I am pretty sure that right now I am real life busto (have no money in Japan). But luckly I have some money online to sustain me till payday.

In December I booked my ticket back home. I get 12 days of paid leave a year. That’s right, averages out to 1 day off a month. But wait for it. Those 12 days include sick leave …

Unfortunately for me I took about 5-6 days off last year nursing injuries and sicknesses. Oh well, nothing like losing half of your yearly holiday at home in your sick bed. I hadn’t looked at how many days I had left when I booked my ticket. I assumed it was like 3-4 or something like that.

So I booked my ticket and went up to the admin lady and explain that I am leaving the 14th and will be back next year when work starts.

The lady logged on to the staff intranet to log the days I am taking off only to uncover that I am taking 9 days off but only have 0.5 days of holiday left…

So yeah it worked out as me being absent from work for 8.5 days. To make it worse since it was the last month of the year and the last few days were holidays, it somehow resulted in me losing half of my wages…

I got back from London and went to the ATM only to find out that I got paid enough for my rent, gym membership and internet bill to be debited from my account leaving me with enough change for a couple of hamburgers.

Kinda pissed off about that. I am the person in control of the intranet in my company and have the ability to fudge the numbers of my paid leave. But in such a small company I would probably get caught straight away

And if things couldn’t get any lamer I now have the taxman up my arse for taxes I somehow forgot to pay last year. In Japan apart from the normal tax that they rape from your paycheck there is another tax that gets sent to your house you have to pay. From June till the end of the year you have to make 4 x 40,000yen payments to your ward or something. That’s 160,000yen (1,755USD/1074GBP) a year of extra taxes.

The allure of working in Japan might be starting to wear off…

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I know, I know it is 2 weeks late. But nonetheless, Happy New Year peoples.

I got back from the UK like 2 weeks ago and have been dead since I got back. The first day I got back to London some friends came around and were chilling at my house till 5am. That was more or less the pattern of my trip. I might have gone to bed before midnight like twice in nearly 3 weeks (I normally go to sleep at 9-10pm in Japan…). My sleeping pattern went like this. I would get to sleep at 3-5am get 2-4 hours sleep and wake up anytime between 6-9am in the morning. I would then try to steal like 2-3 of hours sleep in the evening or mid afternoon if the opportunity presented itself. But since I was having such a good time I was able to shrug it off and somehow survive.

Thanks to that when I got back to Japan I didn’t actually have any Jetlag (can’t have jetlag if you don’t actually sleep right..).

Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures. In fact most of the snaps that got taken were on other peoples cameras, so it going be a task to collect them all…

I didn’t really experience any so called reverse culture shock (first time back in nearly 3 years) I guess it is because nothing has really changed. I was however shocked with how cold it was. Your mind remembers the UK is cold, but your body forgets how cold it actually was. I caught a cold the first time I left the house

Anyway happy New Year once again guys. I will defo be updating at least once a week. Got a lot of plans for 2010. Hope everyone has a good year and gets everything they want.

I’ll leave you with a couple of photos that I did take.

This is the view from my driveway on the 2nd - 3rd day after I got back. It snowed for nearly a week…

Here is a picture of the traffic going in one direction.

The traffic going in the opposite direction.

And lastly a picture of the last night with me and a couple of the guys.

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I have been using the internet on a very active basis for a good 10+ years now. I am ancient around here. Part of the furniture as some might say. I think I made my entrance back in the 14k days. You know, those 14k modems that used to make that super irritating weird screeching sound for a few seconds every time you tried to connect to the internet (notice the use of the word tried).

I remember back then I used to use MSN and ICQ (messaging clients).

You should have seen the facial expressions of some of the people I knew back then when I told them I am talking to my online friend on msn, or meeting up with someone I played video games with online (Duke Nukem 3D, Quake etc) in real life to chill with. It was kind of to the tone of “Mothefucker is you crazy?”

Back in the day telling your friends that you got a new chick and her name is bighooters87 would have got you laughed at and labeled a looser.(yes I know there is one o too many. but that how you spell it on the interwebs).

But now, 10 years later or so the world has done a complete 360. Everybody is signed up to facebook with their real name and posting their whole life’s up on there. Online communities are doing offline meets on a regular basis, hot chicks are using internet dating services, heck even myspace turned into a dating site lol. Well I guess it started off as a facebook, (it actually came before facebook), turned into a dating site, and now is some sort of musicians haven.

I know a few retards with myspace pages that read “The official Myspace page of [Insert name even though I am not famous, I am a nobody and no one is going to try and make a fake page of me...]. Ok my bad, stay on topic Prometheus.

While I am not the maker of the internet or anything like that, as a long time user, it kinda puts a smug smile on my face to sit back and reminisce how things once were and how they are now.

Makes me wondered what is deemed unacceptable or frowned upon today, but will become the norm or the ‘cool’ thing in the next 5/10/20 years.

Any ideas?

