Update.
Including good news for once.
First. Masking. It is NOT going away, ever. At least not in Japan. While fewer than at the peak of the madness, there were still a lot of 6th graders masked when I took the Kid to the big test two Sundays ago. Some were accompanied by one or more masked family members, others were the only one masked among their family. Many kids are still masking 5 and 1/2 years into this madness.
‘Been a few weeks ago now, but of the group of 6 med students I worked with for two consecutive weeks, all but one was masked. All of this group were males. The last group of six I worked with before the break for summer was evenly divided; 3 males and 3 females. 3 of these were masked and three not. Would you like to guess the distribution of the mad maskers in this group?
Gave the full “Mask talk” at my other med school last week. I keep forgetting to note the exact number of masked and unmasked but it is under half masked. Lots were visibly upset. Upset at what they were learning or upset that the teacher they took it upon themselves to tell the director they liked, turns out to be a crazy nonmasking conspiracy nut? Time will tell. None of the masked students took theirs off. Saw several fidgeting with them even after I shared the first rule of respiratory protective gear, do not touch the filter of the mask until time to change. If touched, it is time to change it.
Received a call from my cell phone company. My flip phone is no longer repairable as they are ending support for it. I have the one I do now because my old which I had for close to 15 years was incompatible with the new generation of communication network. Does this not prove the lie of the whole “Sustainability” movement. They demand the replacement of “wasteful”, “resource depleting”, “dirty” appliances, devices and cars that lasted lifetimes and force us to replace them with new models that no longer work when the ever evolving systems they need to function are upgraded. Talk about real waste. Anyway, it looks like if I what a phone after the separation, I will need an idiot phone. Not pleased by this at all.
The Kid’s test results for the big test were not good despite the increase in score, their standard deviation, the import factor, did not improve. Serious before, more so now are the discussions of throwing in the towel for the entrance exams for Jr. high, taking a break and start preparing for High School entrance exams. If so, my departure from the “Fam” is near at hand. However, the test they took Saturday afternoon at their cram school, the second of the day, saw them earn their highest overall score despite the score for each topic not being their personal best. Bottom line, standing by to stand by.
The preexwife has now made an appointment for the Kid to have their gut scoped. Me breaking the door scared them off the toilet but the fear dissipated with the hell I got over it, so the Kid is back to spending hours on the pot each day including several times over the weekend, each for approximately 2 hours. Missed at least the first period at school every day last week and today too. We believe they are just hiding, we’ll see.
The good news.
In my inbox this morning was an offer for 4 classes on a single day each week at my new med school. I was to have 4 classes starting next school (Everything starts April it’s in Japan.) on the same day but another teacher just resigned mid school year. I’ll start these in when we return after summer vacation in September. This greatly improves my situation. Would be better if there were on my other open day of the week and then I would have 8 more classes in addition to the one I currently have there, but still helps by just starting 7 months earlier.
Issues with Substack.
One that has befuddled me for a while is that I often get a message stating, “Post Out of Date” when I try to post a new topic. These on on post I just wrote and did not so much as save for later as a draft.
Another is that I have had to sign in to Substack to make comments and get a code sent from the substacker’s account I am trying to comment upon that I must first inout to do so.
Lastly, many who used to comment have not only stopped doing so, I no longer get their work emailed to me. I am wondering if since my personal Issues have taken over much of what I post here, if some have lost interest or if something else is happening.
Have any of you noticed similar on your stacks?
Sorry, have been lurking lately. I've been a bit stressed and busy lately, but am still reading your posts, enjoying hearing about the good as well as the bad.
I don’t seem to get notifications for all of your updates and it seems a bit random but might just be the way I have things setup. If I don’t hear from you for a while, I’ll usually do a manual check. One possible reason for lack of comments might just be the fact that many of your posts tend to have a fairly negative vibe about them and centre around the same core topics. Don’t take this the wrong way and I might even be totally wrong on this but personally, although I have never met you, we have some things in common and you seem a decent guy and worth caring about. Most of my comments are intended to give you positive encouragement but if, after some time, positive comments don’t seem to help, it’s easy to become disheartened and also I do not want to be drawn into someone else’s negative vibe as I have enough of my own issues to deal with. It was therefore nice to see this post and to learn that you have found more work just when you needed that extra boost. And once again, I know the feeling of not knowing where the next dollar is coming from and can truly relate.
So please don’t be put off continuing to share the good and the bad but try to look for at least one potentially positive thing in at least every other post. Also I think many of us enjoyed your camping posts and I’m looking forward to reading about your first proper adventure with that.
There are also other aspects of daily life in Japan that might seem normal to you but might be interesting to some of your readers. An example from Hong Kong would be something as mundane as scaffolding. I walk past so many constructions sites here as it seems the city is always in a constant state of demolition and reconstruction. This has always been the case. But what is amazing to outsiders is when they see the scaffolding is often constructed using mainly bamboo.
Anyway, take care and stay positive and even the negative ones, only focus on them if you have a plan to change them. Ignore stuff you have little or no control over.