Myspace

In which our hero opens a myspace account to ease feelings of despair and loneliness.

By a months standards february is a bit of a pussy. At a 28 days, he's the short man of month team. Worse, he's squezzed between janurary and march; two man sized 31 day months and if that wasnt bad enough, for no reason at all theres an silent r in the middle that makes it the most difficult month to spell. Theres no doubt about it. February has an uphill battle and I havnt even mentioned the identity crisis it must have every leap year. On the plus side its the only month that 3 out of 4 times can boast being a factor of seven so when I woke up this morning and realised Id been in Japan for 4 weeks, it also meant i could celebrate my first month back by being slightly hungover and sitting around johns apartment all day wearing a t shirt with the heater on.

Hoorah.

Since my new job doesnt start untill april and i have secured accomodation on johns couch for the next two weeks, i have more spare time than my brother. And so i have discovered one of the great time wasters of the twenty first century.. Myspace.


thats right..remember when i bagged myspace for simply being a way for pathetic people to pretend they were cool by listing a bunch of people they thought were their friends and then consumate these rather tenous bonds by leaving a comment for all to see, publicly validating their existance but essentially just showing the whole world their pathetic need to appear popular? remember when i agreed whole heartedly, nodding with sage like wisdom when others pointed out news limiteds interest in finding out all sorts of information about whoever they wants buying patterns, demographics, peer to peer marketing et al. Especially given the demographics of the typical myspace user are traditioanlly the most valuable, able to buy many a trufufler coat of the greedy lorax. (i am making sense if youve read dr seuss, dont worry ill quote borat later on)

as far as i can tell this is what you do. you tell people a little bio about yourself. you put up some pictures or music or stuff you think is cool (since when was having a scrapbook, online or not, cool by the way) and then you wait like a spider by his web for friends to drop by. then when you realise that you actually need friedns to make friends you throw the cunning spider/web theory out the window and start sending out invitiations. people i have know for 15 years last week were getting emails with the subject "gram wants to be your friend"

so far ive spent hours on this thing and got absololutley nothing in return, except that i learned that amelia and vince got married and that some other people i havnt seen in a while have opened accounts and seem equally confused with what to do with it. the biggest trap is going..oh yeah...her! remembering some girl you flirted for five minutes with 4 years ago and going..i wonder..if thats her, then feeling pathetic when you find out it is but so what....your no closer to her than you were when you she started dancing with that other guy the first time you met. it helps to feel less pathetic if you trim your nails and have a shave before going on myspace, theres nothing like wasting a day on this sort of activity and being badly groomed to help boost your ego a few points. (would a loser use sarcasm)

One more thing ive leanrt from myspace is that if you put up a photo of yourself in a hat that makes you look like somebody who listens to craig david and dances in front ofthe mirror, girls youv never met before who may or may notlisten to craig david and dance in front of the mirror send you messages and this in turn leads you to return this voyeuristic interest by looking at their page and then you reaise thats its three o clock in the afternoon and you havnt bought the bread yet.

HI FIVE!

New Job/ moving again

As usual when there are lots of things to write about, i never seem to write anything. So heres me trying to cath up on the last week.

Fisrt the big news. From April, Ill be a catholic school elementary teacher. Im also going to be moving to the countryside to live in the teachers dorms, almost two hours from tokyo.

The job is better pay than geos with better holidays, however im realising the seriousness of the move. Effectively saying goodbye to tokyo and living in a very different part of japan. There are lots of trees and farms and so far io havnt seen a shop anywhere near the place.

So far this is the cast of characters.

The Father

Doesnt speak english, nods off in the middle of a meeting, smokes like a chimney, Watched my class for five minutes and told me to be more genki like pychotic teacher number # 2. See below.


Psychotic teacher number #1

classic short man syndrome. glint in his eyes that says ...are you looking at me...are you taler than me? I asked him if he was staying another year, he said "hell no" two minutes later i asked what he was plannign on doing after april...he said"why..did somebody tell you i was leaving?" and then proceeded to get increasingly paranoid, asking me what people have been saying as if I would know.


Psychotic Teacher number #2

had an hour long meeting with this man. 58 minutes of which was watching him pace around the room describing as 8 year old girl as an evil genius who has made it her mission to get him fired. During the meeting Teacher number #3 came in and mentioned that although he wasnt supposed to tell anyone, he had heard that psychotic teacher number 1 was leaving. Teacher number 3 then emphasised that Psychotic Teacher number 2 was not supposed to know this. Psychotic teacher number #2 then said it was ok he would tell psychotic teacher #1 that I had told him.

Later, psychotic teacher #2 got angry accused me of sitting in his chair and going through his things when reading the classroom texts for next year.


Anyway...Mike came back this week so today I am moving to Johns house in Omiya, a city about 20 minutes north of Tokyo.

A Word from our sponsors

Today I left my umbrella at one of my interviews and had to walk for twenty minutes in the rain while my shoes gathered puddles in them. Meanwhile a bus splashed past me advertising an escort service top to bottom.

Happy Valentines People!

Holy Shit

i just watched a man make love to a 40 kilogram, 3 metre long octopus.

To borrow again from garth merringue...i shit you not.

I love japanese tv.

How much am I worth?

Today was an interview with an international pre-school. The School looked great, had excellent resources and I generally agreed with their philosophy. Here's the catch. I have to name my price. So the question is how much do I think I'm worth? Well besides all the nice stuff that you cant put a price on happiness and making a kid smile is the best reward. Fuck that! I like kids but we're not talking about my own here, sure ill have a few favorites, shed a few tears when I'm gone, think about them from time to time and smile. But you know what'd make me smile even more, getting paid in full! mmmm hmmm show me the money honey! aint no lovin shit gonna buy me no Prada..nuh ahh!

