Thursday, May 15, 2003

May 15

Well, I'm done like dinner. I finished my final class as a full-timer tonight. As of tomorrow, I'm a bohemian teacher. Hmmm...to celebrate, I had some ramen. No big crying scenes, no spotlight with farewell speech. Teachers and staff know that I'll be around, albeit in a reduced role, and the students don't know of my transititon...yet. Sure enough, my idiotic managment left me several frantic calls, fearful that I would be leaving them high and dry for a class that I had already said that I would finish up at the end of May.

What to do about tomorrow? Well, I guess to celebrate my newfound freedom, I'll take a leisurely walk around Tokyo. Let's see what's out there.

Looks like The Matrix Reloaded is getting a lot of mixed reviews. Of course, the diehard fans will blame the media for setting the hype bar way too high, and the critics are blaming the same hype and the almighty buck for the supposed emptiness of the movie. In any case, I'll still catch it.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

May 13

Looks like my departure from my school will unfortunately be slightly bittersweet. I taught the high class; the "disappointed" student is back to normal but now another student who has had a history of histrionics has now given me the cold shoulder over a supposedly innocuous topic. The fact that she has lashed at several teachers over the past year has at least given me some measure of relief but I certainly do not want to leave on a sour note. Well, in any case, I'll be done by this time tomorrow.

Monday, May 12, 2003

May 12

Had lunch today with my two students who will soon become my private students from next week in a hotel restaurant. The whole deal was almost in danger of derailment because of my stupid boss' scheduling me a class in the afternoon when I had told him a couple of weeks previously that there would be special farewell lunch for me today. My boss is either incompetent or devious with my bet on the latter. However, it wasn't too difficult to resolve; I just sent him a nasty note and just went ahead with my lunch. I learned that standing up to them gets things resolved quickly; it's just that it's all so unnecessary.

Last night heading to sleep, we were rocked by a fairly powerful earthquake. It measured around 4 on the Shindo scale; the Kobe earthquake was a 7. My room felt like it was next to a subway tunnel during rush hour. Well, aside from a few CDs threatening to fall off the shelves, there was no other damage.

As an update on that "disappointed" student, it looks like things have cooled down a bit. We didn't get too impassioned today but I am wondering if that so-called dinner on Friday that the class had been clamouring about previously will actually come to pass.

Sunday, May 11, 2003

May 11

Shibuya was its usual youthful, manic mass of humanity around Hachiko the Dog today. Met up with my girlfriend to satisfy her craving for curry. For some reason, Indian, Thai and Italian are the big favorites for something ethnic. We went to the chain restaurant called Samrat where they had a lunch special of 2 curries and free nan for a paltry 1000 yen. Nice and spicy.

Then we ended up going to a cafe where I managed to spill some of my Chai Latte all over my white t-shirt much to my girlfriend's mirth. I think I was quite lucky; I could imagine a lot of other women who would've berated their clumsy others. My significant other after having her bellylaugh, went out to a GAP and got me a new tee which was on sale.

Earlier this morning, I caught a Trey Parker (South Park) film called Orgasmo. Pretty funny and I could find out pretty quickly which characters on South Park he voiced. I got a kick from the small running gag when anyone muttered the epithet, "Jesus". Trey, who was playing a devout Mormon, suddenly freezes, whips around and yells "Where?!"