Entries this day: Olivia Study joypolis

Olivia

11:59am JST Wednesday 16 June 2004

Now if this doesn't give me an urge to travel, nothing will.

From Olivia:

Hello everybody,

Well finally I have got a job that I am interested in!

As most of you know I was so ready to pack up and come back to
Japan- and I also got a job offer at a kids school in
Yokohama (yes Jen- Yokohama 'new town'!) starting as soon as I
could get there with visa sponsorship this morning...... 1 day
too late! Because- im to LAS VEGAS!!!! a ha ha ha!! No- Im really
going to Turkey!!! Ok- heres the deal. Its a nanny job. I will be
working for a family of 4. The father is the Director of a
cosmetic company, the mother is a super busy housewife (!!), the
son is 5 and the daughter is 3. They live most of the year in
Istanbul, but we will be spending the next 3 months of summer at
their holiday home in Bodrum. Bodrum is on the coast of Turkey,
near Greece, its a big resort/marina town. They have a couple who
live with them too, the lady does the cooking and cleaning and
the man fixes the gardens. So that leaves me to look after the
kids with the hope of teaching them english too (1st word Ill
teach them: 'suntanning').

Well I hope its a nice job. The man has been lovely so far. Im
sure it will be a great experience anyway because I have always
wanted to go to Turkey so its a great oppertunity for me. And in
the last year and a half I havent had much beach action so Im
looking forward to sitting on a beach and swimming in their pool
for the next 3 months. I think I leave for Istanbul on Thursday
or Friday. Actually I went looking at airfares today, and then
the man called and asked when I wanted to go, so I think he is
organising the flight..... no complaints from me!

Im sure there will be some crazy culture shock. Apparently
Turkish is really difficult to learn and they speak very
fast...ahh!! Oh well- im so used to getting my point across in
mime I should have no problems. I wonder if they know what i mean
if I cross my arms in front of me???

Besides the job news, London has been OK still. Last weekend I
met up with some friends from Adelaide (Tash and Dom, and Jamie
for those of you who know them). Jamies girlfriend cooked a much
needed big dinner, and then after a few drinks we went out to a
bar that was kind of cool. Actually there was one character that
had me in hysterics all night.... thank god for drunk old women!!
That Sunday Tash and I house hunted. Well that was quite an
adventure. A cheap place was our mission so that lead us to the
pooerer parts of Brixton- we decided we didnt think it was the
safest option living there! But as it turns out shes moving to a
friends and Im going- worked out great that we didnt find
anything anyway.

I must admit Im going to be a little sad to say goodbye to my
hostel. The guys who run it are Polish. They have nothing to do
but sit around the hostel and go a little crazy. But they are
good entertainment value and always a good laugh. And I fluent in
Polish (Polish swear words that is). The Brazilian girl I am
sharing my room with- Tasi- has been there since I moved in .
Shes looking for nanny work too so we have spent a little time
together and made good friends..... travelling's always about
goodbyes hey!

Thanks for all your advice, support and lovely emails. The last 3
weeks have been really hard and I would have jumped off the Big
Ben had it not been for my great friends and family... THANKYOU
ALL!!!

Take it easy!
Love Olivia

ps: it does

Study

4:24pm JST Wednesday 16 June 2004

Ultimately, I did get some studying done. Wrote the Chinese kanji that I know. Just reinforced what I've learned; nothing apparently new.

joypolis

6:00pm JST Wednesday 16 June 2004

Hitomi and I are at Joypolis, the Sega theme park in Odaiba, near her work. It features a short side-by-side rollercoaster thing called Speed Boarder, which I first saw on RCDB. It's short, but cool and really throws one around the turns. zing zing zing. Fun stuff.

I'lll try to get a picture. Now we are about to go skydiving. (????) I have no idea what it will be like. My dream is that it will be one of those huge fans blowing upward, but I somehow doubt it will be that cool.

1:25am JST Thursday 17 June 2004

It was definitely not that cool. Just a video projected on the wall in front of us, and then when we were lifted into the air (with looping coaster type restraints) and tilted forward, we could see video on the ground as well. Fake wind blew upward, and we weren't tilted all that far forward. Just up and down motion to some fucked up storyline like we were parachuting, but rising and falling and being caught by a helicopter. Whatever.

The halfpipe skateboard ride was worth two goes, but we still couldn't figure out how to get it to spin spin spin.

- - - -

(I just got sidetracked reading the article about Airplane Day originally being envisioned as 10 planes on both coasts)

- - - -

Um, the funniest thing at Joypolis was how the girls squealed with fear(?) at the T3 haunted-house type thing. It featured a couple of fake robots shooting at us, and a guy in a suit pointing a scary gun-arm at us, but mostly was led by the speed-Japanese-talking guy who was like, you have to run run run! apparently (according to Hitomi) and riled up the others in our group. They were squealing and running and I was like, "hahahaha" and not running. Except when dragged by Hitomi who was running, or being pushed by the crowd (8 people total). The guy leading the group let me choose the disc to use to save us from destruction, possibly because I was not scared, or not understanding anything he said, or because I was gaijin (a foreigner). When the bad guy came running after us with his bad guy gun, I pointed the disc back at him, "yahhhh!" knowing we had equally effective weapons. Mine may have been more effective from a distance; I could throw it.

When I was given the chance to choose which slot to put the disc, I was like, "T3 だから　さんばん" which everyone agreed was as good a choice as any. At least I think they agreed, or they were being Japanese-polite and I had missed something in the guy's high speed instructions.

Funniest thing was when we came to computers with prompts saying, "enter password," and I typed "hai dozo" (please, go ahead) or (be my guest) and when the guy was like, so, guys; what's the password? they were all like, "T!" because that was apparently something he told us (them) and Hitomi typed "t" on the keyboard, but lo, the password didn't work, and the guy was like, wtf? and try again but it still didn't work and oh-no a bad robot came to kill us because the password didn't work; it was great.

- - - -

The scariest attraction was the 3D sound thing, where we went into a small room with scissors on the table and the sound effects started in our headphones and then the lights went out and we had these scary voices talking to one another in pretty cool 3D around us. One character was asked to get the scissors and the table started thumping as the person looked for the scissors in the dark and they were scissed (the past tense of the verb that means "to use scissors") in our ears; it was funny. The chairs moved without warning and that was pretty spooky; fun stuff. I wonder if it would have been scarier had I been able to understand what they were saying.

- - - -

Interesting was the computer video technology. Large touch screens with fish swimming; and if we touched the screens the fish would react: a touch might produce a piece of food in the tank, or make the fish change size or shape or colors, and occassionally it drew a picture that floated around in the water, and sometimes it made the fish dance.

- - - -

Coolest thing was that they could put things into balloons; I have a sense of how they did it, but I didn't get to see it actually performed.

- - - -

We road SpeedBoarder again (very first and very last thing we rode) because it was a pretty cool ride.