Day: February 3, 2012

Caveat: Pea Soup

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

What’s with me and pea soup? If you look around this blog, you’d think it was the main thing I cook. It’s not. It’s just the main thing I cook and then blog about having cooked, I guess. Maybe I just really like the pea soup I make for myself?

I made pea soup last night. It’s good on cold days. It feels nutritious and healthy to eat. This time I added dill spice (because I have a lifetime supply) and carrots and celery (the things added depend in part on what I run across in the produce aisle across the street – those wacky “foreign” veggies [i.e. celery] aren’t consistently available).

My friend Seungbae called last night – one of my “Gwangju friends” whom I haven’t visited because I’m too lazy to travel to Gwangju. And it turns out he’s being transferred by his work to the south side of Jeju Island – the Korean equivalent of being transferred to… hm, maybe Bakersfield (nice climate, but backwater town). Now it’s even less likely I’ll visit him, I suppose.

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Caveat: Populists and Nationalists

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs / The Wonders of Work

We were doing an exercise in my debate class this evening, and these four mild mannered middle-school girls were turning into the most blatent populists and nationalists imaginable.

I was having them develop hypothetical presidential campaign platforms (for president of Korea, of course, although I also talked about the neverending campaign taking off in the US this year). They proposed everything from eliminating SAT tests (pandering to students) to providing free massage-chairs to everyone over 60 (pandering to the elderly). They suggested war with North Korea as well as Japan (just for old times' sake, I guess). One girl proposed building a protective dome over the country first, which I thought was clever, but it made me think of Newt Gingrich's moon colony for some reason. Another girl wanted to execute all prisoners. I said… even non-murderer criminals? Oh yes… prisons are expensive. Hmm.

Well, next week, I'll give them a chance to try to come up with rebuttals to some of these outlandish proposals. And I hope I can lead them to some degree of thoughtfulness about these  things.

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