It’s said that when you dream in a language, you’ve “learned” it. So, what does it mean when you dream in a language, wake up and immediately type the phrase into Google Translate, just to make sure you understood correctly? That’s sort of what happened this morning.
I dreamed I was talking to a child on a bus. This is rooted in reality, because when I went to Gwangju on Friday, I’d met two of my Hongnong students: two sisters in 6th and 4th grade – the younger is the girl I call “Miss Sardonica” (in my mind) because of her strange, sardonic-looking grin. But they’re good kids. I let them play games on my cell phone during the trip, because they looked bored. It’s a notable, interesting difference between Korea and the US, that it’s utterly common to run into elementary-age children traveling alone on intercity buses here, for example.
Anyway, the dream: the child in the dream wasn’t one of these two girls, but some random child – well, not completely random, he looked like one of the first-graders: a certain extremely mischievous, bright-eyed boy named Ji-hun. And he seemed a little bit lost. There was a woman giving the child a hard time, but I didn’t understand what she was saying. Asking him questions to which he evidently couldn’t offer satisfactory answers. Not his mom – she was like a bus-company employee, the kind that get on the bus to check your ticket sometimes. But then the child turned to me and asked, “돈 있죠?” (don it-jyo), and then I woke up. It wasn’t a very complicated dream. Just a dream fragment, really. But it felt significant, because it had ended with a seemingly contextless question, spoken in Korean, that I felt I’d understood. It felt like a triumphant moment.
I had fallen asleep with the air conditioner on, which normally I avoid because it gives me a sore throat (not to mention it seems an unnatural and expensive way to sleep), so my little apartment was chilly. I looked out the window, and the sun was bright. Sky was blue.
I looked at my cell phone, to see what time it was, but it was turned off. Maybe some spam-text-message had inspired me to turn it off, the night before. Sometimes, I wake up and have no idea what time it is, I will try to guess. I looked out the window, noted the angle of sun’s shadows down on the gas station in front of my apartment building, noted the shade of blue of the sky, and said to myself, “hmm, 7:00… no, 6:50.” A little game I play with myself, right? I turned on my computer, and the clock read 6:53. I felt impressed with myself, at that moment.
But suddenly I felt very insecure about whether I’d understood the Korean from the end of the dream. So I opened up google translate and typed in the phrase, “돈 있죠?”
“Got money?” the google-monster muttered back at me, textually.
Yes, I’d understood. But now it struck me: what the hell did it mean? I mean, in the dream-interpretation sense… Why was this kid asking me if I had money?
I made some instant coffee and had toast for breakfast. Good morning.
Month: August 2010
Caveat: Chrome. Caveat: Vaio.
Unlike most of my "caveat"'s, these are "real" and not just a convention of this blog. Which is to say, I am developing some disgruntlement with respect to Google's Chrome browser. And I've got one last chapter to provide to the long saga of my disgruntlement with Sony Vaio.
I have been a major user of Google Docs – it's where I do most of my writing, these days. I like that my writing is out there in the cloud, because it feels safer than having my writing confined to a local harddrive. You see, I lost well over 300 pages of writing, including two novels-in-progress that I was actually rather happy with, in 1998, to a harddrive crisis. Since then, I have been meticulous about back-ups, but I also like to put my active works out in the cloud, since that way I can work on them and get to them whenever I have internet access, and regardless of from what computer I happen to be on (for e.g. when that laptops dies – see a few paragraphs below).
And as time has gone by, I've been using Chrome more and more, on the assumption that it would be the easiest and best environment to work with Google Docs – same company making both, and all that. This was a bad assumption. For the third time in less than a month, this morning, I had Google Docs "hang" and lose written material for me. I've NEVER had this happen in either Firefox or Internet Explorer. So I guess Google Chrome can't handle Google Docs. Which is downright weird. But… whatever. Fortunately there are lots of choices in the browser market, these days.
