Ego Libre

I know I should focus more on external topics, but then again I am an egoist, so what do you expect? Today was one of the weirdest days in a long long time.
One of the reasons why I haven’t been posting so much lately was that I spent most of my time fighting bureaucracy on three continents and in the meantime worried myself sick. I will skip the stories of me trying to beat that machine, in the end I got my diploma and could successfully apply for visa to Australia. That actually happened yesterday and that’s where my weird day starts.
I woke up this morning with a terribly hangover and got annoyed since I slept through the hotel breakfast time. I have casually checked email just to find out that the Australian embassy wants me to undergo a medical check and submit an x-ray of my chest. Apparently Czech Republic is among high risk countries for tuberculosis. My flight is on sunday and I desperately need the visa. So I wasted no time and called a few clinics. Found one, took a quick shower and started running. I arrived just in time before the doctor went to lunch and I thought that everything is going to be fine and felt on the roll. The fact is, that I almost failed because I obviously wasn’t in the best shape after jugging down several both of shoukoshu the night before. Most notably I have learned that doing a eye-sight check with such a hangover is a true challenge. None the less I passed.
While having lunch I thought how I am going to write here that it is interesting how everything in my life tends to work out perfectly fine, albeit always at the last moment and in a hurry. Little did I know…
When I got back to office my initial enthusiasm wore off and I decided to call the Immigration Processing Centre in Perth and ask them how long would it take. So I did that. After 20 minutes of elevator music the lovely lady told me she is going to check on my case and she came back she told me that it will take between 4 and 6 weeks. Not hours, not days, weeks! You can imagine how I felt at that point. I was dumbstruck. After all this effort and planning and worrying I cannot succeed anyway. I called my school and told them this great news. They agreed the postpone my commencement date to January. Then I proceeded with further canceling. I canceled my apartment booking in Melbourne. Except that it was uncancelable, so I was thinking about calling my bank and cancel my credit card so they can’t charge me. In the end the guy on the phone budged and canceled it provided they will keep the deposit (more then 300 AUD). After that I needed to change my flight. But alas the Czech office of British Airways was closed. So I went on and called a real estate company in Tokyo and arranged an apartment for a month and convinced them to allow me to check in on sunday. Then I decided to call British Airways in UK. They told me that I cannot change my ticket since it was issued by Czech BA and they are not allowed to do it. Alas it was public holiday in Czech and my flight was on sunday. I was not going to let them screw me like that so I started convincing the woman to do it and she was about to agree when an email arrived.
My visa was granted.
Now that was a real shock! I mean wtf?! First she tells me one month and “I am sorry but we cannot do anything about it.” and “no there is nothing you can do to speed it up” and then this. I thanked that lovely woman and started redoing what I have done. I canceled my apartment in Tokyo. I called the real estate company in Melbourne and inquired into canceling the cancel. Luckily enough they agreed, but I felt like a prick. And then I started calling everyone that I called before to tell them to forget what I said and remember what I always used to say: “everything works out in the end”.
And so it does.
But what have I learned? Actually tons of things.

1. It’s useless to worry.
2. Everything works out in the end. So do your best and go back to point 1) and relax.
3. Australian government has terrible phone support staff, but obviously very effective workers.
4. Never book an uncancelable flight or hotel room if you can help it (20% premium is acceptable I think)
5. Always have a perfectly acceptable plan B and realize it.

