Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: 황사

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

황사 (hwang-sa = yellow sand) is what they call the springtime storms of dust that roll in from the Chinese desert far to the west. Korea’s always had these… but in recent years, because of Chinese industrial pollutants and deforestation in China and Mongolia, they’ve become more severe and much more of a health and environmental hazard.

Yesterday was heavily grey, overcast but with a vaguely brownish-yellow tinge. It’s hard to capture on film, but here’s a picture I took, out wandering about randomly in Seoul – note that it’s about 3 in the afternoon – hardly sunsettime – but weirdly dark. Today is blue and clear. Huge contrast.
picture
picture

Caveat: Hazard

Banalities & Journaling

It might be obvious to some, who know me well and can “read between the lines” – I’m not doing well, lately. I’m frustrated and depressed on multiple fronts. Foremost, the Korean language acquisition efforts aren’t feeling successful. Next, the job front is dispiriting: the latest affront has been the fact that the recruiter who offered me a job in Jeollanam Province has completely ignored me since I responded with an acceptance. It looked like a “firm” offer and that it was just a matter of paperwork. But… nothing. For over a week. I even called the office, which is in Canada, and only got a “oh, he’s out of the office at the moment.” I don’t know what’s going on. And such blatant unprofessionalism merits a firm but depressing response on my part, which is to say: “nevermind, thankyouverymuch.” And, it’s time to find a new recruiter. Again. Lastly… well, lastly, I’m just feeling generally gloomy, uncreative, aimless, lonely, old.

I really shouldn’t even be complaining. My life isn’t so bad. 그냥…
picture

Caveat: Things Only Seen, Unthought

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream / My Drawings & Paintings / My Photos

Sometimes when I go to put something in my blog, I open my little black notebook… and whatever’s there on the pages doesn’t translate to blogland very well. Early today is a good example. So, just to be different, I decided to take a picture of the notebook’s pages, instead.  Here it is.
picture

And here is where I was sitting – looking out a cafe window at a Gangnam street. Note the fresh snow (a few cm) melting in the bright morning sun.
picture
picture

Caveat: Weird, weird music

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

So, my chinese-tea-making acquaintance in Suwon has 2 children. The older child, Bong-jun, is 13 years old. There was a picture of the two siblings, along with two history-re-enactors (who are not acquaintances) and me, in one of my blog posts from about 2 weeks ago.

Anyway, Bong-jun has a blog. And he’s got a very weird video on it [UPDATE 2022-10-04: sadly the link rotted away long ago, there’s no video there], which I can’t figure out how to embed directly, here, but I suggest you go have a look. I’m not sure the video will work for you, if you’re looking outside of Korea, since it’s hosted on a Korean website, but it’s pretty interesting. The video shows some computer-generated / computer-played music, which is strangely fascinating to me – because it’s so evidently something that would never have been composed, I suppose, without computers.

If I can figure out how to embed it, later on, I’ll drop a copy of it here.
picture

Caveat: 고스톱

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

pictureI’ve been trying to learn how to play a game called 고스톱 (go-seu-top = “go-stop”), which is played with a deck of cards called 화투 (hwa-tu = “flower cards”) – see picture. It’s a very complicated “go fish” type of game that holds a status similar to poker in South Korea, often connected to themes of family togetherness or gambling-among-friends.

There’re several places online to find the rules in English, which is good because just watching the game, and even having it explained by someone as they play in moderately good English, is pretty incomprehensible. The best thorough description of the rules that I’ve found is at galbijim, a website devoted to explaining Korea to “expats.”

I don’t go there often, as I generally avoid the “expat” community, especially the online expat community. Collectively, they seem too negative about so much of Korea. I’m perfectly capable of feeling negative on my own (see previous several posts!). So… I hardly need the encouragement and influence of thousands of disgruntled foreigners. But anyway, galbijim’s explication of the game is pretty thorough.

If anyone’s interested, I’m sure it’s probably possible to buy hwa-tu cards in any Korean-owned grocery or convenience store on the planet. The Japanese use a version of the cards called hanafuda (which represents the same Chinese characters – 花鬪, in Japanese, as hwa-tu does in Korean) to play a game called Koi-koi.
picture

Caveat: More neverminding

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Normally, I try to change themes with each new post. But this racism thing seems to have opened a can of worms – not so much among others, as in my own mind – although I’ve received some feedback, too.  

My friend Christine wrote a long comment in an email to me, which she sent to me right as I was posting my first “nevermind” (previous post). She said things that surprisingly matched what I wrote in that post, but one thing she said that I didn’t address stands out.  I will quote the relevant paragraph:

I would never defend racism, especially after my own experiences with them. But honestly, after all the racial slurs / comments I’ve heard in America towards non-whites (and many directed at me), I don’t feel like Koreans’ racist views are all that unique, only disturbing in how comfortable they are in them. But you know…if you want to see things as cause and effect rather than good or bad, Korea’s own idea of race will probably change as they become economically wealthier, better known globally, thus inadvertently attracting other races to move to Korea. 

I think this is a very important perspective, and it’s surprising to me that I didn’t include some mention of this before, in either my original post or in my subsequent apology. Surprising to me, because, in fact, I’ve talked about this idea very often with friends (probably with Christine, more than once, last year): Korea is changing rapidly, including in its attitudes about race. I’ve said before that actually, I believe Korea may be better positioned, culturally, to become a country that welcomes immigrants than any of its neighbors, e.g. especially Japan or Taiwan, which are the countries it most resembles socio-economically at this point.

