William Matheson's Journal

09:29 pm - Mini-Ice Storm

Got some freezing rain and horrible winds this morning. I was actually afraid that my bedroom window was going to burst open. Dad just lost the glass from the back window on the cap of his truck - perhaps the freezing temperatures did that in (it was -20°C for what seemed like days). It's not that cold today, though. Even now that it's dark it's still only -6°.

I trundled out the front steps in order to move the cars and shovel the walks and the next thing I know I'm nursing the arm that I put out to break my fall so that I wouldn't hit the edges of the steps squarely with my back. When I went across the street to get the cars I nearly slipped again; the mall parking lot was a skating rink. The road between was covered with a brown, salty / sandy goo.

Aunt Shirley was going to bake cookies but got called into work instead. So this ice storm cost me cookies. No fair! =) But yeah, we didn't get the newspaper, schools were closed, and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't get very much done either, except that I did help Uncle Shane get his teacher certification upgrade request in. I was able to get the form he asked for and fill it out. It was hard because my crayon wasn't very pointy and the boxes were kind of small. And four is my lucky number, so I picked the c4 option for good luck.

Let's see if I can get the Miyajima photos done tonight!

Current Mood: restless

11:15 am - cold cold cold cold cold

It’s COLD! Today I took Grandma’s car to the garage and then walked to a place where I’d get my hair cut, and boy – I had to turn my face away from the direction I was walking in because the wind was just too painful. I’m sure some people wondered what such-and-such a fellow was doing walking up the street to the hairdresser’s with his head turned 90° so that his hood could deflect the wind. At the hairdressers – this was a three-minute walk – I spent five minutes wiggling my toes so that they’d thaw out.

I thought cross-country skiing the other night was cold, but that was nothing. It’s -19°C today (with an afternoon high of -18°), and with the windchill the radio says it’s an extreme -38°. It’s cold no matter how you slice it. Of course, one of my former co-workers is teaching in Buffalo Narrows, and he reports a temperature of -40°, -46° with windchill. So at least it’s not very windy!

But wow, I’ve never been so cold since the time I lived in Grande Prairie. But the only thing Grand Prairie and Buffalo Narrows have in common is latitude. Grande Prairie is a northern bastion of civilization, with real malls, all the big box stores you could name, lots of people, lots of bars, and even a nifty bus service. It still gets cold, but there are things to do and people to see and somehow you get through it. Or at least I’m guessing this – I left town with the other kids in my program at the end of November!

This is what the heating situation is like here:





Grandma, in Albion Cross: “It’s just like Florida out here! The sun is shining…” Well, as long as you stay indoors, yes. =)

Joy: Tomorrow there'll be a high of -20°C, and Saturday they're predicting -23°. Ack.

Current Mood: chipper

10:48 pm - 129. Was That It?

Wow, was that ever a wimpy typhoon.

It rained heavily for a brief period around noon. That, and intermittent showers, is about all we got. It wasn’t ever really windy, and in the evening the sun was even trying to peek out.

It wasn’t a Katrina – it wasn’t even a Noel. But it was like Noel in one respect – where I lived, it seemed like the only serious gusts came when it was being overblown by the media. Remember all that “Post-tropical storm Noel” hoopla. This was in some ways similar.

Reactions to a teacher’s 10-minute late arrival, as he’d taken the bus instead of biking:

Foreign teachers: “Hey! Glad you made it!”

Japanese teachers: “If you’re going to be late, you should phone. You must phone the office and speak with H-sensei…”

I mean, by the letter of the rules they are right to say that, but in doing so they seem rather insensitive to the facts of this particular situation. With all the ballyhoo about the typhoon, he didn’t want to risk biking, and it was his first time taking the city bus – he didn’t know that it would arrive at his stop late and proceed to our area at a crawl. Plus he didn’t really miss anything. I feel they should have taken the attitude, “No harm, no foul” – we already know it’s important not to be late, and nobody needed reminding.

Anyway, it looks like the sports festival may be a go for Sunday, and that makes things easier for everyone. Update: It certainly is going ahead, although showers are predicted. F. gave me the news a few hours ago; I surmised it for myself earlier based on the field markings, flags, and archways adorning the sports field! Alright!

* * *

I’ve been thinking about the pilgrimage a lot lately, and I’m eager to get to some more temples – I believe that 88 is reachable by bike, especially if I go early in the morning, and alone. I’ve looked at the maps, of both digital and paper kinds, and I’ve plotted a route. 88 is an important temple because once I’ve gone there I can honestly say “I’ve completed the 88th temple of the Shikoku Pilgrimage!”

Seriously though, I thought I’d pass on something Ch. shared with me today. When she and F. were in Nagoya, her friend’s grandmother heard that F. was attempting the pilgrimage, and she showed them her pilgrim paraphernalia, including a white yukata she had gotten stamped at each temple in a similar manner as the temple books. She was going to be buried in it.

The traditional idea is that the validation of having completed the pilgrimage helps you get to heaven. By Ch.’s account she seemed pleased with it, even eager – I don’t have religious beliefs (although for a while in my youngest years I was an adventophiliac, after which I “matured” into a more mainstream neo-con), but the part of me that still sings to things “mystical” nonetheless empathizes. Heck, I’d perhaps do it myself if it wouldn’t freak out my contemporaries and/or descendants who actually witness the burial… =) Somehow I don’t think being buried in a shroud covered with strange writing from a strange land would go over very well with the living!

