Here are a couple of examples of sexual harassment according to a pamphlet we got at a recent meeting:

–To ask an unmarried person why he/she is not married or if he/she has a wedding plan. (My whole school should be fired on the basis of this one alone–including the students.)

–Suggesting to an unmarried person a marriage meeting. (like proposing? I’m not quite sure…)

–To make groups and make evaluations on men/women at work. (Guess I have to disband the teachers’ “Hot or Not” Club.)

My personal favorite:

–Force someone to a duet at a party or event outside of work. (However, spontaneous duets during school hours are encouraged as it increases student morale.)

We also had a section on how to avoid “Min-Bo,” an apparently common way of solving civil problems with the use of a gangster intermediary. It literally translates to “Violence Intervening Civil Affairs.”

This weekend I visited the Doulos.  It’s a big ship that sells books “at a fraction of their usual price!” (according to them).  It’s a Christian based organization with a huge international crew.  A floating bookstore that’s really cheap?  I thought it sounded fun.  Plus I’ve been dying for books to read since I finished my town’s measly collection of English language books about a month after I got my library card.

So, I went.   Well, I knew since it was Christian based there would be some Christian books there.  I was hoping they would have some secular ones too.  They did.  Their secular books consisted of the “lose weight,” “better living” and “self help” variety along with a few about science.  Oh yeah.   There were also two John Grisham books.  Despite the huge lack of selection (of the books I was looking for anyway) I decided to pick up a few because they were actually really cheap.  100 to 1000 yen (roughly $1 to $10).

Just as I picked up a couple of semi-promising books I noticed that each one was priced as 200 “units” NOT “yen.”  Then I noticed the sign that said “100 units=300 yen” effectively making the two flimsy paperbacks I had picked up 600 yen each.  So not a fraction but a MULTIPLE of how much they would actually cost at a book store.  grrrrr.

Just out of curiousity I asked a crew member where the profits go (thinking “Christian organization”=”giving to a charity”) and he said “Profits? ha!  book sales account for only about 30% of our operating costs.  Even we, the volunteers, have to pay to be on the ship–about $1000 a month.”   My next  question was “Oh,  so  I guess your mission is to spread Christianity then?”  But NO!  That wasn’t it either!  He insisted, “No no no, not at all” (bizarre I thought since almost the entire book collection in there was of a Christian nature) “Our mission is not to spread Christianity but ‘knowledge, help and hope’”  Then he handed me a pamphlet with that slogan as the title and hurried away.  The rest of the pamphlet was in Japanese so I only have the title go on but here are my thoughts:

1) Knowledge.  You are expecting to spread KNOWLEDGE to people who are affluent enough to come to a big ship and pay exorbitant prices for books they can already get?? (seeing as how you are docked in Japan’s largest port city)

2) Help.  HOW exactly are you helping these people? Helping them part with their money?
*I think they do offer something like a language class but the guy wasn’t *helpful* enough to stick around and explain it to me.

3) Hope.  HOPE?!?  What hope can a giant floating ship with a small collection of overpriced books offer to residents of a first world country who aren’t “hoping” for anything except maybe a good vacation?

So, the whole premise of this ship that makes no profit to give to charity, doesn’t admit to trying to spread Christianity and instead has a slogan that is entirely inapplicable to this city at least–really kind of pissed me off.  The whole thing just seemed pointless.  Especially since the guy I talked to told me how many tons of fuel the ship used up it seemed to me that the only thing this ship WAS doing was its part to ruin the environment.

I came across an article about Brazil’s efforts to aid Africa by providing it with biofuel made from sugarcane.  This led me to a quick google search about biofuel (since Genie first enlightened me that this was not the savior its been touted to be).

First, I googled “why ethanol is bad” and came up with a lot of articles about ethanol’s shortcomings.  To be fair I next googled “why ethanol is good” and what came up?  First, why ethanol is good for corn farmers and some big corporations.  Second, a bunch of articles effectively on “why ethanol is bad” such as “GOOD idea, bad pratice,” “corn ethanol not GOOD for the Midwest” and a UN Report titled “Biofuels could cause more harm than GOOD”  Interesting I thought…

Or in this case “Interesting”=”Man I’m really bored at least I’m not still reading about Grimace”

For Golden Week Scott and I went to Hong Kong and Boracay Island in the Philippines. We flew to Hong Kong and stayed for two days and went to Hong Kong Disney. It was a lot smaller than Disneyland but still pretty fun. All the characters were out and we took a ton of pictures with them. I’ll post some trip pictures to my photobucket site today: (http://s113.photobucket.com/albums/n224/terryevy/)

We also spent about a week soaking in the sun on Boracay. It was really pretty (although I liked Phi Phi a little better) but the people were really really nice.

Then we flew back to Hong Kong, picking up food poisoning along the way (at the Manila airport we think) and subsequently spent the last three days in Hong Kong on the potty. Well, actually we did manage to drag ourselves to Macau (Asian Vegas, about an hour ferry ride away from Hong Kong) for some gambling where despite my illness I won about $140! yay!

So anyway, I’m back at school now…guess that’s about it.