12-18-01
So I had a wonderful update planned, full of Cheerful Holiday....uh...Cheer, I guess, but then I went and got sick as hell on Thursday and have stayed they way straight through the weekend. I'm only just now starting to recover. It was so bad I even missed two days of work. I never miss work or school or anything due to "being sick." So how could I have been crippled for the better part of the week, you ask? I'll tell you: THERE IS NO SYMPTOM RELIEF MEDICATION IN JAPAN!!! There isn't a bottle of Ny-Quil....sweet, sweet Ny-Quil, to be found in the entire country because some damn idiot had the poor foresight to outlaw pseudoephedrine. Now I don't want to tell anyone how to run their country, but the dire state of citizens paralyzed by pseudoephedrine abuse is hardly at the top of Japan's list o' "S#*% We Gotta Fix." They keep lamenting over how their economy is suffering so badly lately. You know why it's suffering - because everyone is too busy feeling like crap from the common cold that they can't bother to think about spending money. Of course, Fletcher says there are other economic factors at work, but I'm holding fast to my own hypothesis.
In other news, I'm probably going to miss an update altogether next week since I have to send in my computer to get my DVD drive fixed. I don't know what I did, but it ain't working no more and I'll be buggered if I have to go through winter break without being able to watch all the wonderful movies I have on DVD.
And since I've been feeling WAY too crappy to put anything together, this is going to be a fairly meager update, I apologize. I wasn't going to mention this originally, but I might as well since there's not a lot here this week; there's some pictures of me team-teaching with Shimamura-sensei over thisaway. Probably not that interesting to people who don't know me.... actually it's probably not that interesting for people that do know me, but my Mommy will like it. Mommy still loves me. <sniff>
This week, Fletcher and I got bamboozled into visiting our local kindergartens and spreading the good will of the Christmas season by dressing up as Santa Claus and parading around like idiots (sadly, I don't think we got any photos of this). Don't get me wrong, it was fun and the teachers who organized the whole thing were great, but it became obvious to us both just how little they get this whole "Christmas" thing.
Last week, a teacher from one of the kindergartens came by to touch base with us and go over our Santa-schedule so we knew what was going to happen. She eventually pulled out two Santa costumes for us to try on to make sure they fit all right. Fletcher and I were a little confused since we were both going to the same school, so we asked, "So, which of us is going to be Santa?" Without missing a beat she replied, "Well, you both are, of course!" I'm pretty sure Fletch and I were devoid of any facial expressions at that point? She asked us if there was anything wrong. The only answer was the echo from my hand smacking my forehead.
In the end, it was actually quite a bit of fun, especially since I had never played Santa before. Seeing the kids faces light up when I came into the room was really something else. It also showed me that, while the adults may not 'get it,' Santa really is something that goes beyond countries and languages. I guess most people have already realized this, but it never really hit home for me until today that Santa is a man without a country; he's a true citizen of the world. And something about that just puts a smile on my face. ^_^
While
you can see a little holiday cheer in the city, for the most part
you don't see a whole lot of Christmas decor here in Japan. To
help compensate, I do what I can to deck out my computer's interface
with the proverbial Spirit o' th' Season®. As usual,
click the pic to see what it is I'm yapping about and for a larger
version.
(Dad, please note that the legendary purple ball is present. It just wouldn't be Christmas without it, would it?)
For anyone who cares about the particulars if you want to set up something similar on your own OS X system (everyone is running OS X, riiiiiight??!?), I'm running Xmas Lights along the top of the screen, the beautiful Snö Desktop application which provides the gently falling snowflakes in the background that you see, a hacked, holiday version of iTunes thanks to the resources at ResExcellence and a plethora o' Holiday icons from xicons.com.
Oh yeah, and Last Christmas in my music playlist was provided by Wham! It just wouldn't be Christmas without that either, now would it? :P
Lastly, this past week was the Student Body Elections at my school. Apparently there's no platforms or campaign promises, they just yell at you from behind their banners as you walk by in the morning, begging you to please vote for them and hope it was loud enough to persuade you to see why you should (is it just me or was that sentence crap?).
At least one guy got into the shaking hands routine. Of course, his outreached hand was ignored by about 10 people before he basically attacked this guy and made him shake hands for a photograph - just like a real politician. You go, Girl!! Er... I mean, dude.
So that's it until I get my computer back from Apple-Japan which I'm hoping should be inside of a week. See y'all soon!!
