Saturday, December 31, 2005
haunted by you...
Belated Merry Christmas.... and a Happy New Year! I'm back in Canada... I'll be here for another week. I really don't have any specific agenda except to spend time with my family and see my new niece RM. She is sooo cute!
It's New Year's Eve here in Toronto... I feel extremely tired. I really don't feel like going to our family New Year's Party at my aunt's place.
I finally got this wireless connection going between my brother's PC and my Mac. I've been working on it since I came back and I just wouldn't give up. I'm a type of person who never gives up easily. I'm happy.
I saw my ex's photo a sea site... I still find ea mulc attractive. Ea canviac a lot. Eu stara proxim a ea, well.. geographically speaking, 3 weeks ago when I visited Kyushu. I'm quite disappointed because I really feel that ea no desiderat habiar contact com meu. Eu le inviac e-mail twice while I was there but I only got a reply only 2 days after. Strangely enough, eu som mulc attract a ea. Hmmm.
Now... gotta get me a cup of coffee, a smoke, and a bath!
8:55 PM
Monday, December 12, 2005
bitter cold... bitter me...
As always, I haven't posted anything for a long time. I've been very busy in the past few weeks... too busy to even look at my computer. Either that, or just plain exhaustion from work and other stuff.
It's been very cold here in Japan. I don't know... I guess I'm just not used to the cold weather here. Canada is much much colder but it seems the cold here in Japan is quite different. It seems colder for some reason. I think it's because there's no central heating inside my house, like the majority of the houses here in Japan... There's also no central heating in school here. All of the schools here uses a "stove". For us, English speakers, a "stove" is a something we use to cook food, etc... but here in Japan, a "stove" is a kerosene heater. The smell coming out of it is not too pleasant but I guess I got used to it. Most of the time, it's not enough to heat the whole room. Oh yeah, no central heating also means that only one room in your house gets heated so the rest of the house is freakin' cold! I've been wearing layers and layers of clothes even inside the house which I am not accustomed to. At home back in Canada, I just wear a t-shirt in the middle of winter because it can be extremely hot inside the house when the heater is on... oh yeah, in Canada our heater is always turned on... in Japan, you only turn the "stove" on when it's getting cold... once the room is hot enough, people turn them off until it gets cold again and then manually push the button to turn it back on... argh. AND, the "stove" may poison you and so it is recommended to open your window twice every hour... oh my God. Such a pain in the ass. I usually uses my air-conditioner instead. In Japan, AC's double up as heater as well.. but not as effective as the "stove"... but I don't want to die of poisoning if I forget to open the window (which what usually happens).
Furthermore, some schools here can be really cruel to their students. My junior high school does not have any heating system at all in any of their classrooms. I could see kids shaking from the cold temperature inside their classrooms. Each student has their handwarmers, a kind of bag with chemicals inside which warms up when you open the package. I could see the smoke coming out of their breath inside the classroom. They are only allowed to wear their school uniforms which is simply a jacket... well, I don't even call it a jacket. Students here in Japan wear an navy/army-like uniform. I don't think these uniforms are enough to keep the kids in my junior high warm. Imagine, it's only fall! We, teachers, wear our jackets when we are teaching inside the classroom! It was weird. It is so cold in the classrooms that one time my hands were so frozen I couldn't even write. Some kids are so happy when they get inside the teacher's room because it's well-heated. Sometimes, these kids make up excuses to go inside the classrooms. As soon as they get inside, they rush right to the "stove" to warm up. I feel so guilty since I am in a well-heated environment (well, not quite... it's still cold even with the "stoves" on) while my students are not. One time, I was talking to one student during clean-up time and I saw his hands, they were red and they looked swollen to me. I asked him if he was OK and he said yes, and immediately, he grabbed his handwarmers inside his pockets. My heart just breaks seeing them like this. I get too upset that I could not help crying a bit. So many things come to my mind... I told myself that if I get lots of money or win the lottery, I would donate "stoves" to each classroom in this junior high... It's so strange that no one, either a student or parent, has ever complained about this. I've been thinking perhaps they simply accept that this is the way it is over here. Well, not for me... We Canadians are quite spoiled I think and we take things for granted.
Sorry for the whinings...
9:31 PM
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