Current Mood: tired

10:41 pm - 128. Typhoon Approaching

The remnants of Typhoon Sinlaku are currently drenching Kyushu and are headed for Shikoku. Over the next twenty-four hours, we’re expected to get up to 350mm of rain – that’s 35 centimetres or almost fourteen inches. Think what you could do with all that rain! =)

Tomorrow’s classes may be washed out – but don’t worry, we’re still expected to go to work as usual! It’s not that bad for us, but it could be a huge pain for those who have to commute – it’d be too wet and treacherous to cycle, and public transit of all kinds may be shut down. Some also have the care of small children to consider – M. is in a situation where his son’s day care is usually cancelled on typhoon days, but he and his wife will still have to go to work, and he can’t bring his son to school for liability reasons. He was advised that he could take one of his remaining five paid holidays.

Please, if I ever get the notion of coming back to settle down in this country once I’m home again, slash the tires on the shuttle van, disconnect my phone, and chain me to my house by my ankle.

While we were working on costumes for the “Y.M.C.A.” dance, we got on the subject of holidays. M. mentioned to Mk. that teachers in Northern North America get July and August off, and she was shocked. She couldn’t even envision such a thing.

It’s not just that Japan demands workaholism – it goes further: they don’t actually want you to have a life outside of work. When M. was a JET ALT at a public school in Ehime, he knew a Japanese teacher who loved to travel. And she would travel – she wouldn’t be going to Disneyland; she’d go to far-off places like Madagascar or Alaska.

Unfortunately, there was an administration change at this school, and the new principal was far less permissive. Oh, she’d have the same holidays as before, but the principal declared that travel was too dangerous and that she’d need to get his permission to go anywhere. She still travelled, but now she had to do it in secret: “I’m going to Alaska… but don’t tell anyone!” Less omiyage to buy, I suppose.

As you might guess, M. and his JET colleagues were instructed to report all travel to their city hall – where they were going, when they’d be leaving, when they’d be back, and that sort of thing. It make my heart sink a little to hear this – until now, I’d been thinking of coming back to Japan as a JET participant, but it’s sounding only slightly less draconian and perhaps even more futile than working here at S.G. When I go home, I think I’ll stay in school until I learn to do something useful.

Futile, I say? Well, for the large part, yes. I have six or seven students in my class that are at an appropriate language level to have English as their medium of instruction. Unfortunately, that leaves sixteen or seventeen that struggle, to varying degrees. I said that my problem student left, but even now I still have three or four students who can’t even read. How am I supposed to teach possessive pronouns in writing class (e.g.: "Her eyes are blue.") to people who can’t even read them aloud?

I wish the classes were set up according to ability. I’d love to help kids learn to read, but third grade isn’t really the time or place for it. I really hate that there are so many choices I have to make in the classroom every day – if I give one student the attention they need, I’m depriving the others of the attention they need. I’m starting to see the classroom model as something fundamentally flawed, for this and many other reasons.

I wish the evaluations here had teeth, but as things are the school has no incentive to set any standards. There’s an entrance exam, but it’s purely ceremonial – the results are ignored. As one other foreign teacher put it, the only thing that’s being examined is the parent’s bankbook. This is why many private schools are actually worse than their public counterparts. When I had my arm broken by the son of an Elmsdale timber tycoon at Sandy Lake Academy, that thug still went on to "win" the Most Improved Student Award just a month later, and yet he may have deserved it. I should have realized that this sort of bottom-line thinking rationalizing would apply in Japan as much as it ever did in Bedford, but fortunately nobody here is making any visits to the ER (moving accidents aside).

God, I was so naïve in coming here.

On the mellow-bright side, I really will miss my kids – I think they’re terrific. Perhaps it’s best that I will never teach again, as they can live on forever in my memory as the high-water mark. The kids are so endearing that they make me want to set up a proper school that would address the needs of children first and management second. In my system, there would almost be as many teachers as children. The teachers would be highly specialized, and allowed to excel. The students would have individualized programs, and they would receive an appropriate balance of agency and guidance. But my system is and will probably always be a fairy tale.

Maybe I will teach again, but I will never again allow myself to be so asymmetrically exploited in the interest of making someone else money. Honestly, I would have run away screaming long ago, but then I would be failing my colleagues, as they’d be forced to cover my classes during the long wait for a new foreign teacher. We must all suffer together. =)

Current Mood: contemplative

11:31 am - 107. Abort

The rain this morning caused me to abort my trip, so it's now almost noon and I'm still at home. I guess I could still go to Hiroshima, but it's just a little bit too far away and too much stress and trouble. It might have to wait until my next time in Japan (if I come back again). Maybe I was only going out of a sense of obligation.

I think I will bike to Temple 18 today, because it's cloudy and therefore good weather for cycling. Tomorrow will be sunny, so it'll be a good day to take the train to Temples 19, 22, and 23, as planned before. Let's hope 4:30 tomorrow doesn't seem so awfully early. =)

Next weekend, I might try going to Mt. Tsurugi. We'll be having an open lesson for potential primary school entrants on Saturday, but Sunday will still be free.

Current Mood: disappointed

09:05 pm - 67. Air Conditioning? + Vacation?

Today I asked D. when we’d be getting air conditioning.