I should stop here and point out the reason that I Have this bog is so I can structure my thoughts in a coherent fashion. Trying to sound coherent is one step closer to thinking coherently you might agree. So forgive me when I get in touch with my inner middle age gold digger. My mind is a democracy and everyone needs a turn. Besides that teaching young kids is hard work.

Where was I, oh yeah negotiating a salary. I'm actually intrigued by the concept. Always wanted to test my business acumen. There must be some part of male psychology that enjoys this playing the field. If women ruled the world we would most likely call it job gathering and I'm sure there would be less hardship and struggle but this is FUN!

Its balls to the wall negotiating people!

Meanwhile I am addicted to watching Dark Place and Nathan Barley on Youtube and getting into petty online arguments with people who annoy me. I should be able to ignore it. Perhaps I'm bored and find it cathartic however ultimately it makes me more miserable than ever and I actually start to sympathise with the person I am taunting followed by feelings of regret and shame. Oh dear.

Forms, Formulas et al

Filling in Application forms that just refuse to die. Why do these companies register with an employment service that are supposed to save your details as an online resume supposedly because it more convenient and then ask that you fill out all the same tedious details on their own websites application form.

At least I can listen to music. Today I have listened to some of the Shins Album but I can never do a whole album of those guys, Miles and Gil Evans sketches of Spain, some obscure jazz fusion record by a guy called Ricky Lane that Dion passed to me and now I'm listening to Stereolabs Dots and Loops album. Its what I always listen to when I cant think what to listen to. Its not that I even like Stereolab that much or ever remember their songs, but they're my go to band whenever there's nothing else I really want to listen to. Perhaps its that they're the band that I know I'm supposed to like but have never really fallen for. Like that nice attractive girl next door who you have a cup of tea with when your not really doing anything else. I wish I could interview stereolab "Critics have likened you to an attractive girl next door who you can have a cup of tea with when your not really doing anything else. How do you respond to this?" I think id make a good journalist.

Is there a rule that on any given day you always manage to achieve about 50% of what you intended never more never less. I thought perhaps I was setting my targets a little high but whenever I lower them I still manage to reach about the same ratio.

random thoughts and trivia

why do I bother to buy more than two bananas at a time?

there's is an unexplainable smell of cheese in mikes apartment. could it be that mike is made from cheese or do I need to clean the toaster oven.

meanwhile my jumper smells like wet dog.

I had my first Japanese lesson today.

Already my standards are starting to slip.

Today, the company I was hoping would jump at the chance to employ any young upstart in a snappy suit, told me by telephone that they are looking for someone with at least level 2 Japanese (1 being the highest). Right now im about Level 82, just above someone who says oregano instead of arigato and slightly behind someone who can order a bowl of ramen without every customer in the shop looking at them (except the guy taking your order who always seems to be too close to the tv)

I had an interview yesterday with a small company that contracts out Assistant Language Teachers to Government schools. While the work was interesting, the guy who interviewed me's shirt was frayed and he forgot to introduce himself. Though Geoff, as I eventually found out, was a nice enough guy it felt like I was the first person he had interviewed not on monday morning, not just for that position, but ever. Questions like...so what are your thoughts on teaching in Japan? I think gives some indication to the quality of available teaching candidates over here. Its like if an engineering company asked a prosepctive employee "so gravity huh, any thoughts?"

Luckily I was able to ignore the snot coming out of his nose and gave pretty good answers the whole way through. Then he got to the part when he explains the terms of the contract. These consisted of a full Elementary Teachers Load except less pay than I had at GEOS and no pay during the Summer vacation. In a nutshell it was everything I had heard about some ALT companies and was trying to avoid.

Today I was going to apply for five jobs however I realised I t would be best to get a japanese phone number before I sent out any more so I only applied for three after I spent half the day in KDDI drawing circles on brochures with the sales assistant and re estimating my Japanese to about level 314.

But I did it, so if you want to email me and ask me where i am or what i am doing anywhere anytime of day, right that very second, you can send a message to my phone using this address.

grammorris@ezweb.ne.jp

till next time

oyasummi!

Im back

The Flight was good. Qantas gets four and a half stars from me. Their new video on demand system rules. (not to sound like an 8 year old or anything but it does rule) I watched two episodes of extras which ive never seen before. Ricky gervais is a genius. Also watched Borat for a second time (do not come any closer gypsy! you shrunk this woman gypsy?) and started watching love actually on ronans reccomendation Only saw half an hour of it but I have to agree that what i saw was so much less painful than babel and given that Hugh grant was in at least three of those scenes, that would have to make babel worse than shit.

Im looking forward to living like a nomad for the next month or so. I have never done the couch crawl.

last week i read that studies have shown that people who win tatslotto and people who have been in car accidents return to the same level of happiness after a short time. if this sort of homeostasis for the mind is true (and i think it probably is) its a strange concept to dwell on. does it mean that al endeavour is futile as it will inevevitibly lead you nowhere closer to fulfillment or is that my hangover talking. perhaps its that endeavor is the point of life and depending on your situation sense of achievement is all relative. this is turning into an unusually deep blog for me. i suppose its just that im going through a period of change right now, where i am is not where i thought id be a year or even 6 months ago. instead im back in japan with no idea how long this thing is going to last for. i used to think that i knew where i would be say, 1, 2 or even 10 years down the track but im learning that all of that thinking is futile. wow deep man.

in other news i have a job interview tommorow. the pay is the same as the old geos dig but im hoping there will be significantly more holidays. the idea of only getting a week or two eeach year again isnt appealing to me.

oh and my friend grant is getting married to keiko who is now pregnant. will it be a shotgun wedding? stay tuned next blog to find out. i also have the job of teaching keiko a little bit of english before she goes to new zealand in april to meet grants family.

exciting stuff.