And if Korea is going to be welcoming immigrants, that implies strongly that it’s going to be dealing with its blatant racists in some way or another… much as Europe has been struggling, not to mention the U.S., over its long historical cycles of immigrant-welcoming and immigrant-bashing.

What I most want to make clear is that even in my anger, in my original post, I realized that the racists in Korea are not the majority. And my conclusion, now, is that they’re really no more numerous than in other places. They’re only more visible, because of the lack of social constraint on the open expression of such ideas.

Perhaps the same analysis could be applied to one of my other personal conflicts with Korean culture: ageism. This is one which negatively affects me much more directly than the issue of racism (which, given the bias toward people of northern European descent, actually favors me, in a majorly guilt-inducing way – see also the “charisma man” phenomenon, from Japan). I wonder if, like what I’m saying about racism, Koreans are only more open about age-related biases that, in fact, exist within and across most world-cultures, these days: the youth-worship, the superficial-beauty-cult (with respect to both woman and men), etc.

These tendencies are deeply embedded in the output of the world media machine(s) (i.e. Hollywood) , which Koreans happily consume, just like Americans. If anything, we should be looking for the origins of Koreans’ worship of youth, superficial beauty, as well as their preference for pale skin and blue eyes, not in Korean culture, but in the Western paradigms they’re avidly consuming.

More later.

picture

Caveat: Nevermind about the rant

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Well, somewhat. In my previous post from earlier today, I was angry, and so I ranted about Korean racism. Riding the bus back to Suwon, I had an insight: maybe Koreans are no more racist than Americans. Which is to say, I would guess that there are probably just as many racist Americans as a percentage of total population as there are racist Koreans. Not a majority, but probably a scarily large subset of the total population.

The difference is more subtle. Americans who happen to be racist are raised, nearly from birth, to be circumspect about their racist attitudes. They come to understand that there are real consequences for openly expressing their feelings, from ridicule to lawsuits to criminal prosecution. So they learn to be circumspect. Koreans, who live in a largely homogeneous culture, have little reason to be circumspect about such attitudes. “Good” race or “bad” race, it’s all the same, mostly: just a bunch of foreigners – so openly expressing one’s positive or negative opinions about them is no big deal. So racist Americans are stealth-racists, while racist Koreans are in-your-face racists. Maybe there’s actually something positive in that, as there is in any kind of transparency. Certainly, at the least, it’s clear whom to avoid.

That doesn’t change my feeling that it bothers me. A lot. But I need to be careful about what I allow to annoy me about Korean culture, lest I fall into a trap of hypocrisy. So… nevermind about the rant – at least on the charge of racism. The other comments can stand, for now. But I’m over being mad about it, I think. Sorry.
picture

Caveat: Language is not the same as culture (thankfully)

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Passive-Aggressive Lunatic Ravings / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

This is one instance where the “caveat,” above, is “real” – I really mean that as a caveat to what I am about to say.

I have been feeling a bit annoyed with some aspects of contemporary South Korean culture, lately. The issue that came up yesterday was perhaps just a “final straw” that pushed me into outright anger. Many Koreans are unabashedly racist. This is not the same as the mild xenophobia that I often comment on.  Korean xenophobia is something that is both historically understandable given their repeated subjugation over the centuries to the Chinese, Mongols or Japanese, as well as being something that I would characterize as essentially more naive and reflexive rather than somehow premeditated or unethical.

But many Koreans also have openly racist attitudes, which are more complex than simple xenophobia, because there are hierarchies of “good” and “bad” races. I see these as having been “imported” at some point from both Japan and the West, and more specifically, from 1930’s Japan and 1950’s America – which were the “occupiers” at those specific times. Pale Europeans, whether from Europe or North America, are near the top of the hierarchy. Koreans and Japanese are, too – although since the Japanese are the “enemy,” they get disqualified from Korean respect for different, non-racist reasons… if that makes any sense. More like a hated sibling. But to be a non-European, non-East Asian in Korea must be utter hell. That’s my speculation.

Um… I’m being disorganized, here. I’m ranting. Yesterday, talking about student exchange programs with a Korean, he mentioned something about the difficulty of placing minority American kids with Korean host families. And something like, “hopefully we can convey this sensitive issue to the Americans.”

I thought about this a bit, and felt only outrage. Why should Americans bear the responsibility for accommodating Korean racism? If Koreans want to participate in a student exchange program, it should be their sole responsibility to cope with making sure their attitudes can accommodate any possible American. That’s the only possibility that looks ethical, from my point of view.

OK. Back to the “caveat.”

I have always felt a great deal of ambivalence about some aspects of Korean culture. There’s the low-grade disrespect for rule-of-law: the never-ending stream of offers for illegal employment being just my own personal brush with this phenomenon. There’s the xenophobia, already mentioned.  There are the in-group / out-group distinctions, which can sometimes make one feel that one is living in a country inhabited exclusively by people suffering from a mild form of autism.

Then there’s the ageism. Ostensibly, Korea is a culture that honors elders. But there’s a caveat there: elders are only honored as long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to – they need to be fulfilling age-appropriate roles. Thus, I have actually been refused two interviews for teaching jobs, solely because of my age, and I was openly told that that was the reason – it’s not illegal, here, to discriminate because of someone’s age.

