Sickness & Health
A long ending to a long week.
I knew I was going to get sick and getting a head start on Sunday did nothing to limit the resting I had to do.
Symptoms of headache and muscle pain began lightly on Monday. Feelings of pity for the scantness of elementary school visits and obligation to make the second and last visit to the Virgin Mother Kindergarten after missing the first one helped me to the selfless path.
After a couple of highly satisfactory classes with the third and fourth graders I found my fortitude waning and a fever of about 1.5 cropped up. So I took myself home and then to the doctor where he forgot about me, but eventually gave me a prescription for tamiflu, an order to monitor the fever, now about 2.2, and the advice that I ought to notify my loved ones 'just in case'.
In the night my fever hit 103 before passing away to naught by morning. It was just as well, a parade of other symptoms were in line to take it's place. Maybe it was a hallucination, but one time I woke up and my lip was stiff. I looked in the mirror and there was lump the size of a grape and the color of silicone. Too sick and shakey I left it, but it was gone without a trace the next time.
My supervisor's a dick. He had me call him every day to talk about how I was, not so he could 'see how I was doing' or whatever the correct platitude is, but so how he hoped I'd be able to go back to work in a couple of days. My vice principal did better; bringing me my dinner when I had the fever, an ice pack, and a thermometer.
Thursday the cold sores came for the first time in 5 years and for the first time with a sickness. Friday I was betterish and got the doctor to say I could go back to work.
All I have left is the cold sores and a nasty cough.
Despite the sores and the cough I went to Shizuoka on Saturday for my last training seminar. It was a bigger waste of time than ever; they simply have nothing left to say. Oh, except that the company isn't making any money what-so-ever anymore. Good work world. I get that the towns have less money to pay for ALTs and whatnot now, but damnit, even if this is a joke run-away-from-reality dead-end job, it requires a college degree, is a position of trust, and should be salaried and respected accordingly. At least I have the awesome cheap rent, which means I'm paid better than most in the company. >.>
Met some new and old people and a very good time was had. A number of us went to eat after and ended up at a very decent Thai restaurant. And! Everyone likes me again. It was really bizarre in Fukui last year. Somehow I had a reputation as some sort of racist. I believe it was equal parts the general poorness of the experience I was having making me sullen and the fact that there were a bunch of terrible people who happened to be ethnic. I suppose I'm glad that as a white guy, when I act like a dick people can hate me for who I am and not attract PC abuse...
Anyways, it was good times. Some of us went to watch a funny old water fountain show and then to a seedy reggae bar called Shanty Town. I wasn't especially surprised when the barman double charged us. I was not nearly so drunk as the others so I probably should have managed the paying, but whatever.
Then it was just three of us wandering around the way one does when they want to find a club in a Japanese town. We had an address; didn't mean anything because addresses are not based on street layout. We had a map, no signs/street names to match it to. We asked for help, Japanese people can't read maps... We eventually found the club the one guy wanted to hit, but it was a total joke. It was the size of my bedroom and there were six dudes dancing shittily to techno.
We moved on. My cohorts, being childish drunks made a game of harrassing a couple of taxi drivers by pointing their index fingers together and saying in poor Japanese, "Where shall we 'love-love'." It was a little embarrasing, but at least now I know why some Japanese people hate foreigners. It was a Canadian guy and an Australian, but I bet those cabbies were cursing 'the Americans' when they went to sleep that night.
Other options having fallen through we went to their stand by Der Booser where we played pool with some J guys that were much better than us for several hours.
After taking the first train home there was one final bizarre sight to see before getting to sleep. At my station in the back end of mountainous Nowhere somebody had gafittied the entire side of a train car. I was more than a little surprised to see such a thing so far from a city.
Well, despite staying out all night, which happened in stages as it usually does, it didn't seriously affect my lingering cough or trigger a relapse, so that's good.
I knew I was going to get sick and getting a head start on Sunday did nothing to limit the resting I had to do.
Symptoms of headache and muscle pain began lightly on Monday. Feelings of pity for the scantness of elementary school visits and obligation to make the second and last visit to the Virgin Mother Kindergarten after missing the first one helped me to the selfless path.
After a couple of highly satisfactory classes with the third and fourth graders I found my fortitude waning and a fever of about 1.5 cropped up. So I took myself home and then to the doctor where he forgot about me, but eventually gave me a prescription for tamiflu, an order to monitor the fever, now about 2.2, and the advice that I ought to notify my loved ones 'just in case'.
In the night my fever hit 103 before passing away to naught by morning. It was just as well, a parade of other symptoms were in line to take it's place. Maybe it was a hallucination, but one time I woke up and my lip was stiff. I looked in the mirror and there was lump the size of a grape and the color of silicone. Too sick and shakey I left it, but it was gone without a trace the next time.
My supervisor's a dick. He had me call him every day to talk about how I was, not so he could 'see how I was doing' or whatever the correct platitude is, but so how he hoped I'd be able to go back to work in a couple of days. My vice principal did better; bringing me my dinner when I had the fever, an ice pack, and a thermometer.
Thursday the cold sores came for the first time in 5 years and for the first time with a sickness. Friday I was betterish and got the doctor to say I could go back to work.
All I have left is the cold sores and a nasty cough.
Despite the sores and the cough I went to Shizuoka on Saturday for my last training seminar. It was a bigger waste of time than ever; they simply have nothing left to say. Oh, except that the company isn't making any money what-so-ever anymore. Good work world. I get that the towns have less money to pay for ALTs and whatnot now, but damnit, even if this is a joke run-away-from-reality dead-end job, it requires a college degree, is a position of trust, and should be salaried and respected accordingly. At least I have the awesome cheap rent, which means I'm paid better than most in the company. >.>
Met some new and old people and a very good time was had. A number of us went to eat after and ended up at a very decent Thai restaurant. And! Everyone likes me again. It was really bizarre in Fukui last year. Somehow I had a reputation as some sort of racist. I believe it was equal parts the general poorness of the experience I was having making me sullen and the fact that there were a bunch of terrible people who happened to be ethnic. I suppose I'm glad that as a white guy, when I act like a dick people can hate me for who I am and not attract PC abuse...
Anyways, it was good times. Some of us went to watch a funny old water fountain show and then to a seedy reggae bar called Shanty Town. I wasn't especially surprised when the barman double charged us. I was not nearly so drunk as the others so I probably should have managed the paying, but whatever.
Then it was just three of us wandering around the way one does when they want to find a club in a Japanese town. We had an address; didn't mean anything because addresses are not based on street layout. We had a map, no signs/street names to match it to. We asked for help, Japanese people can't read maps... We eventually found the club the one guy wanted to hit, but it was a total joke. It was the size of my bedroom and there were six dudes dancing shittily to techno.
We moved on. My cohorts, being childish drunks made a game of harrassing a couple of taxi drivers by pointing their index fingers together and saying in poor Japanese, "Where shall we 'love-love'." It was a little embarrasing, but at least now I know why some Japanese people hate foreigners. It was a Canadian guy and an Australian, but I bet those cabbies were cursing 'the Americans' when they went to sleep that night.
Other options having fallen through we went to their stand by Der Booser where we played pool with some J guys that were much better than us for several hours.
After taking the first train home there was one final bizarre sight to see before getting to sleep. At my station in the back end of mountainous Nowhere somebody had gafittied the entire side of a train car. I was more than a little surprised to see such a thing so far from a city.
Well, despite staying out all night, which happened in stages as it usually does, it didn't seriously affect my lingering cough or trigger a relapse, so that's good.