Getting Ignored by Fate

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

Last week was nothing special for Thailand, but for Japan it was Obon, a holiday when one is supposed to go to pay respects to all the dead people responsible for one's existence. What this meant for me was a bit of free time. Half of my students either went back to Japan or took a vacation in Thailand because the home office in Tokyo was closed for the week. Japanese folks are well known for doing things in groups and that goes especially for vacations. A single Japanese tourist is a rare bird, and the entire country just closes down three times a year.

Despite the break I still managed to be busy with my Korean students. These ones are younger and attend international schools where they are forced to comprehend algebra and history in English. I teach Chemistry to one, and it's fun trying to stimulate my memories of the shape of a Bohr atom and why the heck the periodic table is so important. Kind of like spear fishing with a flashlight.

Nothing is worse than nothing

Nothing much happened this week but that's no excuse for me to neglect my homepage. When nothing much happens, that means that everything goes according to the expected schedule and there are no surprises. This may sound like a good thing to some but in actuality it is a bad sign. Conformity to schedule kills not only spontaneity, but spontaneity's crazy aunt, Luck.

Contrary to popular belief, luck is a skill. And as such it can be honed, though perhaps never perfected. What we call luck is merely a talent for following one's whimsy. If your choice of road is determined by a schedule, nothing will happen that is not on that schedule. And who of us is imaginative enough to schedule strokes of beauty like falling in love or winning the jackpot? However if you spend a liberal amount of time choosing roads based upon a funny feeling in your gut, a trick knee, a metallic taste in your mouth or the flip of a coin, you are bound to dance into the hairy arms of fate on occasion.

Luck is a skill and you can increase the amount of raw luck in your life by using the Force, but the catch is that there is really no way to control the quality of your luck. In abandoning yourself to it, you sign a spiritual contract and the small print says you have to accept the luck you get, good or bad. If you happen to step in the dog doo of life, the Fates take note of your grimace and they think, "He's no fun," and you won't be meeting them again for a while. However if you can laugh at yourself and quietly (or better, noisily) give thanks and homage to the powers of heavenly whim for the opportunity to stink for the rest of the evening, you may find yourself in a wonderful place open only to those with dog doo on their tennies.

If you play a game of pool with your whole heart and you're beaten by an opponent who does the same, it's practically as good as winning if you can take it well. A well-played situation is really a no-lose scenario if you can pull this off. The worst possible thing that can happen is not bad luck, but the purgatory of those whom the Fates ignore.

I sure hope something bad happens to me this week. I couldn't take another week of nothing.

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Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.