“When the kids start passing out and getting nosebleeds.” We’re still a week or two away. And they all say that we’re still in the twenties, and it’s not even hot (by local summer standards) yet.

I’d like the glorious day to come, because I’m sweltering. The humidity is stifling.

I had a very tiring art class today. The students brought their own household materials (plastic drink bottles, clothespins, sponges, scrubbers, toothpicks, etc..) and we made imaginary creatures out of them. It was fun and largely successful, but a lot of logistical things completely threw me, mostly because it was my first time doing anything like this and because I hadn’t thought everything through. Well, no more. All in all, this was a challenging day in which I had to learn more than I was prepared to. There’s no way to learn humility like being humiliated.

The ball players weren’t able to count to three today:
“Ich, ni…”
“Ich ni!”
“Ich, ni…”
“Ich ni!”
“Ich, ni…”
“Ich ni!”
“Ich, ni…”
“San shi!” I shouted. A Japanese teacher laughed.

I was so tired when I got home (just after 5) that I slept until nearly 8! It was supposed to be a little late-afternoon nap, but when I finally dragged myself off my bed, it was well past dusk.

Holy heck, I’m beat. I need a vacation. Or air-conditioning. I might even give in and turn on the A/C in my apartment soon, although doing so would eat into my budget. Well, I’ll survive – there are only six weeks left in the term, and after that there’ll be at least a slight respite – work will be mostly day care shifts, and in early-to-mid August I’ll be able to get away for a bit. If this term seems longer than last term, it’s because it is: a whole month longer! And where did those innocent days of February and March go? I hope they’ll come again…

Wednesday Update: I did kind of get a little mini-vacation after all: junior high math was cancelled for the third week in a row! It's great because I finally feel like I have enough time to attend to everything. And the term will be over soon; I just gotta keep plugging away.

Current Mood: hot

11:21 pm - 64. Rainy season + junior high math

It’s now the beginning of rainy season here in Japan. I had been skeptical about the idea of a “rainy season,” as the weather here has been more than temperate, but I wouldn’t call it tropical, and I had thought that rainy seasons were for places with rainforests. But I don’t really know anything about this, which is why I had dismissed the ‘season’ appellation as an attempt to add more variation to the rather steady and level state of conditions. The seasons don’t seem to change here on Shikoku, they merely crossfade.

But boy, is it ever raining. It rained today. I mean buckets. For hours. It was so wet that it was drizzly inside my umbrella. It rained a lot last weekend, to. And it rained a lot earlier this week. We’ve had lots and lots of rain, and only a very little sun (though the sun came out this afternoon). I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much rain.

All this rain meant the water rescue training that had been scheduled for this afternoon was cancelled. (When it rains, the water seems to go right through the glass roof over the pool, at least from what little I’ve seen. Plus it was probably too cold to use the pool anyway – it’s not heated.) That would have been kind of fun. Instead, I taught a Year One class. At first I was down about it, but once I got in and got going it wasn’t bad – it went quite well! Of course they were well behaved while A-sensei was at her desk doing her own work (I’m a big proponent of the Japanese teachers being in the room at the same time – they exude a moderating influence!), but the best part was that after she left, things didn’t descend into total chaos. This class’ homeroom teachers are running a tight ship, and it’s paying off.

But among the erstwhile and sundry Japanese teachers there is one who stands out above all else in terms of quieting down a class, and all S.G. teachers past and present know exactly who I’m talking about. One time I was teaching my Year Threes and all of a sudden all the little bubbles of conversations, all the little chair noises and squirms – it all vanished into stone-cold silence. At first I was confused, because my homeroom partner coming back wouldn’t have that kind of impact – no, it was just this certain other teacher, just standing in the hall by the window. Of course, she doesn’t “just stand” anywhere without purpose, and she’s a busy person – since she won’t be able to make an appearance every day, I wish I could get a decoy version of her to use when my classes are getting too rowdy. Oh, and the time she came by to run the afternoon meeting! You never saw a more well-behaved group of Year Threes in your life, I tell you.

Ah, where was I?

The rain also changes things inside the school – this afternoon, most the staff room smelled like old socks. When the other foreign teachers came by, I brought it up – and this gave M2 cause to mention that I should get some “Mizutorizosan” doohickey to absorb some of the moisture in the air and keep things from going moldy, especially in my closet.

I’ve also been running my mosquito coil. (I imagine today’s rainstorm will spawn approximately thirteen nonillion more mosquitoes, so I’ll probably be running it some more very soon.) And when I ride my bike through the rice patties to the supermarket, I often have to cover my nose with my hand and breathe as such to avoid inhaling bugs. It’s a good thing I wear glasses, or else bugs would find my eyes, and a few manage to do so already. You hit the swarms suddenly, so if you happen to be taking a breath as you do so, you’ll find yourself hawking and spitting and to hell with Japanese decorum: acccch-plut!

* * *

Junior high math has been getting cancelled a lot lately, which is great a terrible shame. (Such a shame that even W-sensei jokes about it.)

Last week, the students were writing some kind of exam, so my classes were cancelled. What happened was I went to the high school building, materials in hand, got to the classroom and there was the exam, and the teacher telling me my classes were cancelled.

Yipee! This meant having lunch at the normal time, and also having time to fix up the Sankanbi decorations, and not having to stay at school until some ungodly hour in the evening! I was so giddy that, as I skipped down the stairs and reached a landing, I spilled my magnets and pens all over the place. (“That’ll teach you to be giddy,” D. remarked later.)

