Let it not be said that i don't learn from my mistakes! rain was forecast again for thursday, and my decision to play safe and drive meant that i stayed dry-ish except for the short dashes between the town hall and the carpark; as well as from the car to the house. i realize that it doesn't really rain that much in winter. something to do with the lower humidity, i guess? but now that rain is becoming more common on the forecast, i'm thinking whether i should get rainwear for a bike commute. i'm not too inclined to, because i'd rather be braving the weather from within my car...but we'll see.

sometimes, opportunities kind of fall into your lap. one of the other JETs recommended me for a science curriculum writing side job. i interviewed for it on friday, and it went really well! i didn't really have to use any of the tips and tricks from the parachute book, except for sending a thank you note shortly after the interview. i suppose it helped that i was able to allay one of her biggest concerns using a relevant example. quite proud of myself for that! so, a contract's being drafted, and i'll probably get it early next week. it'll probably be a topic to bring up at a later point, but i somehow think that the interviewer looks familiar. i googled her and it seems that she taught at SJI for a bit. i think she might have been involved with judo as a teacher in charge? would be quite funny if that were the case!

i do have one misgiving with taking this job. it's not about the organization or the job itself...well, in a way, it is about the job itself. more specifically, the industry which it falls under. it's still in the education industry, which i'm trying to get out of. as i was driving to school yesterday after the interview, i thought to myself that the longer you do something for, the more fixed your path becomes. i guess that's why it's hard for mid-career professionals to change industries, especially if their industry is highly specialized. but i take inspiration from my professor, who served in the SAF for 8 years upon completing his undergrad, before going on to get his PhD after retiring from active service. granted that i did things in a slightly different sequence from him, so the challenges are not quite the same. 

there's been a recent ruckus about a singaporean man who sang christian worship songs to people on a plane. i don't know him personally, so i can't comment about him or his character, although accounts from people who do know him aren't flattering. the problem with what he did, as opposed to singing on the streets, is that there is no escape from it on a plane. so for all the religious people saying that LGBT people are forcing their lifestyles on others, time to look in a mirror. if we're being charitable, i suppose we can say that the intention was good, but the execution was horrible. although even that is pushing it a bit. i don't understand religious calls to convert others. things like mother teresa's hospital baptizing people on their deathbeds. not just christians, by the way. i remember radical islamist groups converting hostages (or forcing them to convert) before killing them.

but back to airplane guy. another report revealed that this same guy went to or near the ukraine war zone and sang to the people there too. i'm no religious scholar, but it seems that the people there belong to a different branch of christianity. so i don't know how welcome his actions were. also, it seems he and his group sang in english to a largely non-english-speaking audience. taking all this into account, it seems like a publicity/attention stunt. it's just so extra! i mean, he's an able-bodied young man. wouldn't it have been better for him to help by doing something with actual tangible results? giving out food, helping with menial labour, stuff like that. for the record, i also want to state that i have no problems with christian songs, due to compulsory chapel sessions in primary school (which in a sense is having religion forced on me as well, but it was a christian school so it's to be expected). also, it's possible to hear things and not believe them. if i were on that plane, i'd treat it as in-flight entertainment. and if it was bad (which i read that it was), i'd just put on earphones and turn on music with noise-cancelling. but i do understand how it can be offensive to people of other religions or atheists, and i agree that he shouldn't have done it in the first place.

my weekend is almost over, and i didn't really do anything productive. in fact, i slept more than usual - perhaps making up for sleep debt incurred over the week...which should not happen, given my current low-stress lifestyle. i think i should sleep earlier...which means shifting some of my after work wind-down time to later in the night. also, golden week starts with a holiday this friday, then 3 days from next tuesday to thursday. the placement is kind of not-nice, but one school moved their events around so that they have school on friday then get the next 6 consecutive days off. unfortunately, the school i'm scheduled to go to on mondays are maintaining the calendar schedule, so my golden week will be broken up into 2 blocks of 3 days. i think that i should do something with all that free time. maybe an overnight trip to kochi city? i honestly haven't explored japan very much outside of my town, and i think that it may be a good idea to spend some extended time out of the house.