My love affair (if you want to call it that)… my interest… my focus… has always been an unabiding fascination for the Korean language. Unless you’re some kind of unreformed Whorfian, you will understand that culture and language aren’t the same thing.

So, I reserve my right to love the Korean language, and nevertheless harbor serious misgivings about parts of Korean culture. Which isn’t to say there aren’t parts I like, also. The food is incredible. The entrepreneurial spirit is stunning – though often repressed by the neo-confucians in the bureaucracy. The genuine generosity and kindness of most individual Koreans is undeniable.

I feel thankful that language and culture are not, in fact, the same. Otherwise, I’d feel compelled to leave, just at the moment.

Well… that is a really poorly-structured rant. But… such as it is. More later.
picture

Caveat: Chasing Rhiannon

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / My Photos

Having applied for another job last week, I’m now once again in that really difficult position of waiting for the next thing to happen. This is not something I do well. Yesterday, for that and whatever other reason, I felt very gloomy and sad.

I took a long walk, and I was thinking a lot about Welsh mythology: specifically, that business with Rhiannon on her horse, luring Pwyll to the underworld. Why does that particular story always haunt me? Aside from the fact that it was only text I ever got to the actual point of reading (with dictionary obsessively in hand), in Welsh. Maybe it’s the parallelism of living “dictionary in hand” as I am now (with Korean), that made me think of that.

I had awoken from a really unpleasant dream, yesterday morning, which had a symbolism that was pretty transparent. I dreamed that…

…I found a suitcase in my room (since I’m effectively living out of my suitcases, currently, it’s not that strange) and when I opened it, it was full of Michelle’s clothes.  And further, there was blood all over the clothing.   I pulled the bloody dresses and skirts and shirts out onto the floor and just stared at it, inside the dream.

So: I see that I’m dealing with my old baggage; I’m digging out my dirty laundry.  With symbolism as easy as that, who needs Jung?

Friday, I had gone out to Ilsan to pick up reference letters that my former bosses Curt and Sun had written for me. Sun’s letter was surprisingly glowing – it was good for my ego. Curt was a bit lazy, and said, “what do you want me to write?” and I felt strange, like he was asking me to compose my own reference letter.  But now I have two good reference letters.

Before picking up the reference letters on Friday, I had had lunch with my friend Peter. He and I found this pretty nice restaurant on the second level of WesternDom (the big mall between Jeongbalsan and Madu stations) where I had some 해신칼국수 (seafood with homemade noodles) that was delicious.

Someone complained to me, a while back, that I don’t put many pictures of myself in my blog. I’m not good at that, that’s true. So, here is a picture that Peter took of me, getting ready to eat a very small, whole, slightly purple octopus that I found in my soup. Note that I dressed up in a tie on Friday because I wanted to be “prepared” in case I got a call-back from this job I’m trying to get. Plus, sometimes I do that, because feeling professional helps me feel more self-confident.

picture

picture

Caveat: 1000th post

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging

According to my blog host’s administration page (on typepad.com), this is my 1000th blog post.

So it’s a kind of a little anniversary – of a serial, enumerative sort. I started this blog in August of 2004, when I was still working for ARAMARK corporation in Burbank (which I used to call, pseudonymously, Paradise Corporation, to avoid offending anyone, but I don’t think I need to worry about that much, anymore).

Actually, this blog has worked out almost exactly the way I intended and hoped.

It got a slow start – I missed many months at a time, more than once, and even a whole year (in the 2005-2006 range). But once I came to Korea, in September, 2007, I began posting quite regularly, and starting last year, I  began a commitment to post at least once a day, which I’ve kept, although a few times I’ve had to “cheat” and do a “back-post” from a later time.

Once I accepted that I might do “back-posts,” I began to consider the possibility that I could “back-post” my entire life – I have huge quantities of journal-type writing that I contemplate eventually adding here – but to date, I’ve only made exactly 2 “historical” posts, both for my birth year of 1965. 

I had envisioned this blog as means to achieve three primary goals: 

1) I wanted a means to overcome my perpetual writer’s block

2) I wanted a way to more easily communicate with my far-flung family and friends, since I’ve always been so negligent in writing letters or email

3) I felt that my expressing myself in so public a forum, I could in essence use the blog as a tool to look at myself more realistically, with a lesser degree of self-deceptiveness – it’s hard to continue deceiving yourself when you’ve decided to live “live” in front of others

I have achieved all of these goals far beyond my original expectations. I know that this blog is often banal, frequently self-indulgent, mostly chaotic. But for all that, it’s serving its purposes excellently. I had no interest in making something that would get lots of “hits” or become popular – I’m writing this, first and foremost, for myself, with the added benefit that those who are interested can “watch me,” too.

If I study who’s looking at this blog (using the administrative tools provided by typepad or by feedjit), I know that I rarely get more than one or two page views per day from “strangers” – but I’ve discovered that, for example, that the single most common way that strangers “discover” my blog is by googling: “뭥미 meaning english”.

To me, this is funny, but it also points up a 4th possible goal, to add to the above 3:  I can use this blog provide some unique or useful information to random people in the world – in the case mentioned, I seem to be the major online resource for people who are trying to figure out what the Korean slang term “뭥미” means in English (it seems to mean “what the…!”, normally said in a kind of tone of disgust or annoyance). I feel so proud. 