And after I’d gotten back and gotten settled in, ten minutes or so after the class would have started, W-sensei got a phone call. She relayed the message to me that junior high math was cancelled.

I wondered aloud why they bothered with the phone call after the fact. D. said that it was an improvement, though – last year, when he taught junior high math, there was no phone call at all.

This week there was a sports festival going on over there, but since I didn’t know if it was just for the high school (the junior high and high schools are sort of separate even though they’re in the same building), I thought I’d better go to my classrooms prepared just in case. So I passed through the annex and to the hi- oh, the door’s locked. Odd. I go around the back. Locked. Up by the administration building? Locked. Front entrance? Locked. By now our principal is there too, trying doors – she tries the staff room door. Locked. As I walked back to the primary school, I saw some of the junior high IEC students participating in the sports festival activities, so I guess I was off the hook for the day. I found it kind of odd that they seemingly locked up the whole school, though.

That whole day was kind of whack; it inspired the phrase, “So low on the totem pole you need a shovel.” I can’t really use it in context without unnecessarily or fictitiously griping, but you can.

Current Mood: tired

06:09 pm - 59. Heating Up, Falling Down

It’s getting hot here. This morning we had six kids drop out of the (all-school, outside) Monday morning meeting; the first boy had the heaves and puked as soon as he was led out of his lineup. As usual, they went straight into the meeting and the required parade formation right after running laps. The humidity here is shocking, even at eight o’clock in the morning.

With the heat comes an onslaught of pigeons. When I want to be nice I call them Rock Doves. This is not one of those times. Every day since Friday I have been cleaning their goshdarned brown and white souvenirs off my balcony. When I see them perched on my rail, I want to strangle them. I chase them away, but they know I can’t be here to guard the apartment all the time.

It must be their mating season. When I came back for lunch today, I saw one on my railing with a twig in its mouth, and my balcony was the recipient of several fresh deposits. Lucky for that pigeon my window was closed – I would have thrown something heavy. I cleaned up the mess after coming home for the day (just before writing this). I hope all this is only temporary; the situation wasn’t bad in the winter, but right now the outlook is <ahem> dropping.

Update: Just as I was going to the grocery store tonight, I stumbled into a conversation D. and A. were having, and the topic of the birdie gifts came up. D. said he hasn't had problems with them lately. Hmm? What's the secret? Well, D. and some of the people who lived here before solved their problem with pellet guns. D. has a gas-powered unit he got for $70 that shoots little plastic pellets in rapid-fire. It doesn't kill the birds (which may be a downside depending on your point of view, but then I suppose I'd rather clean up bird poop than dead birds), but it's still an effective deterrent - after they started using the guns, the pigeons went to the other end of the building. =)

Current Mood: annoyed

05:43 pm - 40. Dark and Dreary

What a beautiful dark and dreary day! I love it! Dark skies, no wind, mild temperature - it's so invigorating. It's also a reminder of the passage of time, as the cherry blossoms are starting to come down in the slightest breeze, and a rain shower will knock off most of the ones still clinging to their trees.

I came to school today to find that D. had perfectly photocopied all the Year 3 writing books. Awesome.

Right now the children are moving desks and chairs, but I've elected to stay behind because of my ankle. Limping around with the others just gives me a chance to hurt myself again.

Eight days until payday! I'm going to try to reach it on $5 a day. (I'm trying to save some of my monthly spending money so I can travel to Tokyo in the summer. The savings are already earmarked for school.) Let's hope there aren't any more parties!

Current Mood: cheerful

03:33 pm - 39. Sanjikai

Wow, it's HOT today! I had to take off my coat when I picked up my bike at the train station and went to MaxValu. What a gorgeous, gorgeous day. Too bad it's a Sunday - we wasted half of it sleeping in, and for the other half you're thinking about going back to work the next day. =)

K-sensei A-sensei's nijikai was a great time. I had the wrong idea about it, though. I thought it was comparable to an after-reception dance or something. This was actually a complete second reception, meant for the A's larger sphere of friends and associates - there weren't any spaces for people who had gone to the reception and wanted to "keep partying." I was also surprised to learn that though we paid $70, the people who had gone to the reception would have had to pay, too - to the tune of $300. And the closest friends pay more - in these cases, the payment counts as your wedding gift. I think this would be a pretty cool system to have in North America - it would definitely ease the costs associated with weddings.

Several of the guests knew A-sensei because she had been their teacher, or field trip chaperone, or what have you. Is it just me, or would that be uncommon back in North America? I remember once being "invited" to write a few words for a favourite teacher's retirement party, but given that I wasn't being invited to that reception itself, I didn't go out of my way to find time to write them. I probably should have, but you get my point - we kind of keep the spheres separate. Perhaps lots of former students went to my aunt and uncle's wedding reception in a small PEI town, but that was a small town - that's different, isn't it?

At any rate, it's a testament to A-sensei's character that so many people who knew her starting on a professional basis went out of their way to come.

After the reception, we went to Casanova - it had been a while! Same great place, though. We sang lots of songs. Then we went to Ingrid's. I tried to sing "This Love" by Maroon 5 (especially for its loud, emotional bridge), but I had no voice left - we'd all left our voices at Casanova. My voice is still a little raspy this afternoon.

