About a month ago one of the American on-site inspectors that works at the same company as I do went back for a visit to his hometown in America. At the time he asked me if I wanted anything, and I requested a bottle of TUMS for the next time I eat too much hot sauce or yakiniku. He said no problem, and off he went.
Although he was scheduled to be on holiday for a week, he just got back yesterday. Turns out he was stopped as he tried to come back to Japan, and sent back because his visa was not correct. So he had to cool his heels in America until he got a new visa, and while the paperwork was moving along slowly he sat around and didn’t get paid.
Finally yesterday he came back to work, and I bumped into him coming out of the station in the morning. He apologized for taking so long on the antacids, and we joked about his situation – it was pretty embarrassing for him (and maybe for the customer he works for). Now everything is back to normal, and today he promised to deliver the aforementioned TUMS. When I first heard about his troubles coming back to Japan, the image that flashed through my mind was his luggage being searched and some alarms going off because of way too many TUMS. Luckily, it wasn’t the case.
At the end of the day two of my former students stopped by the classroom to visit. One gave me a souvenir from his recent trip to Hong Kong, a small canister of chocolates. It was good to talk to them – one is very busy recently and the other has some slow time, so they are balancing the load a bit between them. We made tentative plans to catch a beer in the near future.
Off to work – today is cloudy in the morning but it should heat up this afternoon. I might even be able to roll up my sleeves on the way home.
