Usually, i try to have a central theme or a main point in a post. today, i don't really have one. i do have some scattered thoughts that i want to give form to, to help me clear some brain space up.

first is the fact that i've wasted my weekend by staying in bed until past noon each day. now that i've changed my sheets to the regular non-summer ones, my futon retains heat a little better, which makes it more comfortable. the sheets are smoother too, the material doesn't pill up and it feels better on my skin. this is in addition to the fatigue from working overtime, and compounded by not having any plans. i've realized that you really have to find your own entertainment, being out in this remote town. but at the end of the day, it still boils down to having the initiative to get out and look for things to do.

next, i've seen jedi master posting on facebook about his "son". not biological child, but a younger gay(?) guy who he has taken on the role of a father for, and who he is mentoring. the "son" is university age, so i think that he's able to consent meaningfully and it's not a situation where there is a power imbalance or someone is under duress. the main idea is that gay people aren't able to have traditional families, in the sense of "one man and one woman marrying and making children", so alternative family structures can and should be explored. personally, i think i'd be ok alone, or with a partner at most. i've been clear about not wanting kids for a multitude of reasons. but at the same time, i think i'd make a decent parent! i think if the right circumstances presented themselves, i wouldn't be adverse to adopting a secondary school or JC-aged kid. i don't feel equipped to handle a kid in primary school, and university-aged would be a little too old - i'd probably see them more as a peer than as someone under my care. gender wouldn't matter to me, although having a girl would probably mean that i'd have to summon help for certain conversation topics. all that is just idle thinking though. right now, not having to worry about providing for anyone other than myself is a huge reassurance. it means that i have more freedom to pursue my goals.

the mornings are getting colder, but it's not like, freezing yet. the tunnel part of my commute is getting uncomfortably cold though. think i'm going to start wearing long sleeves and cycling gloves from tomorrow. also on the way to the town hall on monday, i noticed that the petrol station lowered prices to 177 yen/L. i think it's a seasonal thing, because demand for fuel typically goes up in the colder months due to the increased need for heating. it's good for me, because i save money on petrol. still, i wish they'd put out a price change notice in advance; i've filled my car up the literal day before a price drop twice now!

still facing uncertainty about the future. no new replies since last week, although i'm expecting a few of them next week since the submission deadlines for a couple of companies would have passed. i'm going to practise hoping for the best but expecting the worst. also, one of the companies that i was in contact with put out their recruitment ad. annoyingly, they only advertised tech and engineering positions, no science ones at all! i'm just hoping that the science division operates on a different schedule, and that their ads come up later. the nice person i talked to did say that they recruited at the end of the year, which is horribly unspecific. there are still 2-ish months to go, so here's hoping.

might be my imagination, but earlier during dinnertime i thought that the food tasted bland. a reduced sense of taste instantly got my mind jumping to COVID. doesn't help that a few kids in school came down with it this past week. don't think i was near any of them, but you never know. i've not been wearing a mask since the start of term, so that increases my odds a bit. of course, it could also just be a seasonal cold/flu. i realize that my sinuses are kind of blocked when i wake up in the morning, but it goes away after a bit. well, the plan is to get through this coming week, since it's the last week before eiken. thankfully it's only 4 days long due to friday being a public holiday! after that, i might take some sick leave for whatever this is.

it occurred to me that my phone is one of the last few models from samsung to still have a 3.5mm jack. the upgrade i'm eyeing (S22 ultra) is jackless, which means that i'll have to switch to wireless earphones permanently. it makes me kind of uncomfortable...at least in japan, 3.5mm jacks are still a thing. i play music from my phone to the car audio system via a 3.5mm connection, in fact! not sure what i'll do in the UK, or if i'll even have a car there, so maybe i shouldn't worry too much. i guess it's part of technological advancement, although it seems that we are becoming over-reliant on batteries to me. i suppose i could keep my current phone as a backup, or even just as a dedicated music player.

before all of that, there's still this coming week to get through. i don't foresee it being too hard, just the usual routine with extra practice sessions for the eiken kids. i suppose i should also give credit where it's due, and say that english classes have been going better. my guess is it's partly the new guy, and partly the kids. do i believe that my impending departure caused an improvement in their behaviour? to a small extent, yes. i suppose i should make the most out of it.