The last point is actually the most important one. I hate plans B. I go 100% for plan A and simply KNOW in my heart that it will work out. Generally it tends to work for me, but this time it failed. Well it didn’t in the end, but this time I thought it failed and it shook me quite a bit. It never does that. My plans A are exactly that, frickin’ A. I consciously do not make plans B because I feel it would mean that I would work less hard to achieve A and that is totally silly. A bit like people (yes, I am one of them) who say that they need to study only right before the exam or deadline because the pressure makes them work harder. That is a suicidal cocktail.
So I made a mental note there, have a plan B.
But I also realized it has to be a perfectly acceptable plan. Actually when I heard the news that the visa will take a month and made the decision to stay in Tokyo I hated that idea. I felt like a loser and that my destiny failed me. And then I thought about it. About working in the Tokyo office some more, about going out with my Japanese friends and I thought that a month here is not a bad thing after all and I actually really started liking that idea. And then the email came. My first reaction was: WTF?! And my second was: “Damn it, I really feel like staying that month in Tokyo.”
Now this does not mean that I want to stay in Tokyo rather then moving to Melbourne. It means that I have internalized the idea of being in Japan and synthethized happines around it. And then puff it was gone again. So what I wanted at first was taken away from me, so I took second best option, started liking it and when my previously preferred choice was granted, I thought of it as inferior. Human mind is truly amazing.
I was writing about similar effect here, albeit applied to a different topic.
So the moral of the day. Have a plan B. It is not inferior. Actually there is no absolute hierarchy in our preferences, only temporarily perceived one.

But it is there. One thing living in Tokyo will do to you is to make you realize that homeless people are simply one of us. I have just spent about 2 hours talking to a homeless Japanese, not to men-tin speaking perfect English, about Tokyo. I have met to most intriguing homeless Japanese before. I have met an ex-reality investment guy living in a tent in Ueno wearing a Lacoste t-shirt telling me how his family left him after the stock market crash. I am telling you, if I should take one lesson out of my whole Japanese experience it would be: “easy come, easy go, but hard come, easy can go as well.” In other words: nothing is secure. We live in volatile world and unpredictable society, yet we seem to ignore it. But then again, that is the only way to survive. Except that I share so many opinions about the society we live in with the homeless people that it makes me wonder, whether I will not become once one of them…
If this blog suddenly ends and you never hear of me again, please look for me in Shinjuku station or Ueno park. I will be grateful for breakfast, but do not expect me to return to this madness of society…

I am not going to waste your time trying to explain why it has been more than a month since I have written anything. I have had some post ready on my drive, but none of them seemed relevant enough. Until today, until now.
Today I have a question for your: If you could choose, would you rather be surrounded by people like you or would you rather be an exception?
This is more crucial question than it might sound at first.
But let me tell you how I got to it. It originated, as most good things in life, in a club. Today. Tonight. About an hour ago.
I went to an unknown club with my Japanese friend. This club turned out to be a super-posh ass-hole hang-out cave. Great club by many standards. Invitation to get in, vip feel to it, more staff then customer in early hours and selected crowd. And then me. Feeling totally odd, totally out of place.
After hours of mindless drinking and soulless chatting two things happen to me. One was moment of realization and the other was a good lesson. Maybe they are connected. I met this two beautiful girls, who seemed so incredibly dumb and superficious that I had a blast out of it. Now the funny thing was they were playing me. After a while of me trying to counter their ridiculously sounding stereotypical remarks with pseudo-intellectual comments that I am fairly good at it (and sadly being proud if it), I found out that they were playing me for fun. They were pretending to be these stuck up bitches for fun. Now how many times have I tried a similar game and I still could not see that! Male ego: 0, female intelligence: 1. Now, before anyone starts questioning me, we were not even flirting, the whole conversation was about Tokyo and Japan, which anyone who has been here a while understand how crucial topic in determining people’s intellect and personality are.
So that was the lesson. Some people are smarter than you are even though they seem (/pretend) to be more stupid.
But then I got to think about one thing. I was surrounded by assholes. By rich people with money to spend and lives to waste. A thing I have been running away from for couple of years. I know these people. I know that lifestyle and I don’t want it. But then I thought of one more thing. Which would I prefer: be surrounded by people like me or be surrounded by assholes like that and feel that I am not one of them. I know the answer seems simple, but try to ask it yourself in context you can relate to. Would you rather be a one-eyed man (or a woman) in a crows of blind people, or would you rather be able to discuss with your fellow people what all of you can see? I feel it is crucial and I also feel that my inclining towards the first answer is a good sign of my personality, but one I would definitely like to change. But is it so wrong? Or is it simply a whim of my ego?
I do not know. I hope you do. And if you have never asked you that question before, try to do it. And answer yourself honestly, I know my feelings surprised me… Good luck and good night.