Dialogue, today at 2:28 pm. Student has two pointy-looking wood-carving implements out, and is focused on something at a desk.
Teacher: "What are you making?"
Student: "Destroying."
The behavior was questionable, but the English was excellent.
Month: June 2010
Caveat: Be lamps unto yourselves
"Do not accept what you hear by report, do not accept tradition, do not accept a statement because it is found in your books, nor because it is in accord with your belief, nor because it is the saying of your teacher. Be lamps unto yourselves." – Gautama Buddha.
This is why I am more interested in Buddhism, despite my confident atheism, than in other religious traditions. It offers a sort of "freedom of conscience" that e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or Islam don't appear to offer. When I say, "I'm an atheist," I have had more than one Buddhist answer, simply, "That's OK." It's hard to imagine a Christian saying that.
Caveat: Stasis
Lately I've been feeling burned out. I know what you're thinking: I just started this job! No… I'm burned out on change. Traveling almost continuously for 8 months, living out of a suitcase. The stress of finding the new job. The complications around my housing situation once I started my new job. Those things have me feeling burned out.
So my solution to that is to go into a sort of near-hibernation mode for a while. For a weekend. I didn't do much this weekend. The farthest I traveled was the grocery store. I still feel exhausted on Monday morning. But I think I'm a little less "burned out," hopefully.
I need to solve a problem with my first grade after school class: it's too big (20-something kids) and they're too unfocased (with too low-level English) for my regular song-and-dance strategy to work. I need new strategies to keep these kids' attention. I'm really opposed as a matter of principle to using the giant TV/computer monitor… as a rare, native-speaker resource in this school, it seems like a terrible use of "me" to be sitting there pushing a button on a computer. And I've always been skeptical of the effectiveness of technology-driven language lessons – especially with children.
On the other hand, I had the best class I've had in ages with my sixth grade after school class. We did something a bit like mad-libs, they would randomly make up nouns, places, verbs, characters… then they had to tell little stories about them. Being sixth graders, the nouns included things like toilets and trashcans and dog poop, and the characters were mostly each other or cartoon characters… but they had a lot of fun, making up little disconnected stories. We're working on "how to make a narrative."
Caveat: “God’s Right”
This cartoon summarizes, perfectly, my feelings about the immigration debate.
When those who oppose immigration, legal or illegal, have each taken the time and made the effort to learn at least one Native American language, and have considered the merits of Native American spirituality and culture and “walked a mile in their shoes,” only then will I take their arguments about the need to “control” immigration, and their sanctimonious arguments about “rule of law,” at all seriously.
Until then, I think Herman Melville (160 years ago!) summed up the only, truly ethical stance on immigration quite succinctly, when he wrote: “If they can get here, they have God’s right to come.”
Period.
Caveat: Cynicism is hope
I overheard Miguel Syjuco, a Philippine novelist, being interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio. He said: "Cynicism is the last refuge of the hopeful."
Brilliant quote. And that's… why I'm a cynic. ^_^
Caveat: Alcoholland!
It’s not what you’re thinking.
Last night, I joined some fellow foreigners on what is a regular Friday-night outing in Yeonggwang, for pizza and beer and later a game of self-generated trivia. And what turned out to be a lot of disgruntled chat about “things wrong with Yeonggwang” or “things wrong with Korea.” And I admit, I was disgrumbling, too.
Ultimately, one of the reasons I find myself staying away from gatherings of expats in this country is that they too often turn into complaints sessions. Either that, or it’s just an almost college-life-style binge drinking experience. Which is a total turn off for me, too.
Don’t get me wrong… everybody needs to complain – all you have to do is read my blog to see that I’m guilty of it too. But I also have learned, over the years, that sitting around and complaining, socially, is generally a bad idea. It reinforces the feelings of powerlessness and frustration, rather than leading to solutions or forebearance. So I tend to make my own complaining a solitary pursuit – I complain to the journal (this blog), and I keep my face-to-face social interactions as positive as I am able. It’s hard. But it pays rewards, emotionally.
There aren’t many “foreigners” working in Yeonggwang county. There are maybe a dozen working for the public schools. These foreigners have been attempting to forge some degree of community, under the leadership of a guy named Jim. I admire this – Jim’s even created a website, which is full of information for people who might come to Yeonggwang in the future.
I suspect there may be some foreigners working at the nuclear power plant, but I haven’t met any. Some of these may be “guys from India,” such as I found to be so ubiquitous in Suwon (a city with a lot of things for internationally savvy software engineers to do). I have overheard something that was either Chinese or Vietnamese on the bus to Hongnong twice. So there are non-native-English-speaking foreigners around, too. But I’d be willing to guess that none of the hagwon in the Yeonggwang area are employing westerners. Are there other foreigners? Probably… but I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing. It’s not like Ilsan, where there are whole restaurants and bars dedicated to the “foreigner” market.
Oh. So what’s with the title of this post? I saw a sign on a bar, walking back from the pizza joint, that seemed to imply that the name of the bar was “Alcoholland.” I attempted to snap a picture with my cellphone… it didn’t come out well, but there it is. What a totally awesome name for a bar. And maybe… what a great nickname for all of South Korea. It sure is hard, sometimes, not being a hardcore boozer, in this country.
