Chat Thread: Tokyo Drift

The Untitled Goose is my waifu.

...what?

So heres the current situation: Japan, particularly out here in the countryside, is in total head-in-the-sand, there's no problem mode. Deep down we all, particularly foreigners, know a lockdown is coming but nobody at the top wants to admit it. We literally had a staff party saturday night at which we all clinked glasses, poured eachothers drinks, ate from communal bowls and then joined hands to sing!

In other news I just finished a very busy two weeks of spring school and got a promotion for it.

Sounds weird man. The communal events, not the promotion (congrats). But equally in some ways that feels like how it was here too before things suddenly changed. Apart from the not talking about it, people were doing that incessantly.

I was told a month ago that I'd had my contract extended until the end of July. I was hoping that would be official today if I chased my manager, but it's now up in the air. My employer's finance team have a new emergency department which is reviewing all expiring contracts to determine who is needed and who isn't.

The faculty have made a long and short term case for me being essential, which has been sent off to the finance team so hopefully i get confirmation soon about what is going on one way or another. Things have been happening behind the scenes so I was only told that they'd done this today, but that they had already been making the case as a proactive measure in case they needed too. So I'm in a better position than most of our fixed-term/temp staff because of my experience (which is related to programme specs, multiple databases and supporting online teaching) and because I have a faculty doing their best to keep me.

Apparently even if they had extended me a few weeks ago as they said they would, they still would have probably had the Finance Team intervene and demand a justification. It's just bad timing as we've got a holiday coming up from Thursday-Wednesday, and then I only have two weeks of pay left before I expire so I have to hope the finance team get a move on. Otherwise I'll need to ask my previous employer (a different area of the University) to give me furlough payments - but who knows how long that could take or if they'll do it. I have enough savings to get by with bills for a while but not a great time for my morale right now.

I've also had a really sore throat for the three or four weeks, which has been really annoying. Had some really swollen glands for a while but they've gone down. It's definitely not just psychological and I've had headaches on and off but no temperature so doubt I'm infected with the bad stuff. Feels weird even asking for a doctors appointment at the moment though.

Just seen today that it's hit you (Drunka), big time. Stay safe, and congrats on the promotion.

Argh, sorry to read Muss. Hope it gets sorted out for you sooner rather than later. Sounds like it should be okay.

Balladeer wrote:

Just seen today that it's hit you (Drunka), big time.  

Nope. It has been greatly exaggerated in the british press.
In the big cities, an emergency has been declared and some measures advised.
Here in Nagano, fuck all has changed.

...oh. I agree then, proper head-in-sand stuff. I also read that the national government can't pass laws declaring a nationwide emergency - is that right?

They can declare a state of emergency in a prefecture, but that gives powers to the local governor, not the central government.

Oh boy, good luck everyone - especially Muss with the medical issues there.
My hospital appointment was moved forward which was not what I was expecting. I was medically electrocuted for a bit (this is based on that shit I mentioned about 18 months ago!). Good news: it's probably not a degenerative thing. Bad news: I should sit up straight like a good boy.

HAHAHAHAHA

Yep I have that too. Genetic weakness of the spine. Should sit up straight. Never will.

Good to hear it's not degenerative Jimbob! My sore throat is still here but it's been getting notably better over the past few days which is a relief.

Luckily I am an ubermensch and so have no medical issues and am immune to disease.

It's lymphadenitis, caused by a not Covid 19 virus apparently. An upper-respiratory infection that lasts for 8 weeks and makes your glands and throat go all funny so should clear up in 2-4 more weeks for me. Because it's healing my doctor said I could still go out and all that, but naturally I don't want to pick anything up while I'm already fighting something else off.

Of course it's not helped by the stress of my job situation, where I was told today that my faculty needed to resubmit my extension case because they didn't submit the original case with a template [even though at the time there was no template]. I have until the end of this month and I'm staring at the back of the line for benefits because my institution aren't furloughing people, they're just letting them expire. This is despite other Universities utilising the gov scheme for people with contracts like me.

There is a legal case I could pursue because I was told in writing I was extended before this started. I don't want it to come to that, but I've got no choice but to pursue it with my insurer now. If the Tories had just made their scheme mandatory, none of this would matter. But here we are.

Argh, that's bobbins. Hope the legal side of things isn't too horrendous. At least you're on the mend!

So after talking about getting back into Skateboarding elsewhere on here I found this channel on youtube that not only does tutorial stuff but also a bunch of weird challenges and I just found this video where they skate a wii fit balance board.

A lot of people have assumed that I was really good at skateboarding because of the way I look but I was actually really bad at it. I seem to be a lot better at things where I can shift my mass around more independently, like roller blades or skis, than I am with any sort of board. Not sure I could even stand on that Wii board for very long

The most skateboarding I ever did was sit on it to go down hills.
I can ski/ skate pretty well, though.

Me and Muss were dab hands at parkour, but I took all those videos down one dark evening when I wanted to do youtube and thought the music choices were embarassing. I regret that choice every day.

The most I could ever do was the ollie after weeks & weeks of trying then only a few days after I had it down I actually broke the nose of the shitty board I had with a bad landing, after that I didn't re-buy one & just cruised about on a snake board (if you remember those) I had instead.

Buska wrote:

Me and Muss were dab hands at parkour, but I took all those videos down one dark evening when I wanted to do youtube and thought the music choices were embarassing. I regret that choice every day.

That is a real shame as those would've been funny to see.

I'm furloughed baby! Who knows what the future holds, but at least I'm OK at the moment money-wise.
It's been heavily advised that we do some "self-training", which includes learning Unity...

Hmmmm...

Right - I've already got two games on the go. This is probably not what they meant...

Sounds like you'll have a bit of a headstart on other people in terms of picking up those techy skills at least Jimbob, what with your numerous projects.

I've not been furloughed, but am still in a precarious position since the University is cutting as much as it can. They have now confirmed that they will furlough temps if they have too though, so there's a safety net. My want me to learn coding so that I can act as a back up for our databases in case our programmer gets sick. This would make me quite valuable as it's an area of risk for our department, or at least make me pretty handy for other companies in our new isolated world. I've made about 5 webpages with html and css so far. It's actually kind of satisfying.

Glad you're both okay on the money and the learnings front. Looking forward to the day when Jim's game is hosted on Muss' webpage and it makes Kim Kardashian's backside's impact on the Internet look like a feather's landing by comparison.

Most of my lessons are now online but, as things stand, I'll be going back to my office after Golden Week. Same ol' same ol' . . .

In other news, yesterday I decided to try walking to the next city. 55km, 14 hours, sunburn on the arms and legs and a week's worth of podcasts later, I made it. I was in agony but I felt pretty good. What didn't feel good is that for some reason Pokémon Go had decided to switch off adventure sync and barely recorded any of that distance.

That is a hell of a trek!

What made you fancy it?

I followed a children's PE lesson online today for about half of the thirty minutes it ran for. My back got sweaty so when I was doing sit ups against our wooden floor it made it sound like I was letting rip with more ferocity than when beyblades were "cool".

Pretty sure you're doing this all wrong mate!

JayMoyles wrote:

That is a hell of a trek!

What made you fancy it?

The views are pretty and I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could.

Not bad! Were the views as hoped for? And, er - how did you get home?