Monday, December 06, 2004


just imagine the message we're sending....

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is officially fear of strangers, but what do you call a fear of travelling home for Christmas? The Phobia list has a word for fear of trains and train travel (Siderodromophobia), but what of the fear of returning to one's 'homeland'? (Yes, that's a cheap play on the word 'Homeland Security', that ever-so-3rd Reich-ish sounding name)

Well, if you find a word for it, let me know. I'm officially suffering from fear of the Homeland....of course, it could be worse, I could be North Korean and suffering from fear of somebody else's Homeland - or just being North Korean might totally suck....

It's finals week over here in college-land, and every day that I wake up I try to be grateful for this job which fell on my head like Manna and saved me from languishing in China, selling a product that no one really wanted to buy (American Education) or, more accurately, a product that no one actually believed they could use (since they would never get the visa in the first place)

I'm sitting pretty, at least for today, because I got up early to go play Faculty Soccer, only to discover that the game was cancelled on account of rain - yesterday's rain. Now that's my kind of pansies - I'm also grateful that in order to schmooze with the long term faculty here, I'm not required to grovel in the dirt in ritualistic macho fantasies like Rugby.

Do I need to get up early? Absolutely. For some reason it takes me an hour to get showered and dressed, half to eat, and half to do my exercise and putter around doing things in this tiny 10 X 10 studio. All of that just to get to work at 11 on a Tuesday morning, which is my perfect world's version of Monday at 9. Yeah, this is the best job ever!...

Worst of all is that I neglected to mention that I live only 90 seconds from the office - and maybe 3 minutes max to the classroom. Doesn't get sweeter than that. I keep thinking of David Byrne's song 'Lazy'...

Gotta run and go give those little stress monkeys their final test. The only hard decision is whether or not to wear the 'knife-through-the-head' prop as a goodbye gift to them.