The Life of Riley - and Explanatory Notes

It is now April and I have decided to stay unemployed until I go back to Japan at the end of the month. Well, actually, I made that decision last month for a couple reasons. I had actually been offered a job at a call-center in Peterborough. Taking this job would have meant starting a 6-week training course to prepare me for the job. Unfortunately, had I taken the job, it would have meant that I would take the paid training course, and then quit. It seemed like kind of an unethical thing to do, so I figured it would be better to decline. The other factor was that I succeeded in getting Unemployment Insurance, so I am now "playing for team Canada" as my friend says. Yippee!

So during the day I am free to continue my life as a slug-a-bed. I have finished sculpting that bust of my great-grandfather and have only to paint it. I am continuing to study kanji, and making what I feel to be pretty good progress. I have also started some oil paintings of famous iaido teachers that I hope to donate to the club to use in our annual iaido auction where we have a big party and sell items to help defray the costs of bringing over the Japanese teachers to Guelph. In other words, I'm keeping busy in my own lazy way.

Which brings me to my explanatory note. Since coming back to Lindsay, I have been writing these entries on a computer at the Lindsay Community Access Program. This is a small government-sponsored program that provides computers and computer training for people here in town. It's a nice idea, but it has some sort of built-in censorship program, presumably to prevent people from accessing stuff from the internet. But it also has a rather ridiculous way of censoring words that somebody somewhere finds questionable. I'll type a word on my blog, it will appear on my screen here, but then I will find that it is missing from the final draft. It is almost impossible to predict what words the program will cut out, too. For example, the program seems to have no problem with the word "bust" (see above) but it won't allow me to use the five letter word that starts with "m" and ends with "odel" and means a scale reproduction of something. This is only one word of many that it cuts out. So, as a result, some of my previous posts may appear to be missing some words. I will try to go back through them and correct them on another computer when I get the chance.

But how idiotic is that, anyway? Beggars can't be choosers when it comes to using computers for free, so I can't complain, but it just leaves me shaking my head. I would tell you what I really think, but the program would cut out every other word...