(no subject)
Oh hello. I usually don't complain about shit on here, but maybe that's because there's usually not much to complain about. Lately there's been a lot of work-related dumb shit, so let me fill you in:
CHAPTER 1
There are two ALTs at my school, me and this Brazilian lady named Solange. She is really over-qualified for this job. She has taught English at universities and has even opened her own American English school in Brazil (?!). Anyways, she is ultra-hard-working and is usually cool to talk to, but lately she's been acting like a Biatch. here's why:
A while ago our Supervisor told Solange "You have to work on some weekends coming up," and told her she wouldn't be getting days off in exchange because we always leave early. Solange told me, and I was like "Nope, Supervisor lady, can't do that," and explained why. Then she was like "Oh, OK, then for working 2.5 days during the weekend we'll give you 2.5 days off whenever, AND you can still leave early," and everyone was happy. ...or were they??
Solange was not. I told her, "Just forget about it. She was wrong. We still get days off in return and get to leave early," but Solange didn't feel like that. She felt our Supervisor had talked down to her, or didn't respect her enough, or something like that. I was there, and I think it was a simple case of misunderstanding. But apparently it really pissed her off.
Our first weekend assignment is coming up on Sunday: teaching middle-school kids some fake model lessons. You know, to let them see what it's like at our school. Except with exciting stuff, and movies. For preparation this year I have spent 10 minutes on a worksheet, forgot about it, and taken a lot of naps. In Solange's case, however, apparently she is So Busy working on it right now as to have to print out her daily schedule to remind everyone How Busy She Is (it literally says something like "You all know how busy I am lately") and distributing it to all the English teachers. She gave me a copy today, too. I felt a Little bad about taking a nap at my desk today, right in front of her. I couldn't feel that bad, though, because she was busy doing the most retarded shit to MAKE herself busy. That's the thing: she Makes Herself Busy. Not only at work, but in her life too. She actually has TWO jobs (this one during the week, and one at an elementary school on the weekends, early in the morning, in Osaka) AND has private lessons teaching Portuguese and English at her house almost every weeknight. Wow!
Anyways, here's an example of what is keeping her busy: If I asked you, "Now, when we introduce the exchange students to the middle school kids on Sunday, we want to have it say "WE ARE FROM THESE COUNTRIES:" and write the name of the country each exchange kid is from really big on the chalkboard. How should we accomplish this?" how would you answer?
My answer: Write that shit real big-like in chalk on the chalkboard a few minutes before class starts.
Solange's answer: First spend forever printing out each individual letter medium-sized (not even big) on many pieces of paper, and then cut each individual letter out from that paper and somehow attach it to the blackboard, probably with magnets or something. WEAREFROMTHESECOUNTRIESBRAZILUNITEDSTATESCHINAGERMANY. That's a lot of letters.
There's lots of cool stuff like this that she does, but the point is that she's busy. Now those memos she was sending around to every English teacher got at least one teacher worried about her. In other words, the letters worked. Actually, he is the guy in charge of this weekend's activities. I went out to eat with him yesterday, and the whole time he was all "Is Solange OK? How's she doing? Is she stressed?" and basically the entire lunch conversation was about how busy she was and if she was OK. It's exactly what i wanted to talk about!
So today he comes in and tells her, "You know, if you are too busy or too stressed, you don't have to to do this". That's what she wanted to hear! She totally went off: "Oh yes I do. I Have to do this. A teacher here told me i Have to do it. No, I Have to." Great. Tomorrow I'm planning on asking her, "Hey, do you think we actually have to do this thing on Sunday??"
It's kind of a complicated thing to explain, but my main beef is she's basically making herself unavailable to everyone (which is a pain/annoyance) all because she's mad at our Supervisor who, last time I checked, wasn't even our Supervisor anymore. Our Supervisors handed her job over to another teacher (aka - she fucking quit), so now she's just a normal English teacher and not even in charge of us anymore. So what the fuck? It sucks because right now actually is a busy time for us. There's just a lot of stuff going on at once, and even I'm staying late and actually working a lot more. So it's not the best time for her to be pulling this.
Next weekend (our second weekend job) is the Wakayama High School English Speech Contest. We have to both do a stupid activity that day too, to entertain all the contestants. And of course, one of the responsibilities of an ALT is to help the three participants from our school with first their script, and then their speech. This usually means staying after school and listening to them give the speech a million times, telling them where to stress a word, how to intonate. I'm not complaining here, because it's actually fun to spend time outside of classes with students and I'm actually teaching a student English one-on-one, so I actually feel like I'm making a difference. So, I actually like this job. It was supposed to be me in charge of two of the girls and Solange in charge of one of them. But good old Solange is too busy these days to help out! So she fucked me, and the worst part was she didn't even ask me directly if she could dump her student on me. She went through a proxy, which was shitty and kind of pissed me off.
