal, who passed away in 2020. although she was the vice-principal during my J1 year (she retired after that), i didn't feel any sense of loss or grief because i have literally never spoken to her before! nevertheless, there were many glowing testimonials and odes to her, so she evidently touched many lives throughout her career. flipping through the staff pictures, i only recognize maybe 15 out of 100+ staff by name, and have had direct interaction with maybe 10 or less of them. i'm actually surprised at the number; i'd have thought it would be less! there are a few stalwarts still in the chemistry department, and a couple of teachers in the english department whose reputations precede them. i'd last heard that one of them went back to the UK, but his linked profile says that he came back after less than a year. the people in the judo club are totally foreign to me - no surprises there since i stopped going back in 2016. i was surprised that they changed coaches, to someone from SJC. but it's good. the previous coach should be moving on. skimming through the profiles of the various judo clubs in singapore only confirmed that my decision to wash my hands off the whole scene there was the right one. i also saw in kurash that someone i vowed never to work with again has been accepted into the federation. time for me to make my exit there too. to bring back the juggling analogy relating to different aspects of life, i think i'll only have the capacity for work, personal care, and maybe one or two additional balls. what they exactly are will have to be determined at a later point, but right now i'm thinking social life (encompassing both friends and dating), and possibly one other thing.

over the past week or two, i've received some nuisance messages on whatsapp. they're not scam messages, but what makes me call them nuisances is that the senders will delete them before i get a chance to read them. i know who the senders are, too - the BPS brothers from a long time ago. if i had to guess, i'd say that this is their way of getting my attention. for what purpose, i don't know. but i decided that i'm not going to entertain any games. so until i know what the purpose for them contacting me is, i won't react. the worst case if this persists is i block the numbers, no fuss or hassle. life is so much less complicated this way.

going to have a couple of short days next week, because the schools have some workshops in the afternoons that i'm not required to attend. good chance to burn up all the accumulated unrecorded time off. better study for JLPT too, considering the test is just 3 weeks away! would be nice to pass on the first try, although given my track record, i don't have my hopes too high. hopefully the remaining time will boost my confidence.

-random thought of the day: Feeling conflicted.-

Yesterday's english speech contest marked the end of my busy period this term. it was...not a disaster, but could have been better. i attribute it to one of the schools not being willing to dedicate more resources/support to make it a bigger event. we are due for an AAR eventually, i think, and depending on how it goes, the contest might become an annual thing, along with the usual japanese speech contest. on my part, the things i could have done better would be better choices of reading passages (duration-wise), giving way more advance notice, pushing for deadlines to be more strictly followed, and establishing clearer judging criteria. nevertheless, i'm grateful that the kids did their best and put up a decent showing. the guest judge (someone from the prefectural board of education) gave the kids advice on how to present better. as befitting a(n ex-?)high school english teacher, his english was really good! and i'm not saying that just to be polite. i realize that all japanese people who are proficient in english have the same accent when speaking it. it's hard to describe, but i think the most distinguishing feature is that the Rs and Ls can be clearly differentiated.

i've been doing some cooking experiments recently. first was a banana chocolate cake. see, i usually make things for the school staff when we go back for events on saturdays. i do it maybe once or twice a term, so it's not that much of an effort. i was running out of ideas, and it so happened that i had some bananas which i'd bought a few days ago. they were getting old, and i just put two and two together. it started out as a simple banana cake, but then, i had the brainwave of "hey, choco-banana is a thing in japan!", so i swirled chocolate through the batter before baking. the bananas provided additional moisture, which was nice. not sure if the chocolate burned; i sampled an edge piece (which didn't have too much chocolate in it) for quality control, and it was fairly good. no complaints from anyone, so i'll take it as a win.

