01.01.10
Free Time
I’m standing here in the computer shop. We are getting a desktop with a huge flatscreen monitior, Windows 7 OS, Intel Core i5 processor, and four gigs of memory. With an upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate, we can change the language of the operating system to English. Sweet. I’m waiting while they set up our new PC, so I might as well write a few words. For me, I think the idea of Twitter makes more sense than writing longer blog posts. Except it would have to be something voice activated. So like if I was taking a walk and had a lightbulb moment, I could dictate a few words to my cell phone to be published automatically on my website. At any rate, I really need to write more. I can feel a slight atrophy occurring in my writing skills. Sometimes I have to even think now when I spell a word. Of course, my conversational skills have atrophied. I have trouble making English dance. I think it’s a necessary and unavoidable part of living here. Dumbing down your mother tongue for students day in and day out invariably dumbs down your own conversational proficiency. At least, I don’t have any problem when thinking, thank the gods. The tradeoff, of course, is that while living in East Asia for 10 years, I have arrived at a moderate proficiency level in Korean and Japanese. Maybe that will help me with my future job. And regarding my English, two months back home should fix me up good.
Using the store’s display computer to do some blogging is one of those (admittedly minor) ethical gray areas. I don’t think the staff are going to forbid me to blog on one of their display computers—on account of me being a furriner, they are even less likely to do so—and this being Japan, some of us foreigners sometimes try to see how much we can get away with. Like when I visited my wife in the hospital, I always parked adjacent to the two-hundred yen pay parking lot. It was some half-empty parking lot for the health insurance department, or something like that, but it was free, and only a few meters away. Some foreigners like me are always doing stuff like this. A friend of mine regularly swipes a roll of toilet paper from different bathrooms he visits. (In Japan, there are often spare toilet paper rolls sitting on the shelves in the bathroom shitters. Yet another huge difference from Canada.) A few times, after wiping, I tried swiping a roll of t.p. here and there, but felt too guilty about it. Anyway, what this whole deal about pay parking and t.p. and so on shows is that if everyone did it, it wouldn’t work. I guess we furriners are kind of like parasites. But this being Japan, as long as you don’t overtly offend anybody, nobody is likely to say anything. (One reason—and correct me if I’m wrong—why I think the Yakuza operates so easily here.)
My sister, artist, animal lover, wife and mother of two, recently commented in an email that life goes by in a blur. This is really true, maybe even more so if you have kids (because you get to watch them grow up). I can’t believe how fast they learn. Especially language. Interestingly, I was reading that a kid can become bilingual in the same amount of time that a kid can become monolingual. New research shows that’s how the brain works.* Our kids parrot back a lot of what I say to them, but they also come up with a lot of original sentences of their own.
Anyway, I’m finishing this blog entry at home. My time on the PC at the computer shop was cut short. Thankfully, this new PC is running really well. Now I’ll be able to concentrate on other things: family. I haven’t been to the gym in two months, I’ve been so busy with work and family. During the last few weeks, when I had a long break between classes, for example when I taught only mornings and evenings on that day, I would come home and help out with the housework. I feel bad letting the wife do all the housework as she has her hands full with the new baby. But then I also feel bad that I’m letting myself get out of shape. Not happy at all about that, but I try at least to get in some brisk walking (like walking from the kindergarten to the bank during the long [two-hour] lunch break I get. Anyway, life is about making sacrifices—or at least, it should be. This is what I think a lot of people don’t understand about marriage. Marriage is not about me, me, me—it’s about we, we, we. The good things and the bad. The onus is on you to try and tough things out, instead of walking out (divorce). All in all, I’m pretty happy and content. I love being a father. I try not to think too much about money, sex, and power—too much attention to these facets of life will lead you astray.
Happy New Year 2010, everyone.
*News flash. Whoa! Having a “foreigner moment” here. Apparently, this computer shop is well patronized by us aliens/extraterrestrials/furriners, or whatever you want to call us. And, living abroad as I do in a sea of yellow skin, black hair, and brown eyes, I had to do a double take when I saw a whitey and a brownie walk in. Just chatted with the whitey—no disrespect intended, I just see no reason to camouflage my cavalier attitude–who is a gent named Jeremy from Australia. He said he works in a factory in neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture. Interesting. Usually we foreigners work as English teachers. A word or two about “foreigners.” I have my own joke about that. Living in Korea and Japan, I had to apply for an “alien registration card” in both countries. But the concept of foreignership is not well entrenched in either country, especially perhaps Korea (where kids often shout, “There’s a foreigner!”), so I felt that “alien” had another meaning: literally off-world. (Damn, it feels good to write and express myself in my own language at a more challenging level for once. Just don’t get to do this enough.) In Korea, then, instead of being a “waeguk in” (lit., outside country person), I liked to call myself a “waegyae in” (lit., outside world person). It’s funny that we’re still thought of as foreigners, though. Back home, I grew up with friends of Chinese and Indian descent, who I always thought of as Canadian and never anything else—except perhaps, when I wanted to tease my Indo-Canadian friend with the moniker “paki.” That’s right, having reached the relatively mature age of thirty-six, I am a lot less politically correct. I really should have spoken up more back home in my university English classes. The chicks in my class were always stomping on men for all the thousands of years of phallus-driven patriarchal sins we have committed. When I get back home, it’s time to level the playing field. No more mincing words. If I want to say “chick flick,” I will heartily do so.