In other, related, Jared-rants-about-tech news, my old laptop died last night. It had been a long, slow, dying. That's why I had bought a new laptop (netbook, actually) before coming back to Korea in January – I knew the thing was sickly, with random crashes, and occasional boot failures.
It's been suffering from a decaying harddrive problem of some kind – corrupt and inaccessible sectors on the C: drive. I can still get it to boot into the Windows Server 2003 that I hacked onto it, and although that will be useful if I find there's any data I need to recover, it won't be very practical, as I never was able to find a Win Server 2003 driver set for the video card on that laptop, which means I get a very crappy, lo-res screen when I'm using Win Server, on that box. I only ever booted to the server if I was doing programming, which I basically don't do anymore. And the Ubuntu Linux OS I'd installed seems unbootable, too, although I may be able to rescue that by re-installing.
As an end-of-life review, I only have this to say: I will never buy another Sony Vaio. It was a universe of problems and issues during its entire life, from the memorable August day 3 years ago when I bought it. That one laptop destroyed almost a decade of built-up brand loyalty I'd had toward Sony. So… good riddance.
Still… I'll miss the high-speed video card (even though it sometimes would crash the box by overheating) – this netbook can't come close to competing, with its slow video card and small screen. I suppose I was playing too many games on that box, anyway.
Caveat: Des Moines, SK? Paris, SK; Washington, SK.
When I first got to Gwangju, in April, I was inclined to describe it as the "Des Moines" of South Korea. But having lived in glorious, hillbilliac Yeonggwang for the last 4 months, and returning there to spend the afternoon today, I thought, "jeez, it's like coming to Paris."
I hung out in a cafe (Yeonggwang doesn't really have cafes). I had a scone. I bought some real "imported from US" cheese (for about a dollar an ounce), took it home, and now I'm watching NCIS and eating cheese and crackers. Call it a break from Korea.
After one week of teaching summer classes, here are my thoughts on the curriculum I developed and rolled out for myself.
For first grade: medium-to-OK; about what I expected; it could be more organized, but those first graders are hard to manage, especially on my own, so I figure it could be worse; the best material is when I have them moving around playing (role-playing, vaguely), acting out story-lines from stories we've been reading.
For third grade: not going well; they were really into the role-play last month, but I think I got too serious about it, and showing them videos (i.e. Spongebob) to give them ideas actually distracts them and they lose their focus; I'm going to have to rethink, and change something.
For sixth grade: I've never had a more successful self-developed curriculum! They love it; they come in early and demand that we start immediately, and they refuse to leave the class after the time is up; mwahahaha – I win ^_^. They've named our simulation bulletin-board town: Washington, SK (cf. Washington, DC, I guess, but in South Korea).
Caveat: Kafka the English Teacher in Korea
I'm certain they told me that I was teaching a special gifted student English class at the county education office on Thursdays, starting the first week in August. Of course, that was back at the beginning of July. I said "OK," marked it on my calendar, and nothing more was said about it. Nothing. Nobody told me what time, where, what students, what materials were expected. I figured, well, that's just the Korean communication taboo, kicking in.
Being the somewhat responsible person that I try to be, I researched the when and where by asking a coworker who had been doing these classes before, and showed up at the education office building in Yeonggwang yesterday at 4:45, expecting to teach some kids at 5 pm. But they didn't know who I was. Finally, with my broken Korean, I managed to understand that "oh, that gifted program is on vacation at the moment." They told me to come back the last week in August.
Maybe I misunderstood the original request to do this – but I really don't think so. It's just another example of how information most definitely does not work its way down hierarchies, here.
I don't really feel that upset about it. But it's interesting, to me. So I thought I'd document the experience.
As I was walking back to my apartment afterward, I had a sort of insight: information doesn't move down hierarchies reliably because it's always the responsibility of those farther down to find stuff out – the higher-ups are never wrong, by definition, so, in my case for example, I now owe an apology to my higher-ups for having misunderstood (or for having failed to confirm) the original request. I remember my first hagwon boss's line: "but you never asked." As an employee in Korea, it is always one's responsibility to ask.