-random thought of the day: Forgot that I'm working this coming Saturday!-

Noticed that i've been feeling tired earlier these past few days. is it because having another teacher in the classroom is taking up more of my energy? probably not...if i had to guess at just one cause, i'd say it's the lower temperatures at night. we're going into the low teens, which is chilly for me, and makes me not want to take a morning shower. good thing that i stay fresh enough in the mornings if i shower at night right before bed!

today was day 3 of teaching with the new guy. it's been going well. true to form, he's the typical extroverted american, and he easily strikes a conversation with almost anyone. i'm a little jealous in that regard! it's also because his japanese is miles ahead of mine, as befitting someone who's been here for 8+ years. i'm happy that there isn't really an element of competition - we seem to be supporting each other well. one unforeseen perk of sharing my schedule with a chatty native speaker is that i get to speak casually in english! no worrying about whether my message gets across, whether i'm speaking too fast, or any of the things that i'm usually conscious of during class. provided we don't step on each other's toes in my remaining time here, i think i'll enjoy having him around.

also today, my busy period started. it's this term's eiken season, and i'll be putting in overtime basically every day for this and next week. quite a lot of candidates this time...5 for grade 3 and 2 for grade pre-2 in the bigger school, and 1 for grade pre-2 in the smaller school. while i hope that everyone passes, i think that i'm realistically looking at 2 or 3 grade 3 passes, and 1 or 2 grade pre-2 passes. well...i'll do my best, and whatever happens happens.

something unexpected happened during practice earlier. as i was going through a set of questions with a candidate, this candidate began to cry. i don't think i came across as angry or scary - i believe that i maintained the same tone and manner in all my interactions with all the candidates. my guess was that the sudden requirement to think 100% in english was too overwhelming for that particular person. to be fair, i don't have a bad impression of this candidate. they put in effort during class, but if i'm honest, it's insufficient. they've never volunteered an answer, and don't ask questions. but well, it is what it is. i hope that this experience will show this particular candidate (and all the others too, if they didn't already know it) how little of the english language they're actually learning in school. it's not completely their fault, since the english education system in japan is a farce. if things pan out according to my wishes, everyone will put in 5 times more effort into english. and if any higher power out there is thinking of granting my wish, i'd like a couple hundred million SGD in my bank account, please!

my nose has been feeling stuffy recently. i think it's due to the air getting drier. i don't know how dry air leads to stuffy nose, but i guess it's related to why germs survive longer in drier air. with luck, getting my DIY humidifier will make it better.

-random thought of the day: Apply to more companies!-

Starting the weekend with a rejection doesn't feel good, but it is what it is. i was thinking about all my applications so far, and i realized that i don't have a clear-cut preference/ranking system for every single firm that i've applied to. i have 2 main tiers - tier 1: one firm which i have the most hope for (since i attended their open day and received a generally welcoming vibe from them afterwards); and tier 2 - the rest. of course, i would be happy to receive an offer for any of the UK firms that i've applied to. i figure more results will start coming in from now until year-end.

actually, i wonder if it's a good thing that i haven't heard from some of the firms that i'd applied to in september. one way of thinking about it is that they're keeping me in consideration and not rejecting me outright, unlike some other firms that have already sent me rejections. the other possibility is that maybe the firms where my applications are still pending have simply not started looking at applications yet. related thought: why have some firms rejected me already? i'm inclined to think that it's because of my visa status, but there's no point in worrying about it.

