Bon Voyage

[Today’s entry is slightly shorter than the others, mainly because I didn’t write enough down on the actual day and now, three weeks later, I don’t remember squat, but also partially because I did less on this day. Took it easy after all the effort; relaxed in the afternoon, did some reading. In a way, what I’m doing in these first few weeks in France – reading and writing – is what I should’ve been doing all summer. Ah well, as one high school English teacher used to say, ‘Better late than dead’. The quotes that stick in our heads, eh? But my activity today, or lack thereof, should explain the format; most of this is thoughts I had at various points throughout the day.]

You know, it is a fight to go out – to go out again today, trying to get this paperwork done, encountering numerous obstacles. I have to will myself into doing it some more and not just staying in this room. Again, I’m sure there are countless exchange students, new missionaries, and others the world over who’ve been experiencing those feelings for decades. I can now relate to them firsthand, a skill that will certainly not remain unused throughout the rest of my life.

I went this morning to try again for my student card. Yes, I know they told me Friday, but that seems like a very long time from now, and if the disorganisation thus far is any indication, not everything they say is written in stone. Sure enough, this time the guy, though he laughed slightly when he saw me, told me jeudi, quatorze-heure. Thursday at 2 p.m. That’s tomorrow. Boom. Persistence.

Speaking of persistence, I also went to the international office to see if the woman had sent our papers back to Bradford that would release our funding. She hadn’t and asked me to come back tomorrow. I highly doubt she will have done it by tomorrow, but I’ll keep coming back. I’ll be the very essence of graciousness each time, but I’ll keep coming back. That’s my plan.

[Whatever you think of that plan, I didn’t actually go back until more than two weeks later.]

Right before I went into the office I ran into a group of French-speaking ERASMUS students and the French girl helping them asked if I needed to go down and do the payment for my student card along with them. She asked in French! And she didn’t recognise me as one of the English speakers, so she asked it at full speed! And I understood! I didn’t know how to respond in French, so I said, ‘Yesterday’ in English, but I understood the question! I will get this.

Went shopping after that; had to withdraw some more money from overseas, hopefully this’ll be the last time.

*     *     *

I was just thinking about when we arrived at Toulouse-Blagnac airport. We swept out of there so quickly – waiting for our suitcases at baggage claim was by far the most time-consuming. The immigration officers or whatever they’re called asked us no questions, they simply (for me) turned to the French visa in my passport and stamped it. Coming to the UK the first time I had to produce my CAS letter, possibly other documents, and they asked me questions. I thought that the laidback-ness of our arrival in France boded well for the registration process and all other formalities awaiting us. It did not, it was a severe anomaly.

[This is the other complaint I referred to earlier that you are meant to take with a grain of salt. It’s not so bad, and like I said then, they gave us mini-fridges! Means I don’t even have to go to the kitchen and risk running into a French person when I wanna munch. That was a joke. I am practicing my French by speaking to French people, yes I am.]

But I’m not just tired of all these formalities, I’m tired of complaining about them, so for both my sake and yours I hope they pass quickly so I can go on to telling all of you about my lectures, my interactions with French cultures, my hilarious language goofs (for that I need to be far more daring – I promised myself I would be), and the people I meet. I’m sure they will; the first few days always seem the longest and hardest. But telling myself that doesn’t help as much as I want it to.

*     *     *

I guess one thing that makes it hard is feeling like a burden, what with not being able to speak even a minimal level of French. If anyone told me I was a burden on the system, I would angrily retort that the system is a burden on me, and that would be true. But I still feel like a burden, coming into their country and expecting them to, at least somewhat, condescend to my level. I need to at least repay them for that kindness.

What also came to me today is that the reason I’m so frustrated with the language barrier is not just that I can’t communicate, but that I can’t express myself. Language has so much to do with how I convey my identity and persona to others that, excluding that, I feel so little. They don’t know me. I don’t fully exist. Now, part of that is valid, and useful to know about myself, but it’s not alright that I am so focused on me and my conveyance of myself. I should be about actions, not words and impressions.

*     *     *

In the distance I see a plane rising into the sky (my window faces the airport, though I can’t see it). Do I wish I were on it?

[Perhaps I should interject that the reason this question comes quickly to my mind whenever I see a plane in the sky is that several years ago, after having been asked at numerous points through my life what I considered home to be, I came up with the following definition: home is where you can look up at a plane in the sky and not wish you were on it. So now I, unbidden, perform that test quite often.]

No. I’ll stick this out a little longer (by a little longer, I of course mean the entire year). I just need to find something to sustain me here, like City Vaults Sunday night jazz in Bradford.

