Gaz: Big in Japan

In so many ways to keep this blog updated. I always feel busy these days, or if I’m not busy I feel like I should be, leading me to feel guilty about rambling self righteously on my blog.

However, in keeping with the “fuck Gareth” approach that has dominated Japanese weather ideology for at least 2 years, it is far too humid for anything else today, the crew of the good ship Galactica would have sailed right on by this planet in search of another had they seen the humidity guage. Battlestar Galactica is something I’ve gotten into, in fact my two main vices at the moment are Mr. Theo Thourson’s fault,

1) Battlestar Galactica

2) A Game of Thrones CCG.

The former is awesome. I’ve been through a string of addictive big budget dramas in recent years, “24″, “Dexter”, “The Wire”, “LOST” etc. but of them all Galactica has surprised me the most. It didn’t have to be good to get viewers, the cult following would guarantee it a lengthy run, just take a look at the new Dr. Who, it’s fucking awful, and yet despite lead actors dropping out every 5 minutes it is still going strong. However, the makers of BG obviously said “Fuck this. Let’s make a high tension, involving Sci-Fi drama and not fill it full of pseudo-science and plot holes”. I applaude it.

The latter of my 2 vices is not something I am good at, or get to do enough. I have never played a CCG before, having always been a nit too skeptical about Tragic: The Saddening (not my joke) to jump in headfirst. I have been playing against Theo for a couple of months now on an almost weekly basis and it has to be said it is great fun, although I have yet to beat him so much as once. I could make excuses for this, but the biggest issue is probably my own incompetance – I recall cringeworthy moments of simply not reading my cards correctly and bungling things like and oaf (the incident of the misread military and power challenge is burned into my memory). But, it IS a great deal of fun, so much fun that I’ve spent ludicrous amounts of money on cards already, of course, reading the books makes things far more entertaining. Reading the books is something you should do, so buy them.

I’m thinking a lot more about my future these days. I’m being careful to do “thinking” rather than “worrying” as Baz Luhrmann once put it “Worrying about the future is about as effective as trying to solve algebra buy chewing bubblegum”. What do I want to do? Now there’s a question. This can be put quite simply. I want to go into TV/movie production as per my degree. There are a few issues with this, the biggest being that rather than being a guy who can speak English as a talent, I suddenly go to being a guy who can’t speak Japanese very well, not a desireable quality in an employee in Japan. Also, outside of my degree I have no experience in the field at all. I’m trying to think of ways to converting my English into a saleable skill, the most obvious field that comes to mind is educational TV or location documentaries (assuming said locations are in English speaking countries).

The other far too obvious option is teaching English. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like teaching English ……generally. I have good days and bad, the busier tends to be the better. This is the first job I’ve had where I don’t get up in the morning resenting the days ahead in some way, although I occaisionally come home resenting it happening but that’s to be expected. Too much free time wouldn’t be a problem if I were to work for an English education company out here, chances are that the company don’t want me laying about anymore than I want to be laying about, it’s all about the turnover after all. Theo made a good point a few weeks back when saying “you should do a job in which you help somebody every day, at least then it will be bearable”. This applies to English teaching at least, it’s not like I’ll be working in a sales or retail environment, however it feels like I’m kind of falling into it by happenstance and I’m keen to avoid it.

The real question is “Do I have the will power to chase my dream come what may?” It’s a big question, and it would be terribly easy to fall into the trap of taking the easy door rather than battle on through the shit to get what I really want. Whatever happens, I guess telling people what I want to do is kind of the first step, at least that way I’ll have some