But yeah, just a random thought I had on the way to work.

Misspent Life is now officially back open for business.

I will be in London from the Dec 15th - Jan 3rd. Should have a lot to ramble about.

Hope everybody is doing well.

Peace

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I sit here staring at this familiar wall, feeling somewhat uninspired, wondering if the grass looks greener on the other side.

I am brainstorming, drawing clouds with sticks coming out of them with my imaginary pencil on to an imaginary canvas. I am looking for ways to break the chains that keep me shackled and confined to the conveyor belt of monotony that goes a little something like; wake up, go to work, get home, eat, go to sleep continue for 50 more years please.

But meh I guess I will talk about that another day.

I am from the UK as most of you have gathered. The population compared to Japan is pretty small. There are like so many more people in Japan. I suppose it has its good and bad points. A good point is based on the fact there are more females, there are going to be a higher number of hot females, DUCY? (Read as “Do you see why?”)

A bad thing though is that you see more people who are not doing too well. Maybe things are different back home, but I am pretty sure I have seen more blind people in the past year in Japan than I have in my whole life. Kinda makes me feel pretty silly walking around depressed in the morning when I see the local blind woman at my station who gets the same train as me that is normally smiling..

For some reason like the past couple of times I have got the train a couple of amputee victims have jumped on the same carriage as me. First there was a dude being pushed around in special wheel chair. He had no arms or legs. A few days later I saw a dude with no arms and a few days after that was a lady with no arms.

The most recent woman got on the rush hour train and it was really crowded. She was standing right next to me. Her left arm was completely gone but the right one had a sort of cone shape stub hanging from her shoulder but the rest of her arm from the elbow down was missing.

Based on the angle I was standing at I could see most of the train. The change in atmosphere and the way the people starred when she got on the train kinda made my heart sink a bit.

My first thought I had was that I wish I could give her a new set of arms. But obviously that is impossible.

Second thing that went through my mind was, “I wonder how she lost her arms.”

I feel pretty shitty for thinking about that. But curiosity is just human nature right …?

That heart sinking feeling was then anchored onto me for the next week. Anytime I would see someone who didn’t have both their arms in full sight I would remember the way I felt on the train. I would then have to break my neck just to make sure that they did in fact have the rest of their arms and it was just being hidden behind their back or pocket etc…

It was a pretty stressful week.

Meh dunno, recently just been thinking about life in general. Not to sound all Matrixy or anything but it is not till you actually go out and see the world for yourself that you realize how stuff like society, religion and most of the stuff implanted into your head when your younger is just bullshit.

There probably isn’t any point of life or being alive. But I guess while you are life you can find some interesting stuff to do. I would really love to just disappear and go live in the mountains for a month and see how I feel after that.

The aim now is to save up about half a year’s worth of living expenses then bounce from work. So just gotta keep on trucking till early next year.

Meh anyway here are some fireworks. Will probably do around the hood part 2 soon :O

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I am posted up outside the station with my back against the wall.  An old dude walking by suddenly stops in front of me. He doesnt turn his body to face me, he only turns his head.
Old Man: “grr grrr grr skdfs;j grr”

It is hot. I am in a shitty mood. I look at the dude and dont even answer him with words.
I give him the international facial expression for WTF!!??.

He clears his throat and speaks again. This time I can actually understand what he says. In Japanese he says.

Old Man: “You live at Complex X , Building No X right”

I looked at him again. Nup, an unfamilair face, never seen him before ever. I was worried for a second. Is he another undercover cop?
I looked a little closer. Nup, noway. Unless they are sending pensioners who can barely speak or walk into the streets to gather intelligence.

It is one thing when people you meet in the elevator that live in your building call out the floor you live at (Elevator Mind Tricks).
But when an old random dude who might not even live in my complex is calling that shit out all the way at the station it is slightly worrying.
With a slightly worried expression I turned and replied:
Prometheus: “Yes…”

He looked at me for 1 second, turned, and just walked off…
A few days later I get in to the lift. Some old dude gets in a few floors down.
He turns and looks at me angrily. I just ignore him. He tilts his head back, makes a disgusting flem sound and spits on the floor.
Why? Why would you spit in the lift that you have to stand in? Does it even make any sense???

Not only was the act disgusting, the sound he made as he cleared his throat made me wanna slit my own throat.

Remember the video I made of me playing slots in Hong Kong? That machine I was playing was hot. I was winning sick money. Then all of a sudden some fag comes and sits next to me and does some sick flem into the ashtray. Then starts hitting the machine violently screaming like an Afghan rebel. I had to cashout and leave the lucky machine to avoiding catching SARS or swine flu…
 
Whats with people in Asian countries spitting and making revolting sounds?

Anyway back to the elevator.

He spits on the floor. Turns to me, but this time he smiles. He had no teeth…

I dunno man. Next time somebody does that, I might just pull pants down and take a shit next to them -_-

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