less of a win were the brownies i made for the school band to support their annual concert. because my usual metal baking tin was occupied by the chocolate banana cake, i used a glass baking dish instead. i knew that there was a difference in how things baked in metal vs glass, but i remembered it the wrong way round. the actual difference is that glass retains heat better than metal, so it takes longer to warm up, but also retains the heat for longer. if you bake things in glass, you should probably reduce the temperature, time, or both. genius me went to increase the temperature instead. result was that the whole bottom and some of the sides burnt. lucky i caught on and trimmed the burnt bits off. it meant that the pieces were about 20% thinner, though. that'll teach me to do something unfamiliar with no trial run!

other cooking adventures: caramelized bananas. still need better control on heating the sugar for that one. i'm surprised at how much the bananas retain their flavour even after cooking! in the middle of last week, i made a huge pot of cream soup, which lasted me for 3 days. the original plan was to make soup in a homemade bread bowl, but then i discovered that i didn't have enough flour to make a full-sized loaf. and i had quite a lot of vegetables, so i just decided to put everything in the soup. it was nice! for once, i didn't overdo the garlic. the things i'd do differently would probably be to blend the soup, and to use more cream. i used a 200mL carton for maybe...2 litres of soup? i did taste it, and i think that it did thicken the soup a little, but more wouldn't be amiss, i think. on the other hand, that makes it less healthy too. we'll see next time.

do you have any weird food rules or biases? while i wouldn't tell others how they should enjoy their food, i do have some food-related beliefs that may be odd to some people. first is the "no fruits and nuts in savoury food" belief. i understand that sweet and sour recipes often use pineapple, and nuts/raisins are commonly added to rice in some cultures, but i wouldn't cook my food that way. not that i wouldn't eat it if it was on the menu, by the way. i also believe that "steak should be medium rare or medium at most", and perhaps more oddly, "white chocolate isn't really chocolate". under normal circumstances, i wouldn't buy white chocolate for personal consumption. but i've recently bought a few bars to make into matcha chocolate, and somehow, i ended up eating a few pieces as they were. i have to say that i quite like it! of course, my first choice will always be dark, but white chocolate isn't off the table any more. i'm thinking it might be because the stuff i have here is less sweet and milky.

which leads me to another point, about opinions. people are often praised for sticking to their guns, less so if they change their minds about something. the only exception would probably be if there's scientific proof to support the new point of view, but those don't really exist for subjective things like taste and preference. i don't think it's wrong to change one's mind - it just shows that people are capable of learning and growing. i should be more confident about my opinions. having said that, i don't think i'll be liking well-done steak anytime soon!

another new thing i experienced recently is doing an amazon return. i bought a pull-up bar, the kind that wedges between 2 vertical surfaces. possibly due to the age of the house, i heard wood creaking as i set the bar up. and although the bar was rated to hold up to 200kg, the creaking didn't make me feel safe using it, for fear of personal injury and/or damage to the house. so i arranged a return to amazon. the process was less painful that i thought. apply through the "my orders" page, get a shipping label and barcode, print it out, pack the things up, slap the label on, and send it off. especially because it's in japan, i could drop the package off at the local convenience store. the downside is that the returner is responsible for return postage in the case where the product itself isn't damaged, so i actually got maybe 1800 yen back, out of my 2999 yen refund total. still, some money back is better than nothing...or worse, putting in additional effort to sell it off second-hand.

speaking of amazon, i've also bought a water flosser. it was motivated by a dental health workshop that the kids in school had. i've known for a while that my gums aren't the healthiest, as some dentists have told me. the thing that surprised me was that the water jet was so strong! or maybe it's just my gums are weak. mild pain aside, it's actually quite fun to use! best thing is that it charges by USB, so i can bring it on to my next destination.

not wanting the refund money to sit for too long in my amazon account, i also bought a couple of fountain pens and nibs. metal bodies, snap caps, coloured nibs that match the pen bodies. i'm actually quite excited to get them! and in the event that i don't get along with them, i can give them away to some kids in the schools. i also think that i should start to get rid of some screw-cap pens that i won't be using in the future. unfortunately, that's something i can only do when i'm back in singapore, or long-term in another place. as a reminder to myself, i'm also looking to get the pilot explorer, for a work-appropriate pen. but after JET.

