Still alive. Though kind of wishing not at the moment, since my dinner consisted mostly of chocolate and I feel rather ill. Anyhow, back at home in Japan, back working, writing, et cetera. Posting at the moment over on wordpress more than here, so feel free to check it out:

http://thenonakas.wordpress.com/

Ugh. Be back when I don't feel like yurking and have something more interesting to say.

After a week off in Shiga, I'm back! Yeah! One more week until I go home for six days! Wa-heeey!

is that when you feel suicidally enraged and impotent and just want to talk to someone who will understand, they're all asleep. Especially problematic when you're terminally considerate enough to not want to wake anyone up because you know they'll have a hellish tomorrow if you keep them up all night bitch. So instead you take it out on your blog.

 

Okay. My name is J.S. and I have a problem. The problem is that I want to tear down every institution related to the medical field in this country. This is a problem, since many people - myself included - need treatment from said medical institutions. But god, I hate them so much.

 

This is especially ironic if you take a look at my family:

Brother: doctor and medical-malpractice lawyer (for the defendents, of course)

Sister: nurse in training

Mother: registered nurse

Father: retired medical administrator

Maternal Grandmother: retired (and, well, dead) nurse

Maternal Grandfather: retired (dead) doctor

Paternal Grandmother: retired (dead) ministry of defense worker - breaking the mould, grandma! That's right.

Paternal Grandfather: retired (dead) hospital administrator

 

You may be able to detect a pattern and notice that my family is slightly involved in the medical field. I have a sympathy for this people. I know how hard their jobs are. I know what miserably, thankless work it can be. I know how hard it is to watch patients suffer and die and kill themselves by not following orders.

 

BUT THEY STILL MAKE ME SO ANGRY I WANT TO SCREAM. Let me describe my day, if you don't mind. I left at 10 am for my 11 am appointment. Arrived at 1030, a half hour early, as is protocal. Waited. Waited some more. After about two hours of waiting and four bottles of water, I reminded one of the nurses that I was there for an echo and thus was all prepared and had filled my bladder as instructed and I was about to burst. She waved me away. Another a thirty minutes and I was having sharp pains radiating through my abdomen and stabbing pains in my back. I reminded them again that I wasn't going to be able to hold this in much longer. They waved me away with placating vagueness. By this point I was crying in public, something that I hate to do. Three hours after arriving, I finally was shown into the examining room, where they had me lie on my back to wait for the doctor, an excruciating exercise in itself. Then I waited some more. My back felt like it was cramping and I was having visions of dialysis. I couldn't think straight through the pain and finally had to give in and go to the bathroom before the sonogram. 

 

That didn't relieve the pain, by the way, and even now - an hour later - my abdomen is still cramping and seething. Eventually got the sonogram, which the doctor wasn't satisfied with because she couldn't see my left goddamned ovary or some damn thing. So she instructed me to come in again for the whole fun process. Then routine blood tests, then the humiliation of attempting and failing to complete a urine sample, since I had just pissed two gallons of water and tea five minutes before. But then! It just keeps on getting better.

 

I am released and sent downstairs to collect my pills and settle accounts. At which point I am told that I owe them something over US$120. Trying not to hyperventilate, I repeat the figure disbelievingly and they show me how much each test cost and how the national insurance that I pay 10% of my salary to every month DOESN'T COVER THEM. And, don't forget, I need to do it again in the next month. As tears uncontrollably well up in my eyes again, I shakily open my wallet and ask if they take credit cards.

 

OF COURSE NOT, YOU DUMB FOREIGN BITCH! WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, A FIRST WORLD COUNTRY OR SOMETHING?! HAHAHAHAHAH!

 

I happened to have enough cash on me because I have a business trip to Kansai next week and the money was supposed to pay for my tickets. Now I'll have to put the tickets on my credit card and pray to god that I find a way to pay it off with my next salary.

 

I DON'T NEED THIS SHIT. I work two fucking jobs, do the work for my second master's degree, study Japanese and Swedish, write a bloody novel and fanfic at the same time,try to make fucking Christmas cookies for my students, and I am on my last fucking nerve. I'm about to just say, "Fuck it, wait till symptoms go terminal and then the insurance will start to dish out for tests."

 

Instead I'm going to clean my house, because it looks like a disaster area, and then I'll do laundry and buy groceries. That's what grown-ups do. They don't get to call their mummies in different time zones. They fucking deal.

