Always the anthropologist, I find myself intrigued by the graffiti that the school’s students leave on desktops. My Korean is much too poor, and my knowledge of Korean pop/youth culture too limited, to make sense of of what’s written, but I nevertheless wonder. And occasionally I get paranoid and think, oh, they’re writing bad things about me. Or one of the other teachers. And maybe they are. But mostly, I’m sure, it has nothing to do with anything but the tribal fascinations of youth, as expressed in graffiti anywhere.
Day: October 25, 2007
Caveat: K-Smog into Drizzle
Over the last several weeks it's become steadily drier, and the last couple of days have even been marginally smoggy – though nothing like Mexicopolis versions 1 or 2. Perhaps the smog would be more intense if I went into the city proper – out here on the western edge of the Korean megalopolis, with the breeze off the Yellow Sea (oh, wait, a breeze laden with pollutants drifting from north China's industrial heartland).
So I walked to work today, looking at the sudden appearance of little piles of leaves under some of the trees that are beginning to change color. It was sunny and vaguely hazy, and as warm as it's been for a while. Yet when I looked out of the windows of the school a few hours later at dusk, it was drizzling. First rain we've seen for quite some time. I walked home on the shiny wet streets, and watched a cat attempting to get into a garbage can for a while.
I thought about how big the world is, and how small our minds are.