Actually there is a happy ending to the story above: one of the girls dropped out and there are only going to be two girls total, so nothing changes for me. I'm kind of sad because now I can't really use that example to strengthen my point. But it illustrates it, right? I mean, it was the same in the end, but she did fuck me over, right??
So lately she's just been being "busy" a lot, and reminding everyone of it. It's vaguely annoying just because I have to sit a desk away from her and watch her be "busy" and take her stress out on students. I just sit there and blatantly don't work in her face. I mean, I've told her, "Just forget about it, you don't HAVE to do anything, and she's not even our boss anymore so it doesn't matter," but she didn't listen. Too bad for her, because out of the options of working a lot and making yourself look busy just to look busy, and taking naps and chilling out, she chose the wrong door.
CHAPTER 2
Dude who got all sympathetic about Solange on me is Itogawa-sensei. He was one of the first dudes to show me the ropes about my high school, and we have gone on many lunch dates together. But not lately. Actually I was dreading going out to eat lunch the other day, because lately he has been pissing me off. I didn't want to spend an hour with him alone.
Itogawa has a problem that annoys the shit out of me. It happens when someone is rambling on about something, and blatantly ignores what other people say, or that they are even speaking at all. He likes hearing himself talk. Even if I do make some delightful contribution to the conversation, he'll just ignore the fact I said anything and go on. And on. And on. And later he might ask me a question I already answered before. For the third time.
He's a smoker, and so am I. Our school grounds are all Non-Smoking, so we have to leave school whenever we want to take a break that doesn't involve sitting in the same chair you've been sitting in all day. There is a ward office (like a little government building that does extremely local governmenty stuff) across the street with a smoking room, so I end up spending a lot of my time in there. It's cool because smoking there is probably the most social thing I do. I meet all the smokers who work at that office, and we chat about stuff (it's probably one of the only times I get to use Japanese on a daily basis, too). I meet other teachers from my school who I wouldn't normally talk to and we get friendly. It's an all-around good place to chill out and smoke and drink some coffee and have a friendly chat.
Today Itogawa comes up and tells me that some dick from the ward office called the Board of Education and told them that the teachers from our school were over there too often and were probably not working enough. First of all, why call the fucking Board of Education? Way to go, anonymous dickhead. Doesn't this happen in Japan a lot? Why don't they just call our school and talk to someone instead of going through our fucking bosses. What a dick move.
So this was pissing me off a bit today, but Itogawa was going nuts. It was kind of funny, but more in an annoying way because HE is probably the reason that guy called in the first place. Itogawa takes breaks over there probably 5-7 times a day. I average about three, and I'm over there a lot compared to most of the other teachers. Itogawa is already in there half the times I walk in the door, and through the office window I see him walking out of school to take a break multiple times throughout the day. He's also the only teacher I've caught sleeping in there. I didn't wake him up.
Also, I absolutely positively know Itogawa is not working as hard or much as he could be, because he asks me to do his stupid work for him. And I do it, because I'm nice and it gives me some incredibly easy busy work. So, the office rat was technically right. There are, in fact, teachers who are spending too much time smoking over there, and not doing their work. But, HEY GUY, I GOT THAT SHIT COVERED. I'm doing the work that guy is not doing, so fucking leave it alone. I got it.
So Itogawa going all apeshit because someone ratted on us, well, maybe he should have not slept in that room. But that's just my theory. I probably have something to do with the complaint, but at least in my case, I'M NOT A TEACHER. So it doesn't count. In the end, though I guess I get screwed two ways, because now I can't smoke there AND I will probably still get asked to do his work while he takes smoke breaks somewhere else. But next time I'll say I'm too busy, possibly because I have to walk so far every time I want to take a goddamn smoke break.
Also, as my Protest Against Being Inconvenienced (PABI), I came up with two ideas:
a) Start petitioning the local government to make all government buildings (schools, ward offices) non-smoking. It'd probably work better if I focused more on schools. It'd be a big 'STOP KIDS FROM SMOKING' campaign. I could probably get a good little anti-smoking rally going in little Wakayama. I'll definitely show them some JEL commercials, which might blow their mind. I could even quit smoking and act as real proof quitting makes you healthier and happier. Then, when the bill passes, that one dick who ratted on us will now not be able to smoke in there either! Take that!!!!
or
b) Pretend like that didn't happen, and still go smoke in that building. I'm actually still wondering if that call was even real, because it's so stupid. I mean, who does that? I'll probably still go there to buy smokes at least because the supermarket doesn't have my brand. If it's empty, I'll take a little break. Plus it'd be sad if I never saw the cool old ladies who work there and talk to me about the weather and school life. Aww.
