Not So Much Quitting, But Moving On

I quit. Not Nova, not yet, though I should, and will, soon enough, but I mean smoking. Again.

A year ago I quit, for 4 months, until shortly before coming back to America, when Serena was visiting, waiting for the train back to my house from getting royally drunk over at Greg's place. I had the first cigarette there and it was a short path back to regularly smoking from there.

I'm writing this down here so that I will be horribly humiliated should I crack, but I won't. There is no possibility of failure anymore. I can do anything I put my mind to. My life has the possibility of falling completely apart right now, and if I am not able to enact my will, then I am incapable of anything. I quit. I will not smoke again.

Furthermore, I will find another job should the need arise, and I will start or stop anything that I feel necessary in my life to make it what I want.

No longer will this weak will of mine stand in the way of accomplishing that which I dream of. This is it.

About A Girl

In slightly happier news, my girlfriend and I have been together for over 5 months now. I haven't written too much about it, mostly because I'm doing my best not to let my emotions take control of me and burn out on it or want something serious too quickly. I want things to happen at their own pace, and not rush into anything that's gonna eventually push me away from it.

And the result has been this: I really like this girl. I don't say it very often, and when my friends ask me how things are I'm generally pretty nonchelant about it, but I really do. She's really chill, and we goof around about the exact same things, and the fact is we both learn so much from each other. I like that we're still getting to know each other as well. As time has gone by, we've started talking about things little by little, learning about each other's pasts, and likes, and dislikes, and really kind of discovering each other at our own pace, and that's really nice. I've never felt uncomfortable with her.

We don't really volunteer information to each other, or ever really ask about it, when it comes up it comes up and we both listen and learn. And as we get more comfortable, we've started making our own groove, we have our own little sayings and our own little ways to tease each other, and they're unique to us. That's what I like the most, basically nothing we do is a rehash of anything I've done in other relationships, and that makes me feel like this really is special.

The language barrier is fun too. My Japanese has improved a lot, and people tell me that all the time, and I see that her English is improving too, much like that of other students I've had who date foreigners, in that her listening is way above her speaking ability, and her reactions and side comments are increasingly more natural. She helps me with little phrases, and most all of our text messages are in Japanese now, so I get practice every time we talk, and it's in writing too so if she uses any form I don't know, I can learn it and start using it right away.

One of the Mexican workers at Haggen's years and years ago during my first job once told me that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love. And though I knew there was truth to it then, I see it now every day, as I struggle successfully or otherwise to find ways to communicate exactly what I mean, be it serious or otherwise to her. She's a reason for me to grow and improve myself as a person, and though that's reason enough to be happy, everything else just makes it so wonderful.

We don't see each other all the time, and that's great. I need my space, lots of it, as I'm sure she does too. We both work a lot, and I see her maybe once a week at best. It's great, I get all the time I want to do my stuff and we come together when we have time. Perfect. We don't even talk every day, we'll go a few without texting each other and that's not the end of the world; a far cry from other ill-fated codependent relationships I've been in. I trust her completely, as I'm sure she does me, and unlike my relationship with Melissa it doesn't bother me at all that we don't spend more time together. In fact, I prefer it because, as I mentioned, I never burn out on being around her.

We've taken day trips together, and I'm always happy. In two weeks, we're going to go to Nikko for the weekend together, and I'm looking forward a great deal to our first multi-day trip together. I really like the idea of the two of us traveling together, crashing in a hotel after a long day doing stuff. Couple stuff.

It's a little scary, I'll admit, because I catch myself thinking that I'd be happy with it become more serious with time, like living together and marriage and kids and the like, and I usually put those thoughts out of my mind as quickly as possible, because I really do want to just take it slow and enjoy it for what it is. Also, I don't want to mentally consider our relationship something it isn't yet. It's not forever, not yet, regardless of if I'd be happy if it were, so I'm not going to let that kind of thing cause me stress thinking about.

If it ends, it ends, and I'll be grateful that it happened, but I don't want it to. Not any time soon, maybe not ever.

It's really strange for me to be writing about how happy I am being in a relationship, this coming from the guy who's spent the last 5 years doing everything in his power to avoid one. And it's not that I'm happy to be in a relationship, because that much is true still, I don't really want to be in a relationship. What I want is to be with her.

Nova's Fucked

*NOTICE - The information contained within this entry is entirely public information. Nothing disclosed here is in any way a company secret, or something that cannot be learned from public newspaper articles and other documencts. I.e. don't fire me.*

So the buzz recently in my life is the fate of my company. Nova's hurting somethin awful, and it's getting to be almost farcical at this point.