Caveat: I hate the new google news
Google recently revamped the way that their news website is organized. As an admitted news junkie, this is something I've had to deal with, as I go there several times a day to see "what's happening." And let me be very clear.
I hate the new google news format. What's funny is that I found I'm not alone in this feeling, because I went to google and typed into the search engine "i hate the new…" and the little suggestions popped up, and right at the top was "i hate the new google news." So other people went and did the same thing I did.
Actually, some things about the new design are good ideas. One thing that I really like is the way it grabs my IP address and offers a section with "local" news – finding interesting news about southwest Korea in English is challenging, and that really helps.
But overall, the new design is a problem, and it boils down to one issue: real estate. By this, I don't mean anything about buying and selling land; I'm referring to how it uses screen space. At home, I mostly use my little netbook computer to surf online, and the screen is small. As a consequence, because the center column of entries is now "fleshed out" with more info about each story, only 1 and 1/2 story fits "above the fold" on my screen – I have to scroll to see more stories. And the convenient little index thing on the left now is two or even three screens long, whereas before it fit easily "above the fold." Using the nasty track-pad for scrolling on my netbook isn't fun – there's no handy scrolling wheel like on most newer mice.
And as always when programmers make changes, the keyboard shortcuts receive short shrift, are inconsistent from version to version (both of browsers and/or of specific websites, that also like to override default browser behavior, which itself is brutally annoying, by the way) and zero documentation support.
The expansions in real estate usage are even noticeable on the large screens of the computers at work.
Relatedly, I don't like the "fast flip" in the right hand column, either. Not that it's a bad idea, but it takes up way too much space relative to the possible benefit offered – it's still too small to read the content shown "right there" and so, like most thumbnailing features, I'd be inclined to turn it off, if I could. I've never found thumbnails to be particularly useful as a feature in any computer desktop context, as the images are too small to see directly and therefore serve no purpose except as a memory prompt for the semi-literate – but why would someone only semi-literate want to surf the google news site? I'd be perfectly happy to have no images at all, to be honest.
I would guess that there are ways to get back to more closely approximating the old format, using the news customization features – but because I don't allow google to store cookies or do site customization on my computer or in association with my login ID, that's ruled out. I don't allow the google customization not just due to privacy concerns, but also because it seems to make which of the news articles that get prioritized kind of strange – they become incomprehensibly driven by recent searches (which given my line of work and wide ranging imagination, aren't exactly current-events-driven) – these "recent search" driven news items are exactly what I don't want when surfing for general recent world news.
Caveat: ♥왜젤왯
I found an extra car attached to my bulletin-board construction-paper town. It said “♥왜젤왯” – which tranliterates as “wae-jer-waet” – I think it’s an effort on the part of the student to write my name in hangeul, which I sometimes jokingly transliterate as “왜제렛” [wae-je-ret]. If that’s the case, it’s a sweet tribute.
Caveat: Can you play Sim City using construction paper and scissors?
Yes.
I’ve started a project to build a “town” with my 6th grade class. There are turns, they buy and sell property, start businesses, etc. A classroom economy.
Here are 3 shots of the first 2 days of the town. See how it’s growing, already? Hmm… I hope this works out – the kids (admittedly a small group) seem really into it – more than I even had expected. But they could lose interest. We will see.
I’m really proud of the traffic circle I made.
Caveat: Summer School
The school is a mess – a construction zone. Most of the teachers and, more happily, the administrators, are missing-in-action (they get longer vacations, because they’re “real” teachers, unlike the foreigner types). But I’m teaching “summer camp” classes. They’re awesome. No coteacher to have to work with or around or behind. I get to make up my own curriculum. And I know the kids already, so I already have some rapport.
I took some “class portraits” today, because I really want to make a serious effort to learn these kids’ names. Korean names are so difficult to learn, but except for the first graders I mostly have them down. So now I have pictures of them to study and to match up to names, as practice.
Here is my number-one super favoritest class – the 3rd graders.
And here are the first graders, behaving better than usual.
