cat /proc/claus

So far, I have been able to live on non taxable income (scholarships, fellowships, etc). So I never had to learn much about how taxation works. But now that I am working “for real” (not that I dont consider PhD to be real work), I had to learn how the income tax (among others) work in my case.

As a Brazilian working in Japan as a professor, I actually have to option to pay either the brazilian or the Japanese income tax for two years. If I keep working in Japan for more than two years, then I have to pay Japanese I.T. anyway. It seems that this time limit varies with your job and nationality (probably based on international agreements).

So I since I have a choice, I had to research a bit. As for the tax amount, it is basically the same in both cases (around 20% of my salary). If I choose to pay taxes in Brazil, I need to send a notice to the japanese tax office about my decision, and pay my brazilian taxes directy to the brazilian government, yearly. On the other hand, if I decide to pay Japanese Income taxes, they will be deduced automagically from my salary, and I need to submit a form to the brazilian embassy stating that I have moved out of the country (along with a bunch of other info).

Since the values are about the same, I decided that it made more sense for me to pay the Japanese Income tax, since I should be staying here for the medium term. It was also generally less hassle. I was quite surprised about how much information about this is readily available online, though.

I’m writing this from the Incheon airport in South Korea (yay for free internet acces). In 2 hours I’ll board the flight that will take me to Japan, for my new job in Tsukuba University.

The flight was as pleasant as a 26 hour flight can possibly be. I chose to fly Korean Airlines because I had a history of good service from them, and their flights were quite cheap. I was not disappointed this time. From the land crew in Sao Paulo, everyone was corteous, and all the facilities were well maintained. I just wish the plane crew spoke better english - but anything that I couldnt understand was usually printed somewhere accessible.

The US transit - usually the worst part of any international trip - was relatively painless. It seems that they finally decided that passengers in transit who are not even going to change planes aren’t a threat to US security. We skipped all security procedures and went to a transit lounge. Unfortunately, all three shops in the transit lounge were closed.

So if all goes well, I should arrive in Japan around midday, and in Tsukuba mid afternoon. I will stay the first few weeks in the university dorm, until I can find my own place. Tomorrow I will have to get all my documentation - alien card, bank account, etc - ready, so that I can start working wed.

No time to rest!

After almost one year and a half living in Rio, tomorrow I’m boarding for Japan. I’ve been hired as an Assistant Professor at the G30 Computational Science Program at Tsukuba University.

I’m looking forward a lot for this move. For me, more than any “january first”, this signals a new year. Moving has always been accompained by a rush of productivity and energy, and I have been planning to use these to start (or re-start) a number of projects that were on the back burner. The things I want to do in this new start include: Going back to the Gym, getting better at Starcraft, Learning to program indie games, reading more technical books. Not to mention updating all my websites

This last year in Rio was great from an academic point of view. I had a very interesting research project, with awesome work mates. I will miss that. But I also look forward to my new position. The prospect of having students under me, and a bit more of academic freedom gives me all sorts of ideas to work with.

Recently I have read news that the Japanese government will again reduce the stipend of international graduate students under the scholarship of the Ministry of Education (MEXT).

So, as expected, a lot of people start to complain about it, saying they can´t live anymore, they are getting screwed, etc. And then, also as expected, a lot of OTHER people start to complain about the complaints, saying that the complainers should be happy for being given any money at all, that they are just guests, among other things.

This amount of missing the point, it hurts me so much.

Graduate students often have this terrible misconception that because they are ¨students¨, they are not working. This sometimes shows as an inferiority complex, where they think that what they do is not work; that any money they receive is not earned; that they should hurry up and get a ¨real job¨. No, the academic career is as real a job as any other, even though is not seen as one. You, as a PhD student, is no less a worker than someone who just joined a company. Your research will be used by your advisor to justify the grants that he receives, and his standing inside the university and funding agencies. You are working, results are expected of you, and you are being paid for those results. That stipend is your earned salary.

Of course, as in many things, there is another face to this coin. I´ve seen people use the ¨I´m just a student¨ mentality to avoid responsability. These people will act as if they were on extended paid vacations. For them, the same thing applies: Your stipend is your salary, and you are expected to work for it. A PhD diploma and a thesis is nice, but the body of your work/contacts/classes/research activities is what is really being expected of you.

Back to the fact of the scholarship reduction itself, I think it is really unfortunate. Yes, it is possible to live in Japan, even in Tokyo, with the new current scholarship. But this current value means that you will earn almost as much money flipping burgers in Mac Donalds in Japan (or, as is more often the case, making sandwiches in some bento factory), than you will performing research. Going to Japan for a PhD is not exactly an easy decision to make (language barrier, social barrier, distance from family and friends), and the high scholarship should reflect the incentives for taking this decision.

Of course, Japan is not exactly in an economic golden age at the moment, but I think it would give much more bang to the buck if they reduced the number of scholarships, and improved the selection process.

Finally cutting the scholarship for those who are already mid-way through their courses is just a dickish move any way you see it.

Today I had to wait for a few hours at the Tiete bus station, in Sao Paulo. I was reading “The Blank Slate” by Steven Pinker, a not so good portuguese translation, in a coffee shop.

The cool thing about this coffee shop is that they had a big piano, which was open for anyone who wanted to play it. When I arrived, a kid was playing nicely, and kept on it for almost an hour. After he left, a guy dressed as a bus driver sat down and played for a while as well.

I wish I could play the piano too. When I was about 10, I took maybe 2 or 3 months of classes, but then stopped. Mom says it was because at the time we could not afford to buy a piano, which I needed to progress further. Oh well.

I wonder if I’m still capable of learning it to any acceptable degree.