Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Valentines Day was an interesting mix of absolute terror and unprecedented joy.

I’ll start with the bad.

In the middle of a lesson, with 30 other kids watching, something went very wrong in a little boy’s mind and he exploded with rage at my JTE. After what seemed to be a controlled argument about not changing seats without permission, the boy snapped and flung his desk over, walked up to my JTE and shouted in her face, using his height advantage to scream down at her, whilst pushing her back with his chest. Woken up from my daily self-induced coma, I floated over and gently coaxed the boy back into his seat, all the time fearing that he would turn around and plant one in my face.

It was probably the most disgusting in-school behaviour I had ever seen. I was utterly shaken, shocked and horrified that such a thing could happen - especially to a woman teacher from a boy student (to the uber-feminists, don’t jump on me for saying that).

My JTE took the boy out of the room for a long talk, leaving me to get on with the rest of the class before a sea of deathly silent Junior High students who seemed to be dealing with the shock by smirking at how badly I was concealing it. Needless to say, the event had pretty much ruined the atmosphere for my ‘fun’ English TV lesson.

However the end of the day promised ultimate happiness, which lifted my spirits. For this was the day that the Gameboy Advance SP was released in Japan, and I had long since planned on screaming down to my local inaka videogame shop straight after work, breaking every kind of driving law that exists, to purchase one. Which brings me to the second bad event of the day, although depending on your point of view, is either much much worse, or insultingly dissimilar to the previous.

They were sold out. Possibly one of the most crushing blows of disappointment I have ever experienced in my life, this left me directionless and stagnant, unsure of how I was going to get through my weekend, having planned all weekend activity around playing Gameboy. Truly it was an unfortunatism of which the pain could only be suppressed by consumption of alcohol.

Onto the good things.

I received a large package from my darling-Cheryl-baby-love-you-muah-hug-kiss greatest-woman-that-ever-lived (this is her full name). Inside the box was various foodstuffs from Singapore. Curry mix, pork floss, Kaya and instant mee goreng, all packaged perfectly with a kind of motherly precision. Whilst this was obviously welcomed with open arms (and mouth), it brought with it the unnerving nuance of being in a war. On Sunday night I toasted the end of the weekend with Kaya on bread and an ice cold Asahi.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 17th, 2003 at 4:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.