Now that its all over, I’ve got some money, my health is good and I’m starting to head out more, I figure its time to tell you guys how shitty things were for a while. I would have told you guys what was happening sooner, but there really wasn’t anything you could have done and all you would have done is worry and that is a shitty reason to tell a story :)
So.. it started a while back. Hmm.. where to start? After my walk seems like a good time to start.
I had bugger all money. I think it was around $300 and was couch surfing at a families house. Well, sleeping in a closet while a rabbit was eating my clothes is a nice emotive description for this story. The wife had just brought home a Black painter friend (Annotation: All these guys are great friends now and have helped me out a huge amount.) over who kept talking about how easy it is to get a job here. I said I was having trouble getting a job here and next thing I knew I was on the phone and had an interview the next day. The night before I had sent an email to Aust. concerning work. So, by the day after the interview I had work in Japan and Australia. The Japanese job would give me a house and health insurance, with the only problem being that my first pay would be in just under two months. For my Perth work I was getting paid on completion so I borrowed some money from my lovely mother and got to work. I was going to be set, I would have money and somewhere to live, study + train. Just somewhere stable after no money and being homeless.
I had been staying with the family a few days and though my house would be a few days away… turns out it was a few weeks away. This pretty quickly became an unspoken problem so I tried to give them as much space as I could in at their house and spent most of my time elsewhere, which is pretty much the worst thing I could have done. Pretty quickly it started to get to me. I was invading this lovely families space but had no money to go elsewhere and couldn’t think of any alternatives. They hadn’t said anything but I knew it was a problem. It was also starting to get to me that I had no space to myself or to spend with my girlfriend. I kept thinking that the next day I would have a house and everything would be okay, then I would talk to my company and there would be a problem. For some reason getting up at five A.M. and going to sleep at one P.M. while doing bugger all but sleeping started getting me down. I ended up spending the time that I wasn’t working sitting on park benches listening to music feeling awesome about myself, pretty emo :) My girlfriend lived pretty far away and neither of us had much money so we didn’t see each other too much.
Finally I got a house. Thank god. I had some space to myself, I finally had somewhere to just hangout and I forgot all about organising health insurance, the house was hard enough. I still had bugger all money but that didn’t bother me at this stage. I worked out a budget and blew the rest cheap useful things like washing powder and a toilet brush.
The budget went well for a while. I had my bag of rice, natto and the odd curry. I had a cash job once a week that paid of my weekly expensive Japanese transport. I didn’t really have the money to head into the city to see Rie, but she would come over once or twice a week and feed me. It was awesome.
Then, well fate has a bitch of a sense of humour. I almost made it to payday, well it felt like I almost made it. Then fate decided to be a petting little bitch, one off my teeth died and I ended up with a jaw infection. One day I had a slightly sore tooth, five days later I had a jaw like captain hero and couldn’t sleep. I booked an appointment with the dentist for the weekend. By then things were pretty bad. The painkillers weren’t working so well so I just spent my time immersing myself in computer games. Sex kinda worked but it turns out that I clench my teeth and the pain can back in full force in the exhaustion that follows :( When I wasn’t having sex (or just after) and there wasn’t a computer handy then I looked like some ADD kid jumping from one thing to the next. It made for a pretty shit visit for Rie, for a good portion of the time we were at the dentist she sat in the corner being ignored while I ran around touching things.
When the dentist finally saw me did he pick up a drill, put a hole in my tooth to remove some of the pressure? No, instead he put me on antibiotics and painkillers. Now that could of been cool, except when I got him to point to the drug in the painkiller (I had written codein, panadol, and ibuprofen in japanese on a sheet of paper) he told me that his painkiller was better. After some googling I found out that it was standard strength Panadol. I was pissed. I think so was Rie since she paid for most of the medicine and appointment. I don’t think she expected that. I had wanted to just drop my TV off as collateral or grab the goods and run, but Rie wasn’t so keen on that idea :(
That night was an absolute bitch. I think I woke up for a few groaning sessions, it was great. By the next day the antibiotics seemed to have started their shizzle and my jaw didn’t hurt so much. A few days before this point I had arranged to borrow some money from a friend of mine in Australia (Your awesome Stef :)) <- A double chinned smiley face :) ). I told Rie about this and that health insurance was finally getting sorted. I told her a day when both should be done and booked a dental appointment. Unbeknownst to me their was a problem with the money transfer.
The night that I was meant to have everything sorted I got a message from Rie saying she was tired and would talk to me the next day. I now know that it was during her four hour break at work for night shift. She tried to get some sleep, I thought something was wrong, and soon enough she was talking about how we would make better friends. I figured it wasn’t the time to tell her that my tooth, money and health insurance were still screwed.
For the next few days I tried to take up a friends offer to use his health insurance. That would come with the benefit of not having any medical costs. I’m kind of happy that didn’t work out. I didn’t really like the idea of screwing the population out of money I should be able to pay.. just not now. So, all trying to use his health insurance accomplished was to leave me stranded half way to his place Thursday night after work. We were going to fix my tooth and then I was going to do some work for him and he was going to give me transport money. I needed that money. I had ~$3AUD in my wallet and needed ~$10AUD to make it through the next day to my cash job. It wasn’t much of a discrepancy, but it was enough. With everything else it was enough to just stun me. I stayed outside the train station for about two hours going through my options. When I got there I had called all my Japanese contacts that were close enough to lend me some money. They were all busy… so I pretty much paced. I kept thinking about how there was no way I could get money from Australia to here for the following morning and just how alone I was. I felt like shit. There aren’t many times I have ever felt that bad. Reading through this now, it doesn’t seem like things were that bad but they felt like it.
My solution in the end was to walk home and hit up every vending machine I found for change. Previously I had gotten ~$25AUD from a vending machine so I was in high hopes. I got about five cents… it was awesome. There are SO many vending machines.. and I had got no money. Luckily I had borrowed a bike so I thought I might be able to ride that into work the next morning. My morale was pretty low though. The walk was a bitch, I actually jumped on a train half way, five hours after work finished. I really didn’t think riding the bike the next morning was a viable option. Still I had no choice so I set my alarm for four am and hit the sack. Looking at it now its <20km>
I got more money from a cash job that weekend, and wore my hair out to an art show. It was awesome. Then on the Monday I got my health insurance and money. God I needed it. A few days before I looked in the mirror and even I thought I looked gaunt. I actually weighed myself after the kyoto trip. I weight 59.5 (not wearing clothes) thats a few weeks after I got money and I think I’ve put on weight so god knows what it was before. I just know I was sitting around 65 when I left Aust…
And things have only gotten better since. My tooth is fixed, I’ve been paid and other good things have happened too, I swear. They’re just not gonna be part of this post :)
The End. It doesn’t seem so bad reading through it now. It seemed pretty shit then though…