Another reason I don’t wish I were on that plane is that landing in Toulouse on Sunday was the second time in my life I have felt a searing pain in my head during a plane’s descent, and when I say searing, I mean searing. As in it feels like something behind my left eye is growing and trying to escape. My eyeball starts watering and seems about to pop out, every nerve around it is on fire, little pinpricks on my forehead feel like needles stabbing from the inside out, and generally I get the impression my left brain lobe wants to get as far away from my right as possible. It’s awful.

I don’t like to complain about pain, I mean, I am male. I wasn’t even going to write about this originally, but as I’ve been flying all my life and this has only started happening in the past few years, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried. The first time was on a flight from Japan to the US last summer. Same sensation. I looked it up a few days after arriving, and at least I’m not the only one who’s experienced it (one of the joys of the internet). Apparently it’s caused by fluid filling some chamber in the head at high altitude, and then expanding as the atmospheric pressure builds. I’ve had some trouble off and on with nosebleeds in my life, and those are always from the left nostril, so some of my piping back there must be wonky. But since I didn’t feel it on my flight back to the UK, I thought (hoped) it was a one-off. Seems it wasn’t. I’ll have to do some more research, especially on potential remedies.

Because it’s not just about being able to comfortably use the fastest form of transportation currently available to mankind. It’s not just that I enjoy flying and want to continue to enjoy it. Flying, for me, is much more than those things; it is far more sentimental.

No, I don’t have childhood ambitions to be a bird or Superman that I’m secretly clinging to (though some of you might take issue with the latter claim). But I have been flying longer than I can remember. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, and airplanes have taken me between almost all of those places. You could say that the cabin of a jumbo jet has been a relatively constant physical location (with irony as my elixir) throughout my life, something I cannot say for any house in which I’ve lived. So air travel is a glue that holds all my life experiences together. After long periods without it, I miss flying like I imagine other people miss their hometown. As for the place I sometimes call my hometown, Yokohama, well, yes, I love it there, but I love it because it’s cool. I probably have stronger feelings for Tokyo and my high school, but Yokohama is cooler so I call it my hometown. I’m not sure that’s completely legit.

Going back to the previous point, I suppose that the reason my definition of home is so useful for me is that it’s not merely asking if I wish I were in a different place, it is asking if the place I am in right now beats being on a plane, a wondrous long-haul plane flight, with all the home-ness I attach to that experience. To be told that I cannot, or probably shouldn’t, experience that anymore would be, in my mind, akin to someone who finds out that they, for whatever reason, cannot return to their home, though I don’t wish to trivialise those actually in such situations. I realise that my mentality, or perhaps sentimentality, rather, is born very much of first world privileges.

There’s more I could say about this, such as that one thing I like about being on a plane (long-haul, of course) is that for the duration of that journey, everyone is from the same place and they are going to the same place. There is none of this pesky, ‘Where are you from?’ business. And likely some of what I have said could be said in a better way. But I will do that at a later date, in a far more polished form. For now, these are some of the thoughts flitting through my head as I watch that jet (Airbus-made, perhaps?) climb away from Toulouse-Blagnac. If you’re a fellow TCK I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve said, or even if you’re not a TCK, I suppose.

That’s Wednesday.

Why I Worry While I Write (And Have Mixed Feelings About Alliteration)

My top three sources of consternation (or more accurately, the goals in my life that I worry about not accomplishing) at this time are:

1. Finding a job so I can earn enough money to go to university next year in September.
2. Studying enough for the Level 1 Japanese Language Proficiency Test on December 6 so I pass.
3. Gaining discipline so that whether I’m attending university, working long hours at a job, or facing massive white spaces in my schedule due to unemployment, I still use my time wisely.

That list might not be accurate. There may be a better hierarchy or other goals that fall higher or lower. The fact that I mixed concrete and abstract detracts from the list’s usefulness, but nevertheless, these are the things that occupy my mind. I’m taking a year off from college and I don’t want that to turn out to be a wasted time.

I thought it would be relatively easy to get a job as an English teacher in Japan. I speak Japanese, so surely any company would want find me an attractive prospect, right? I can relate to the students in their quest. Alas, that does not seem to be the case. I’m still confident I could relate to students, but I am not quite as attractive a prospect as I first thought. Nearly every large English-teaching company in Japan requires a college degree; in fact, the only company I’ve found that doesn’t is Gaba. I’ve applied to them three times (they put out a new job posting every month, and they have a school right close to where I live) and they finally took notice this time, but it’s been several days and they haven’t called. I should call them, to, as they said in the e-mail, “expedite the process”.

