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!-