What ever happened to Saturday night

bighead
Originally uploaded by katesteak.

So something fairly stressful happened to me the other morning. I arrived at one of my schools just in time to be informed that the main topic of the morning's meeting would be computer use- mine in particular. It seems computer station 1,2 4 and 5 had been experiencing some problems. Every time someone tried to go online, they were directed toward some "eigo no homepeiji" (the only thing the vice-principal said that I could understand.) One of the English teachers tried to explain what had happened before the meeting, but the conversation went something like "Kate-sensei, could you do me a favour?" and on to say "it seems you downloaded certain things the other day, and now the internet cannot be used from computer station 1, 2, 4, and 5" (never telling me exactly what "favour" I could do for him.) I was visibly upset, almost in tears in fact, and he kept saying "It's okay, Kate-sensei. Maybe just some spyware has been installed. It's okay." I had no idea what had happened, how I had been responsible, but a vague recollection that I had clicked "yes" on some boxes whose text I couldn't understand the day before started washing over me. Oh ___, I thought, what do they think I was looking at? Am I the new office pervert? Do I look capable of that?

I felt so terrible that after the meeting I was compelled to apologize to kyoto-sensei (v.p.), even though our conversations are generally restricted to "ohayo gozaimasu" and "otsukare sama deshita"- good morning and thank you for your hard work- the prescribed expression used as one is leaving work. (Which I am at once baffled by, and smitten with. How good we can make each other feel every day- "You're such a hard worker"- "oh no, you're the hard worker"- "oh no, it's you..." and so on.) I started bowing and saying "conputa wa gomen nasai, gomen nasai" and gesturing toward the computers. He looked slightly baffled, and very amused. I went on to try to ask which "eigo no homepeiji" kept popping up, and then he brought in a reinforcement (the English teacher) who could explain it to me. I think he was saying, "it's not your fault, necessarily", but I'll never be sure. You sense that a lot is always lost in translation. For all I know he could have been directing me off the school's property (while smiling, of course, so this was highly unlikely.)

Moral of story- As Grant reported in his last entry- I think the issue was with our blog (not our blog necessarily, but with blogger.com.) I hope you can still visit this site, and that we figure out the details soon.

I am about to begin a four day weekend. Yee ha. We might go on a little excursion, perhaps to Kagoshima. Then again, we might just hunker down and start the next season of 24 (how pathetic, I know.)

Hope you're all well.