My life seems to have come to a complete standstill. I am not getting anywhere at the moment, or so it seems…
Business is very slow, to put it mildly. I keep applying left and right, but all I get are rejections, if I get any reply at all. No reply to a job application seems to be the modern version of “fuck off”, which I find extremely annoying. The job in Osaka I was talking about three weeks ago I did not get because the company was not willing to hire my company rather than myself. Well, I already had the impression that the interview did not go that well, so I was not overly flattened by this one.
Other jobs are perfect, but do just not exist in Kyoto. For the last one I applied – part-time translator of IT documents from English to German in Tokyo – I was told that they really, really needed somebody to show up in their office three times a week. Probably to hold hands with their developers or so? And others yet, people just cannot afford me. A friend of mine has been struggling for a long time putting together a webpage that I could do virtually effortlessly until the end of the month, but she is scared about the costs involved and doesn’t even want to talk about details… It’s frustrating.
And then there is soroban. I am still practising daily because I want to take the next exam for first kyu on March 20th. This will be my third try of taking the test on this level, which means that I have been training for more than six months already… Okay, the first try I knew I would fail. I did the test then because from this level on the tests are administered not in my soroban school anymore but in an external location, and I wanted to know the exact procedure. I did much better on the second try, but I was still too nervous and unprepared to pass. Let’s hope the third try will be the final one. The exercises are not getting any more exciting…
Well, perseverance is everything.
This is also what a friend of mine needs to do. He has been in the ICU of Kyoto University Hospital for a week now with unclear abdominal pains. He seems to be cheerful though – and is especially taken with all the young nurses fussing over him – but I still have the impression he’d rather be home. All the best for you!