"It All Pays The Same"
5/2/1
I read something at www.sevenquestions.com/new7q/mikecash.htm. It wasn�t so much the entirety of the seven questions which people ask this American guy who drives trucks in Japan; it was one statement that caught me. He had moved to Japan when he was 18 to do that �I Love Japan� self-exploration thing, and also because he was failing his classes at UT and so he became an exchange student so he wouldn�t have to work. After some other stuff, he became a truck driver in Japan and deals with the stigma of being an outsider, but he really likes Japan. In 1997, he moved back to America but after only two years, he moved back to Japan.
The reasons were that his wife didn�t like the small town they were in, American trucking kept you away from your family too much, and life was too easy.
That last part struck me. It is one of the reasons that I am frustrated at times. I need a challenge.
On the door to my office I have five pieces of paper surrounding the dark wood-looking laminate plaque with my title on it.
Directly above the title is my name, printed in the font Eurostyle. It helps people know who�s office it is, and I wouldn�t ask to get a laminate one.
Below the title is a 8.5 x 11 graph of the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis. I can apply that to many different things. I first found it studying riparian zones. Below the title it says �Connell 1978�, in case you want to look it up. It graphs Relative Disturbance on the X and Diversity on the Y.
To the right of my title plaque are two fortunes from fortune cookies. One is in Spanish and says �Para ma�ana las cosas de ma�ana, para hoy las de hoy.� If you looked on the back of it it incorrectly translates this to �First Things First�. Dur, that really doesn�t get the don�t-worry aspect of it across. The other says �You are a happy man.� Well, I suppose I am, generally.
The final piece of paper on the door to my office is a Farside cartoon, but with the caption cut off. With the caption, it limited the story and tried to be funny. The picture itself says much more.
In the picture, there is a man with his hands tied kneeling over a wooden stump. His neck is against the stump because standing above him is the executioner, mask and all. The executioner holds an axe, but the axe handle is broken. There is a speech bubble also. The executioner is saying �Dang!�
I put that up on the door when I was in a very Serpico like position, if you know what I mean. I weathered it out. Now the meaning I get most is that I�m not on the lame side here. I shouldn�t fret about the little things.
On Sunday, a missionary we support in Malawi came and reported for last year. Malawi was going through another hard time and the UK and Japan had donated rice and other grains to the Malawi government. The Malawi government sold the grain to their citizens at a fair market value. But none of the citizens have any money since the drought won�t allow them to grow any food to sell at market.
I�m so spoiled. Here at work we even have a saying when we don�t like the type of work we are doing, either because no one will look at the paperwork or because it�s demeaning. We shrug and say,�It all pays the same.