That seems to be the only English-teaching opportunity of that sort. I’ve also applied to several jukus as a tutor to help kids with their homework and study for exams. In that area, my attractiveness is again dulled by the fact that I can probably only teach English. While at an elementary level I could probably help with maths as well, the fact that I never went to Japanese school beyond kindergarten decreases my ability to converse in Japanese maths terms. I could always study those terms specifically, I suppose. I did pretty well in maths in high school; I don’t think the concepts would be a problem. But my strong suit would be tutoring English. There is a demand for this but I fear there is also a copious supply. When I was applying for English-teaching jobs through Gaijinpot I was one of literally hundreds hungrily snapping at any applicable opening that came along. It was a surprising and slightly overbearing discovery.

Ideally I want a job that requires or at least makes use of both Japanese and English. That’s what I can do and that’s what I will get paid more than the minimum for doing. I don’t want to take you through the whole tour of where I’ve applied to and what I’ve done, but I’ll just mention that I did apply to and even got two interviews at TGIF in Shibuya. Then it didn’t work out, for some reason. The Baseball Cafe near the Tokyo Dome is not hiring at present. Neither is Outback.

I’ve applied to a few hotel jobs, those haven’t come to anything yet. Nor has my abundant potential as a model. Those Shibuya scouts just aren’t taking notice. Ha. As if I could be a model. Oh, but the money…

I’ve made other applications and gotten suggestions and contacts from friends. I’m really hoping for something to break soon, because I’m going stir-crazy and I won’t be able to celebrate Christmas in good spirits if I still have the fact looming over me that my gap year is almost half over and I’m still not accomplishing its primary objective. At least I made money during the summer.

Enough about that (although if anyone actually does end up reading this, advice or even contacts would be much appreciated. Or donations, of course. That’d be swell – and yes, I do know that there’s absolutely no chance of that happening. There is a website – Kickstarter.com – that people can use to get funding for creative ideas. I probably couldn’t use that to get to university, though). What do you want to hear about? The Japanese test?

Basically, if I pass I’ll have a vastly higher chance of getting hired by a Japanese company, or get a higher salary because of my proven ability, but that’s more of a career course and I’m not looking for that at the moment. No, really my main reason for taking the test is improving my ability, gaining confidence, and amassing some bragging rights. I passed Level 2 two years ago, which is a formidable accomplishment but still only second-best. I can only be as good as a Level 1 failure. But if I pass Level 1, that shows I’m at least that good, right? And there’s no ceiling for how good I could potentially be. I’m not sure if this is making sense to you. I’m talking about how it looks on paper, on a resume, for example. If an employer reads that I passed Level 2, he/she will assume I’m between Levels 2 and 1 (which I would be). But if I’ve passed Level 1, there’s no telling how good I could be! (even if in reality I only barely managed to pass it).

But mostly I want to learn and prove to some people that I can do it.

As for discipline, well, that is a huge topic, isn’t it? Massive, and totally worth going into. However it’s so large that I hardly know where to begin, and I’m starting to feel like I should get back to the job search or studying (starting? I feel that way every minute I’m not doing one of those two things!). Ah, the life of an unemployed individual. You’d think it would be relaxing. It’s rather stressful. But I don’t want sympathy. If anything, give me a kick in the pants. I have to man up and make those phone calls until something comes through.

I’m enjoying this writing. Although I’m not sure about the whole others-finding-it-and-reading business. I tried searching for my own blog on Google and it didn’t show up. Right now my plan is to keep writing in hopes that with more quantity more attention will come, not that I’m looking for attention, just a murmur of response. From someone I don’t know, who thinks so similarly. Is that you?

Maybe I need to post more tags.

Oh, alliteration, yes. Most of my alliteration is unintentional, so for me it’s not so much the question, “Should I incorporate it as a poetic device?” as much as, “They’ll think I’m corny if I don’t replace some words in there, won’t they?” And the answer is yes. Yes, yes you do. Yes I do. And no I didn’t. I didn’t change the title, I left it. And I added this little paragraph just to make the title sensical, or rather, the parenthetical amendment to the title sensical, so that I could leave the title proper as is, because I was just that attached to it as soon as it popped out. My high school junior year English teacher would tell me that a ‘because’ should never have a comma preceding it, but I put it there because you were supposed to pause for the approximate length of a comma when you read that sentence. That’s how I would’ve said it were I speaking to you. Again, an improbable justification; you would’ve walked away by now.

Out.

-Brad