Good Morning, 2010! The Princess' Diary Intarwebs Edition

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Dude what?

[Cmdr_King]

Man, that's the first japan story that actually makes the country sound awesome.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Anyway, I recently joined in on my local area's Dragon Festival, which culminated in a big fireworks-enhanced parade with a bunch of Japanese guys (and me) running all over the place with these giant paper dragons while people cheered and threw water and beer at us (both literally and figuratively).

When I signed up, there were a few 'practice' sessions, which were more like mini-performances since we had huge audiences each time and practically no instruction. We even wore the traditional Dragon-carrying garb and were accompanied by our backup drummers each time except the very first one. And on that first practice, we were even made to run under streaming fireworks, which admittedly, was pretty awesome, though I kept thinking the dragon was going to catch on fire.

The traditional "let's get drunk and carry a giant paper dragon up a mountain" attire consists primarily of bandages and white shorts that tie up in the back (Oh Japan...). There's also the tabi shoes, which are like plastic toe-socks with rubber tread. They had to special-order a pair for me since I'm roughly twice their normal sizes. The other Dragon guys had fun trying on my clown shoes and cracking jokes about my obviously-huge penis size. Japanese humor is so oddly self-effacing.

The day of the main festival, each of the five dragon teams went wandering around a different area of the city with our respectively-colored paper dragons, posing for pictures with kids and getting sunburned since the only things we were wearing were bandages and shorts. Also, some Buddhist monk guys tagged along, throwing refreshing water on us sporadically and collecting donations from townsfolk. Also part of our merry band were the sexy yukata-wearing girls who played the instruments for our Dragon team's various performances where we'd stop alongside the road where a bunch of people had gathered for the Japanese equivalent of a barbecue and we'd show up and bust into a run tossing the Dragon up and down and zigzagging in weird patterns while shouting nonsense Japanese "So-re... waSHOI~!" ...I'm told that it doesn't really have an actual meaning, it's just what you shout when you're carrying things at a festival. So I guess it might translate to something like "Whoo-hoo!" or "Huzzah".

Being the only foreigner and the English teacher at the largest elementary school in the whole 5-city area, I drew a lot of attention and a ton of my students would run up to me, shocked and excited, while their mothers took pictures of them half-carrying (it was way too heavy for most of them, so we helped hold it) the Dragon with their "Sensei".

So we did that from noon until 6 PM, when we loaded up on the trucks and headed out to the main festival grounds where we were to meet up with all the other Dragon teams for a co-op performance. There were five Dragons in all, each a different color: Green, Blue, Gold, Silver, and Red. I was on the awesome Red team, of course. How the teams worked was that each carrier position on the giant paper Dragon had 2 or 3 people assigned to it, and we would trade out mid-performance so that no one got so tired that they dropped the Dragon. The head and tail positions had roughly 6 or so people assigned to each because those were the only parts of the Dragons made from molded plaster instead of paper. There was also a hose running through it where we could hook up a tank and the Dragons could spew fire and steam out of their mouths, which looked pretty damn impressive.

The whole thing finished up when all five Dragons gathered at the top of the hill where everyone could see us under the flaring torches and spotlights. Three of the Dragons coiled up, spewing sparks or smoke at one another, and the others circled around them at top speed, everyone jumping and shouting and cheering, while the drums blared and the firecrackers popped.

Afterwards, we all got free food and beer and we hit on the sexy yukata girls. And they all lived happily ever after.

There are lots of little moments like this, but happy news rarely merits its own post, after all..

[Grefter]

Anyway, I recently joined in on my local area's Dragon Festival, which culminated in a big fireworks-enhanced parade with a bunch of Japanese guys (and me) running all over the place with these giant paper dragons while people cheered and threw water and beer at us (both literally and figuratively).

When I signed up, there were a few 'practice' sessions, which were more like mini-performances since we had huge audiences each time and practically no instruction. We even wore the traditional Dragon-carrying garb and were accompanied by our backup drummers each time except the very first one. And on that first practice, we were even made to run under streaming fireworks, which admittedly, was pretty awesome, though I kept thinking the dragon was going to catch on fire.

The traditional "let's get drunk and carry a giant paper dragon up a mountain" attire consists primarily of bandages and white shorts that tie up in the back (Oh Japan...). There's also the tabi shoes, which are like plastic toe-socks with rubber tread. They had to special-order a pair for me since I'm roughly twice their normal sizes. The other Dragon guys had fun trying on my clown shoes and cracking jokes about my obviously-huge penis size. Japanese humor is so oddly self-effacing.