I had one beer last night, and woke up with a headache. I don’t do alcoholland well, obviously.
Caveat: Yahoo fails some more
I have felt that Yahoo is a doomed company for a long time. I’ve had problems with obfuscating and bureaucratic approaches to problems with my yahoo email account before … in fact, I’ve been annoyed with Yahoo since at least 2003.
So I don’t use my Yahoo email account very much. This evening, I tried to log on and got the following page.
Take a look – can you tell me what is wrong with this picture? The fact is that it’s giving me two choices, neither of which is true. Nothing is worse than a computer program that gives you only a limited number of choices that fail to cover all the possibilities, thus allowing a user like me to “fall through the cracks.”
The first option: I’m a resident of the U.S. Not true. The second option: I’m a resident of Australia. Also not true. And why does yahoo keep thinking I’m Australian, anyway? That’s not the first time I’ve had that experience. Admittedly, I’ve been in Australia while happening to use Yahoo. But I’ve never lived there. And currently, I live in South Korea. That wasn’t a choice on the web page. Why not? At first, I thought… are they inspecting my IP address? I guess their software isn’t that smart. Because, what’s even funnier? When I gave up and lied, and told them I was a U.S resident, and was able to check my email, well, subsequently, when I logged out of my email, they threw me onto Yahoo.co.kr! That means… they CAN, in fact, tell by my IP address that I’m Korea. So what idiot came up with the software that only offered the two choices shown on that web page?
The header on that page said, “help us make your Yahoo mail more relevant.” Earth to Carol Bartz: maybe you should ask yourself, “how can YOU make my Yahoo mail more relevant?” Right now, it can’t even figure out what country I’m in, and it’s too poorly designed to even give me the option to let me tell it what country I’m in. A LESS relevant internet mail program would be difficult to invent.
If you haven’t already… sell your stock in this company.
Caveat: bp cares
So now that I have some internets, I’ve been doing some surfing around.
There’s a guy who goes by the nom-de-twit of Leroy Stick, who is apparently behind the fake BP PR tweets on twitter that have been such a hit. A sampling:
Not only are we dropping a top hat on the oil spill, we’re going to throw in a cane and monocle as well. Keeping it classy.
I found his press release on Huffington Post, and he actually seems pretty smart. I really like the following line:
You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand. Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions.
This is brand management 101 – and it’s why 90% of marketing people don’t get it. And why the remaining 10% of marketing people are the secret masters-of-the-universe behind the magic of ethical capitalism, by functioning as the watchdogs that keep businesses honest. And it’s why I don’t believe that marketing as a profession is a bad thing. It can be – and often is – a bad thing. But it can also be right up there with saving the world. Too bad BP doesn’t seem to have any of those types of marketing geniuses on staff.
Caveat: OMG I gots some internets
I haven't had internet at home for … a long time. The closest I got was when I was staying in Suwon, in January thru March, but my connectivity at Suwon was sporadic. And since starting work in Hantucky, I've been deprived. I've been able to do the essentials. But there a little things, that long ago became important habits: streaming internet radio (such as MPR or KCRW); being able to blog when I felt like it, rather than when it was possible; being able to look something up on wikipedia when I wanted to, rather than having to note it down and wait until I had a chance to look it up later. These are luxuries, in the scheme of things. But I'm very pleased to finally have the ability to do these things again. And my blog admin website isn't even blocked. Wow. Special super-duper wonder-bonus, eh?
A friendly and competent Korean technician came and got it working for me, this evening. Special thanks to my co-teacher for handling the various telephone calls that were required to make this happen. Hopefully… I won't have to move again. Ergh. Scary thought. Mantra: Pessimism = bad; Pessimism = bad; Pessimism = bad. Heh.
Caveat: Election Day
Yesterday was election day, in Korea. Which is a sort of public holiday. Most countries either hold elections on a day when people are off anyway (like Sunday), or else they don't give people a holiday, but accommodate the need of workers to take some time off from work to vote. But Korea makes everybody take the day off – except small businesspeople, I suppose – there were still some guys banging on metal stuff in the factory-like establishment across the road from my new apartment.
Anyway, I kind of avoided going out in public. The whole election thing is a bit overwhelming, with trucks and dancing girls and bowing campaign workers beside major highways and loudspeakers and crazy campaign jingles. I just hid in my room, feeling kind of moody.
I'm convinced more and more that the 하나라 party is basically a front for the reactionary Christian right, in Korea, much the way that the Republicans have gotten more and more that way in the US, abandoning their secular conservative and libertarian roots. For that reason, although I don't agree with everything the 민주 stand for, I was hoping they'd do well in the elections, mostly to register a protest against 이명박's administration, since these are local-only, mid-term elections.
I watched the election results on the TV this morning, and it was a mixed bag: 하나라 won the Seoul and Gyeonggi governorships, looks like, which are the two largest and influential constituencies that voted. But overall 민주당 seems to have done better than I was expecting. I was surprised by the number of independents who did well, too, especially in counties and towns in the southern part of the country.
Caveat: 귀여운 고양이
One of my first graders presented me with this picture the other day. How did she know I like cats? I put on the bulletin board.
Unrelatedly and randomly, here is some 김치볶음밥 that I made for myself this evening.
[this is a “back-post” added 2010-06-03]