I'll probably do B. A sounds like way too much work, and the amount of people who had nothing to do with this being inconvenienced would be too high. Too many casualties just to get back at that one shitty guy who ratted on us in the first place. But it would be epic...
So that's what has been pissing me off at work lately. I try to keep my stress levels at an absolute minimum, but it's natural to get a little stressed when lots of things are happening. I just try to balance everything out, do a little at a time, and take lots of breaks.
In other news I've had a Killer Kough the past few weeks, which is fun. I should cut down on smoking (and maybe I'll be forced to now YAAAY), but it's not that bad. I don't physically feel bad, and my throat isn't sore or anything, so I guess it's just a cough. It'll go away.
This just in: So, I've been watching a lot of film noir latley. It's so fucking cool. I've always liked stuff like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Tim Burton Batman, but that was more because I loved cartoons and Batman. I mean, I love cartoons and Batman now, but I'm more interested in the genre of noir at the moment. The movie that changed this was Brick, which was incredible. One of the aftershocks of seeing that was I really wanted to go back and look up some of the original film noirs. Instead of diving right in, I thought I'd go backwards through time a bit: after Brick I watched Miller's Crossing and Chinatown. Both were great. Then it was time to start from the beginning: The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.
Well, the movies were awesome. I didn't think I'd be able to sit through 1940's black-and-white movies that were mostly dialog, but the style kept me interested. The style of both the movie (shots used, framing, that kind of stuff) and the style of the characters (everyone in suits constantly drinking and smoking, hard-ass detective dudes, classy looking ladies, how they speak, and THE FEDORAS). Oh god, the fedoras. Humphrey Bogart is a badass.
So I'll continue this noir journey. I'll definitely be checking out some Chandler and Hammett, too. And fun fact: William Gibson was called "the Raymond Chandler of Sci-fi", at least according to the cover of the version of Count Zero I read.
Does anybody care about this stuff?!??!
Well I guess I had a little more to say than I thought I did. Oh well, I'm glad I got that shit off my chest. Cool??
CHAPTER 1
There are two ALTs at my school, me and this Brazilian lady named Solange. She is really over-qualified for this job. She has taught English at universities and has even opened her own American English school in Brazil (?!). Anyways, she is ultra-hard-working and is usually cool to talk to, but lately she's been acting like a Biatch. here's why:
A while ago our Supervisor told Solange "You have to work on some weekends coming up," and told her she wouldn't be getting days off in exchange because we always leave early. Solange told me, and I was like "Nope, Supervisor lady, can't do that," and explained why. Then she was like "Oh, OK, then for working 2.5 days during the weekend we'll give you 2.5 days off whenever, AND you can still leave early," and everyone was happy. ...or were they??
Solange was not. I told her, "Just forget about it. She was wrong. We still get days off in return and get to leave early," but Solange didn't feel like that. She felt our Supervisor had talked down to her, or didn't respect her enough, or something like that. I was there, and I think it was a simple case of misunderstanding. But apparently it really pissed her off.
Our first weekend assignment is coming up on Sunday: teaching middle-school kids some fake model lessons. You know, to let them see what it's like at our school. Except with exciting stuff, and movies. For preparation this year I have spent 10 minutes on a worksheet, forgot about it, and taken a lot of naps. In Solange's case, however, apparently she is So Busy working on it right now as to have to print out her daily schedule to remind everyone How Busy She Is (it literally says something like "You all know how busy I am lately") and distributing it to all the English teachers. She gave me a copy today, too. I felt a Little bad about taking a nap at my desk today, right in front of her. I couldn't feel that bad, though, because she was busy doing the most retarded shit to MAKE herself busy. That's the thing: she Makes Herself Busy. Not only at work, but in her life too. She actually has TWO jobs (this one during the week, and one at an elementary school on the weekends, early in the morning, in Osaka) AND has private lessons teaching Portuguese and English at her house almost every weeknight. Wow!
Anyways, here's an example of what is keeping her busy: If I asked you, "Now, when we introduce the exchange students to the middle school kids on Sunday, we want to have it say "WE ARE FROM THESE COUNTRIES:" and write the name of the country each exchange kid is from really big on the chalkboard. How should we accomplish this?" how would you answer?