Now that I’ve got the blog consistently (mostly) cross-posting to facebook, that’s added some to its functionality. To those who find it annoying to have to come “outside” of facebook to “visit” me, I apologize – but I have too many friends or family who are not interested in adopting facebook, and so I need to stay outside of that convenient but tightly-walled garden.

If I follow my intention, I think the “next 1000” will come more quickly, as I genuinely intend to pursue my plan to “back-post” at least some of my pre-blog writing – I’ve even brought along some major chunks of it (electronically and in the form of paper journals) to Korea, with this plan in mind. 

Anyway, to my few but beloved readers – friends and family – thank you. Thank you for tolerating this rather droll effort to stay in touch. Thank you for being my friends, too! I have been so very lucky in my life, to have the kinds of friends and family that I have. Take care… 

~jared
picture

Caveat: 꿈도꾸지마

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

“꿈도꾸지마” means “stop dreaming” – it’s a negative command form.  It was cool to hear this on TV only a few days after having managed to finally acquire the relevant grammar and vocabulary.  Mostly I learn things and I’m left wondering, when do they really use that? … or else I hear things and I wonder, when am I going to learn about that?  
I’m frustrated with my current Korean teacher, still.  She seems less pedagogically able than the one I had last month.  The insight I had last night:  the one I had last month always dedicated a minimum 10~20 minutes in each class talking with each of us in the class about our lives.  Where we lived, what we were doing, etc., in Korean.  And often, successfully using whatever vocabulary or grammar items we were currently learning.  Whereas my current teacher always only follows the lesson, which at best represents fictional situations or roleplays and more often is just rote substitutions of various kinds.  
It’s so much easier to learn a new bit of language when you’re using it for something relevant to your life.

Caveat: ∃@*$

Banalities & Journaling

I carry around my little black book, which is kind of like a private version of my blog, combined with a place to write down names, or addresses, or vocabulary, or other things I want to remember. In my black book for the other day, I found written: “∃@*$”

I have a long history of inventing weird ways to symbolize and abbreviate things. I can go back and find pages of utterly incoherent codes and abbreviations in my old college notes, for example. But I figured out what the above meant: “I am at starbucks.”

The first symbol is probably the obscurest – it’s what’s called the “existential quantifier,” and is used in mathematical logic, higher-order mathematical proofs, and some types of formal semantics. So that symbol means “I am.” Really, I mean it in the locative as opposed to existential sense, though, which isn’t really right. But the “@” makes it clear that’s what I mean.

The asterisk is fairly clear: it’s a “star,” in computer-people-slang. And the dollar sign means “bucks” of course.

What was I writing about being in Starbucks? I was being weirded out about hearing Joan Baez on the soundtrack (all Starbucks play the same music – no concessions to locale on that playing field) while sitting in Korea. Why was I sitting in a Starbucks? Call it an indulgent and somewhat embarrassing habit.
picture

Caveat: 시티홀

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

I’ve been watching a drama called 시티홀 (The City Hall, from 2009 – although the hangeul could more justifiably be said to represent the English phrase “shitty hole,” from a pronunciation standpoint, which I think is kind of funny, although not really relevant).

Actually, I like this drama – it addresses South Korean politics, which, at least up until now in my personal experience of Korean dramas was an off-limits topic. And as a parody/commentary, it’s got some strengths. I’d say that in some ways, it seems a little darker, and more cleverly self-referential, than the others I’ve been looking at recently. I definitely recommend it, if you want an entertaining and fairly light look at the rampant cronyism and corruption that seems to prevail in South Korean politics.
picture

Caveat: (re-)making history

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

Korea has a lot of history. And contemporary Korea loves exploring, studying and re-enacting their history. Just take a look at the sorts of dramas popular on TV, for example – there’re always several historical dramas running. Those aren’t the sort I enjoy, mostly because the language is stilted and harder to understand (which makes sense, since they’re trying to capture the more formal Korean of centuries past). Also, I don’t always think those sorts of dramas are particularly faithful to the historical “facts.” But anyway…

Yesterday I went with some of my Suwon friends to see some re-enactors at the Hwaseong palace. These were guys with swords and pikes and other things, doing martial arts displays of various kinds. Half choreography, half hapkido / geondo (= japanese kendo), etc. Here are some pictures.

In the first two, the guy was using a big pikelike-thing to hack up some bundles of straw. The last picture is me with some re-enactors, along with two kids I’ve gotten to know, who are the Chinese tea-maker’s children: a brother and sister named Dong-jun and Dong-hui (it’s very common for siblings to share a syllable that way, in their name).

picture
picture
picture
picture

Caveat: 다시 차를 마셨어요.