recently, i noticed that there are fewer cars parked in the shared lot outside. the BMW that gave me grief that one time when i'd just moved in is conspicuously missing, as are the 2 cars that are usually parked between me and it. the last time i saw it was...a few weeks ago? makes me think a whole family moved out, especially since one house is now totally dark. considering that i don't interact with them at all, i don't feel particularly affected. but it's interesting to track how a place changes over time.

now that i don't have any more big events on the horizon, it's time i started using up some of my accumulated off-in-lieu. somehow in the last month, i've managed to accumulate 14 hours. i'll probably take the last hour or two off workdays here and there. the goal is to finish using it all by this year.

-random thought of the day: Need to sleep better.-

I will do the usual update about daily life and stuff either later in this post, or in another separate post (depending on how long this one gets by the time i'm done), but first i want to talk about time - in both a micro and macro sense. micro first. over the past week, i've bumped into old students of different levels. some graduated from secondary school, and are now in high school. there was also one who graduated from primary school and is now going to secondary school in another town. in the course of the catching up small talk, i asked them what CCAs they were in. all of them said that they didn't join any CCA. i don't know the reason for the high school students, but for the secondary school kid, he told me that he didn't have time. not because he was super busy, but because it was a 90-minute train ride (one-way) between home and school. so assuming school starts at 8:30am, he'd have to be at the town's station before 7:00am. and if school ended at 4:00pm, he'd reach home at 5:30pm earliest. these projections don't account for the distance from home to train station, or station to school, which means that the actual commute is probably even longer. rounding off to 2 hours one-way, that means 4 hours, or a sixth of his day, is spent travelling. that's such a colossal waste of time! of course, he could be doing something productive on the train ride like studying or sleeping, but still.

during the culture festival this past saturday, the current sec 3 students gave presentations on their vision of the town in 2050. they too, identified its remoteness as an issue. other issues include the aging and diminishing population. is there a good fix? short of moving the town's location or setting up something that will draw people here to live, no. personally, i like one group's idea of setting up a high school here in this town. that way, the kids from the other district won't have to live away from home to go to high school. and as a bonus, maybe future JETs won't have to teach in the primary school. but according to people in the town hall, there was a high school here once, a long time ago. and it closed down due to lack of enrollment, just like one of the secondary schools last year.

after talking to that kid, it got me thinking. are kids born in this town being robbed of a typical childhood/growing up experience? granted, "typical" is very subjective, given how things vary by location in japan. but based on the stereotype, a japanese kid's "typical" school life includes school lunch, CCAs, a ton of homework, all the school events, maybe the odd school romance. to be fair, the schools deliver on most of these things (albeit in a limited capacity as far as CCAs go), but the kids' circumstances mean that they may not get to experience everything fully. interestingly, there has been close to zero talk of romance in all my schools. i mean, i'll occasionally catch whispers of "so-and-so likes whoever", but as far as seeing actual couples together, nope.

next point on micro-scale time, my own time allocation. because of the nature of teaching, i'm on my feet for most of the day. clocking 5000 steps on any school day is a given, and my typical daily count averages around 7000. so, when i leave JET in the future for what will most probably be a deskbound job, i'll have to spend extra time just to get that same amount of physical activity in. that will, in turn, eat into my free time. i suppose i can mitigate it by doing a cycle commute, but again, it would take longer than just driving or public transport. maybe i should just...i don't know, be an OBS instructor or something. no, i kid. i'm not a huge fan of roughing it in the wild. but yes, given that the 86400 seconds per day we get is a fixed number, something will have to change in my routine. i figure that i'll adjust by sleeping earlier, getting up earlier, and maybe gaming less. that's for future me to worry about, though.

transitioning from micro time to macro time, i've started doing some simple static exercises. hopefully that will help with weight loss and muscle gain. our bodies are both wonderful and annoying in the way they can adapt to new conditions. the exercises are push-ups, leg raises, pull-ups, squats, bridges, and twists, all with different levels of difficulty/progression, and not all at once. i'd die! there's a mix of difficulties; easy for some (most), a little advanced for others. unfortunately, there's a difference between the effort requirements from muscles for daily life, and for deliberate exercise. i remembered that the hard way when i couldn't do a set of proper push-ups. right now, the amount of exercise i'm doing is not much, but i hope that the results will accumulate over time. i've got another 510-ish days to improve.