-random thought of the day: Cycling plans start after the rain forecast!-

Gambled on the weather and lost on thursday. it was fine in the morning, and the forecast said 40% chance of rain in the afternoon, so i decided to cycle as usual instead of my wet weather plan of driving. the rain started in the morning and basically didn't let up for the whole day. so i ended up walking home and driving to work the next day - both because rain was still forecast, and because i had to get my bike home somehow. all in all, not a bad experience, although it most certainly wasn't fun while it was ongoing. at least the rain was light-ish. i realize that i don't really like getting wet while wearing nice-ish clothes (anything that's not purpose-built for exercise). to a certain degree, that also extends to getting sweaty. maybe that explains why i wasn't the most active/outdoorsy kid around. i wonder if aversion to getting wet or dirty is more of a nature or nurture thing; i had JC friends in ODAC (outdoor adventure club) and they'd go for like treks and camps in the forests of malaysia during school holidays. not my idea of a good time, but they seemed to really enjoy it.

the first full week of school is over. my schedule is essentially the same as last year's, so it was easy to get back into the rhythm on that front. the biggest difference is that everyone's moved up a grade, and the classroom allocation has changed in the primary school. i occasionally find myself thinking of kids being in a grade lower than they are now, but adaptation should be easy enough. i'm also happy that the vast majority of the classes are friendly to me. there's one small exception, in that there is some distance with a particular class, but that's more because of their (lack of) english ability than being hostile or uninterested. as for the new teachers, we're getting along decently too. i don't foresee any major problems there either.

countries are beginning to relax their border policies. it's becoming increasingly possible that a summer trip back to singapore would be feasible. in case it is, and in case i do decide to go back for a while, i've asked about applying for a vaccine certificate in japan. there's an app for it, which i just used. pretty easy, with the only minor hiccup being that a device with NFC capability is needed. the alternative to that is applying for a paper certificate at the town hall. best thing is that it's all free! i think i've said it before, but there are many things i have to consider before deciding to go back. border policies, air ticket prices, taking leave, and how it would fit into the overall schedule. not to mention the JPY to SGD exchange rate, which is absolutely horrible now. when i came over, it was about 1 SGD to 80 JPY. the current figure is about 1 SGD to 92 JPY. let me illustrate the difference between the two like this: if i changed 1 million yen a year ago and now, i would receive 2000 SGD less now. it's a lot both in absolute terms and relative terms; that's about 20% difference between the 2 figures. i was joking with the JETs in our discord group, that i'd love to see the day when 1 SGD = 1 JPY. although now that i think more about it, that might not be a good thing, because that would mean singapore's currency would be severely devalued.

finally, it got warm enough for me to ditch the jackets while at work. the temperature lows are predominantly double-digit now, although it will drop back to like 9 degrees for a few more nights in the coming weeks. i've washed my fleece sleepwear and will put them in storage (along with the tights and thick gloves) after they dry. will probably wash the fleece jacket next week, and my NUS hoodie after that...which leaves the blankets and sheets. should have all the winter stuff put away by golden week. just for the record, temperatures generally get cooler from early to mid-october. it stays cool/cold all the way until mid-may or early june, which means that the hottest months are july, august, and maybe a few weeks of september. i find that i have quite poor memory regarding season changes, so i figured i'd write it down as a reminder.

still in a bit of a quandary about the future plan. forgive me for repeating this for the umpteenth time, it's just that it's lodged in my brain and will probably stay that way until i come to some sort of a decision or take some concrete action. let's break it down into what's within and outside of my control.

within my control

- my JET term (august 2023 or april 2024 end)

- my choice of future location (australia, singapore, japan, other)

- industry that i enter

- companies that i apply to

outside of my control

- whether i'm employed by a given company

- visa approval

on one hand, i want to finish off JET well before thinking of the next step. you know, like have a definite conclusion to one thing before embarking on the next thing. but i also know that if i do that, there'll be a lot of wasted time in the form of waiting. normally some downtime is good - give a person time to wind down and refocus before the next thing. but i don't think i need that here, since it's so slack already. right now, i think it's still too early for me to start sending emails out to people. after all, i'll be here for another 15 months or so. perhaps i'll think about it from august and take action by december.

