In Japan, it is commonly said that one’s personality is defined by their bloodtype. Of course the practice has been completely dismissed as thwackery but it is odd to note how many Japanese people will express an interest in your blood type (those who can harken back to the Street Fighter II days may remember the character profiles all came complete with blood types). I never knew my blood type, and nor did my parents when I asked them, so I’ve never been able to join in the stereotyping fun, until now. Anyway, the traits are as follows:
Type A:
| Best Traits: | Earnest, creative, sensible, calm. |
| Worst Traits: | Fastidious, overearnest. |
Type B:
| Best Traits: | Wild, a doer, cheerful. |
| Worst Traits: | Selfish, irresponsible, arrogant. |
Type AB:
| Best Traits: | Cool, controlled, rational. |
| Worst Traits: | Critical, indecisive. |
Type O:
| Best Traits: | Agreeable, sociable, an optimist. |
| Worst Traits: | Vain, careless, ruthless. |
T’other day, I happened to mention to my doctor that I did not know my blood type, and he freaked out, saying that we had to find out in case I got in an accident (I guess it makes sense really), before you scroll down to find out which one, take a guess.
Answer: A-
Of all those, did it seem to you that I could possibly be described as earnest? to the point of being over earnest? Nor would I describe myself as wildly creative to be frank. Still, A is the one everyone wants to be in Japan so I guess I win.
Filed under: Entertainment, General | Tags: A game of thrones, George R R Martin
….although I think I’m prepped and ready to move on to 102 sharpish.
So this last week I’ve had a lot of free time, a virtual mushroom cloud of available time fallout and I have done precisely nothing with it. Well nothing isn’t exactly true, I have read almost every single comic from “Questionable Content” (thanks to Dave for the recc – although I say thanks with the words “for stealing the better part of my week” in quotation fingers) and watched a relatively poor quality copy of the Iron Man movie (which I couldn’t wait until September to see – although I still intend to see it on the big screen and purchase the DVD, it was great).
Today and tomorrow, due to the school trip to Tokyo for 3rd years, I have zero lessons. Not a single one. A wise man would probably plan umpteen weeks of elementary school classes, selection classes, activities for team taught classes and study Japanese with the 16 hour gaping hole of inactivitiy. I, however, am questing to see what other webcomics may be worth reading having already ruled out Megatokyo, because like their tag-line states “I just don’t get it”. I’m also experimenting with deck building for “George R.R. Martin’s a game of thrones collectable card game” (from here on referred to as GRRMAGOTCCG). I’ve never once been tempted to play a ccg before, I never had enough self confidence to scale the nerd stigma of Tragic: The saddening and playing the World of Warcraft CCG just seemed like an utterly ridiculous idea, why would some play a ccg of a mmorpger? It’s like being a car enthusiast who collects spark plugs.
Playing GRRMAGOTCCG is an oddly compelling experience, even for someone who loses heavily to Theo as I always do due to massive buffoonary and not reading of the rules or chosen cards leading me to counter +11 card of assballs death with the you have a nice fish for dinner, invite some friends defense card. Part of my ineptitude stems from having never done this sort of thing before, but thanks largely to Owen I am a huge fan of trying new and interesting table top games (no thanks to Dillon and his 13 dead end drive which was just a bit shit – save that we used to the pieces to play “Kill Dr. Lucky” years later). The point is, I intend to get better, and I usually do get better at these sort of things given some time, I think I now have a deck made that isn’t quite as hilarously useless as previous incarnations. The downside of GRRMAGOTCCG is in the “CCG” part. To fully enjoy the experience one does have to spend a large sum of money, the upside of this however is when you do receive a monstrous sum of cards suddenly you get whisked away to the days when every penny of pocket money was spent on football stickers and the biggest issue you had in life was whether or not the next pack contained the missing Gary Pallister.
In summation, read the books, play the game have a better life.
In the dilletante world of ELT (English Language Teaching for the acronym unfriendly) there is a curious emphasis placed on the use of singing in the classroom. As a man falling into the “not-quite-2-years-of-experience” category of journeyman English education I’m in the unenviable position of being listened to by no one and expected to listen to everyone else when it comes to the matter of how to go about teaching. The point is, for those of us who aren’t going to spend the rest of our lives warbling away in musicals or bursting into song whilst communing with the checkout lady, I think it’s really all rather pointless. There are some small merits to teaching certain specific songs to learners, Heads, shoulders, knees and toes is useful for remembering all of about 8 body parts – save the irritating side effect of children then not realising that “and” is a seperate word from “eyes” causing them to go through life pointing at unfortunate gaijin saying “andeyes blue!”.
Some revolutionaries have realised that traditional songs like “Mary had a little lamb” are mostly useless on a grand scale and tried to come up with songs more useful to speakers of English, the most famous of which is probably Genki Richard. He however also fails on a spectacular scale. The ground breaking song below takes about 15 minutes to teach and results in (a portion of) the kids shouting the words “Thankyou” and “Take care” appropriately throughtout the non-sensical clamor.
In case the students had any apprehensions about whether or not it was ok to use basic greetings across all seasons he helpfully included a handy guide in there.
Here’s how you teach “Thankyou” and “Take care”.
Thankyou = Arigato
Take care = Itte Rasshai
FINISH
And I did it all without the aid of an entire gym, sound system, assistant teacher. miming and accompanying music.
I think what irritates me most is this tripe is actually successful. This said, I met the guy once, he was quite nice. Like a cocker spaniel is nice. I wanted to rub his head and say “whosagoodboythen?Richardis!Yesheis!Yesheis!”