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I went with Mr Choi again to meet his tea-making friend, and provide some informal English practice to him and his acquaintances and various children, too.  And then we went out for “Chinese.”  Going out for Chinese food in Korea is a bit like going out to Chinese in the U.S., in the sense that what you end up eating isn’t actually Chinese cuisine, but rather an American interpretation of Chinese cuisine.  So it’s basically a special type of Korean food, that they conventionally call “Chinese.”
It was interesting, and maybe helped to keep my mind off my frustrations with learning, at least while it was happening.  Afterward, of course, I could nothing but meditate on how ineffective and stupid my various efforts at using the language were.
It’s obvious I’m feeling very frustrated, lately.  This is, from a language-learning standpoint, entirely to-be-expected.  But knowing that it’s part of the process doesn’t make it any more pleasant.  And my feelings of discouragement tend to rebound against other aspects of my life:  feeling like I should be trying harder to find a job; feeling like I should be working on other things, like my writing; feeling lonely.
Of course, there’s the approaching solstice.  I always feel like I have some weird seasonal-affective thing going on, around solstices.  My mood starts to seem very volatile and shifts around.  Not sure what that means, either.

Caveat: Pop Architecture

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

Modern Korean pop architecture is fun to look at sometimes. I think any country where there is a strong capitalist, advertising-driven culture, you will find architecture that is kitschy, often tasteless, over-the-top, etc. Some of the more interesting buildings tend to be the ubiquitous “wedding halls” as well as churches. Here are some pictures I’ve taken recently.

picture

picture

picture

picture

Caveat: 전 오늘 절망한 기분이에요.

Banalities & Journaling / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I’m feeling very discouraged.  I can’t seem to understand anything my new teacher says.  Partly, it’s my “level-up” that I’ve just done, skipping a level.  Mostly, though, it’s because she’s got a different teaching style that I simply haven’t figured out yet – I can understand whatever grammar point / vocabulary we’re covering at any given moment fairly well, but I find her “meta-instruction” (i.e. what she expects us to be doing, her instructions to us, her explanations) incoherent.  I’m just not used to it, maybe.
Anway.  Sigh.

Caveat: Parachute

Banalities & Journaling / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I was recently exposed to the term "낙하산 인사" (nak-ha-san in-sa) in one of the dramas I've been watching.  Literally it means "parachute personnel managment," roughly, but it refers to the way that Korean business and government organizations will "drop" someone into a given department or branch office from "above" (somewhere up the hierarchy) for either political or nepotistic reasons.

Anyway, I used the word "낙하산" (parachute) yesterday in class, to describe my situation.  The teacher laughed, so I must have used the word more-or-less appropriately.  What situation?  Well, I moved up a level in my Korean Language class, but found out yesterday that, because I was the only one enrolled at that level, that my class was cancelled for the term.  My instant solution?  I asked the hagwon manager (in English – my Korean's hardly that good, yet) if I could just jump up to the next level.  I'd have to work hard, obviously.  But she said, sure, give it a try – she hardly wants to lose a paying customer, right?

Actually, this may be a great development.  It will push me extra hard in my learning efforts, because now I have 16 chapters worth of grammar and vocab that I need to "catch up" on.  It will push me hard, preventing me from taking this "full-time-student" thing in too leisurely a way.

I have an ambition to put together a special web page that will be an index of Korean "endings."  I may have mentioned or undertaken this before, but without much success.   One of the difficulties with Korean is that given its highly agglutinative (this is the formal linguistic term) nature, it has a plethora of endings, for nouns and especially for verbs.  I even found a verb ending in my reference grammar that allegedly exists for the sole purpose of talking to oneself!  [-{ㄴ/는}담 … I have no idea how widely used this is, but the fact it's mentioned in a reference grammar highlights some of the fascinating aspects of the language.]

The problem, of course, is that it's hard to look up endings.  The online and cellphone based dictionaries I use are useless for this task.  If I put all the endings into a document or webpage, and ensure that it's consistently formatted and laid out, it will be easily searchable through the use of the simple "find" function, and I can look up endings.  And the fact of making it might help me remember things better, too.

The drawback is that, in fact, endings are not my particular area of difficulty.  I know far more, already, than I "should" given my level, at least from a recognition standpoint.  Grammar, in general, has always come easily for me.  My weakness is vocabulary.  So maybe this "endings" project is just my special way of procrastinating on what is, for me, the painful part.

Caveat: 89

Banalities & Journaling / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

Because I’m continuing at my Korean Language hagwon, I took an end-of-level test today. There were listening, speaking, and grammar/reading sections. My overall score was 89.

That’s not bad, I guess. I was surprised that my lowest score was on the grammar/reading part, since that’s really my strength, but I had made some careless mistakes, on the one hand, while on the listening section, which was the hardest, the teacher gave all the dialogs and questions twice, which may have been stretching the intent of the test, a bit, making it easier, so that my score on that part was 94.

What else can I do to get more out of my language study? I need to spend more time reviewing and memorizing vocabulary. I have some excellent tools that I’m not making much use of, for example that Rosetta Stone software, as well as the spreadsheets I’m maintaining with list of words I’ve looked up. I could stand to spend more time with each of those.

I had a weird conversation with a short-term guest at my guesthouse, the other night. He was Australian. I told him I was studying Korean, and his comment kind of sums up some preconceptions and prejudices that exist out there, with respect to my endeavor. He said (roughly), “Wow, I never met someone studying Korean before who didn’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend helping them.” I just laughed. I had no comeback, at the moment, but I thought later, I should have said, “Yeh, I guess so. I’m in love with the language, directly, instead. It’s a frustrating relationship.”

I have so far to go. Will I become tired of it, at some point? Will I become disillusioned, over time, as the difficulty of this “relationship” emerges in all its permutations and complexities? I have been infatuated with the Korean Language since we did a unit on Korean in my undergrad syntax class at the University of Minnesota in 1988. But I didn’t really pursue that infatuation, for a very long time. Then, a little over 3 years ago, as I was shopping around for “what to do next with my life,” once I’d decided to quit the computer thing, I decided: “Find your passion, and chase it down.”