due to the tense state of affairs in some parts of the world today, i've actually wondered if it would be better (safer) for me to just remain in asia. by that, i mean going back to singapore after JET, and trying to make a life for myself there. one particular thought i remember having was, 'what if my plane gets shot down over ukraine or some other war zone?' and then i think that singapore airlines operates multiple flights every day along that route, and i haven't heard of anything bad happening yet, so the chances that something bad happens to my flight in particular is quite low...but not zero. well, i also thought of a quote that i once heard. i don't know the exact phrasing, but googling the key words turned up, "a ship in harbour is safe, but that's not what ships were built for". hopefully i can convince myself of that.

still trying to think about whether i should plan a trip back to singapore. i realize that it's not cost-effective, since i'll be going back in march-ish anyway, but the main benefit of making a short trip back is that i can bring stuff back to japan for people. i'm actually tempted to bring a secondary school english assessment book back for one of the english teachers i work with, just to give her an idea of what native english-speaking kids of an equivalent age learn. apart from that, there's no longer a pressing reason for me to go back, especially since the bicycle shop people said that they could hold the bicycle for me until march. what i'll probably end up doing is an osaka/kobe trip as previously planned, and then buy another piece of luggage or two and pay extra baggage fees for the trip back. i do need another suitcase, since i have to return the one i borrowed to my aunt anyway. also, i think having a wheeled carry-on would be more convenient than my messenger bag, which i've been using so far.

the new guy starts next monday. i'm not worried per se, because i know we're on the same page...more or less. still, i think there'll be some level of...competition? or maybe i'm thinking too much. the eiken results will come out too. as bad as it sounds, i'm hoping that not too many people pass. while i can rack up the extra hours of off-in-lieu, there are kids that i don't particularly want to help. but whatever it ends up being, i'll be professional about it.

-random thought of the day: Laundry tomorrow.-

My unofficial and quite arbitrary rule is that something is only a tradition if i repeat it for at least 3 times of a predefined interval. going by that metric, i failed at making birthday posts a tradition because i didn't write one on the actual day this year. it's actually the first year i've missed it since coming to japan, but it's no big deal...i don't really care for my own birthday anyway. i mean it's nice if someone remembers, but i'm ok even if nobody does.

didn't really celebrate this year - the double whammy of the remoteness of the town plus not having friends close by to celebrate with make trying to celebrate quite pointless. as a treat and excuse to do a cooking experiment, i tried making assam fish head using more of the turmeric that my friend gave me, plus curry paste that i'd bought from kaldi. the taste was good, but the absence of spiciness was very noticeable. extracting the turmeric with water really makes a difference! the sourness was more controlled, although i think i could have thrown in a bit of the pulp for a stronger flavour. next time, when i restock on curry paste.

for a small blessing, i didn't receive any rejection emails on my birthday itself. i did open one, though. it was sent the night before, so i'm not going to count it. as another blessing, it was for a small-ish firm that would probably have been nice to work for. ultimately, i don't see it as a loss at this point, mainly because more attractive firms haven't gotten back to me yet. it does make me nervous though, that a huge wave of rejections may be coming my way in the near-ish future. but it's no use worrying about things outside of my control, right? that brings my total to...7 UK rejections? i don't know - i lost count, and i don't really want to remember. save my brain space for more important things.

as of today, i've told the kids in both my schools about the new guy coming, and me ending my contract. deliberately left the exact end date blank, to give myself more flexibility. the thing that made me equal parts touched and annoyed was some kids coming up and saying that they were sad that i was leaving. while i appreciate the sentiment, i think a lot of them didn't (don't) realize that they are part of the reason i don't want to extend my contract any further! it's not their absolute english proficiency that is the problem...it's that they haven't improved as much as i'd have liked. and this is tied to some of their attitudes regarding english, and perhaps school in general. not going to rehash all that again, but long story short is newton's first law: you'll stay still forever unless a net force acts on you. i kind of want to talk about that to the kids soon. that, and you can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. might do a whole post on things i want to tell the kids before i leave, but tonight's not the time.

