An enviable ability to multitask...

 

Paperwork.... head spinning..... imminent head explosion...

A couple of months back someone in the staffroom of the university I most enjoy teaching at  asked me if I was interested to teach some classes as a different university.   It  would mean a few more teaching hours a week at a humanities university with high level students and also pays comparatively well. (Usually the general rule with part time teaching, is the better the university the lower the salary (people want to work at good universities and will forgo salary for prestige and satisfaction).  It would also give me great satisfaction to flick off this establishment.

But............

Yesterday the paperwork arrived.  Full marks to them for doing it by email.

There are 6 pages of a spreadsheet that need to be filled out.

English and Japanese of my work history, education history, publication history, presentation history.  As if the resume I already sent them doesn't have all this information on it anyway......

Translating the name of the school in Thailand, or my high school in Aus, or the schools that I have worked at into mangled phonetic Japanese that turns my name from Cecilia to Se shi ri a.     Does Rhamkhamheng become ra mu ka mu he n gu  or   ra n ka n he n  .... or ramu ka n hengu.... the possibilities are driving me up the wall.....

If I translate the name of an article I wrote for the Guardian, no-one would ever be able to locate it.... 

And...

As if anyone will ever actually read it.....

sigh...

As if I don't have better things to do with my time... 

And the gods of Shinto wept - over zealous pruning.

A week or two back, on my way home from work I was confronted with a terrible, and yet perennial sight...  In the morning when I went out, these were trees; on my return... post apocalyptic.... ravaged trunks. Stark, naked... the Agent Orange effect... it happens all the time at this time of year...  According to Hiro, the most likely rationale is that it saves the surroundings from ..... autumn leaf litter.
Shinto is supposed to be a nature worship religion... Japan prides itself on being a nature country attuned to the seasons (though it doesn't take too long being here before that becomes bitterly ironic).... the gods of Shinto must have looked and wept. 

 

Rain and "physical" day.

Typhoon season mixed with taiku no hi - poorly translated as physical day, as in the public holiday to celebrate physical exercise - equals teru teru bozu (little "shine shine monks" that look like a cross between a C grade horror movie and C grade Christmas decorations).  They're quite cute actually, and made as charms to keep away the rain - often for school sports events.    I was out in Ochanomizu the other night and stumbled across some in the main street next to the station.  

I was holding my umbrella, everyone else was holding umbrellas....cute they may be, but I am not convinced of their efficacy.