(Un)Lucky Birthdays

Tomorrow is another birthday for me. Another year older and hopefully another year wiser (but I seriously doubt it). Besides the normal adult reluctance to have another birthday and to take another step towards old age and senility, I don’t like birthdays because it occurs in winter and I usually have a cold with a sore throught and/or cough at the time. I also have another BIG reason to hate having birthdays, which I’ll share in a moment.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very grateful to have been born and to my mother (and father) for all they did and continue to do for me. If you’re reading this, Mom and Dad, thank you so much and I love you.

I’m also a little proud of my birthday. I share birthdays with a few famous people: Walt Disney and U.S. President Martin Van Buren (OK, so one famous dead person and a relatively unknown dead US president). I just wish I had been born in the summer or at least the spring so it wouldn’t be so cold on my birthday. Then I think I could enjoy it more.

That is, if bad luck wouldn’t pop up. You see, every few years, I have extremely bad luck and as a result, unusual, bad things happen to me on my birthday. Here are some examples:

1st Grade: For my birthday, I got a cool Transformer watch. The cheap, digital watch face was embedded into the body of Optimus Prime, which could be unsnapped from the watch band and transformed into a small robot toy. I thought is was so cool and wore it to school. After recess time (where I of course wore the watch outside to show it off), I noticed to my horror that I was wearing an empty, black plastic watch band. I realized that the Transformer toy must have fallen off the band. During the next recess, I searched and searched for it but couldn’t find it (there was a lot of snow that year). I did eventually find the watch a few weeks later in a snow bank after it had melted somewhat. But by that time, the watch face didn’t work and that was the end to my Transformer watch.

7th Grade: My first year of junior high school, lockers, and getting to classes in time. As it turned out, my locker decided to celebrate my birthday by not opening for me. No, I didn’t have it crammed with books, papers, clothes, gym shorts, and garbage. It was very Spartan, with only a few books and my backpack in it. Unfortunately, it had the one book I needed for the math class taught by the meanest teacher in the world. AND MY LOCKER WOULD NOT OPEN! I knew I had the right combination (it was a combination lock, not a key lock) and I could feel it almost open but it just wouldn’t open no matter what I did until after the bell for class to start rang. I threw my other book in, grabbed my math book, and sprinted for the classroom. But it was too late. The world’s meanest teacher wouldn’t accept my story that my locker jammed and gave me detention, the first and only time I got it. (Detention wasn’t so bad. I had it with one of my favorite teachers and I just did homework for about an hour.)

College: My leg became painfully infected somehow and the doctor set up for me to come to the hospital, get a dose of antibiotics via IV, and go home. The first appointment fell on my birthday. I went in anyway and remember being stuck with a needle and they started the drip antibiotics. The next thing I knew, I was waking up and there was an annoying alarm and the nurses said I had passed out. They said I had had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics (I still think I blacked out due to the drama of being stuck with a needle and not because of an allergy to the antibiotics. I’ve passed out giving blood because of the shock to my system due to being stuck with a needle). But I was hospitalized on my birthday.

The next year: I rode my bike to my job at a retail store in Waikiki in Hawaii on my birthday. I usually rode my bike to work to save from paying for parking, unless it was raining and then I’d drive my car. After working for several hours, one of my co-workers whispered to me that my shorts had a hole on my butt. I examined it and found it was a HUGE tear and there was no way to hide it or repair it there. I received permission to go home and change, which I did. Since I wanted to get back to work as quickly as I could, I drove back to work. When I was close to my working place, it started to rain hard. And of course I didn’t have an umbrella. So I reported back to work soaking wet. But at least my shorts didn’t have a hole in them anymore. And no, I couldn’t go home to change again.

These are the reasons why I don’t like my birthday and wish I could forget it was my birthday. I have bad luck on my birthday. And that’s why I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. I wish I could stay home and stay in bed tomorrow. Next year I’ll take the day off and celebrate my birthday on November 31st.

Tenkiishi 101

Welcome to my new blog. This will be a blog about me, my experiences, thoughts, and whatever I feel like writing. I have set a goal to post an entry once a week, so here it goes.

First, a little about me. Not too much (I hope) due to security/privacy concerns.
I’m from Utah in the USA but currently I live in Japan, near Tokyo. I have lived before in Japan, in 1997 – 1999, and then moved back to the US. After that, I lived in Hawaii for about 8 years and then in Utah (briefly) before moving to my current location. My wife is Japanese and we have one daughter who is 4 1/2 years old.

I currently work for a private English school and I travel to different locations to teach English to children and adults. For fun, I enjoy computers, movies, reading (or listening) to books, studying Japanese, and playing any sports when I get the chance. I also like to spend time with my girl and wife.

I love living in Japan and am enjoying it very much. I love the people, the food (the bread here is very good), and the language. If only I could get a job in IT, which is my background and what I enjoy the most, life here would be…hmmm…not perfect or even close to perfect, but it would be a lot better. I don’t really like my job as it is not what I want to do and it’s hard to work hard at it as I have no internal motivation but I do want to do my best at it and help my students learn as much as possible. This is a big conflict and one I face everyday when I go to work.

I will try not to post any boo-hoo blogs. I have to keep in mind this is publicly available to anyone who wants to read it. But I do want to share some feelings that I have, mostly to help me make sense of them. But, as I’m a private person and don’t let my feelings out too much, I’m sure most posts will be about my experiences.