-random thought of the day: 3 more applications by this week!-

Recent developments have made me change my plans. don't worry, it's nothing too drastic. i'm still set on leaving JET by the end of my current contract. the main change is that i will most likely cancel my planned singapore trip in december. instead, i'll make it a tokyo or osaka trip since i have to go to either of those 2 cities anyway to do something for the UK visa. i'm thinking of shipping my clothes and perhaps some other stuff back later in march, and asking for a gst waiver as a returning citizen. or maybe i might exploit a loophole that my friend told me about - we'll see.

before i go into details about recent developments, i wanted to mention an incident that further confirms to me that i shouldn't be a teacher. so as i was walking past the sec 1 classroom, i saw their form teacher outside talking to 2 kids, with one appearing to be in tears. later, i found out that one kid (A) had said something to the effect of the other kid being unable to do maths and english, causing that kid (B) to cry or otherwise feel bad. normally, i'd feel bad for kid B. not in this case, because kid B puts minimal effort into studies! i can't speak for maths class, but for english at least, this kid is always falling asleep, not paying attention, talking with friends, and there's just the general attitude of "english is too hard, so i'm not even going to bother". is it any wonder that there's no improvement? i suppose someone who's more teacher-inclined might say that kid B needs time to come around, and that people bloom at different times, and that kid A shouldn't be saying mean things. i'll agree with one point though - kid A shouldn't be saying that as they're not exactly top of the class either. feels like a pot and kettle situation in this case.

despite all my planning to have it happen as early as possible, it seems that i will be telling the kids about the new guy only less than a week before he actually shows up. perhaps i should have communicated that i wanted to let everyone know by a certain date. but yes...japan finding more ways to make things difficult for themselves. just spoke to the principal of the bigger school today, and he told me that there was no time (despite him promising to make time when i asked him about it last week), and blah blah. exactly the situation i was hoping to avoid! so we compromised - i'll tell them next week, during the lunch music time. not ideal, but it's better than his suggestion of catching everyone by surprise on the new guy's first day. i'll probably clear it with the principal of the smaller school on sunday (it's a school day because of a community event), to tell the kids on tuesday. thursday would be a little late, i think.

applied to 3 more firms yesterday. one was a re-application, since their job ad was updated to be looking for chemists. the other 2 were speculative applications, ie. the firms don't have appropriate vacancies, but i'm leaving my CV with them in case something pops up. no harm casting a wider net, right? i might send more of those out, with appropriately-tuned expectations that i won't be hearing from those firms. they didn't advertise a suitable vacancy, after all, and i'm being proactive by approaching them. i'm actually still quite skeptical of firms saying that they'll keep candidates' resumes on file and consider them when an appropriate vacancy opens up. maybe it's my cynical singaporean side again, but i'm more inclined to believe that firms just throw the resumes away, or at best, into a dark corner. at least that's how i believe it goes in singapore. reddit has stories of people in other countries getting contact from firms though, so maybe it's different there. speaking of singapore firms, one got back to me, more than a month after i wrote to them. it was a rejection, unfortunately, but i was still impressed with the director apologizing unreservedly for being late to reply.

future plans and trip thoughts! right now, the plan is to submit the UK visa application around december 20th. gives me a decent buffer in case anything goes wrong, and is late enough that i can wait until about june 20th to enter the UK. as part of the application, i have to submit my biometric data at a collection centre in tokyo or osaka. the decision is now between taking a domestic flight to tokyo, or the highway bus to osaka. the plane will cost about 24000 yen, while the bus will cost about 12000 yen. annoyingly, there's a 10000 yen surcharge for using the osaka venue but not for tokyo, so it roughly evens out. i'm considering spending a night in osaka, and staying for a few days in kobe after getting the errand done. i regret not buying some stuff back the last time, and i figure that i should make up for it while i can. my tokyo bucket list is really only one item long, and that's to try sushi dai, to see if the people getting up in the middle of the night to go down and queue are actually crazy, or on to something. figure i can do that in the future.

good news is that by doing things this way, i have about 6 more days of leave to play with. i'll probably put them towards the end of my time here. i'd initially wanted to start taking leave in january, maybe a couple days off a week, but i realize that by putting everything until the end, i may be able to take leave into april. hopefully i won't have to, because doing so would mean that the UK start date is going to be late, but the small comfort is that i can draw salary for a little longer here. it's the best of a bad situation, so let's hope it doesn't happen.

small reminder to myself: SMBC requires a minimum monthly average balance of 50000 yen ($500) to avoid paying the fall-below fee. it's 2200 yen per month, which is ridiculous! going to have to keep that in mind when i do the transfer back to my singapore account. the plan is to keep this account a little longer to receive my pension refund. once i do, i'll empty it out and close it.

