Grrr. Arrggh. Yeah!

[akujunkan]

I hate conflict, which is why I spend so much time bitching on this lj. However, there are times when it's better to head into the fray at the get-go.

It would be an understatement to say that my supervisors have no fucking clue what to do with me. When I first showed up in the Oaks, they gave my second school incorrect office hours for me, essentially inflating my work schedule by thirty minutes daily.

This was ironed out at my main school, but when I tried to bring it up at my second school, they told me they'd get back to me on it and never did. I let it slide because I hate confrontation, and what the hell, it was just thirty minutes, right?

Still, it's thirty minutes out of my weekend which sucks. And now that I have Korean class on Fridays after work, it's thirty minutes in which I can't go home, cook dinner, and get to the station in time for class. This means I either pay $15 for a one-way, 11 minute train ride, or I go without dinner until 8:30 at night. Neither of these prospects are particularly appealing.

Furthermore, as the students leave my school two hours before I do, and the rest of the staff goes to meetings, it's not as if I'm even doing anything aside from surfing the net or sitting at my desk. So it isn't as though my leaving on time cuts my interaction with students or staff short.

So, sure enough, we had the big blowup about it today. True to form, my supervisor (who'd been my supervisor at the MAIN school until this past March and as such should know better, two vice principals, or pricipal actually know when I'm supposed to show up at and leave from work. They don't even have a copy of my contract.

So I'll be bringing that with me next week. Of course, they may still force me to stay after, in which case I will use my free time to cook dinner in the school kitchen. I'm tired of going to class hungry, or paying 5 times the normal fare to get there. It just irks me because I truly enjoy working at that school, get along with the students and staff, and have done my best not to cause friction. I've worked here for over a year guys. You know me. I'm not about to start pulling shit on you.

In other news, I've been invaded by pests both virtual and actual.

I killed my second cockroach in 1.5 months last night. metal_dog5 was there for the freak out. I really hope she's right and that it just crawled in from outside (there are about 1-inch gaps all around my door) and that they aren't living here too. Because I fucking hate cockroaches.

I also pulled open my programs menu to find that infernal spawn of satan, makes-me-want-to-slay-all-programmers pestware gator had somehow installed itself on my puter. How it managed this I do not know, as I use pop-up blockers, spambots, and rarely visit sites that host the program. It is a devil and a half to get rid of, and I think it, and not another virus, was what was causing my computer to overheat and crash everytime I logged online the past two weeks. (Seriously, I had to keep my room at 26 degrees Celcius with the fan focused full blast on the HD in order to keep the puter from overheating.) Fuck you gator.

More angst, in which I restrain myself admirably.

I cycle back home from school, still shaking slightly over the confrontation, pull my bike into the apartment foyer and begin to lock it up. There's a late middle-aged woman standing nearby, with all the bad hair and overdone make-up that implies. You know the type.

She has the gleam in her eye. Don't you even dare, I think to myself, but after living in Japan for so long, you learn to spot these people pretty damn quick.

Sure enough she walks over to me and starts harranguing me in speed of light Japanese. She's one of the really conservative Japanese who get orgasms by being absolutely foul to westerners because most westerners don't understand Japanese. Fuck you, lady. I understand everything you're saying to me and I also understand the complete lack of politeness conveyed by the verb forms you're using.

Anyway, she's bitching at me because of where I've parked my bike (or at least this is the excuse she gives once I inform her that yes, I do understand what you're saying to me, turd). The ground floor of my apartment building, you see, is occupied by the mailbox area and a pharmacy. According to this dumb woman, by parking my bike where I did (namely, in an empty space) I was making it hard for other pharmacy users to park their bikes.

Well, as the pharmacy is small - there's room for two people to stand inside, and as there are spots for eight bikes in front of it, and spots for another 20 in the clinic next door, space is not an issue. But still, she wants me to move my bike.

And guess where?

Right in front of the mailboxes and staircase to the apartments, which means that any tenants who come along will be able to get to the pharmacy, but not, uh, their mailboxes or the entrance to the building where they live.

I am very proud of myself for resisting the urge to tell this woman where she could take it.

Dude, I like to think I've always had empathy for the immigrants to my town who are treated like shit just for being Hispanic. I have so much more now. And uh, I'm moving my bike back to where it won't inconvenience anyone once I go back downstairs.

In lighter news, I seem to be writing again, slowly, which is a nice feeling. I'm also making a great deal of headway in 一級　study. I've finally found a book that's pretty good - the right combination of grammar, example sentences, and test questions.

I'm really excited by the fact that some of the explanations in the book clarify grammar and usage points I hadn't seen explained anywhere else, things that even Japanese professors told me "Don't worry about that. People will understand what you mean even if you don't get it right," or "It's too hard to explain/remember to use correctly." Sure it's hard. Learning English grammar was hard. It doesn't change the fact that I'd like to speak Japanese with finesse.

Well, this book is taking care of those explanations for me.

I'm also quite excited because the other 1/2 of the explanations were really confusing to me at first, especially ones that give examples of where words, phrases, or expressions were used incorrectly. I kept fearing that I would begin to use them that way, because they stuck out at me so much in the book.

Then I realised that, holy crap, these things are catching my eye precisely because it would never occur to me to use them that way - I'd never studied any of these points before, but I was already using them naturally, like a native speaker. So that was an ego 大パワーアップ right there.

Go me!

That will be all.

Comments

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

Cool, what's the 1kyuu book you're using? I'm about a million years away from the 1kyuu, but I like to plan ahead, and being a classicist pretty much automatically makes me a grammar geek. ^-^ I'd love to know the Japanese title and ISBN if you have that information convenient to the computer sometime -- I might be able to find the book through Kinokuniya, or failing that, amazon.jp.

Gambatte! I can't tell you how much I envy your mastery of the 1kyuu kanji. :-)