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.-