-random thought of the day: Busy weekend incoming!-

Eventful day, yesterday. had the license renewal, which went well. everything went smoothly...the registration, payment, eye check, document check, photo, and lecture. the lecture was a huge waste of time though. there are different durations, depending on the category of driver a person falls under. "good drivers", ie. those that have a clean driving record for some time, only have a 30 minute lecture. the next-longest is an hour, for regular drivers with maybe minor infractions. the longest session, two hours, is for first-time renewals and those who've accumulated a certain number of demerit points. despite having over 10 years of driving experience, it was my first renewal in japan, so i was made to attend the 2 hour lecture. i was surprised to see a good number of not-young drivers in the classroom with me. wonder what they did to get stuck in the long session.

the lecture itself was a huge waste of time. the lecturer also seemed to give off a "i know you don't want to be here, but it's the law so let's get this over and done with" vibe. the main contents were going through accident statistics and showing dashcam footage of actual (minor) accidents...i actually felt less confident to drive after watching the videos! the one and only thing i found useful was the breakdown of the cause of accidents. a surprising number of them arose from people stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake by mistake. means i have to be concerned about getting rear-ended, i guess.

also, to further support the idea that it was just going through the motions, the lecture was conducted completely in japanese, with no foreign language support. to be fair, i wasn't asked to make an appointment, so there was no way they could have known when i'd show up. nor did i expect them to cater to me like that. also, there was no checking for understanding - just an information dump. it seemed to me that the main goal was to get through the script, instill fear (of having to attend the long class again) in new drivers, and to punish the more experienced drivers for not driving well enough by taking up more of their time.

as i stopped for petrol on the way to the license centre, i noticed that the back left tyre (diagonal to the driver's seat) was abnormally flat. hoping that it wasn't a puncture, i asked the petrol station staff to pump it up, and went on my way. looked at it at aeon mall, and it was flat again. decided that i'd already taken a huge risk by driving 50km on a flat, and didn't want to increase the chance of an even greater failure occurring any further by making the return trip. good thing that that tyre bears the least weight since it's furthest from the driver's seat! so i changed out the flat for the spare, in the middle of the aeon mall rooftop parking space, in a light drizzle. good thing i'd had experience with my civic! although i did notice that the lug nuts weren't tightened down as much as they were on my civic. i remember having to actually stand on the tyre iron and bear down to get it to turn. here, i just exerted downward force with my hands. and no, i didn't get that much stronger. perhaps it's a different standard, or the different make of the car required a different tightness.

examining the tyre after removal revealed a screw embedded in one of the treads. i don't know how or when it could have happened. considering i don't check that side of the car all too often, it might have been weeks! lucky i don't drive every day, or else the wheel might have started rubbing on the ground before i noticed anything was wrong. the thing that struck me as peculiar was that the screw's angle of entry was almost perpendicular to the tyre surface, and it was fully embedded in a tread! if i didn't know better, i'd say someone sabotaged my car. of course, it could have gotten pushed in deeper as the tyre deflated, but who knows. i'm just going to think the best of people, and not worry too much unless it happens again.