Then, over the following two years, I became side-tracked by the sheer volume of work related to teaching (or trying to teach) English to kids. And that was VERY rewarding. No denying that. It taught me new things about myself, and gave me new tools to cope with life’s challenges. But I didn’t pursue this passion, this linguistic avocation, very aggressively. I dropped the ball. Now, I’m trying to pick it up again.

When I was really trying to learn Spanish, first starting out, in 1986, living and working in Mexico City, I remember many times thinking, “wow, this is exhausting!” Learning Spanish, trying to become essentially fluent, is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Harder than basic training in the Army. Harder than grad school (although that was, in fact, part of learning Spanish, too, at a much more advanced level). Maybe even harder than that messy fall of 1998, when things fell apart with Michelle and I had to make the difficult decision that existing in the world was worthwhile.

And now, I’m trying again. I will learn Korean. Because if I succeed, it will be such a magical, amazing accomplishment. Unconventional, and, in the greater, grander scheme of things, pointless… yet, for all that, utterly worth doing.

There, I’ve laid my cards on the table. I always feel uncomfortable declaring goals, for fear that when/if I fail to achieve them, I have to then bear the secondary humiliation of everyone knowing that I’ve failed. But… by declaring my goals, I am also giving myself extra motivation, extra impetus.

So, friends… hold me to it. If I stumble, or pause, or fall down, or wander off in frustration or distraction, please gently remind me: “Jared, what about your goal? How are you doing with the Korean?”
picture

Caveat: Have you ever peed in a soccer ball?

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

I know that’s a strange title to a blog post, but I couldn’t resist.   I was taking a long walk the other day, and saw Suwon’s “World Cup Stadium” out on the east side of town.   There’s a park around the stadium, and in the park, there are soccer-ball-themed public restrooms.  I just had to make use of the facilities, just to be able to say I’d done it.

Here are pictures – you can see the boy-girl icon on the giant soccer ball, that tells you there are public restrooms inside.
picture

Here’s a view of the stadium from a pedestrian overpass.
picture

Below is a picture of the northeast gate of the Suwon city walls – where they’ve punched a hole under the wall for (or reconstructed it over) a major street.

picture

picture

Caveat: Gazes of Incomprehension

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I'm just feeling very frustrated about my progress with Korean.  I feel like no matter what I do, I can't seem to remember essential vocabulary.  And I say the same things, over and over, to clerks in convenience stores or to the manager at the guesthouse, and I'm never understood.

Gazes of incomprehension.

And people say things I should understand, and I just stare, with the thought, I should be understanding this, but I can't.  I dream in Korean, sometimes, but it's always that specific type of Korean that I can't understand at all… it's just dreaming in confusing babble.  So dreaming in a language isn't a guarantee of progress, after all.

At moments like this, my resolve to stay and try to learn this language wavers dangerously, and I think, oh, hell, I'll just go back to the US and do something else.  I feel intimidated by the job search, depressed by my lack of progress in the language, unimpressed with my lack of diligence in the tasks that I set for myself.   I'm feeling too old, insufficiently competent.

OK… so here I am, venting my despondency in this very open forum.  Maybe, it's just springtime blues?   Well… "아자아자!"

Caveat: 환갑

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

Yesterday I was invited by the owner of the guesthouse where I’m staying to accompany him to his older sister’s 환갑 [hwan-gap]. This is a special ceremony/event that accompanies one’s 60th birthday party, which is considered quite significant. It really wasn’t that different from a 돌 [dol = child’s first birthday party, one of which I attended last year], nor was it different from a wedding or catered business party, for that matter. But it was interesting to once again be an observer at another Korean social function – not really a fly-on-the-wall, as I’m too conspicuous for that, but I don’t think anyone’s behavior is that different because I’m there, either.

pictureI felt proud of the fact that it seemed my Korean was improving, in small ways. Still, sometimes I hate to write about feelings of improvement, not just for fear of “jinxing” my progress, but also because it makes it sound like I’m out there in the world having actual conversations, when in fact, I’m still stuttering along with occasional good sentences, a few chunks and phrases now and then, but mostly just incomprehending smiling, and barely understanding the things said around me.

Later that day, I joined an “English class” that the owner here coordinates for occasional Sundays, where some neighborhood children (the building’s owner’s son [building owner is distinct from guesthouse owner], for example) showed up and I pestered them about their likes and dislikes in English. One boy, Jun, was quite good, especially at his ability to listen to what I said and synthesize it in succinct Korean for his less-comprehending peers.

