Furu Anime Panikku

A few days ago, I started a really short temporary job with a rather decent pay. It’s really short, so short that it lasted a mere 4 days, and ended today. At first, I was supposed to work in the IT fair, but the company decided to dump me at the shop instead. The result? 4 days that bored the hell out of me! I’m not complaining though, since the pay’s S$60 per day, and all I did was stand around, occasionally attending to the customers who enter.

I prefer office work over sales

Compared to the job where I had to bring the Japanese students around, this job was total crap. The only saving grace was the pay. I needed the money, and I had the time to spare, so I went for it anyway.

Basically, I was in a store selling routers, PDA phones, memory cards, and some random stuff like laser pointers(?!). If the laser pointers and random crap weren’t stupid enough, I had to wear formal wear! In the whole complex, it seems that my company’s the only one forcing its staff to dress formally. And so, we looked like clowns among the rest of the people working in the complex, who have a common dress code of t-shirt and jeans. Imagine having to work in Singapore’s version of Akihabara(just without the anime stuff) in a long sleeved shirt, business pants and formal shoes.

I miss school uniforms…

The next load of torment was the music in the shop. For the past 4 days, it was only me and a senior staff. The guy liked chinese music and everything chinese, so the same chinese music CD was blasted over and over again for the entire length of my job. I have not tuned in to Chinese music for almost two years, and suddenly, I’m flooded with it. My brain’s rather dead now due to that. I need to revive it by looping some Jpop/Jrock.

Then came the boredom. An average of 9 hours each day was spent standing in a corner of the shop playing the waiting game. Since there was the IT fair, the people who came here were those who were either too lazy to squeeze with the mob at the fair, those who came to be an ass by complaining to us about how much cheaper prices at the IT fair was, or those who were just living under a rock. I had so much free time standing around that I started thinking, and a whole lot of weird/crazy ideas and thoughts started popping out.

Actually, despite all my complaints, it wasn’t really all that bad. I liked the formal wear, except for the shoes which sucked. My soles hurt badly because of the damn pair. The chinese music was actually expected since I worked with the guy last year, but what I didn’t expect was the looping of the same 20 songs for 4 straight days. The boredom was quite beneficial, as it gave me time to I think about some stuff that I wanted to do, and how I would go about doing it.

For example, I devised a “project”, which I shall conveniently name as Project M. It will require quite an amount of funding, there’s a time limit, and the failure rate is exceptionally high. I can start saving now, with my funds beginning with the pay I am about to receive. And even if I don’t get to execute the project due to the various obstructing factors such as school, I’ll still get to spend the funds.

Rock’s job seems fun ^^

Enough about my job. Let’s move on to otakus and jobs. The real hardcore otakus will never work, unless the circumstances force them to. For example, they need money to buy food so that they can live on to continue watching anime, or they need that cash to buy that expensive event exclusive item. Other than such similar cases, they would rather be hikkikomoris staying within the comfort of their home, watching anime, playing games, pleasuring themselves with their choice of explicit graphics, or just slacking around.

As much as I would like to do some (note: it’s some, not all) of the activities mentioned above all day long, I would feel weird staying within the confines of my home all day long. Two to three days is still manageable, but anything more than that and I would force myself to get out of the house for a couple of hours.

The reason why I work even though I don’t lack the money is to burn some time in a useful way. No matter what type of work, you’ll learn at least something that might be beneficial to you in the future. Something much more beneficial compared to slacking on your butt 18 hours a day straight. And you don’t get cash while slacking on your butt.

This is why I can never be a hikkikomori. In fact, this is why I can never be a true blue otaku. It seems that I have this internal hidden (devil) trigger within me that practices certain moderation, which is why my level will always remain at the level of an anime fan, possibly rising to the level of a super anime fan, but never rising to the level of an otaku and the stars beyond. Even though I always use the word otaku, I don’t really think I can be considered as one due to the difference in level. Instead, an anime fan would be a much apt phrase to describe me.

The irony is that I’m using otaku as one of the categories in this blog. But doesn’t otaku sound a whole lot better as a category name as compared to anime fan?

So, what are your views on this? Does an anime fan equate to an otaku? Or is an anime fan ranked on a much lower scale as compared to an otaku? And what are you? Discuss!