The White Peril 白禍

Don't take this the wrong way, dear and valued readers, but I had to send my laptop back to Toshiba for repairs (CD-ROM drive was freaking--which I think is pretty ungrateful, considering the choice diet of Kylie singles and Hitchcock movies I feed it) and am kind of enjoying not having an Internet connection at home for the next week or so. Last night, the man from Nittsu came to take my Dynabook, and when he left, I felt truly alone in the apartment...in a good way. Of course, I was looking forward to Atsushi's nightly phone call at 11:00, and I got a few cell calls and mails. But the temptation to check the websites of five newspapers to see whether they'd been updated since the last newscast on NHK was blessedly removed. No look at G-Mail when I got back from dinner or out of the bathtub, lest I miss some stray plaint from the office. Just a book or three and a glass of the plum wine Atsushi brought back for me the last time he came home. Anyway, I don't think posting will be all that light over the next week, but it may be more randomly distributed.

Oh, speaking of the Internet: is there something inherently snobby about not using it to meet people? In response to a direct appeal for information, I remarked the other night that I've never met a guy over the Internet and wouldn't really know where to go if I wanted to do so, and the person I was talking to kind of flipped. He was really affronted, and I didn't get it. I mean, okay, if pressed, I'd have to admit that I preferred the face-to-face-sparring method of flirtation even when I was more young and fun-loving. But I'd never imply that people who use web personals are pathetic, or what have you, for the very good reason that I don't believe any such thing. You just can never tell with people.

If I have any readers who are fellow Pennsylvanians...well, first of all, hi! How's the old commonwealth doing? Second, next time you run into PennDOT, could you please kick it REAL HARD for me?

You wouldn't think PennDOT could find a way to make your life miserable on the opposite side of the planet, huh? Ha! You forget--Pennsylvania used to have more paved roadway than any other state. At least, that's what we learned in elementary school. It may still be true. Anyway, the point is, PennDOT functionaries have had a lot of practice getting their obstructionism down to a science. I shouldn't have been surprised to learn that their reach is now global. Save yourselves!

My birthday was in March; like a good boy, I did my driver's license renewal bureaucrap in February.

You know what's coming, right? I still don't have my renewed license, despite regular e-mails, a few phone calls, and (futile) attempts to actually open PennDOT's website to find out what the hell is going on. I thought about writing a letter of inquiry, as someone old enough to remember how paper correspondence works, but I got stuck in that mode...you know, when you're like, dammit, this is 2005, the website is SUPPOSED to be accessible, and I'm going to keep at it until I get the homepage to come up.

Yesterday, I gave up and went to the Lehigh County government site (with such exotic features as pages that open) and got the phone number again. After two or three unsuccessful loops through the phone tree (ACK!), I was connected with a flesh-and-blood operator who, to be fair, was very helpful. I'm confident, perhaps naively, that if I do what she told me to do, there is an unexpired driver's license waiting for me at the end of the process. That way when I visit my family in a few months, I'll be able to play obstacle course with PennDOT'S was-there-actually-a-pothole-there-or-did-they-just-decide-to-dig-a-hole-and-fill-it? projects like everyone else. I'll feel that I've really gone home, you know?

And while I'm on the subject of paperwork, that immigration processing center out in the wilds of the monorail line down from Shinagawa Station? Not as bad as I'd expected. This is the first time my visa's come up for renewal since they closed the little office in Shibuya (a seven-minute walk from my old apartment--man, was that convenient). Having people line up and ask for the forms they need was probably a good idea; the way they used to set them out in plastic trays just invited a free-for-all and guaranteed that some people would grab the wrong ones. There were long waits, of course, but as someone who's constantly complaining about the number of redundant mandarins in the Japanese government, I can't exactly bitch when they decide to consolidate two or three offices. And maybe I was just lucky, but everyone I dealt with was downright solicitous, even (dare I say?) amiable.