Apologies

For the lapse in correspondence from this end. The new term has just started over here and I have been reacquainting myself with the somnambulant species, studentus disnterestedus. That and the ever elusive concept of 'teaching'; one of these days I'll figure both of them out.
I was also attending the Japanese Association of Language Teachers' (JALT) annual conference. This was held last weekend in the city of Hamamatsu, an unremarkable place principally renowned for its eel and musical instrument manufacturing.
There may well be some sort of the connection between the two, but it eludes me.
What struck me about the JALT conference, besides the abundance of harmonica playing eels, was the number of late middle aged men, a balding band of brothers, who had spent most of their working lives in Japan. These, I am beginning to realize, epitomize my most possible future. They have about them a sort of hollow bon homie. The years of forced effusiveness, of being professionally cheery, has left them with exhausted smiles and fleeting, scurrying wit.
They also drink a lot. So the exhausted smiles may well be the default facial setting for a serious hangover. And yet, could this be, ten, fifteen years from now, me?
My hair is certainly disappearing at a fair clip, though I finally seem to have my drinking under control (I don't). My face has this default smile/grimace setting and I can do forced empathy better than Mitt Romney. And with a mortgage, a family, and a country of origin in economic ruins, it would seem to be the case.
That is unless of course, the National University of Singapore come to their senses and realize that their faculty sorely lacks the sure-to-be inaugural winner of the Nobel Prize for Applied Linguistics.
And with that my smile would become genuine.