After Ingrid's, the group went to this other place, and I just sat and later slept in a corner. And then one of us got obsessed with finding a ramen place. This delayed some of the rest of us from being able to share a cab back, which is the only reason I was still hanging around after Casanova. To top it off? This person was obsessed with finding noodles even though she didn't have any money left! She would be borrowing for that AND for her share of the cab ride home! Sheesh! No hard feelings (we were all quite drunk) but next time, I'm biking in and biking back so I can decide for myself when to go home. I won't be able to drink very much that way, but drinking is overrated these days anyway, especially when it's $5 or $6 at each go.

Current Mood: hungry

12:41 pm - 36. April Chills

Wow, is it EVER cold at work today! I mean, it’d be nice walking weather, but it’s a bit too cold to sit and do work in. I had two shirts on and a coat and I was still freezing! I even drank a cup of coffee for its warmth instead of its caffeine. When I went out for lunch, the warmth of the sun made it warmer outside than it was inside. When I go back after lunch is over, I’ll be wearing a sweater.

I noticed that the portable heaters we had going in the staff room before were gone now, and I asked D. where they were.

“They’re in storage. O-sensei and a guy with a truck took them away yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s after April 1st! You don’t need heat anymore.”

Uh-huh. (He wasn’t buying it either.) Maybe it sounds less absurd in Japanese. And there’s no heat – the central system is shut off now, too.

D. also said that there’s no swimming before a certain day – it could be thirty degrees or more, yet people would look at you funny if you went to the beach (but we could still get away with it since we’re foreigners). And no air conditioning either, no matter how hot it gets. And, again, no heat on or after April 1st.

I figure this makes about as much sense as keeping the snowploughs and salters off the roads in the event of a December or April snowstorm, with the city citing the fact that it’s not winter and not the right time for clearing roads.

But this is Japan. =)

Current Mood: cheerful

04:55 pm - 25. Zap: Bills

We got our power bills today. Mine is a little (ahem) shocking - it's ¥6,219 (about $60), but not too bad considering that I'd stupidly left my heat on for four days straight during that billing period. Heat comes from a combined heat / air conditioning unit, so it's not something you'd run all the time under most circumstances.

Anyway, my power bill should be lower this month because (Northern North Americans reading this may want to look away) I don't need heat anymore. I haven't touched the heater for the past two days, and I only expect to use it sparingly from now on. Today it's... twenty degrees and sunny. I left my coat in my closet at lunchtime and went back to work without it.

This, my friends, is beautiful weather.

Then again, I'll be singing a different tune in July and August when the temperature can nudge 40 °C. But at least I won't be using much hot water in my showers! That bill has been almost as much per month as my electric bill!

Current Mood: warm

12:24 pm - 10. Letter to a friend

10. Letter to a friend
(with insights on driving and weather, which is why it is being included here since time is at such a premium)

Dear [friend],

Assuming you’re still on to come to Japan in February, I thought I’d better let you know what my schedule is like.

Generally, I work Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm. I’m off Saturdays and Sundays except for the 23rd, as there’s a school concert that day. And there’s a ski trip that goes into at least the 16th, which I may or may not be going on – sometimes they take the foreign teachers along on the trips, and sometimes they don’t. I think I might try to sell them on taking me, but we’ll see. =)

But there’s a real good stretch of time off in February: We have a four-day weekend from Saturday the 9th until Tuesday the 12th, because the school anniversary holiday happens to fall on the same day as a national holiday (they’re usually on Mondays due to the Happy Monday System), so they put in a substitute holiday on Tuesday. Very nice of them! So if you were here those days, we could do a lot of things. Let’s say you came to Tokushima mid-week, the 6th or 7th, you and [your sibling] could entertain yourselves in the daytimes (there’s *lots* to see and do, and it’s a touristy area by Japanese standards; I personally haven’t even scratched the surface yet), we could get together in the evenings, and perhaps on the weekend we could rent a car and go all over the place. I have an International Driving Permit for just such a contingency. =) But man, getting used to everything being on the left is HARD! Like it’s not just driving, it’s crossing streets, it’s turning, it’s knowing which way to look when you’re crossing those streets – man. I’m sure you know how it is having had to adjust to Canada.

Of course you have a lot of factors to consider when you’re booking your travel, but boy, if you happened to be here those days, it would be pretty darn cool.

Oh, and pack and dress warm! Gloves, scarf, everything! It’s only slightly warmer than Halifax here, and quite windy, which pretty much negates the slight temperature advantage. Unless you’re including Okinawa in your travel plans, where they’ve had temperatures in the mid-twenties, it’ll be an all-winterish excursion; if you go north of Tokyo or into the western interior, there’ll be snow on the ground.

Okay, I’d better get to studying now; as things are, I’m definitely not going to bowl you over with my Japanese skills when you get here. =) Think sub-rudimentary. Like somewhere not between “beginner” and “novice,” but between “neophyte” and “zero.” =) But it’ll be fine. There’ll be lots of pointing and “Haihaihaisososososo.” Also a few of the other foreign teachers would probably be happy to hang with us from time to time, and two of them are fluent in Japanese and one is conversational, and the rest have had enough time to get the survival elements of the language.

I hope I’m not drowning you in details. To summarize:

- Long weekend, February 9th to 12th, we could rent a car
- Dress warm, it’s cold
- Nihongo no something something sen.