-random thought of the day: Still feeling sleepy.-

Maintenance for final fantasy started earlier tonight and is scheduled to go on for 24 hours, so i'm unusually free now. in my mind at least, i have quite a few blogging points to talk about today, hence i'll be using the 10 sentences maximum per point rule.

we're in a bit of an odd place as far as the weather goes. too hot for fleece, too cold for summer wear. think i need to get creative with my layering for work. today, the temperature broke 20 degrees for the first time in about half a year. i wish it'd stay at this level or maybe slightly colder, but i know that summer is coming. have to enjoy the cool weather while i still can. this also means i can start thinking about putting the heavy winter blankets away. will probably do that around golden week, which is in another 3 weeks or so. on the plus side, it isn't so dry any more!

can't recall how it started, but i've been feeling a little...full recently. it's not quite bloating, but i don't think i've felt hungry since saturday (with eating as usual, of course). is that weird? i won't bother googling it, because i'm sure that nothing helpful will come out of it. conversely, it'd likely scare me into thinking that i have stomach cancer or something equally bad. but well, it's good in a way, i guess. i still have energy, and i need to eat less anyway. my weight loss has slowed dramatically over the last 4 months or so.

in direct opposition to what i just said about eating less, i made (or attempted to make) oysters rockefeller just now. i was in the big supermarket yesterday, and since they had in-shell oysters, i decided to give them another chance. they were passable, but a little below the quality required for raw consumption. i put an escape clause in the form of "attempted to make" because my creation definitely wasn't authentic. it did have the main elements, i suppose - oysters, spinach, cream, cheese. would i do it again...yes, actually. next oyster season, maybe.

despite only working for 3 days last week (2 in schools) and 1 day so far this week, i feel wiped out. i think it's the sudden jump in activity levels. going from sitting at my desk for most of the day to walking around during class and joining other classes to kaypoh during my free periods is a really big change. i guess i should pace myself a little. speaking of schools, i've met the new english teacher. her english level seems higher than her predecessor, which makes me relieved. i think we'll get along well enough. i was also really happy to see my primary 6 kids (less one) in the secondary school. it's a reminder that building up on previous rapport is important. now i just need to get better acquainted with the 4 kids who transferred in from the other primary school...shouldn't be too hard.

really should make use of this rare opportunity to sleep early. i've been thinking on and off about my next move after JET, but there's no solid progress in that aspect. at least i still have another year or so here. lots of time to think about it. but i don't have the mental energy/focus now. let's call it a night.

-random thought of the day: Pre-emptively applying for vaccine certificate!-

Have you heard of the infinite monkey theorem? the one which, at its simplest, goes "a monkey typing away at random on a keyboard will eventually type out the complete works of shakespeare". i'd wanted to use that to explain an observation on this blog, in that my past 5 posts' starting letters (from most to least recent) were BCNOF. those are the chemical symbols of elements 5 to 9 (boron to fluorine) on the periodic table. it didn't happen by design, either! upon noticing the trend, i was tempted to continue all the way to element 1, meaning that after the B post, i would have to write 4 more posts starting with Be -> Li -> He -> H...but that would mean breaking my "no same starting letter in consecutive posts" rule. twice, at that!

while reading up on the theorem, i gained insight into how small the odds really were. hand-waving over the mathematical stuff, the odds that a monkey does actually type out hamlet at the first try is 1 in 3.4X10¹⁸³⁹⁴⁶. now, i'm a chemist, and we deal with numbers of atoms. the typical order of magnitude we'll see is 10²³, which in my mind is already a huge number. if i had 3.4X10¹⁸³⁹⁴⁶ gold atoms, i would be the richest person to have ever lived. even if i had that number of protons and made gold atoms out of them, i would still probably be the richest person in history. put another way, if there were 3.4X10¹⁸³⁹⁴⁶ characters in a text document, and if each character was a byte, the data would take up about 183937 gb. for perspective: my grad thesis was about 34000 (or 36000, i can't remember) words long. assuming each word was 10 characters long on average, that's 340000 characters, or 3.4X10⁵. i would have to write close to 200000 grad theses to get to 3.4X10¹⁸³⁹⁴⁶ text characters. another comparison: the last 15 posts here (before this one) contained about 14000 words in total, or 74000 characters. the point i'm trying to make here is that the denominator is so huge, it makes the probability so small it's effectively zero. if i started my posts with letters chosen at complete random, i might eventually see the whole periodic table in my posts page. but my rule places a constraint, in that my choice of starting letter is not completely random. so no periodic table for me. side note: do i really write about 1000 words per post?

