So much for travel sites being the end-all for all your reservation needs. I have finalized my Austin apartment preview for September (a week after ACL, to avoid the unwashed masses ;-) for over $150 dollars cheaper by doing it piece-wise and not choosing a package ‘deal’.

I needed a flight, a car, and a place to sleep for three nights and four days. Orbitz quoted me $561, Travelocity quoted me $534, and Priceline quoted me $510. My price? $360

To make things fair, I’m staying in a hostel instead of a hotel. However, had I made reservations at a cheap hotel (cheap is $50/night, I guess), my price would have been $450, still cheaper than the best quote from these bargain sites.

I suppose using a Denver-based discount carrier (Frontier) and buying directly from them is an advantage since a reseller cannot beat their price. And some diligent car searching revealed that there are weekend rates and weekday rates. Apparently the business pukes pay more than double to drive during the week. And the trump card is most certainly the hostel, which is less than half the cost of a standard hotel.

The one advantage that bargain sites have for them is that everything is taken care of all-at-once. No making sure each part will work and fit together. It just will. Saves a lot of time and some stress. But I sure like my $150!

saa, iyo iyo owari ni tsuita. iitai koto wo ienai kedo, ore ha ittemiteiru zo.

Reading over past poems helps capture my feelings again. Nearly every loose end is tied off - all that remains are my connections to the outside world: tomorrow I cancel my mobile phone and internet. Then I jump on a train the next day for Thailand (there’s an airplane involved, too). With only one night reserved in Bangkok so far, it’ll be an adventure.

Prolly something I need right now - a little uncertainty in the set meal that is Japanese life.

But, as I promised last time, I have the new video uploaded and ready for viewing. Yaizu Suisan: Portrait of a Fishing High School.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Today I gave my goodbye speech, and it was bittersweet. Afterward, some students came by to give me a few mementos and touching parting words. And now that summer’s officially started, I won’t really be seeing them. Except for tomorrow, which is the school’s first baseball game in the national tournament. Everyone’s going to cheer on the team, so I’m glad to have such a lighthearted atmosphere to say final goodbyes.

Been having a few goodbye dinners and parites as well. One every day or so has been the average. Lots of eating, laughing, and drinking. It’s great to have such positive experiences on the way out - makes leaving a nice memory, rather than the life shattering one that coming out here was. There are a few more left before I take off to Thailand. :)

I’ve also finished the school video, just in time. I’ve been in front of the computer for so long recenlty that I’m staring to loathe writing email and even reading other blogs. I’ll post links next time. Speaking of, there will probably be only one more entry after this one, so if you want to stay in contact, be sure to email me. joe at meriwi dot net

Last lessons are finished, and now exams are on, and I find myself entering a bittersweet period of finality. It’s most likely this ‘blog’ will end with my contract, so if you’d like to stay in touch (or convince me to keep writing), then please send me email - joe at meriwi dot net. There are about two weeks left on contract, and then it’s a small holiday before finally coming home. Exciting turbulance ahead!

This is my last week of lessons - final exams begin on Thursday. Plus, the footage for the school video should be finished today as well, which means I can start editing. This should be a bit easier than the doco since the narration is ordered and set, I just have to add pictures to words.

The travel agent has been completely silent for the last 4 weeks. I have no idea what’s going on, and it wouldn’t be the first time the JET progam has done this.

Here’s a good wtf: hymen restoration. In addition to the rather steep slant of the author, the very idea does seem a bit ‘wtf’.

I’m nearly positive the hard drive has some sort of wonkiness - it failed in the same way under slax. The dvd burner appears to be ok for the moment: I can burn from the command line, but k3b sends some funny options and makes the drive freak out. That’ll take some investigation. Wish I had tried slax before I downgraded and re-upgraded my debian - could’ve saved heaps of stress and time. piles of heaps, even.

Anyway, the school video should be ok, so long as I have enuf onboard hard drive space. If the dvd player is truly working, then I can free a lot of space before the frame grabbing commences.

Yesterday was the sports day at my school, and this time the weather was good. However, unlike previous years, I actually got to participate in events (only two, but two is infintely many more times than 0). The first was the dizzy race: sprint a bit, put your head on top of a baseball bat, spin around 10 times, and sprint 50 meters around a traffic cone. I was also part of the mukade relay - the centipede madness. Luckly, I was only tied to 3 other people, and not 9 like some students were.

I’m beginning to think that lappy isn’t broken so much as the external devices are…. the hard disk gets offlined in knoppix as well, and I’ll be trying the dvd burner soon. I was reluctant to test the dv camera, but after fixing udev’s silly node making, I captured a full 25 minutes’ worth of footage without any dropped frames. I’ll be able to make the school video, but burning it will be another trick…

The garden has begun to produce.

(yet another double-post day over a page-break; be sure to go the previous page, too)

Fridge fixed, lappy still crippled. I’m getting worried that I won’t be able to make the school’s video. Every attachable component I’ve added to the system gets offlined. It’s always easy to reproduce, but difficult to characterize.

The last three days with Brian, Jeff, and Sam were good fun. They got a glimpse into the small-town life, and even came to two days’ worth of lessons. The students were really excited after the first 10 minutes of shock and bashfulness. They were like celebrities or rock stars. The fellas also tried Japanese style karaoke, proper sushi, and ramen.

And now it’s time for rather harsh rebuking. Please refer to this news story. Basically, a ’straight-A’ high school student meets someone thru myspace and decides to meet them in real life. That person happened to be in Jordan, so the girl gets a passport and flies. This is a choice cross-section of what I hope isn’t but dreadfully know is an average American parent:

Someone…
Shawn Lester told The Saginaw News that her daughter has “never given me a day’s trouble. … I just don’t understand with all these new laws protecting America how a 16-year-old kid could get out of the country.”

And now for the kicks (yes, plural) in the teeth:

(1) Rules protect who?

• Part of me goes “Awwww! Isn’t that cute! A sincere believer in ‘We the people’.” Since when did the rules and laws of the land have the best interests of the //people// in mind? The companies and corporations did more than hide the manufacturing process from the general person (well, not hide - there is still a small ‘Made in <cheap labor human rights violator>’ sticker on everything you buy - but ask a random walker how or where their computer was made, and you may just get a clueless answer, if any at all). They’ve also hidden the process of government - people must still have that School House Rock song stuck in their heads. Laws are made because they are paid for.

(2) Children are supposed to be protected by rules?

• Typical blame passing. If you don’t have a relationship with your kid beyond “How was school today?” or “What do you want to study at college?” then you’re destined to be suprised when the kid leaves the country. But I don’t know this mother - maybe she’s busy with her own career, or Starbucks coffee crew, or yoga classes. Know your kids, woman; that’s been is your primary responsibility for the last 16 years when you signed up to use the delivery room. Did you forget or something? And where’s the father in all of this? Raising a kid is a job for two people in most cases.

(3) Is the news media so forgetful?

• It’s like this is the first time a kid has _ever_ been deceived on the internet. Does anyone remember the AOL days? Sensational amnesiatic journalism makes my brain want to scream, but I usually end up just shaking my head and being more cynical.

ack! Everything is breaking - the fridge’s anti-frost heater broke, so I have no fridge till it’s fixed. And lappy is in a sad state - the upgrade I did 2 weeks ago broke connectivity with the USB HD - it keeps getting reset by the kernel and offlined. This’ll make the school video pretty much impossible until I get it working. fffffekking time constraints. Been trying to find the problem for the last 2 weeks - udev and sg3-utils aren’t culprits, the kernel and modules haven’t changed, so I’m freaking out and downgrading everything to _sarge_ of all things. Plan B is sid ;)