My reading days

I have been reading a lot in the last two weeks. It all began with my pledge to myself to finish every library book within the three weeks for which it is lent and to get a new book next time I go to the library. My wishlist coincided largely with the list of recent Booker Prize winners - I remember planning to read all the winning titles back in my university years. So I began with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things (I didn't borrow this book, though), then went to the library in search of Yann Martel's Life of Pi, but it was out on loan, so I settled for DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little.

I read Roy's book slowly, desperately trying to make the joy last longer, turning the pages slowly over a large teapot of darjeeling and countless bars of Meiji black chocolate on quiet evenings. I tried to taste every word, hold it in my mouth for some time, chuckling at jokes and sighing when Roy's fictional world threw its weight on my shoulders. In short, I couldn't get enough of this book - it eventually ended, as good books usually do, leaving me thinking about it for the rest of the week.

Vernon God Little was good in its own way. The eff words kept piling on my head from the very first page, and after reading Roy's beautifully constructed prose, it was a little disappointing, even disgusting to some extent. But later on I got used to this, and caught up with the narrator's real story, which is nothing but hilarious. I literally swallowed the book in one busy week.

I finally got my hands on the Life of Pi, which I am reading at the moment. The book is promising much at this stage (I am now in the thirtieth pages), but let's see whether I will eventually approve of the Booker Prize panel's decision.

Lazy lazy lazy

I have not been so lazy in the last few months. I am so lazy today that I don't want to even think about anything. Maybe I am tired of everything, maybe I need a rest. Maybe it is because I can feel that something is wrong with my body, my head, my spirit. Or maybe it is because I am not getting enough sleep every night. I don't know. I am fed up with most of what I have everyday. And I want to change some things in my life, because almost everything I have now adds up to the current frustration. So I have to do something about it. But before that, I need a good rest.

About my long-suffering toe

Last December I hurt the fourth toe on my right foot due to a bicycle accident - it struck the ground while I was trying to stop the bike abruptly. It was nothing too serious, but the swelling didn't go away for about a week, although the doc had assured me prior to that that the toe would be fine in two days. He even lectured me over a high-precision X-ray shot of my right foot on which I could see every tiny bone in minute detail - and make it clear for myself that the bone was not hurt, not even displaced. That the swelling was largely due to the damage to the surrounding tissue.

Months have passed since and I have almost forgotten about the accident. And a football match misstep made me remember the whole shit from the beginning. I lifted my leg high in the air and somehow managed to land it badly. There was a sharp feeling in the toe and the first thing that came to me was "not again, the fucking toe!" I played on, though, for an hour and a half. At home I was not very surprised to find the toe swollen. I know it's nothing too serious and not worth spending another 3000 yen on a visit to the doc, but still it struck me out of my inner balance.

Blogging

What are the chances of landing a journalism job through blogging extensively? Does blogging help develop writing skills to the extent stipulated by job descriptions?

I don't know whether one day I will write for an English language media outlet or not, but blogging for me at the moment is merely a chance to reflect my experiences, to record my life somehow for future reference, to let my thoughts out and make them tangible, visible, comprehensible. Let some order into them. And if in the course of doing all this my writing skills happen to improve, I think I will have one more cause to celebrate.

I'm back

My long absence is over now. Life has been very tough on me recently, and the last thing I could think of in the last month was to update this blog. I am slowly recuperating, mentally. There are events in this world one cannot accept, although it is possible to comprehend them to some extent. I have tried to live through that in the last weeks and who knows how many more weeks I will have to fight off certain thoughts. But I am on my path back, that's for sure. Although the world is never gonna be the same.

I have started working part-time as a teaching assistant to one of the professors at the University. The job so far is utterly technical: setting up the computer-projector-speakers and, once in a week, microphones in class; helping the lecturer with showing PowerPoints by literally pressing the button after a signal; passing the cordless microphone from one student to another during class discussions. It's been mostly ok. This month I will also be taking care of one of the seminars, for which I am preparing at the moment a list of readings. I have to come up with a PowerPoint and show it to an 80-odd class of Japanese first- and second-year undergraduates. I am looking forward to it, although I am also worrying a little about the reluctance of the students to speak up in the public, of which I have already written. And will write more, it appears.