also in the city, i decided to give sushiro a miss this time, and went to another conveyor sushi chain called kura sushi. just based on impression alone and without doing detailed comparisons, i think they both have about the same quality of food. sushiro probably has more variety on the menu, but the overall experience at kura sushi is better. i was particularly impressed by the custom order lane. while they have the usual conveyor belt circling around, they also had an upper lane for delivering things that customers order. the REALLY impressive thing was that the upper lane had no visible moving parts! i expect it's done with magnets under the surface. it was really cool! my only minor complaint is that the plates tend to stop a little too far left. still within easy reach of my left arm, but i would have preferred if they stopped directly in front of me. there was a minigame too; return 5 plates and stand a chance to win a prize. it's more novelty than anything, although it was added motivation to finish on a multiple of 5.

got a bunch of shopping done! bought 2 kinds of curry paste - one will go into assam fish, the other probably curry chicken. indulged a bit and got beard papa cream puffs, which i usually get when i travel to tokyo or osaka. turns out the outlet at aeon mall is their only one in the prefecture. aside from some cleaning supplies, i got a fabric shaver at daiso too. the proper name is "depiller", but fabric shaver sounds more funny, and is not only accurate, but easier to understand too! you know how sometimes friction causes little balls of fluff to develop on your clothes or bedsheets? those are called "pills". don't ask me why, though i suspect the etymology has common roots with "pill bug". the depiller shaves those off and leaves the fabric feeling smooth again. my next target is to use it on my fleece sleepwear, when it's time to break them out again next month or so. sadly, the KFC-final fantasy collaboration was sold out. they told me it sold out on launch day, which means i was almost a week too late. sucks, but i suppose that stocks wouldn't last long at 1 of only 3 KFCs in the prefecture.

on the way home, i realized that the sky had gotten dark by 6:30pm. it still disorients me a little, that night comes so early. even in singapore, 6:30 is still fairly bright and darkness only really sets in around/after 7. that's the only thing i don't quite like about non-summer...that the days are shorter. but i'll take shorter days if i get low temperatures and no insects in return. come to think of it, bug season is almost over, and i haven't seen a single huntsman spider this year. hopefully i haven't chased them away.

4 days of work this week, starting with the official notice from the board of education to the schools tomorrow. ideally i'll be able to break the news to the kids by this week, but next week would work in a pinch. going to send a couple more applications out this week; people on reddit haven't been super positive about my odds of finding work in the UK. a common argument they have is "why would an employer hire an overseas candidate that requires sponsorship when they're already spoilt for choice with local candidates?" i wish someone would tell the singapore government that! but anyway, it's no point worrying about things outside of my control. my main priority is to do my best for all the applications (job and visa), so that even if nothing comes out of plan UK, i can leave it behind with no regrets, instead of "oh i should have tried harder".

-random thought of the day: Kaldi sells tapioca flour!-

For a country that goes on and on about reporting and maintaining communication, japan sure doesn't practise what it preaches! the new guy is slated to start work in 9 working days from today, and the board of education hasn't officially told the schools yet! i asked the bigger school for some time during assembly to break the news to the students 2 weeks in advance of his arrival, only to find out that the principal didn't prepare for it because he thought that the new guy wouldn't start classes until i left! and bear in mind, we had the meeting with the new guy and decided his start date a little over 2 weeks ago! what is with with people keeping big news until the last minute here!? so after a chat with the principal and a separate chat with the vice-superintendent, i've come to understand that the board of education is going to break the news to the schools officially this coming tuesday (because monday is a public holiday). and only after then, will i be given clearance to tell the kids.

i guess it's a cultural difference, since the personnel transfer is also done at the last possible minute. i mean, in a space of only 10 days, teachers find out if they're transferring schools. and if they are, they have to potentially find new accommodations, including the moving-out and moving-in procedures for different towns. not forgetting all the hand/takeover in the schools, too! and my question is, why not give them a month? just another example of how japanese people like to needlessly make things difficult for themselves. well, i suppose i should be looking on the bright side - that something is slated to be done about it.

perhaps it's just the way in japan...there's a popular idiom known as 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e), which means strawberry one picture "once in a lifetime". the idea is that people should treasure every moment that they have together, because it won't last. example: even if i stay here longer, things will change too. the kids i see, the teachers i work with, so it's really everything lines up the way it does in that one particular instant, and never again. so maybe because the japanese people know that, they don't have such a hard time saying goodbye? i don't know. it just doesn't mesh with my thinking of wanting more time to properly say goodbye and/or to come to terms with the impending departure.