We’ll definitely chat more when I get internet.

[Goodbyes, sentiments, etc…]

~ Will

Monday: So how am I doing as a teacher? Stay tuned for that, and lots lots more…

06:26 pm - the week of hay

(Albion Cross, 11:06pm, August 24th)

I meant to write for my blog earlier today, after getting in from unloading the hay and taking Heber’s tractor back to Rosshaven. It would have begun something like this:

I am so exhausted. I never want to see another hay bale again for the rest of my life.

Instead, I exhibited this exhaustion not by commiserating to my blog, but by sleeping on top of the bedclothes in my hay clothes all afternoon. How much progress am I making on that Seiko Gakuen information package and Sam’s language materials? Don’t ask.

The rain this morning came as sweet relief, but I regret that we had to leave two tarp-covered wagons out in Red House – the hay will get a little wet, and will need a good sunny day (uncovered) to dry out before we can even think of stuffing it in the loft of the barn there. We did get two unloaded, though, and we unloaded an additional wagon plus the truck-friendly road trailer in the shelter of the cavernous barn here at the farm proper.

Yesterday was brutal. Four unloads, a quick lunch, and then out to the field for 1,362. Then I had a fun experience with hauling hay that I’ll tell separately for emphasis. Then we put tarps on the loads at Red House, and by the time all this was done the day that had started at 7:00am ended at 9:00pm, and I couldn’t even go to bed – my cousins were expecting me to help them out at Trivia Night up at the fair grounds. We had fun, and I got home from that just after midnight, and then it was up at 6:00am again this morning for work (again) at 7. But the rain set in before 10 and ensured that we wouldn’t be baling today. Thank God.

This week has been the most strenuous I’ve had since the few 60-hour weeks I completed at TeleTech last year. I know there are some people who can work 80 or more hours and not miss a beat, but I’m not one of those people. Anyway, if you put all my work hours together I would imagine it would come to somewhat less than sixty, but this is much more physically demanding work. Also, after a shift at TeleTech, you’re not coaxing black souvenirs out of your nose with a Kleenex. Still, there are things worse than packing hay, which I’m reminding myself of as I type this, struggling with allergy-irritated Eustachian tubes and trying to pop my ears.

Yeah, I’m kind of looking forward to getting back out to Souris tomorrow night. The rural lifestyle would be the death of me. I’ll be helping out with our stand at the Farmer’s Market at the fair tomorrow, and next week will be far easier than this one was: there’s only one field of hay left (if you don’t count the stuff we haven’t brought in, but it’s been rained on enough that we may leave it unless someone wants it for road construction or warehouse banking or something), and then probably a day or two of straw, but we may wait until early September for that, and straw is less dense (and therefore lighter) than hay anyway.

Oh, want to hear the tractor story?

* * *

So I’m on the Massey-Ferguson yesterday, which is a reasonably old tractor – there’s no cab, and you have to wear ear protection (they look like headphones, so I think I’ll call them headfoams) when you operate it – and I’ve got two full wagonloads of hay trailing behind me, weighing many tons.

I said when I was told that I’d be driving it from the old Ross farm to Red House, “Yay! I get the deathtrap!” I had found that the throttle and clutch had been acting up, and earlier that day we had to get our Cousin Heber’s tractor (a very good little Ford) to run the baler because the Massey’s PTO* 1) wouldn’t stop and 2) despite #1, wouldn’t run the baler. The PTO didn’t have anything to do with me, although I noted with some chagrin that the tiny stub of it protruding from the back wouldn’t stop spinning. This was clearly a tractor in need of attention.

* - Power Take Off, a rotary extension of a tractor’s drivetrain that can be used to run equipment like snowblowers, hay balers, rakes, tethers, bush mowers, spreaders, etc...

Anyway, so I’m heading off the field, hoping to get to Red House. The road out of the Ross farm is downhill. It didn’t take long for me to discover that I had no engine braking. I gathered dangerous speed as I trundled down the hill, merely skidding and sliding ineffectually as I attempted to pedal-brake. (“Is this how I’m going to die?” I wondered inside.) I had no hope of stopping at the road, and I was fortunate that there was no traffic as I barely managed to make a wrong left turn and head off in the opposite direction to Dingwell’s Mills.

As I got over the shock of the near-accident, I started thinking about where I was going to turn around. Reaching Red House via Fortune Bridge was not an option; there would have been an even steeper downhill stretch on that road. You might be wondering why I didn’t just back up to the farm road and turn around that way. The answer is that backing up a wagon requires substantial expertise; while backing up with two-wheel trailers is one thing, four-wheel trailers and wagons are something else entirely. It’s completely counterintuitive, and you have to think six ways at once. Dad tried to teach me once a few weeks back, and I succeeded in going straight backwards for short spurts, but executing a controlled backing turn (without the back wheels of the tractor coming close to meeting the front corner of the wagon) remained beyond my reach. Backing up two wagons is generally impossible and rarely attempted; in such a case, they’ll usually be detached and backed up one at a time.

So I’m driving along, looking forlornly at the various little paths that went off the road into the woods and wondering if they lead to clearings or fields. On my way Heather passed me in Heber’s truck – I first thought she was going to the field to pick up his tractor, but that night at Trivia she told me that she was actually moving some things to her new house in Souris, and she was on the back roads because she had no brakes! So we had something in common as we both waved to each other in a guilty, wary, confused sort of way.