april is the start of the new financial year in japan, so yesterday was really busy (for everyone else, that is). the new transfers came in, and we had 4 people come in from other departments, plus an additional new hire. the new hire is being trained to become the JET supervisor. based on one day's (sporadic) interaction with him, i think we'll be ok. better than the last one who transferred out, at least. april is also when i have to sign a new contract. my term remains unchanged, but it's something about the admin side in japan. we were recalculating my leave balance, and it turns out i have 37 days total. the maximum i can carry over into my next JET year is 20 days, which means i have to clear 17 days by the end of july. leave-taking during term time is difficult, so holidays are the best time to clear leave. in that spirit, i've taken next monday and tuesday off. then back to the office on wednesday to finish my video project and prep for school, before going back to visiting schools from thursday. i'm largely looking forward to resuming my term time routine; being stuck at my desk all day in the office with nothing really mentally stimulating is not fun. i think we need some kind of stimulation to not feel bad, and it can either be physical or mental. preferably both. even though i'm not really using my brain for classes, all the walking and movement keeps me occupied. to be deskbound with nothing to do is just the worst.

on cooking experiments, i've gone a bit freestyle in the kitchen, and made my version of tapioca kueh. i'm not sure what the actual name is, but i remember it being sold at the snacks/breakfast stall in the wet market. it's this yellow soft chewy sticky kueh that's covered in coconut. i went a bit overboard and bought 4 packs of tapioca flour (totalling 2.4kg) when i first got here, and i think i'm only halfway through pack 2 or 3 as of now. the idea for this recipe came from the ondeh-ondeh one, actually. recall that they have to be boiled in water to cook the wrapper and melt the sugar. some of the more poorly-made ones end up exploding in the water, so the water contains palm sugar. also, it seemed like a waste to throw the water away just like that, especially since it was used just for that one purpose. so what i did was to stir in tapioca starch into the cooled water, and bring it to the boil after the starch had been fully dissolved. the mixture thickens up into something quite gloopy, and sets into a soft kueh-like texture. let that mass cool, cut it up with scissors and toss in grated coconut. it's not a dead ringer for the original; the one i made is softer with less of a bite. but i'm happy with it! of course, there are endless variations; i'm thinking of trying a pandan one eventually, as well as one that uses coconut milk. an added benefit is that some of the starch mixture gets deposited in thin layers along the walls of the pot from the stirring, and it cooks into this nice tapioca paper type thing. great to chew on, plus it pulls away cleanly from the pot, so no scrubbing required! as i was writing, i was trying to find english words to describe the kueh texture, but cake, pudding, custard, jelly, are all inaccurate. i don't think there's an english equivalent to describe a steamed kueh/mochi-type consistency, is there? let me know if you know one!

earlier this morning, i realized that i'd been blocked on a social media platform by an online acquaintance. i didn't take it to heart at all. we've been having quite enjoyable casual conversation on and off for about a year now, and there were no indications of displeasure from either side, so it was a little bit of a shocker. funny how well i'm taking this, in contrast to the job thing. i guess multiple factors are at play here: the overall impact it has on my life; how easily i can replace the lost thing; and how important i perceive it to be being 3 i can think of right now. well...it's sad, but not a huge loss. i've no doubt that there will be more people to meet.

looking back at my to-do list, i've accomplished most of the items. all i have left to do is to take a gopro cycling video, and to clean the house. made some progress on the latter just now; did light vacuuming and de-grimed my rice cooker. the garden looks ok as of now, just a few new shoots sprouting up. but i think i'll buy more plant killer to standby. streaming japanese learning has been the thing that i've made the least progress on so far. it feels like i don't have enough time from when i reach home after work, to make and eat dinner, take a shower, and unwind a little before it's raid time. i should start playing later or spend a shorter time on just-got-home activities. by the way, i need to reexamine if this current raiding team and i are a right fit. their progress is a little slow for my liking. but i'll give it another week or two.

-random thought of the day: Lunch at the primary school on Tuesday!-