Tide Change

Today is exciting – it’s Ken’s first day of work.  He found a job at a smaller game development company.  He likes the size because he’ll be able to do all sorts of things (3D, background, character design and what have you) without being pigeonholed into one category.

This marks a big change for us.  Up until now Ken has been mostly at home while I’ve been working mornings and afternoons.  I usually get home by four and we would have the late afternoon and evenings together.  No more.  Ken will probably be leaving the house around nine (the company gets a late start) and coming back around eight.  So those chores we used to share?  Those are mostly mine now.  Grah.

I knew this was coming.  Japanese companies value time put in at work, sometimes more than the actual amount of work done.  An hour of overtime each day is du rigueur at many offices with more around deadlines and other big happenings.

While doing a mad google search for “daily/weekly cleaning schedule” I came across the Flylady.  Her philosophy is that your house didn’t become dirty in a day so it won’t become clean in a day, either.  By slowly establishing a cleaning routine and not overwhelming yourself you can get a lot done.  One mantra on the site is to take baby steps and not rush anything.  The first baby step?  Cleaning your sink until it shines.  Sounds corny, but my kitchen looks much better with a happy, gleaming sink greeting me.  Not to mention that it’s such a big piece of real estate the shine adds an extra 10 watts of light to the room.

While there are a lot of things I’ll have to modify to fit my needs (“air the futon” isn’t exactly on her list) I think it’s a great foundation for my own cleaning routine.  Leo at Zen Habits advocates a similar approach but the Flylady makes everything dead simple, telling you where and how to concentrate your efforts each week.  I like.

In other news I had a very interesting class today.  One of the Japanese teachers I work with is part of a program developing new ways to teach English in Japanese schools.  This guy is amazing – he lived in England for over three years and is quite conversational.  He uses English every day and as a result his kids know things like, “Let me try!”, “One more time!”, and “How do you say ___ in English?”.  This is leaps and bounds ahead of most sixth graders.  In other classes I pretty much run the show but in his I sit back and enjoy, providing pronunciation models and playing the games with the kids.

Well, today a bunch of people came to evaluate his technique and discuss his methods.  I knew that much.  I didn’t know that there would be two people with home movie cameras recording us and that the people coming were mostly higher ups from the local Center for International Education.  Wah!

Luckily the class went off without a hitch.  The kids were great, the games were fun and everyone spoke a lot of English.  Success!

Afterwards a nice lady from the Center complimented me – she was surprised to hear I’m a first year teacher, my technique was so good.  Woot!  She also said my voice was clear, easy to understand, and overall very nice.  I was interested in a career in radio at one point (heck, I still am) so that made my day.

Only two more days of work before my six week summer vacation!  May it be filled with sunny days and gleaming sinks!

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