The day of the main festival, each of the five dragon teams went wandering around a different area of the city with our respectively-colored paper dragons, posing for pictures with kids and getting sunburned since the only things we were wearing were bandages and shorts. Also, some Buddhist monk guys tagged along, throwing refreshing water on us sporadically and collecting donations from townsfolk. Also part of our merry band were the sexy yukata-wearing girls who played the instruments for our Dragon team's various performances where we'd stop alongside the road where a bunch of people had gathered for the Japanese equivalent of a barbecue and we'd show up and bust into a run tossing the Dragon up and down and zigzagging in weird patterns while shouting nonsense Japanese "So-re... waSHOI~!" ...I'm told that it doesn't really have an actual meaning, it's just what you shout when you're carrying things at a festival. So I guess it might translate to something like "Whoo-hoo!" or "Huzzah".

Being the only foreigner and the English teacher at the largest elementary school in the whole 5-city area, I drew a lot of attention and a ton of my students would run up to me, shocked and excited, while their mothers took pictures of them half-carrying (it was way too heavy for most of them, so we helped hold it) the Dragon with their "Sensei".

So we did that from noon until 6 PM, when we loaded up on the trucks and headed out to the main festival grounds where we were to meet up with all the other Dragon teams for a co-op performance. There were five Dragons in all, each a different color: Green, Blue, Gold, Silver, and Red. I was on the awesome Red team, of course. How the teams worked was that each carrier position on the giant paper Dragon had 2 or 3 people assigned to it, and we would trade out mid-performance so that no one got so tired that they dropped the Dragon. The head and tail positions had roughly 6 or so people assigned to each because those were the only parts of the Dragons made from molded plaster instead of paper. There was also a hose running through it where we could hook up a tank and the Dragons could spew fire and steam out of their mouths, which looked pretty damn impressive.

The whole thing finished up when all five Dragons gathered at the top of the hill where everyone could see us under the flaring torches and spotlights. Three of the Dragons coiled up, spewing sparks or smoke at one another, and the others circled around them at top speed, everyone jumping and shouting and cheering, while the drums blared and the firecrackers popped.

Afterwards, we all got free food and beer and we hit on the sexy yukata girls. And they all lived happily ever after.

There are lots of little moments like this, but happy news rarely merits its own post, after all..

Dude what?

[Cmdr_King]

Clearly djinn is just typing while in bed.  That's rude you know, by the way.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I was responding to CK's comment about how most of my Japan stories don't portray the country in a flattering light. It's mostly just because the little things that make the country fun are rarely worth ranting about, whereas the little things that piss you off tend to make me want to ramble at length.

[Cotigo]

How I woke up this morning:

"Hey uh I think I downloaded a virus on your computer."

"Ugh what. God damn it.  Here, let me see."  *Google!*  "Yep, virus. Fuck."  *System restore to last week, problem solved as confirmed by a scan by AVG.  Feel like a badass.*

[Lady Door]

%*#(!@&

You do not need to wait until the last goddamned minute to do everything. You don't! I promise!

Ugh. It's bad enough to deal with one's own ADD, but at a departmental level it's just flat out insane. NO I CANNOT DO SOMETHING THAT REQUIRES CONTACTING AN OUTSIDE SOURCE WITH FIRM DEADLINES IN HALF THE TIME IT TAKES TO GET IT DONE. No, not even if you ask nicely or if you vaguely threaten my job.

Can. Not.

CANNOT.

You wanna know why it takes me so long? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's NOT MY JOB. Or that every time I try to build a system to deal with this stuff, you tell me "we don't need a system, it works fine the way it is" and ignore the framework I've built in favor of haphazard flurries of emails along the lines of "oh, by the way, here's a thing I knew and I should have told you at the start because now it means you're going to have to go back to step 1, making this whole thing take twice as long."

You all have worked in this field far longer than I have. You damn well should know that printers can't turn around 100,000 print pieces on a whim, and mailing houses take time to process your ridiculously poorly formatted and out-of-date lists.

Fuck. Direct. Mail. IN THE EYE WITH A RUSTY BOTTLECAP.

[superaielman]

Nothing like preventable chaos to make you want to strangle someone with their own shirt.

You all have worked in this field far longer than I have. You damn well should know that printers can't turn around 100,000 print pieces on a whim, and mailing houses take time to process your ridiculously poorly formatted and out-of-date lists.