After a while I realized that the intersection of Highways 2 and 4 (which I was approaching) would be an ideal place to turn around; it’s quite large and has a little off-ramp from 4 to 2 East – I could take that, pull a U-turn, then turn back into Route 4, then turn left and complete the circle. But it didn’t even come to that; just before that intersection there was a sand and gravel pit (for road construction)… with two driveways! I slowed to a crawl and took the second entrance as widely as I could. (You have to take your turns very widely with two wagons, or else the corners of your wagons meet, with potentially destructive results; after this trip was finished there were a few more telltale shards of wood broken off from said corners.)

I gently curled around a power pole, gingerly rolled over a few ruts and bumps, and finished by fording a wide, sandy mud puddle. I got back onto the road, this time facing Red House…

YES!! I couldn’t believe it! I had looked danger in the eye and triumphed! HA-HA! I pumped my fist before making yet another steering correction that had been neglected in my exuberance. Sweet relief and exhilarating joy circulated as one within me.

At length (the detour alone took more than 20 minutes), I got the loads safely to their destination. I discussed the incident with Dad, and he told me apologetically that he had neglected to tell me I ought to be in “High Multipower,” which provides engine braking – I was in low, and that’s why I coasted. Naturally the labels on this switch and many others have worn / rusted off with the process of time, and I couldn’t tell which setting was which even if I had really known which setting I wanted.

Fast-forward to Trivia Night, where I’m fresh off the field and smelling of hay. (Despite this, I received a warm welcome, both from the Rosses (my team) and Glen Swallow’s team; in fact, Glen turned me around in my chair and pulled me over to his table.) Let’s not talk about the trivia results; we beat Glen’s team, but we also beat ourselves in not sticking with a few correct initial answers and I think we finished 4th or 5th.

I told the Rosses about my experience today, and Heber later mentioned that he had been preparing to harrow* or was going to harrow, and Jennifer (his wife) said in her delicious English accent, “Oh, you and your harrowing, you’re the only one who cares about that!” I said, “Well, you know, today with the tractor I also had a harrowing experience.”

* - I had to look this up: “to break up land by pulling a harrow over it.” The harrow is “a piece of farm equipment with sharp teeth or disks that is used to break up soil and clods of dirt and to even up a plowed field.” (Encarta World English Dictionary, Microsoft)

So after the laughter subsided, we had our team name: The Harrowing Experience. After Heber talked about harrowing some more I suggested we could be Heber Ross and the Deathly Harrows, but we stuck with the original name. =)

* * *

Oh, I can’t forget to mention the Queen of the Furrows competition. Vicki, Miss Springwater Farm, won! Isn’t that awesome? We sponsored her at the last minute, as she entered with my cousin Christina. Now nobody but us really cares that she was Miss Springwater Farm, everybody else just noticed that she was well-spoken, good-humoured, respectable with a plow, and rather fetching in evening wear – in other words, perfect, but it’s a cool little thing that we played a small part in it. Go, Vicki!

Current Mood: exhausted

03:35 am - report from Kentville

On our way up to Saint-Anne yesterday morning, Mom and Paul and I hit a nasty snowstorm. The 101 was closed off from Coldbrook all the way to Yarmouth, so we were forced to stay overnight in Kentville with friends. We're hoping the snowplows have made it through that stretch, and if the wind isn't blowing too hard and reducing visibility, we're going to try again later this morning.

( Pictures... )

Ordinarily packing's the easiest part of getting ready, but my Uncle Cliff and his partner Shelley are travelling all over North America not only with their message of spiritual cohesion to heal the planet, but also with my suitcases. (They were in a panic and needed them badly; to my slight chagrin nobody asked me before mom lent them to them, but at the time we didn't know that I would be going away myself so soon.) So I've got a couple of weekender bags, my backpack, plus my maternal grandfather's old suitcase that got a bit mildewed in storage - I spent some time the other day scrubbing it out and letting it dry off in the hot sun.

As you might expect, I'm a little bit jealous of my suitcases, which are going to all kinds of interesting places, but I hope they don't come home with a compromised sense of reality and a propensity for pseudoscientific logic as I don't doubt many of her audience members will. This isn't to say that I doubt her sincerity or the significance of what can really only be called a miracle. But too many people who've had near-death experiences report the same kinds of "new awareness," and you really have to wonder how much of the visions are really just brain chemistry - being dead for any amount of time kind of screws with you! I don't think all the people thinking and praying for her son hurt him in any way, and it probably did everyone a world of good, both directly and indirectly.

That being said, I think a relatively mundane explanation for his recovery could be found if we were more willing and able to search for one. She loses me at the point where the energy beings tell her to tell everyone to sit for an hour at 1111 GMT (that's 8:11am here, 7:11am Eastern - not 9:11 / 8:11 as we might think due to our being on daylight savings time now) on July 17th and think some kind of unifying thought. I don't think it'll do any harm, and it might serve us well to pause and meditate or reflect, but I wouldn't expect July 18th to be quantifiably different from July 16th either, unless the ritual itself has some sort of placebo-esque impact on a lot of people. That wouldn't be a bad thing either, but it might do some incidental damage to the development of reason and intelligence within humanity.

Well, I wish all of us well, and revisiting Shelley's experiences remind me that there are much more important things in life than the welfare of my suitcases.

