Drew Martin:
CLASS OF 1979
Curtis High SchoolClass of 1979
University place, WA
Pacific Lutheran UniversityClass of 1983
Tacoma, WA
Drew's Story
Aloha from Hawaii's Big Island. For the last four years, I have been living with my family in a paradise of sorts. Last month, we had 48 inches of rain in one week. Also, I have a lava flow that has decided to start heading in the direction of my house. At least the snowboarding is good. Yes, we have snow here too. The road to Hawaii has been long and twisty. Currently, I am college professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.
Following graduation, which may be the last time some of you saw me, I followed several of our classmates all the way to Parkland to attend PLU. College life was so much fun that I decided to stay a couple of extra years and get a Master's degree. Also, I continued my swimming career at PLU. Having the team helped me because I had an instant peer group. The other side of the coin was that the peer group was a great source of distraction just about every night of the week. For me, the first three years in college were learning what not to do to myself rather than broadening my mind with philosophical insights from Kant, Kierkagaurd, and Hobbs. By the end of my six-year stay in Parkland, I still was not very sound on any of the three previously mention philosophical giants, but I at least emerged with a couple of college degrees and a deep appreciation for microbrewery beer. Rainier and Budweiser would never tarnish my palate again.
I spent seven years working for the State of Washington as an administrator of some government food programs. One of the more disgusting parts of the job was sorting through a 40 foot trailer full of spoiled cheese. About a half of the 40,000 pounds had evolved into a new life form. That cheese was discarded. The other half became food for the homeless. To this day, the odor from that ordeal still reappears. Over a period of six years, I gave away a lot of government cheese to the poor and needy. One afternoon, I estimated that the program in Washington State had given away enough 5 pound blocks of cheese to cover an entire football field to a height of about 11 feet. I also made calculations for the amount of powered milk in terms of Olympic-size swimming pools, but that number has been long lost.
During the sixth year of my incarceration in cheese hell, I was appointed the head of parking for the Capitol campus (Olympia). I was given instructions to take everyone's assigned park spot away from them and establish parking zones. That year, I was the most hated man in Olympia. I even got into an argument with the State Supreme Court Justice about his parking spot. He asked me what would happen if all the stalls in his parking zone were full. I replied, "you will have to walk a little further." Apparently, he was not accustomed to someone giving him an honest and unvarnished answer, so he called Governor Gardner and complained about me. I happened to meet with the Governor later that week. He was pleased to hear that I was looking for new career options.
On a whim, I applied for a fellowship to represent Washington state in the Governor's office of our sister state in Japan (Hyogo Prefecture). I am not sure if the candidate pool was weak, the Governor wanted me out of the country (see above), or my desperation to leave Olympia was a catalyst for an Oscar winning performance during my interview. Two mo...Expand for more
nths later, I boarded an airplane for a one-year tour of Japan (please hum the Gilligan's Island theme song when you read this sentence). In preparation for my one-year stay, I took six Japanese language lessons at TCC. At the end of the course, I was off to Japan with a 15-word vocabulary. My best Japanese phrase was "I am going to Japan." Obviously, this nugget of information was not going to be very useful once I arrived in Japan.
Fortunately, I learn that some Japanese people could speak a bit English. I concluded that it would be easier for me to teach everyone in Japan how to speak English than for me to learn Japanese. Those of you that have traveled already have figured out the flaw in this plan. For those of you that still think the plan has merit, I finally abandoned this strategy.
I immediately started taking Japanese lessons full time, but my progress was slow. My classmates were all Chinese and Korean students that were trying to pass the Japanese language proficiency exam to enter a local university. All of them spoke Japanese fairly well and they could already read all the Japanese and Chinese script that are used in the written language. These people also were very highly motivated to pass the test. While they were nice people, none of them spoke English.
After three months of intensive Japanese, I had 1st grade level reading and writing ability in Japanese language and my spoken vocabulary had approximately doubled to include worthless words like flower, dirt, and rice. My best conversations lasted only about one minute. I always started out with my crowd-pleasing "I am studying Japanese." Usually, the following-up question was, "where are you from?" To be honest, I answered that question whether it was asked or not because I had reached the limit of my conversational Japanese. Unfortunately, none of the people willing to talk with me had much interest in talking about flowers, dirt, or rice. After six months, I graduated #163 out of 164 students at my language school. Even though I was at the bottom of the class, I am delighted to report that I learned more Japanese language than one of the Chinese students. I suspect he had a learning disability, but I still happy to report that I was not the worst Japanese speaking foreigner in the country.
During my first three months in Japan, I lost a lot of weight. Not being able to cook (a skill that still eludes me today), I ate lunch and dinner in restaurants. As you recall, I could not speak very much Japanese. My linguistic level was not useful when ordering food in restaurant. I did manage to learn the name of two or three different dishes that I rotated on a regular basis. I usually went to the same two restaurants and ordered the same thing. I still had not learned how to order beer, so my meals usually were water and noodles. My former college roommate came to visit at the six month point, I was able to order beer, but were were still limited to three or four menu items.
The real interesting bits of the story are yet to come, but I won't bore you with more bad humor unless you want it. Look me up on the Google to find my e-mail address or send me a note through this classmates site. I am not a Gold Member, so I cannot initiate contact with you.
Best wishes to all of you.
Drew Martin
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