My answer: Write that shit real big-like in chalk on the chalkboard a few minutes before class starts.
Solange's answer: First spend forever printing out each individual letter medium-sized (not even big) on many pieces of paper, and then cut each individual letter out from that paper and somehow attach it to the blackboard, probably with magnets or something. WEAREFROMTHESECOUNTRIESBRAZILUNITEDSTATESCHINAGERMANY. That's a lot of letters.
There's lots of cool stuff like this that she does, but the point is that she's busy. Now those memos she was sending around to every English teacher got at least one teacher worried about her. In other words, the letters worked. Actually, he is the guy in charge of this weekend's activities. I went out to eat with him yesterday, and the whole time he was all "Is Solange OK? How's she doing? Is she stressed?" and basically the entire lunch conversation was about how busy she was and if she was OK. It's exactly what i wanted to talk about!
So today he comes in and tells her, "You know, if you are too busy or too stressed, you don't have to to do this". That's what she wanted to hear! She totally went off: "Oh yes I do. I Have to do this. A teacher here told me i Have to do it. No, I Have to." Great. Tomorrow I'm planning on asking her, "Hey, do you think we actually have to do this thing on Sunday??"
It's kind of a complicated thing to explain, but my main beef is she's basically making herself unavailable to everyone (which is a pain/annoyance) all because she's mad at our Supervisor who, last time I checked, wasn't even our Supervisor anymore. Our Supervisors handed her job over to another teacher (aka - she fucking quit), so now she's just a normal English teacher and not even in charge of us anymore. So what the fuck? It sucks because right now actually is a busy time for us. There's just a lot of stuff going on at once, and even I'm staying late and actually working a lot more. So it's not the best time for her to be pulling this.
Next weekend (our second weekend job) is the Wakayama High School English Speech Contest. We have to both do a stupid activity that day too, to entertain all the contestants. And of course, one of the responsibilities of an ALT is to help the three participants from our school with first their script, and then their speech. This usually means staying after school and listening to them give the speech a million times, telling them where to stress a word, how to intonate. I'm not complaining here, because it's actually fun to spend time outside of classes with students and I'm actually teaching a student English one-on-one, so I actually feel like I'm making a difference. So, I actually like this job. It was supposed to be me in charge of two of the girls and Solange in charge of one of them. But good old Solange is too busy these days to help out! So she fucked me, and the worst part was she didn't even ask me directly if she could dump her student on me. She went through a proxy, which was shitty and kind of pissed me off.
Actually there is a happy ending to the story above: one of the girls dropped out and there are only going to be two girls total, so nothing changes for me. I'm kind of sad because now I can't really use that example to strengthen my point. But it illustrates it, right? I mean, it was the same in the end, but she did fuck me over, right??
So lately she's just been being "busy" a lot, and reminding everyone of it. It's vaguely annoying just because I have to sit a desk away from her and watch her be "busy" and take her stress out on students. I just sit there and blatantly don't work in her face. I mean, I've told her, "Just forget about it, you don't HAVE to do anything, and she's not even our boss anymore so it doesn't matter," but she didn't listen. Too bad for her, because out of the options of working a lot and making yourself look busy just to look busy, and taking naps and chilling out, she chose the wrong door.
CHAPTER 2
Dude who got all sympathetic about Solange on me is Itogawa-sensei. He was one of the first dudes to show me the ropes about my high school, and we have gone on many lunch dates together. But not lately. Actually I was dreading going out to eat lunch the other day, because lately he has been pissing me off. I didn't want to spend an hour with him alone.
Itogawa has a problem that annoys the shit out of me. It happens when someone is rambling on about something, and blatantly ignores what other people say, or that they are even speaking at all. He likes hearing himself talk. Even if I do make some delightful contribution to the conversation, he'll just ignore the fact I said anything and go on. And on. And on. And later he might ask me a question I already answered before. For the third time.
He's a smoker, and so am I. Our school grounds are all Non-Smoking, so we have to leave school whenever we want to take a break that doesn't involve sitting in the same chair you've been sitting in all day. There is a ward office (like a little government building that does extremely local governmenty stuff) across the street with a smoking room, so I end up spending a lot of my time in there. It's cool because smoking there is probably the most social thing I do. I meet all the smokers who work at that office, and we chat about stuff (it's probably one of the only times I get to use Japanese on a daily basis, too). I meet other teachers from my school who I wouldn't normally talk to and we get friendly. It's an all-around good place to chill out and smoke and drink some coffee and have a friendly chat.