See, there were a bunch of scandals regarding Nova not too long ago, a lot of things came to the surface about their policies that weren't exactly legit from a legal standpoint, including, but not limited to refusing to give refunds, discounting the price of points for refunds actually given, failing to provide students with vital information about their own accounts such as the number of points remaining in their contract, and creating an application system that wastes nearly all of the 7 day governmentally mandated risk free back-out period on all contractual agreements signed by customers. So, as a result, Nova was forced to pay some unGodly fine and was forbidden to sign new customers for any contract longer than 1 year for a period of six months, which, given the nature of how Nova makes its money, i.e. get the largest amount of money you possibly can up front and never, ever, ever give it back, is more or less a death blow.

This, coupled with Nova's ill-fated expansion into completely demand-devoid areas, which succeeded not in bringing in new customers but rather only in spreading existing customers around, thusly reducing any 1 branch's income significantly, more or less instantly dropped Nova into the red, big time.

Nova was additionally forced to hire 700 more teachers to compensate for the widespread complaint that students were not able to book lessons at times that were convenient to them, but, due to the unfortunate and ill-timed recent murder of a British Nova instructor, recruitment drives have failed to be as effective as I'm sure the company would wish. Additionally, scares about Nova's financial position have made taking a job with the company increasingly less attractive.

For a little while Nova could skate on their profit margins, but now that we're towards the end of that 6 month period, cockroaches can be seen, i.e. the place is infested with problems and they're becoming increasingly noticeable, nay, impossible to ignore.

This is including, but again, not limited to: branch closures. Over 200 are closing nationwide, including my own. Moraju, Tennodai, and Abiko in my area alone are closing. Branches are closing because landlords are evicting them for failing to pay rent for the last 3 or 4 months. Teachers are being evicted from their apartments because Nova hasn't paid their rent in 3 or 4 months. Teachers that have recently quit have not received their final paychecks. Current teachers, namely titled instructors, didn't get paid on time, actually, their payday was pushed back three times, accompanied by grossly insufficient apologies from Mr. Sahashi, the CEO. The Japanese staff as well have experienced similar tardiness in pay.

The worst part about the branch closures is that students are all gonna quit because of it.

And so on and so forth. If you look at the financial data, Nova's fucked. Nova reported a 4.5 billion yen loss in the las financial quarter alone, which was limited to 2.5 billion due to a liquidation of assets.

This just goes to show how incredibly poorly this, and other companies like it, have been designed and performing, but on the other hand it's a classic example of the corporate model of business. You do something to make a lot of money and then you use that money to expand yourself and make more money, and continue to do this until you literally collapse under your own weight, and then the owners embezzle the bankruptcy money and sneak away to start again.

If you want a unique but not too far off look at the future of this planet, take a look at what's happening to Nova. This is what we're doing to the planet. I think I just said it, but, for emphasis and deeper consideration, I'll repeat: Nova's fucked.

So, I'm chillen right now waiting for my girlfriend to call so we can go out tonight, so I thought I'd give a little update and say what's been up lately.

I got back from my trip to Thailand on Monday evening. Thailand was alright, though I have to admit it wasn't all I had hoped it to be. That's probably because I didn't really go out of my way to have that kind of time, but who knows. There's always next time.

Thailand gave me this shady feeling the entire time like someone was constantly lying to you or trying to rip you off, and that feeling basically never went away no matter where we went. Greg and I ended up taking tours the whole time, be them organized tour kinda things or just the Tuk Tuk tour around Bangkok itself, and it was just disgusting the ways they try to extract money out of you any way they can. It just made me feel used and dirty. The Tuk Tuk drivers, as you may well know, will take you on a tour of major spots throughout the city, and you basically get them all day for 20 baht, but, they of course stop at all the knock off suit shops along the way so they can get vouchers for free gas, which of course you never see and probably don't physically exist.

We got called liars straight to our faces in 2 of these places, it was funny, but I'm glad they did it cause it saved us from the possibility of actually spending some money on a suit. You would think that if a business actually wants your money, they would kinda, I dunno, maybe NOT call you a liar in the process of bargaining, especially when truth be told we weren't lying at all. Greg got a good deal last time he was here and whenever one of us told a salesman about that deal, and how we wanted it again, they just straight said, "Impossible!" To which we of course replied, "Are you saying I'm lying to you?" To which, much to our shock and disbelief, "yes, you're lying." But it was good cause then we got to slap them with "Has it been 5 minutes yet? I don't do business with people that call me a liar but I at least want my driver to get some gas out of this waste of time."

But then, at the end of it all, our Tuk Tuk driver, after taking us to an infamous ping pong show that involves neither tables nor tennis, says to the question of how much we owe him, "whatever you want to pay me," i.e. "way way more than 20 baht please," which in reality is less than $1, so, we gave him more anyway, just cause, what the hell the guy gave us a day of his time and he was funny to shoot the shit with along the way.

Anyway, we went out to Kanchanaburi on a tour thing the next day and had a good time meeting the other people that had been taken the same way we had and chatting to them and drinking a whole lot and never actually getting their emails or anything, despite them all being from places I'd like to visit at some point. I actually was never really introduced to any of them, and I learned their names by listening in.

Anyway, off to Saizeriya with Ty to wait for Saki to call. more later.