that aside, the past week was average. not my busiest week by far, but also not my slackest. work should pick up in the next 2 weeks though, because there may be eiken candidates who are scheduled for the interview exam. or maybe everyone fails and i don't have to conduct the practice? the temperature's dropped to the mid twenties in the day, and mid to low teens at night. it also occurred to me that the sun's setting earlier; it's basically dark by 6:30. just the progress of time and the seasons. should think of setting my makeshift humidifier up soon.

some new job ads have come up, but i still haven't heard from any company yet. the most recent job ad that i applied for is in my opinion, bordering on ridiculous. bear in mind that i'm applying for a job that requires a bachelor's degree or higher. so i don't understand why they're going all the way back to ask for my O-level grades! granted, it's not just this company - probably 3 or 4 out of the 12 that i've applied to so far have done that. what do they even do with it? do they use it as a tiebreaker in the event that two candidates have the same university and A-level scores? and they also asked for my university grades in terms of marks scored for each module. NUS gives letter grades instead of marks, and even if i had the marks, i have to input them for EVERY SINGLE MODULE. so maybe i'm going to pass on this application until i become more desperate. not to mention they asked if i had the ongoing right to work in the UK without ever needing sponsorship. my response to that question would probably disqualify me on the spot, so i'm probably going to save myself the trouble. incidentally, i wonder if that counts as a discriminatory hiring practice? hard to say, since i'm not a UK citizen, and i don't know if their anti-discrimination policies apply internationally.

main task for this weekend is to get my driving licence renewed. interesting that the licensing centre opens on sundays. and since going there is already something like 80% of the way to kochi city, i figure i'll head into the city to do some shopping (curry paste, KFC) and see what else i can do/get while i'm there. tempted to go for a ramen lunch or something. maybe sushiro again? the best part is, monday is a public holiday, so i don't have to worry about coming home early or anything like that. not that i'll stay out late anyway, but it's always good to know that i can do so worry-free if i want/have to.

-random thought of the day: Feeling tired more easily.-

Visa application is going to get more expensive! i was made aware that the fee will go up by 107 pounds (about SGD 180) from TOMORROW. that means that i have another 11-ish hours, accounting for timezone differences, to submit my application and get the cheaper rate. and although i have all of my documentation ready, i don't think i will. let me explain.

the biggest effect that application date has is that it influences when i can enter the UK. during the application, one of the questions is "expected date of entry into the UK". and for some reason (i guess to keep a consistent timeline and to make sure people don't forget to use their visas), the expected date of entry cannot be more than 3 months later than the date of application. so if i were to apply today, i could put 3 january 2024 as the latest possible date of entry. but even then, there's some wiggle room in when i can actually enter the country. to be more accurate, the expected date of entry really only affects the start/approval date of the visa. as for when you can actually enter the country, you have a further 90 days from the start date of the visa. so applying tonight means that i'd have to enter the UK by 3 april 2024.

considering i don't have a job offer, that's kind of early! the current plan of applying in december means that i have until about next june to enter the UK. assuming the best i can get from any firm is a typical september start, entering in april will shorten my effective visa duration by 2 months. also, that's 2 months more of rent that i'd have to pay, most likely while not drawing a salary! so although i save 107 pounds by submitting my application now, i'll possibly lose 1700 pounds in rent, and even more in daily living expenses. so applying early to get the lower rate would be a penny wise, pound foolish move. even more appropriate because the actual currency used in this case is the pound!

you know, it would be so much easier if i had a job offer with a clear start date. that way, i could work backwards from it and decide when best to enter. but well, i suppose nothing worth having comes easy. plus, it's a good exercise in operating out of my comfort zone. i just hope that i'm able to navigate things well.

-random thought of the day: Sneezing non-stop.-