Today Itogawa comes up and tells me that some dick from the ward office called the Board of Education and told them that the teachers from our school were over there too often and were probably not working enough. First of all, why call the fucking Board of Education? Way to go, anonymous dickhead. Doesn't this happen in Japan a lot? Why don't they just call our school and talk to someone instead of going through our fucking bosses. What a dick move.
So this was pissing me off a bit today, but Itogawa was going nuts. It was kind of funny, but more in an annoying way because HE is probably the reason that guy called in the first place. Itogawa takes breaks over there probably 5-7 times a day. I average about three, and I'm over there a lot compared to most of the other teachers. Itogawa is already in there half the times I walk in the door, and through the office window I see him walking out of school to take a break multiple times throughout the day. He's also the only teacher I've caught sleeping in there. I didn't wake him up.
Also, I absolutely positively know Itogawa is not working as hard or much as he could be, because he asks me to do his stupid work for him. And I do it, because I'm nice and it gives me some incredibly easy busy work. So, the office rat was technically right. There are, in fact, teachers who are spending too much time smoking over there, and not doing their work. But, HEY GUY, I GOT THAT SHIT COVERED. I'm doing the work that guy is not doing, so fucking leave it alone. I got it.
So Itogawa going all apeshit because someone ratted on us, well, maybe he should have not slept in that room. But that's just my theory. I probably have something to do with the complaint, but at least in my case, I'M NOT A TEACHER. So it doesn't count. In the end, though I guess I get screwed two ways, because now I can't smoke there AND I will probably still get asked to do his work while he takes smoke breaks somewhere else. But next time I'll say I'm too busy, possibly because I have to walk so far every time I want to take a goddamn smoke break.
Also, as my Protest Against Being Inconvenienced (PABI), I came up with two ideas:
a) Start petitioning the local government to make all government buildings (schools, ward offices) non-smoking. It'd probably work better if I focused more on schools. It'd be a big 'STOP KIDS FROM SMOKING' campaign. I could probably get a good little anti-smoking rally going in little Wakayama. I'll definitely show them some JEL commercials, which might blow their mind. I could even quit smoking and act as real proof quitting makes you healthier and happier. Then, when the bill passes, that one dick who ratted on us will now not be able to smoke in there either! Take that!!!!
or
b) Pretend like that didn't happen, and still go smoke in that building. I'm actually still wondering if that call was even real, because it's so stupid. I mean, who does that? I'll probably still go there to buy smokes at least because the supermarket doesn't have my brand. If it's empty, I'll take a little break. Plus it'd be sad if I never saw the cool old ladies who work there and talk to me about the weather and school life. Aww.
I'll probably do B. A sounds like way too much work, and the amount of people who had nothing to do with this being inconvenienced would be too high. Too many casualties just to get back at that one shitty guy who ratted on us in the first place. But it would be epic...
So that's what has been pissing me off at work lately. I try to keep my stress levels at an absolute minimum, but it's natural to get a little stressed when lots of things are happening. I just try to balance everything out, do a little at a time, and take lots of breaks.
In other news I've had a Killer Kough the past few weeks, which is fun. I should cut down on smoking (and maybe I'll be forced to now YAAAY), but it's not that bad. I don't physically feel bad, and my throat isn't sore or anything, so I guess it's just a cough. It'll go away.
This just in: So, I've been watching a lot of film noir latley. It's so fucking cool. I've always liked stuff like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Tim Burton Batman, but that was more because I loved cartoons and Batman. I mean, I love cartoons and Batman now, but I'm more interested in the genre of noir at the moment. The movie that changed this was Brick, which was incredible. One of the aftershocks of seeing that was I really wanted to go back and look up some of the original film noirs. Instead of diving right in, I thought I'd go backwards through time a bit: after Brick I watched Miller's Crossing and Chinatown. Both were great. Then it was time to start from the beginning: The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep.
Well, the movies were awesome. I didn't think I'd be able to sit through 1940's black-and-white movies that were mostly dialog, but the style kept me interested. The style of both the movie (shots used, framing, that kind of stuff) and the style of the characters (everyone in suits constantly drinking and smoking, hard-ass detective dudes, classy looking ladies, how they speak, and THE FEDORAS). Oh god, the fedoras. Humphrey Bogart is a badass.
So I'll continue this noir journey. I'll definitely be checking out some Chandler and Hammett, too. And fun fact: William Gibson was called "the Raymond Chandler of Sci-fi", at least according to the cover of the version of Count Zero I read.
Does anybody care about this stuff?!??!
Well I guess I had a little more to say than I thought I did. Oh well, I'm glad I got that shit off my chest. Cool??