-random thought of the day: Time to break out the fleece!-

Given that it's my birthday, i guess the expectation is that i should be feeling happy, thankful, and/or some other positive emotion(s). to a certain extent, i am. but that's tempered with some other less-good feelings too. might be due to the fatigue from attending sports day yesterday, or just some things that happened in school today.

let's talk about sports day first. compared to last year, i felt more disconnected. or perhaps i should say less involved/invested. guess that's what happens when you lose the emotional connection. i've been trying to identify why i like my secondary school kids more, and i've identified that it's mainly attitude. like, the kids in the secondary school are more willing to interact with me. the main issue isn't even the language barrier in this case. it's that the kids are generally in their own worlds. like, i can ask them something (official stuff about class, not personal questions) in japanese and only get a reply sometimes. well...it's no skin off my nose. putting aside my thoughts about the kids, i'd say that this year's sports day was not exactly worse, but it was less enjoyable than last year's for me. like, the events were similar, but the modifications weren't always good. for instance, the songs that they chose for the dance items were less catchy, somehow. i'm considering just not going next year.

today in school, i was making small talk at the start of class as a warm-up for the kids, like i usually do. it so happened that some of the kids in this class (sec 2) went for the sports day as well, as they still have siblings in the primary school. thinking that i'd use that as a bit of interesting trivia for the others to think about, i asked the kids who were there, "where did i see you yesterday?" total silence from the first 3 people i asked. it was only person 4 that asked me what "where" meant. for context, interrogatives (who, where, when, etc.) are taught in the first term of sec 1. it's now their second term of sec 2. worse, i'm the only foreign english teacher they've had in secondary school, so i am responsible for this in some way. i wish i could understand their thinking sometimes. there was this kid who was unwilling to show me his assignment for fear of having made a mistake. still didn't budge even after i told him that it was my job to look for mistakes and correct them. it's like that stupid meme - the cleaning people are coming over, i'd better clean the house. i mean, let me do my job!

something good that happened today was that my cousin-in-law video called. she was trying to get her kids to sing happy birthday to me, but they kind of froze. stage fright, maybe? i actually kind of wonder if the elder girl still remembers me. i don't expect the younger girl to, because she was born a few weeks after i landed in japan. come to think of it, i can't exactly recall my earliest memory of my non-immediate relatives. for grandparents, i'd say from 3 years old? but for aunts, uncles, and cousins, it's definitely later. if pressed to answer, i'd say 5-6 years old, so maybe i'll still be in time to be part of their core memories. one thing's for sure, if i go back to singapore after JET, it'll be interesting to interact with them again.

browsing linkedin showed me that an acquaintance is now working for the IP firm that i'd like to end up in. we're not close at all - in fact, i don't recall how i know him! my memory says it's either undergrad or grad school. he's a year or two above me, so maybe he TA-ed one of my lab classes. upon looking more intently at his profile picture, i think our association might go back even further. if my hunch is right, he was actually in the year above me in CJC, and my judo senior, to boot! just sent him a message on linkedin. i wonder how he'll react.

still have some things on my mind, but i don't know how best to put them into words. figure i'll let them stew a little bit more in my head. i'm actually hoping that this and next week will pass quickly, because i'm scheduled to appear at an after-school event for some of the primary school kids...aka. more glorified babysitting. and given my thoughts about the primary school now, my goal is just to go in, do the hour, and GTFO.

-random thought of the day: Maybe I'm thinking too much.-