Day: June 15, 2012

Caveat: Damn Expensive Cigarettes

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

When I was in my early 20s, I smoked cigarettes. I was defnitely addicted, but I managed to kick the habit without that much difficulty. I started again when I was in the Army, but it was always a kind of boredom-while-working type thing, there, doing what everyone does during the breaks. It never really got to be a habit during that time.

Mostly I don't think about smoking, except that I'm glad that I stopped. But sometimes I get cravings. And this morning, when I woke up, I awoke from a dream about smoking cigarettes that was weirdly compelling. In the dream, I'd gotten really angry because I'd gone to buy cigarettes and I had been charged an outrageous amount of money – there was vivid moment of handing over one of those gold-colored Korean ₩50,000 (about 50 bucks) and getting small change back. So I was smoking my cigarettes, in the dream, one after the other, as if to say, "damn, I'd better enjoy these, they were so expensive."

I like when I have strange dreams – I've been having a lot of them lately. My sleep patterns are messed up, too. That part, I don't like so much.

Caveat: Hellbridge Redux?

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

So it's official, now – the letters went out to parents today, so they can't really go changing  their minds, at this point. My current place of employment, Karma Academy, is merging with Woongjin Plus, which just happens to be the company that took over and eventually renamed my former employer, LBridge, affectionately known as "hellbridge" to some of its workers. Overall, there were a lot of things I liked about LBridge, so I don't see this as necessarily apocalyptic – and one of the things I liked least about LBridge was the management, which will have changed twice over by the time I'm back there again next month. My current boss, Curt, will be in charge. I wonder though, at how this will work out. There are a lot of "I wonders" now.

I'm going to keep an open mind. Given the current market conditions, mergers are one of the few ways a hagwon can grow. So I understand the business rationale. But why this specific marriage? – two hagwon could hardly be more mis-matched, from a business culture standpoint. That's actually the point, as a conversation with my boss last night underscored. Perhaps both can grow and improve through cross-fertilization.

The title to this blog post is rather alarmist. But I'm not really expecting a return to the dark days of 2008. And as I said, there were a lot of things I really liked about LBridge – especially the rigid curriculum. Karma could use some structure, in that area. I had a moment of schadenfreude during a "training presentation" yesterday, when a powerpoint slide on a means of evaluating student writing was flashed on the screen that bore clear markings of being the descendant of the speech and writing scoring schema I developed while at LBrdige and had happily turned over to the curriculum designer (who's long-gone, now, but the earmarks of her work are everywhere). That weird feeling that you've left actual traces of your work at an organization that you've long left behind, but now, returning, there it is. "I made that," I wanted to say. I refrained.

[Daily log: walking, 4 km]

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