Did you ever have one of those days that already start terribly and the best, no probably the only, way to prevent complete and utter disaster is to turn around and go back to bed?
In fact, it already started last evening when I went to the community house to see a friend – who wasn’t there. I thought we had wanted to go out for dinner, but I may have mixed up the dates, so I had another one of my takeout sushi meals.
When I read my emails later in the evening, there was a reply from a potential employer, an international company in Tokyo – cancelling the skype interview that was set for Thursday afternoon. I had made the mistake of asking for an interview in English, not being confident to do it in Japanese, and was informed that Japanese fluency on native level was essential for the job and hence, no interview needed. Mind you that the advertisement only mentioned “Japanese communication ability” and not how much of it, and that the job description talked about travelling and doing business with foreign people in English, not Japanese. The email was brief, but it said that they were “impressed with [my] background and experience” (but just not enough to conduct an interview and find out how bad my Japanese really is) and that they wished me “success with [my] delightful career and future”. That’s what you get for talking only to some snotty boy from human resources, and I bet “English native level” was not one of his job requirements… Anyway, at least we didn’t waste each other’s time, but I am indeed a bit floored by this, as I am sure that that desk in that company had been custom made for me already…
Today around noon it started to rain heavily, with lots of wind that pushed the water against my main window. I had not closed it as it was so hot the last few days, and my blanket which I put up to air out got all soaked by the time I was back to close the window. As the humidity goes up quite a bit when it rains, and it also cooled down a few degrees, my blanket couldn’t dry properly and is still damp now.
In the afternoon I got an email from my real estate agent essentially telling me that I’ll have to reduce my price for the house considerably in order to be able to sell it. Once I will have paid all sorts of fees and taxes, the remainder will only buy me a one room apartment in Japan. I have not yet decided what to do, if and by how much to reduce the price. That will require more thinking.
Finally I just went down to refill my water bottle and I had to face two cockroaches in the kitchen. Only one of them was polite enough to wait for the washing-up-liquid treatment, the other one disappeared. I hope one of my housemates will come across that one – I did kill the bigger one after all.
Those were my last 24 hours (and a bit) and I’m glad they are over – it can’t get worse, can it? To alleviate the pain I spent the day surfing the internet, playing lots of stupid games, and reducing my stash of chocolate to zero.
Dang it, now I’ll have to go out tomorrow in the rain to buy new sweeties…