Film Festival

Last week, there was an international film festival held in Roppongi. Since I don't work on Sundays-Tuesdays, I tried to take as much advantage in having the opportunities in watching international movies.

The 1st movie I watched was, "Hitler Cantata". I thought this German movie would be as good as, "Downfall", but I was wrong. I feel asleep most of the time and the movie was just boring.

There was this other movie I watched, which was a Korean movie. "Rules of Dating", don't let the title surprise you, because it really had nothing to do with dating. It is a love story, with a real unique plot. It was a real interesting movie which had much to do with sexual harassment rather than dating. The movie was about a high school teacher who was hitting on his assistant. The teacher already had a fiance and the assistant as well. The teacher was really aggressive towards his assistant. At times he did sexually harassed her and technically raped her. The assistant already had a bad background because in her past she slept with her former professor who was already married and she stalked him when he decided to break it off. She eventually fell in love with her high school teacher and she was afraid of suffering the same fate so when she began being in a topic of high school gossip between her and the high school teacher, he decided to cover up by saying that he was only consulting his assistant. When the police asked if this was true, she later reported to the police how the high school teacher raped her and molested her. As you know, he was no longer allowed to teach at any high school. His career was in ruins. The odd twist to this story is they did eventually reunite and got together, even though she got him fired. He wanted to kill her for what she has done to him and his career, but eventually forgiven her after he slept with her. They wound up being together, because after she reported to the police, his fiance also dumped him. She dumped her fiance and they wind up together.

Yeah the story was a bit stranger, if that had happened to me I would have killed her too. Then again, I am glad that I am not a high school teacher or a college professor.

In my honest opinion, I always believe that dating someone from work is a real bad idea. If it works out, then that's great, but most of the time, it becomes a big disaster.

I mentioned to you about my friend Gregg, he is a good friend, but he was known to be extremely careless regarding who he was dating. When I 1st met the guy, he was dated his Japanese language teacher back at his university. She was 29 at the time and Gregg was barely 21. Like most 29 year old Japanese ladies, she wanted to get married. Gregg in the other hand, was not thinking about marriage, because after all, he's only 21 and was in no mood to settle down. As you know, this relationship was a disaster. After he broke up with his Japanese language teacher, he became a part-time English teacher while exchanging at a Japanese university. He got together with his student. It would have been all right if she wasn't married. Gregg thought she was a sex friend. I mentioned to him that there is no way she was looking at him as a sex friend. I asked Gregg if he plans to marry her. He said, "No!" I hated to spoil this for him, but I had to tell him that she is looking at you as a replacement. I reminded him that she is going to want him to replace her husband. Gregg thought he was ok, but when she actually made the official divorce with her husband, Gregg did not know what to do. So I congradulated him in destroying someone's marriage. I still have a friend in Japan who is Gregg's student. She is a wife of a film writer, and we did meet through Gregg. Even though this happened almost 10 years ago, we still talk about Gregg and his flirting with disaster, because she was also friends with the married woman who messed around with Gregg. We still laugh about this. We were talking about making Gregg's disasterous story into a movie or TV show. Unfortunately her husband only interested in writing action movies like Godzilla or Lupin the 3rd.

We both knew that this was not 100% Gregg's fault. This was just as much as Hiromi's (the married woman who Gregg messed with) fault as it was for Gregg.

As I mentioned earlier, it's not a good idea to mess around with someone from work. I did learn a valuable lesson from Gregg. That is why it's easy for me not to give in when a married woman molested me at my former company. I always think about Gregg. I don't care how good looking she is, it's alway a good idea to walk away. The last thing you want is having a married woman stalking you. That's why I tell people nothing is free in this world.

In Japan, I believe the easiest way to met a soul mate is to teach English. Just make sure your student is not married.

Parenting (Part 2)

As most of us know, Happy is about to be a mother. Like most future mothers, the 1st thing she would worry about is how to raise her newborn. I personally don't think she has much to worry about. She tolerated with me, and I am about as childish as most newborn. Plus she is the most organized person I'd ever met. She is so well organized that she really scared me. I came from a very disorganized family, my father is organized, but my mother is very disorganized. My sisters and I, all inherited our disorganization from our mother.

Anyway, there was something else I wanted to talk about since the topic is about parenting. 7 years ago, a friend of mine Gregg invited me to have dinner with his former boss. I didn't understand why Gregg wanted me to go have dinner with his boss and his family at the time. Once I had dinner with them, I began to understand why. Back when Gregg was an exchange student in Japan, he taught English as a part-time job. His boss was his former student. After Gregg graduated from Ucla, his boss offered him a job working at a step-ladder company. Gregg knew nothing about step ladder, but his boss had no friends and Gregg was his only friend. The problem about his boss (Eizo), is that he is a very arrogant man. He treats everybody, except for Gregg like dirt. The company which Eizo ran monopolized the step-ladder business so he had no competition. When you run a business with no competition, it is very easy to become very arrogant since he has so much money he thinks he owns the world. It's like dictatorship and Eizo acted like a dictator. Eizo also had a son (Hidetoshi), he is very weird much like Hideki. He seemed kind of gay, and sometimes extremely isolated. Why did Gregg invited me to have dinner with Eizo and his family? I can see why. Everyday when Gregg has dinner with Eizo, all he does is remind his son Hidetoshi what a loser he is. Making comments such as, "Why can't you be more like Gregg? Why are you such a loser?" No wonder Hidetoshi is so isolated and messed up. When I joined for dinner, I listened to Eizo's remark towards his son. After he made that arrogant remark towards his son, I spoke to Gregg and made a wise-ass remark, "I never knew a child can raise himself!"

I mentioned to Gregg, "I wonder if he realize whose fault that is? A child can't be raised on his own." I thought to myself, "What an arrogant asshole!" Hidetoshi is who he is, because his father is not a good parent and he uses Gregg to replace Hidetoshi as a son Eizo wished he had. I think that is common with most millionaires or billionaires. Super wealthy people usually have no time to be with their kids, so they don't become good parents and they wonder why their kids turned out bad.

I like to say one thing. I am glad my father is not Eizo. I see this common with Japanese parents, comparing their kids with other kids and blame their own kids for being a failure not realizing whose fault that is.

Eizo is really into sexual harassment. I guess that should be another topic..

Eizo asked me if I can take classes for his son. He wanted me to enroll at Ucla for Hidetoshi. I asked what am I going to get out of this. He offered to pay me, but when I found out how much, I told him not to waste my time. I have better things to do than to take classes at Ucla for his son.

I guess this is where the movie "Spanglish" comes in. A control-freak mother, try to interfere with the maid's daughter, because her own daughter is not as beautiful as the maid's daughter. So she spoils her, because she is the daughter she wished she had. Eizo is by far worse, because he really makes his son feel like garbage.