Current Mood: tired

03:44 am - April Snowstorms Bring May Showers Bring June Flowers

April Snowstorms Bring May Showers Bring June Flowers
Part of a set.

Current Mood: tired

09:19 am - m-m-man... <clunk>

Scene: My bed.

"Get up! We've got to go shovel!"

Ugh. I looked around, blinked, and pulled myself up. The scene outside the window looked strangely dim, as if the sun had yet to rise. Disbelieving, I glanced at the clock on my mobile phone.

6:30?!

"It's 6:30!" I cried.
"Yes, well, we've got to go shovel. Home care's coming in an hour, and I've got a class to teach at 9:30!"

&@(&%FNV(@(&

Incredulous, frustrated, annoyed, and fuelled by adrenaline, I headed out a few minutes behind her.

Anyway, I'm glad to have done it; it was a nice morning and good exercise. But now I'd better get back to sleep. I'm too tired to do anything productive on the Lappy 486 here.

Current Mood: tired

02:29 am - cat!

Made it back today, went to rehearsal, ate at Subway with Jaymee, then went to Mike's Oscar party. So I'm just getting settled back in the house now. Here in Halifax it's at least 5 degrees warmer and significantly less blustery than eastern PEI. It looks like we might even get Spring back in a few weeks. Meanwhile, if I were to go biking on PEI in late May or early June, I would be hiking my bike over snowdrifts on the Confederation Trail. I've had to do it before!

It turned out Ila never did go to bed last night; she lay on the couch all night with the TV muted. Oh, boy...

We have a cat. I met him tonight; he was sitting on my bed. So now my sheets are covered with cat hair. ARGH. Not what you want to see coming home at 2 in the morning.

Picked up a letter postmarked from Chełmno today! I think it's Kinga returning my reference papers, but I won't know for sure just yet because 1) there is no return address and 2) I'm not supposed to open the envelope containing the teaching reference, and so I can't risk assuming she put an envelope within the envelope. I sent her an e-mail to double-check.

Oh, the cat's here. He's cute, I guess. Or is it "she?" (Update: His name is Dexter.) I just absolutely do not like pet hair on my sheets and clothes. I'm spoiled staying with Aunt Shirley and Uncle Shane, because they never have pets except when other relatives bring them over ("Sit down, Cocoa! Lie down, Cocoa! Behave, Cocoa!" ... "That's a GOOD GIRL!" =) Heather thought I hated animals, which isn't fair, I just don't particularly like being in close physical or sensory contact with them. =)

OK, time to get that linguistics journal done, and find someplace else to sleep, since my bed is off-limits until I can find new sheets.

Current Mood: annoyed

04:26 pm - PEI part 2

Last night I drove myself to Charlottetown for Jenna’s party. From the 7 Mile Road to Cherry Valley, it was all blowing snow, slippery patches, and white-outs. Scary!

But I’m really glad I braved the conditions, because it was a great party! It was a little bit awkward at first because I was one of only two people there not wearing a deliberately tacky 80’s dress, and I was the only male. But Jenna made it easy for me to break the ice with everyone and her friends were wicked-cool. Good times, good times.

We had Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II going, and now I’ve got Boston’s “More than a Feeling” stuck in my head. Speaking of music, I drove back to Souris this morning listening to an Electric Light Orchestra compilation – man, these guys just have one hit after another! (And apparently the most Top 40s without a #1.) It was good to have that to rock out to while the eighteen-wheeler in front of me on Highway 2 gave my windshield a generous coating of grime while we coasted at 85 km/h.

Jenna’s roommate Marijka totally 0wn3d Guitar Hero. She was something to watch. She also made us a huge breakfast with pancakes, toast, bacon, and cantaloupes. When we first awoke, she brought us a pitcher of water with lemon. I don’t mean to commodify women by any stretch of the imagination, but Marijka is a total babe.

Oh, and memo to self: don’t drink five 6% Moosehead Dry Ices one after the other. I went up to use their washroom at 7am, already feeling quite weak in the stomach, and I got up there and that went OK, but then the next thing I remember is waking up on the floor draped against the edge of their bathtub, and my arm hurts for some reason. It must have happened suddenly, because my nepo llits saw ylf! It was that that made me reconsider the wisdom of just remaining on the bathroom floor for the rest of the morning, and I somehow got back downstairs and back into bed. I still had momentary instances of nausea until about 10:30. I guess I’m not 19 anymore – I never had hangovers then! On the plus side, I didn’t have a headache – maybe something else was making me sick. As if.

I also met this really cool girl named Laura who wants to be a mortician. She only tried to stab me about three times. I guess you had to be there. I imagine Jenna and her crew will have the other highlights on Facebook soon. I didn’t want for my camera.

Tonight I’m going to try to get that chapter of my psychology textbook read, and I also need to work on my father’s website. I’d better hurry, because Aunt Shirley wants to rent a movie tonight. Lisa just MSN’d me from her parent’s home in Ontario, asking about preparations for the Democratic Individualism exam on Tuesday. Keener! Keener! =) It’s a relief to hear that she hasn’t started, and neither have I. Dear Dr. H___, we have lives, K THX. =)

Your e-Buddy,
~ Will

Current Mood: chipper

12:05 pm - Voice Post

VoicePost 236K 1:23

(no transcription available)

Current Mood: awake