HAHAHAHA. 50,0001 (or 50,152 by the NaNoBots count - we'll ignore that discrepency) and stick a fork in me because I am DONE, BABY. Perfect timing!

The Yukster just got home and I just finished an entire novel, complete with epilogue/teaser for the next book - and all of it between one full time job, one part time job, one part time masters course, and debate practices and competitions nearly every weekend. I p0wned life.

49,059!

Less than a thousand left! I've written over 13,000 words in the past two days! INSANE!

And over three hours left in the day. Man, I'm such a rock star. I know, I know - I'm cocky, but dude. Insane.

I'll even get to go to bed at a regular time. Which is good, because I still have to write the exam questions for my third year essay writing class's final that is first period tomorrow.

HAHA. Last 1,000 here I come, baby!


(Yeah, getting a little hysterical at this point.)

Five and a half hours to go. Need 3,531 words.

46,469 right now and it's taken a turn I never planned. That's the best part of writing.

Little less than eight hours left in November.

And, umm, (50000-43588)... uh.. [So not a math teacher here, folks; I'm an English teacher]... 6,412 more words to go.

Go, go, go!

Just got home from debate, which I have to go to again tomorrow morning at 6 am. We'll be off to Dokkyo University for a tourney from 6 am to at least 10 pm.

NaNo is getting screwed like a pretty boy in prison. I'm about 14,000 words behind, what with all the translations and jobs and real life.

No, I still haven't giving up hope. It's almost ridiculous that I haven't, isn't it? I guess that's what years of being a students does to you: immunizes you against the impossibility of impending deadlines. So. My goal is 14,000 words in two days. Pshaw. No biggie. If I weren't at a debate competition all day tomorrow. Which makes it 14,000 words in the one remaining Sunday of Nano.

Hmmm.

I likes me a last minute deadline. :D










...I'm gonna be a little disappointed in myself if I don't finish on time. I've so tackled worse deadlines before.

Real life has been intruding on NaNoWriMo. I had a variety of homework and assignments for ye ol' Japanese study and also a massive translation deadline and they ate up all of my NaNoWriMo time, which leaves me at only, erm, currently 15,688. The translation from hell came in at just over 12,000 words and the transcription I'm completing today is about 4,000 words. If only I could add them to my count.

But this is so not throwing in the towel. Ha, who do you think you're talking to? Or, uh, reading? No, I'm still going, even if it's only a hundred or two hundred words a night. Now that the translation from hell is finished, my goal is to catch up to 25,000 words by the end of the weekend. That would get me almost back on track. Only 10,000 words - in between wedding consultations, a Japanese proficiency test, and a night in Tokyo because I promised an old friend. Hmm. So, I need to average about, eh, 1,000 words an hour. No problem, right?

HAHAHA. Yeah. I am so my mother. Times about a billion. Never satisfied unless I have a million and a half things to do.

Oooh, and I got a nice check from the IRS. How do you like your nice check from the IRS? I love that they sent it to me in Japan. Like, no fucking way I'm using it to boost your economy, guys, but thanks for paying for the international postal rates. :D

Soooo... I seem to have temporarily lost my sense of smell. I'm REALLY hoping it's temporary. I've just this cold/allergy/congestion something going on and maybe I've had this symptom before and just never noticed, but today I noticed that I CAN'T SMELL ANYTHING. Strong corollary effect being that I CAN BARELY TASTE ANYTHING.

I noticed this after I bought yummy treats to make myself feel better and they tasted like nothing but plastic in my mouth. I was like, huh, strange - did they change the recipe? Then I tried sniffing the pot of pumpkin-pie essential oil across the room and could smell nothing. I don't have to be the one to tell you, I think, that essential oils generally smell pretty strongly. I then checked the ridiculously strong vanilla-scented moisturizer I had and, boom, nothing. I finally got a bit of reaction by stick my nose in a jar of pickled garlic cloves (don't ask, silly Japanese). So really really strong smells can just seem to squeeze through, but otherwise, I'm basically without smell or taste.

This may seem like a good thing for weight loss but a depressing development over all. Keeping my fingers crossed that it goes away in the next couple of days.

P.S., translation going really slow, which prevents me from doing NaNoWriMo, since the one is paid and on a deadline and the other is, well, not.