Enforcers

So I've got a sore throat.  That wouldn't be particularly worrying in of itself (considering the incessantly cold weather and lack of heating in my house) but it's encroaching.  It's heading downwards, inexorably towards the lungs.  The only time(s) I've experienced this have ended up in great heaving lungs of mucus, the kind you don't simply clean with a cloth, but scrape off with trowels and heavy equipment.

Ironically, it came about because I was shouting particularly loudly at training (I think) which left me with a throat-of-nails to begin with.  This coupled with the weather (or my notorious hygiene) has left me in a position where I'm going to be fighting just to keep fit for the game next week.  That's the reason it's ironic, by the way.  If there was no game, there wouldn't have been training and I wouldn't be ill, chicken and egg kind of thing.  Or something.

So today has been a particularly interesting day.  One of the reta... I mean kids; went to have some kind of spaz attack.  He was clearly aiming it at a little old lady who comes into school once a week to impart knowledge unto other English teachers, and whose soul (sic) purpose is to help (she is rather dedicated).  This is obviously untoward, and I stepped in, quelled the child without saying a thing (unlike back home, these guys have the sense to realise that someone four times bigger than them can do serious damage - also unlike back home they still fear the threat of physical violence, despite not being enacted for at least half a century) and went on my merry way.  It occurred to me that this was an isolated incident (no one has the stones to actually follow through on threats, once again unlike England) but the entire school has the discipline of a gaggle of swans.  Such an apt metaphor, I feel no further explanation is necessary.  Hint - not all is well in the swarm.

I've wondered what the reason for this could be.  It's worse than England.  I leave almost every class knowing that no one learned anything.  I leave a class knowing that every kid is perfect Macdonalds fodder.  They're terminally stupid, and this is the problem with a group led mentality.  Once the group decides to be sardines, everyone gets canned equally.

In Japan, all the teachers change schools every few years.  The idea being free exchange of ideas and whatnot.  What actually happens is no one builds up a tenure long enough to build respect.  There are no enforcers in Japanese schools, so when a kid does something bad there's no recourse, no repercussion.

I find it hard to muster up even the slightest inclination to care, however, as the vast majority of the kids want to be hairdressers now (a new cartoon came out I think) so their aspirations are at least in-line with their abilities.

There's one kid who wants to be a doctor, and he might well be able to pull it off.  Good luck to him.  He's also lucky because I'm tasked with actually teaching that one, not just telling him to sit down/stop rubbing himself/stop climbing out of the third floor window, as is the case with all the other kids.

Two Typhoons, a Birthday, and Being Sick Everywhere

So I'm writing this during lunch, primarily because I can't face eating anything at the moment.

I'm feeling quite terrible, having eaten hateful chicken wrapped in hate and loathing.  At the time it tasted quite nice, but even as I was eating it something unpalatable crept along my spine.  This unpalatable feeling stemmed from the myriad diseases the establishment puts into the food.  The upshot is that I feel quite vile, but the life of a foreign teacher is irriplaceable - unless you die, there's no getting out of work.

In reply to the question about prior storms; yes we have had our storm.  It was pathetic.  We then proceeded to have another storm immediately following, seemingly along the same path.  In a sudden and unexpected turn (sic) of events, it altered heading and veered straight towards us.  In the first 'eye of the storm encounter,' (TM) I have ever had, wind speeds exceeded forty miles per hour.  That's nothing, frankly.  It didn't even turn my umbrella inside out, while walking along the street.

I was exceedingly disappointed, as per usual, but the rain was quite spectacular.  120 mm in two days, I think that's some kind of record, to be frank.  That's two to three months of rainfall, in a day.

What's even more impressive, is that the lag time between rainfall and peak river flow, from cursory observation, is exceedingly small.  This means that the vast majority of the rain that falls, finds its way into the rivers, and in short order.  I would imagine flooding is or was a major problem around Korea, as the abundance of steep-sided mountains means the rain is funneled extremely quickly into the rivers.  When we travelled over the river after the days work, it was extremely high (still nowhere near capacity) and by the next day it was back to normal levels.

And there ends the geography based geeky interest in the landscape of this island.

It rained a hell of a lot, for the summarised version.