The day after being freed from the chains of almost cancer I got to spend my saturday celebrating in style by fishing in the rain, in the dawn twilight of the morning at Junior high school a million miles away. I don’t have any rain gear either so I was basically in a soaking wet fleece and jeans catching fuck all save a cold and having my jubilation generally ruined. The alternative to fishiing however was doing regular class work – regular classwork with the grade that are less fun than your average salad onion. Amazing that almost catching pneumonia can be the lesser of two evils. At least I got Monday off.
Happier news, it looks like Obama is on his way to winning the democratic nomination. Having been named the “likely candidate” by the party chief and stolen some of Hilary’s super delegates, specifically those with healing factors I’m told. You know a campaign is on its last legs when people at your campaign rallys turn out dressed like this.
Actually, Hilary isn’t looking at the shirt, she’s just a massive lesbian. Mind your eyes you dirty lezzer.
Apologies one and all. My blog has of late become a woefully abandoned and unfrequented phantasm of it’s former self. I intend to address the issues by posting less “eye-bleedingly” huge posts in favor of shorter commentary post haste. However, today indulge me if you will and I will spin a yarn about a subject rather more sedate than my usual aimless ramblings.
Let me tell you about how I had cancer for 24 hours. Or if you prefer less of a tabloid sheen to it how I feared I had cancer for 24 hours. I am thoughtlessly ruining the punch line for you all right here by telling you that I don’t, in fact, have cancer.
So yesterday lunch time the school nurse approaches me, and contrary to her usual “cheerful- in-the-face-of-anything-complete-with-bad-English” demeanor she very gravely explains to me in Japanese that I have to go to the hospital for an X-Ray and CT scan because the people at the Wakayama board of health say something was amiss in my yearly X-ray. I think, like most people who have had some experience with smoking, it is understandable that the first thing that popped into my head in big red letters was; CANCER! They always said it could happen to you! And you didn’t believe them! Fool!
After a minute or two of reading the irritating letter and the even more infuriating instructions that said “details of inspection in envelope: not to be opened by anyone other than a Doctor under any circumstances”, I calmed down and realised, I’m young, relatively healthy and basically a non-smoker bar a 3 year variable blip and the occaisional blip elsewhere. But even so, I have never been a 20 a day man. However, it’s still not awesome news, and the fact that I was the only member of staff to not come back clean suggested this wasn’t a hugely common occurance, so the thought of cancer was never far from my mind. Helpfully, the nurse made me an appointment at the local hospital for the following day, and wrote a letter for me to take with me to save any misunderstandings (something I’d usually stubbornly battle through myself, but considering it was potential cancer I figured I would err on the side of caution).
So today I trotted down to the hospital and waited for my CT and X-ray to be taken ….and waited….and waited… and waited. It’s true, waiting is by far the worst part. Especially when no one is willing to venture an opinion, the best I got was from a nurse who had seen the “mystery letter of doom that I wasn’t permitted to open” was that we would definitely need an X-ray at least (it’s always difficult to know where to put the italics in Japanese speech, I’m still not sure which parts are being stressed and what those nuances are). Eventually I get ushered into a room and chat to the doc, my blood pressure and heart rate are normal for a guy who’s scared shitless he has cancer and the Doc can’t feel anything obvious from around the area, but it still could be early stage cancer apparently, on the lower part of my right lung. The fact that it’s treatable if it’s caught early doesn’t seem like a huge consollation prize – small graces be damned, its still cancer.
The merriest part of the journey was the CT scan, if you’ve never had one, it really is just like the movies, it’s a big expensive looking circle machine that makes you feel like “Shit. If they’re using this I must be pretty fucking sick“. Whilst making me feel like I really did have some serious illness it also at least felt like I was throwing money at the problem to make it go away.
So anyway, after more waiting and X-ray visits the Doc says: “Nothing to worry about, you have a scar on your lung from where you had a bad cold or a chest infection and that’s all, we’ll take the blood tests just to be safe but there’s no need to worry”.
When I think about it, I know there are a hojiilion and one things a shadow on an X-ray can mean, and given my family has no history of cancer there wasn’t really much cause to be concerned. But, if I can be melancholy for a moment, whilst I was sitting waiting to find out if I had cancer, it made me think a lot about mortality and taking care of myself. What was just as bad was sitting in a room of people who really did have cancer, seeing the despair and pain it was causing them. Without meaning to give into hyperbole, I swear you could honestly see the worry and fret etched into the faces of those suffering from cancer (one at least was suffering from lung cancer as I overheard the discussion from the Doctors office). On top of everything else, the one thing that kept ringing over in my mind was “All this could have been avoided for god knows how many people by the simple act of not smoking” .. just not doing something, not even doing something.
I think my point is, whilst I don’t have cancer, I could have done. Until you are faced with the reality of it up close and personal, it all seems like “something that happens to other people” and it’s not possible to understand the terror of it all. This is almost certainly coming over far too melodramatic, but if you are a smoker, I would very much like you to stop, and I know A LOT of smokers. You really don’t want to put yourself through the pain of waiting to find out (nor others around you). If you are feeling any of the symptoms, don’t do what I would do and leave it alone in the hope it goes away, get an X-ray. In fact, get an X-ray anyway, as a smoker you should get yourself checked for that shit, you catch something like lung cancer fast then it can be dealt with, go when you’re coughing up blood and it is much less likely. I don’t care how “live fast and die young” your personal philosphy is, it’ll still scare the holy fuck out of you.
This was all epiphany and shit.
Stop smoking!
