Entries this day: Miki Work ccpt_bye-bye_party

Miki

12:22pm JST Sunday 25 April 2004

KG Miki called me last night, sad about Carla leaving Nova and Japan. I really wanted to help comfort her, but I couldn't realistically do it in Kawasaki for there is no safe place for her to let loose and cry.

So she came over to my apartment this morning and cried some. Lots for her. She asked me if I had ever cried. Def.

I wanted to stay and hang out with her all day, but I'm on my way to work now. I can feel myself wanting to grok/possess/have her, but I don't think it's actually Miki, but just being close to a fellow beautiful soul that I'm enjoying, and .. it's like I'm differentiating between being in the state of bliss with her and being with her.

Work

8:52pm JST Sunday 25 April 2004

Pretty good day at work; I realized that I can use emacs via the terminal window, but only on the local machine; I can't easily save data on a network drive that is accessible from the other computers (I'm in a different cube from day to day, so I need to save files in some non-cube-specific manner)

I had two LUTs today. 87% for the first one and 91% for the second one. Oh, I had Noriko today! She's past lesson 1 of book 0 and I helped her get started on lesson 2 of book 0. We looked at sentences like, "I'm Noriko" and "Are you okay?" and "Yeah, thanks." (after Kei ate it while surfing, Lukas helped him out of the water.)

To start, I translated everything on the comic for her, and then once she pretty much understood all that, we ended up looking at the difference between "today" and "every day." I am studying English today. I study English every day. Man, she works so hard.

Jesse wasn't there today. When I texted "WR U @?" he replied "FAR AWAY"

I wanted him to help me test my student reminder.

- - - -

Now, I'm about to arrive in Kawasaki for Carla's second (third?) bye-bye party.

ccpt bye bye party

11:47pm JST Sunday 25 April 2004

Clayton, Carla, Phong, and Tomoko's byebye party tonight. The place was packed; we took up all four tables in the back of WaraWara. I moved around the room a bit more than I have in the past; in the past I've just picked a point and planted myself there for the duration of the party. And I've often been hesitant to leave; don't want to miss something or someone or some shit like that, so I just stay and stay.

Tonight, I could feel the brazen arrogance of my ex roommate Frank coming through when I talked to some of the new teachers. I was like, "you won't get fired; I was seeing tons of students and no one cared. Just don't sleep with them and you'll be fine."

Just before the room reached peak capacity (that I saw this evening), Ali presented Tony's photocopied teacher cards to Carla and Clayton and Phong. I'm guessing that Tony was a bit daunted at how loud he would have had to yell to be heard over all the crowd. But, for Tony, the cat who can't help but say funny things, the room would have shut up.

I chatted with Erik for a bit about movies and learning Japanese; it turns out that he goes to Japanese classes a 5 minute walk (if that far) from my house. Wow. I don't know that I'll switch up from Ayana-lessons on Friday; I didn't really like group lessons before.

(( I might not take new Japanese lessons at all, but find a Mandarin-English exchange partner in Metropolis. I wonder how that would be; I know basically 0 Mandarin.

Maybe I could take lessons from Kat. ))

As I prepared to leave, I waited for a bit to hug Carla, as all the Japanese staff had just arrived (after they had their own welcome party (hi-hi party?) for the new staff) and were swamping Carla. Lots of tears (none from me, it seems) and promises to stay in touch. Real promises. Really in touch. Handshakes to Neil and Andrew; didn't see Ryan. Hug to Morag ("I'll send you that letter soon." (I wrote her a letter during a no-show back in January or February)) who I didn't really talk to all night.

Oh, so as I prepared to leave, I realized that this may be one of my last times to hang with this group. Lyle would invite me to things and Carla would as well. But Lyle's been gone for a month and Carla will be on a plane to Beijing in two days.

Chatted a bit with Yuki on my way out the door; maybe we'll actually email each other this time. Told her I've started keeping a Japanese diary. I need to write in that tonight before I get engrossed in my gaba db project.