After that, Mr Choi (the guesthouse owner), took me to a traditional Chinese tea-maker’s establishment (I have no idea what better term to use for this guy’s profession). The man was some acquaintance of his who lives and runs his business a few blocks away from the guesthouse.  This was a fascinating experience, and the people – the tea-makerand his wife – were quite kind. They struck me as a sort of wonderful syncretism of the very traditional Korean, mixed in with some loopy western counter-culture. They had a computer playing mp3 tracks of western music, and a wine-cabinet on one wall with all these European wines, but he was sitting at a traditional-looking tea table and doing all these elaborate things making tea, talking about 30-year fermentations and the fact that evidently (based on my face?) I needed something for my kidneys. And there was a lot of beautiful traditional pottery and furniture around.
picture

Caveat: Zina’s Musical

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Photos / My Videos

Last year around this time, I went to see my student Zina in a musical production. I blogged about it. This year, I had the opportunity to go again, even though she’s not now my student anymore.

pictureThis time, I had my video camera with me. Here are some clips from the musical. I’m still working on figuring out the plot (I bought the CD and the words are in the extended program, so I can spend as much time as I want deciphering it), but the basic idea is that some kids who live in a futuristic “ecologically sustainable” village get bored and decide to go to visit the big, dirty, polluted, future-city, and have some interesting and scary experiences. It was pretty cute, although I liked the plot of last year’s production better (nothing is better than the idea of mosquitoes bringing lawsuits!).

Note that although the kids are lip-syncing during the performance, I’m pretty certain it’s their own voices, that were pre-recorded so as to raise the production value a little bit – Zina’s voice defintely sounds like Zina’s voice to me.






picture

Caveat: Eerie Synchronicities

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

[this is a "back-post" written 2010-03-01]

I was riding the subway on my way up to Ilsan, this afternoon.  There was a giant earthquake near Concepción, Chile.  And at almost exactly the time that the earthquake was occuring, I was reading Pinochet's chapter in his autobiography about his own experience in the January 24, 1939, earthquake in near Concepción.  Of course, I didn't realize the synchronicity until hours later, when I heard about the Chilean quake.  But it struck me profoundly.  Obviously, pure coincidence.  But still kind of eerie. 

Caveat: I am not a criminal

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Finally, after more than a month of sending off the paperwork and waiting, I have received my "apostille" criminal background check, which is a document that I will require when I apply for my Korean alien registration card – at least, presumeably.  The last time I was asked to present such a document, I was told when I finally took it in that I didn't need it.  But, it's important to be prepared, and no one will offer me a contract unless I can show that I'm prepared.

On Thursday, I'll get my copy of the medical checkup I did last week, which should mean that at least from a bureaucratic standpoint, I'm 100% employable in Korea.  Then, of course, there's the matter of finding a job.  But, as I've mentioned before, I haven't been looking that hard, to date – because the fact is that I'm enjoying putting my energy full-time into trying to learn the language, and I can afford to do so, at least for now.

Caveat: Caffeine

Banalities & Journaling

Sunday evening, after getting back from my templestay, I had a splitting headache.   At first, I thought it was something about the long journey and/or about the experience that was making me feel terrible, but then I thought back to the last time I'd felt that way:  my first few days in Tokyo last fall.   I must really be a terrible caffeine addict!  It's withdrawal, of course – there was no caffeine in the food/drink we consumed at the temple, and I'd neglected to bring a backup supply.

So a few cans of cold coffee later, everything was fine.  But jeez… I need to cut back, I think.  This will be difficult.

Caveat: 금산사…

Banalities & Journaling / Buddhism & Zen / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea / My Photos

I went on a “templestay” tour to Geumsansa over the weekend.  Here are some pictures.
Here is the main entrance to the provincial park that hosts the temple, down by the parking lot:
picture
This is a turtle statue near the entrance to the temple complex:
picture
Here is a view of the main stupa (left, over a 1000 years old, though repeatedly rebuilt) and big old main temple (right, 400 years old, currently being restored due to arson by some right-wing Christian group):
picture
Architectural detail on the structure housing the old drum, bell, and gong:
picture
A cool painting on the side of a side-building:
picture
The entranceway to a small temple dedicated to Chijang Boddhisattva (I think), with the statues visible inside (this is where I did my 108 prostrations, see farther down):
picture
A view of the main temple courtyard looking back toward the entrance building (a modern building but in the traditional style), and the gong structure off to the right:
picture
The ancient stupa that is the core of the temple site (i.e. the oldest part, dating in one form or another to at least the 500’s AD):
picture
A cool statue I saw (well-armed, indeed):
picture
The men’s dorm where I slept Saturday night (bathrooms are around back – this is a modern building built to look traditional, but women’s dorm out of sight to the right is quite old and traditional, with a fire-burning ondol heating system) :
picture

Walking from the dorm area across the stream to the side gate into the main temple courtyard:
picture
A waterfall that I found while wandering around a ways up the stream beyond the dorm area:
picture
These beads below represent my 108 bows (or prostrations) to the Chijang Boddhisattva. I really did this – it was quite tiring, and yet an old woman came into the temple, about the time I was working on bow number 50 or so, and she did 108 of her own, and finished and had left when I had gotten to my own number 70! I will keep these beads as a souvenir, because each one represents a bow that I actually did:
picture
This is the charismatic monk who led the templestay guests around and led us in meditation, etc. He was very friendly, positive, and interesting (despite having an incoherent interpreter):
picture
picture

Caveat: The Left

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Yesterday, on the subway, I saw my first left-handed Korean. 

I'm sure there have been others, but I know it's exceedingly rare.  I was teaching here for over two years, and never saw a student writing with his or her left hand.  The pressure toward social conformity is very great, even in the pre-school and kindergarten years when things like what hand one writes with are established.

But on the subway, yesterday, there was a young woman writing diligently in a notebook with her left hand.  I felt this startling feeling of recognition, and then a weird kinship with her.  Totally unjustified, I'm sure.

