One hour and a half later....spent all this time looking for jobs on the internet...nada...I take it back about moving back home...I will have to move in with my parents and spend the rest of my life living with them rent free until I am old and grey. There are no jobs out there for a kinesiologist with experience teaching English in Japan.

My eyes are getting tired of staring at the screen and my wrist hurts from the mouse. Time to give up my search for today and start thinking about working at Starbucks.

Feeling good!!!

It is a sunny warm 27 degrees here on a Friday afternoon. I have finished teaching all my classes this week. I now only have to keep myself entertained for the next 3 hours before I can officially finish my day here. Yeah, that should not be hard, considering there are a billion websites out there advertising jobs. Sunshine always makes me feel good. It reminds me that Winter is over and Spring is in full swing. It almost makes me forget that I will be homeless and jobless in only a few more months. I say that jokingly...my parents would never let me starve. I bet I could live at home until I am 50 and still not ever have to pay rent. However, I have no plans to ever do that.

I just wanted to share my warm happy mood with everyone. It is a bit rare that I am feeling sunny after teaching a class full of unruly 17 year old boys.

Have a great day. :)

New Phobia..

My heart rate quickens, my palms get sweaty, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach, the adrenalin pumps through my veins...you ask yourself, what could make Char that scared, is it walking down a dark alley at night and then hearing footsteps quicken as her own quicken or a giant spider that in a dark corner that is threatening to expand its web to encompass my whole apartment......nope..it is my new fear of the phone and door bell ringing. It is a new phobia, unofficially called "annoyingmenphobia". No, it is not that I have gone completely nuts, just that I have the fortune of always meeting random men

My phobia about the doorbell ringing stems from the NHK man who comes every month to collect money for cable..which does not make sense to me, cause I do not have cable. I get three lousy channels that I cannot understand at all. I refuse to pay $30 a month for 3 channels that I do not watch anyways. It seems that in Japan if you own a TV you have to pay for the cable each month even if you do not watch TV. Simply by the virture of having a TV, you must pay this fee. I made the silly mistake of paying it once and ever since they have been hounding me to pay for it. I tried the ol' "sorry, I cannot speak Japanese", but the sneaky NHK man, wrote out the figure and said, "money, pay, TV"...I have now resorted to not answering my door....I know it is him cause no one else would ring my doorbell between 9:00 and 10:30 pm on a weeknight. He rings it several times and knocks...I meanwhile, cower in the corner next to my spider. I would rather be with the spider than deal with the NHK man...that says a lot. I have gotten English pamphlets and several notices..all empty threats cause they cannot do anything about it...

My next phobia is about my phone ringing...it is not normal to be afraid when your phone rings but alas if you had a "stalker" you would be afraid too. I met this Indonesian man last September. He seemed nice and we chatted a bit. Well, about 4 months later, I bumped into him again at the mall. We chatted again and he asked for my phone number so that we could hang out sometime. I stupidly said, okay, and gave it to him. Mistake number 1!!!. Well, I gave it to him on a Sunday night, he then proceeded to call on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The only reason I did not get his call on Thurs. cause I was not home. I have met this man twice, he then told me he would miss me when I returned to Canada and that I should go to Indonesia with him, and it was too bad a nice girl like me idd not have a boyfriend. Please keep in mind that this conversation is all in Japanese, my Japanese is limited and his is heavily accented. It is really difficult to talk to him. Once we covered the above topics our conversation moved onto, what are you doing now...watching TV, what are you watching, how are you...

Okay, I must admit I like people who go after what they want and are not afraid to lay it out on the line, but I am also not big on suffocating men and needy men. He has then called several times after that...once I was pretty curt with him and he seemed to get the message and did not call for 3 weeks. Just when I thought it was safe to answer my phone again, he called again..and we had our repeat coversation about TV. So now, I am afraid to answer my phone. I do not know how to say in Japanese, that you are calling way to often and totally freaking me out. I like aggressive but then there is stalkers, there is a fine line between those two and you have definately crossed it.

So, now I am not answering my door and not answering my phone. So if you ever call, the machine will get it. It is not because I am not home, but because I am afraid that you are my Indonesian lover.