What is the company going to do? Take a bath and pay expensive shipping to get the books in, or just run around and generally panic?

[Lady Door]

Corporate-level duncery is really annoying. Despite the budget crunch we're definitely feeling, it's like they WANT to waste money. I was TRYING to save the company money. But that takes time and planning. So fuck it. Apparently they really want to overspend their mailing budget.

They're going to push back the ship date, likely, and then subtly glare daggers at me for it. There will be vague "woe is me" statements at meetings for the next few weeks and I'll be the one they blame because my part is the one holding everything else up. No one will say anything, of course. It will look like this:

"We missed the Back to School rush," slight pause while no one looks at me, "and suffered a slight dip in sales as compared to last year," another pause, more Pointedly Not Looking, "BUT we're going to recover by insert project that also has a ridiculously idealistic deadline that's nigh impossible to meet on top of everything else we're doing."

I would pause to headdesk, but typing up these rants has pulled away enough from precious OH SHI- damage control.

EDITED TO ADD: Come on now, seriously?

"So I want you to only suppress these things."
"Do you want me to suppress the things I suppressed last time?"
WHAT THE EFF DOES 'ONLY' MEAN TO YOU, WOMAN?!

[Grefter]

You know you can speak up and call people on their bullshit right?  If you call them out on it then they are less likely to try and pull it on you in the future.  Keep the mail you have saying "Pls do this" and then "plzkthxdothisthingIforgottotellyouabout2weeksago".  Paper trails are fantastic.

[Lady Door]

My manager is my gatekeeper, and everyone keeps talking to me as if this is all very reasonable.

Which is to say I just have to amass a full avalanche of such a paper trail before I turn around and point out how ridiculous they're being.

On a positive note, my CEO is actually very receptive to business suggestions. So guess what I'm working on the next time I'm not scrambling to fix someone else's problem?

[Grefter]

A Mass Driver to launch people through the infinities of space?

[Luther Lansfeld]

Can Grefter or Elfboy get on IRC plz~?

[Grefter]

No.

[superaielman]

The beach is all fun and games until you get burned on the small of your back and the back of your arms, and not much else.

[Idun]

I'm on my period for a third time in 45 days. ):

[metroid composite]

Wow.  Synchronizing with someone, perhaps?

[AndrewRogue]

So. Sleepy.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Stopping birth control can make your period come basically immediately afterwards, as well.

[Shale]

I'm on my period for a third time in 45 days. ):

Well....you know you're not pregnant?

[Idun]

Thrice not pregnant.

If I'm synching up with some female, I would like to tell them to leave me alone. I missed two periods in May/June, and I supposed that aberrant behavior is assailing my uterus now. I did stop taking my birth control with apprehension of an actual legitimate pregnancy, but I've been back on it for about two weeks. Just. No more this month.

I remember my period started at the beginning of the month as a pre-teen. Later it moved to the middle of the month, so maybe nature is reverting to my youthful roots.

[Lady Door]

Highlights from today:

CEO phones me and tells me I'm undertrained for my job (NO, REALLY?) and since it's something she used to do when she first got in, we should chat about it. She admits that I don't even know the right questions to ask, so there's a seriously hole here -- one that hasn't been filled since she vacated the position 10 years ago. Even my predecessor (who made 2x as much as I do) did not have the whole of it. Result? Inefficiency! Wasted money!

You know, like I've been saying.

So I get to pull the system administrator out of a meeting to rehash what goes into these. The result of this meeting: another meeting is peremptorily canceled; the project I've been scrambling to make right despite repeated set backs will need to be entirely rehauled; I get to be the focal point for everyone's wrath/confusion; carry on!

Hooray.

EDITED: OOH, OOH, I forgot the best part! Since the CEO is actually out -on vacation- while making these calls, she wants to meet in person with the account executive of the mail house we work with. Next week. So I might have to miss some of DLC Thursday/Friday to get more of this set right. Awesome.

Also, I have a zit. This happens with relative infrequency anymore, but it's happened today.

Guess who gets to star in an advertisement that's being mailed to 100,000 educators, since she happen to be the youngest person on staff and can probably pass for a high schooler?

HOORAY.

[Grefter]

It only adds to the authenticity that is a graduate being made to look like a high schooler.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Arrival in California!

Ashley and Andrew have such difficult opposite schedules.

Poor Andy ended up staying up 24+ hours due to having to pick us up from the airport.

That's WAAAY too nice for someone with a trolling avatar.