Koreans sometimes notice that I'm left handed, and although they're clearly not offended by it, they nevertheless seem to find it even more alien than, for example, my bluish eyes.

So, anyway.  Today, I'm going to Geumsansa, which is a major temple complex a few hours south of here that's important historically and that's also important to contemporary Korean Buddhism.

Caveat: inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

The title to this post is an obscure reference to a 60's cultural phenomenon. 

Actually, I went to get a medical check-up, yesterday afternoon.  In order to qualify for an E-2 visa in Korea, a person has to have a medical clearance:  drug test, HIV check, etc.

The check-up I got yesterday was quite thorough.  For 55 bucks, I had my vision and hearing tested, got blood and urine tests, dental checkup (not cleaning, just looking around), TB x-ray… and it was all quite efficient.  I'm not sure how much of this is actually required for the visa.

The one thing that disturbed me:  my blood pressure is much higher than I'm used to seeing.  Not in the "danger" level, but higher than accustomed, certainly.  I haven't had it checked in quite a while, and after losing all that weight 3 years ago, I've been pretty blase about it, but obviously I should be trying to get back into that exercise routine I had when I was living in Ilsan.  And maybe cut back on coffee.

In other news, my blog received it's first "spam" comment recently.  These things are a plague.  I hope it doesn't become a serious problem.

Caveat: Classroom Chaos

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

Yesterday morning I did a demo teaching in a real classroom.   I felt very nervous.  I knew the job was a long-shot, and I'm pretty sure that the demo teaching wasn't, ultimately, a deciding factor, either way.  The fact was that the potential employer, a rather posh private elementary school in Northeast Seoul, seems disinclined to hire me due to bureaucratic obstacles (i.e. the complications of getting me a "fresh" E-2 visa by working with the Korean immigration authorities, as opposed to the convenience of hiring someone already on a valid visa, either E-series or F-series, where it's fairly simple to set up). 

I don't know why I was so nervous.  I think I had a pretty good lesson plan, although the main caveat (yes, caveat) would have to be that no lesson plan survives actual contact with children, at least not 100%.   And I'm experienced enough to know this.  The kids were first-graders – younger than most that I've worked with, at least in Korea.  But they seemed very entertained by what I'd put together:  I had them going around asking each other questions about what they would like to eat, based on the contents of a story they'd been reading that the school gave to me ahead of time. 

My thoughts:  probably, it was a more chaotic classroom than the Korean teachers were used to seeing.  I have always striven for a "student-centered" classroom, as much as is possible given any particular curriculum.  And since they'd only given me the story, without any other curricular guidelines, I simply did what seemed like the best thing:  make a lesson that kept the students moving around and talking in English to each other as much as possible, without worrying too much about "controlling" it. 

The result was apparent classroom chaos – any time you get a dozen first graders on their feet, you can hardly expect anything less.  But I saw two important things:  they were speaking English to each other, and they were having fun.  That, in my opinion, is success.  Hmm… I feel like I'm trying to defend myself, here.  And, as I pointed out at the top of this post, I don't think I need to – I actually think that they understood what I was doing and were not disappointed in it.  But I think, too, that they were just "going through the motions."

Hard to read the Koreans, on this matter – my Korean language comprehension is still quite weak, and I therefore don't pick up what they're saying to each other during or after the class with much accuracy or detail.   But I could tell the native English-speaking teacher they had watching me was cool with it – he was quite friendly to me after we finished, and said something like, "go ahead and just stay with them as long as you'd like," which was a pretty positive evaluation, I thought.

Conclusions:  I will only get the job if the school still finds itself without any other viable, "easier" candidate several weeks down the road and becomes "desperate" to fill their position.  Not to mention the fact that I'm still missing one piece of paper I need to present (it's in the mail, hopefully).   But, as far as the demo teaching, I was feeling pretty happy with it, afterward.

Caveat: 난 드라마를 보면서 한국말을 배울 수있습니다.

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I’m getting back into the habit I had last year of watching Korean “dramas” on my computer. I prefer to download and watch them on my computer, rather than on broadcast television, because that way it’s possible to find subtitles for the shows (there exists a vast “fansubbing” community whose members freely create and post English subtitles for Korean shows, online).

pictureThe drawback is that I mostly end up watching “what I can find,” and I don’t get to watch the series in real time, because there’s the delay waiting for a subtitled version to show up. But with the subtitles, I can actually learn a great deal of Korean sometimes by watching the shows. And, the fact is, these shows can kind of grow on you.

Lately, I’ve been watching episodes of a series called “별을 따다 줘” (officially translated as “Wish upon a star” but maybe more accurately “choose a star”). Like most Korean dramedies that I’ve seen, it’s a weird combination of drama and comedy that’s hard to find in American television, and it’s not a series or soap opera in the western sense – more like a mini-series in that Korean dramas generally have a planned, fixed time frame from their outset, and aren’t meant to be episodic in nature but rather tell a plot (sometimes is a drawn out, complicated plot, but it’s still just a single “story”).

The fact is, I’m a pushover for these types of shows. They’re sappy and romantic and they are full of little moral parables and endless repetitions of unlikely coincidences and ridiculous plot complications. Yet they present the most compelling and also the most annoying aspects of Korean society and culture side-by-side, somewhat glamorized and somewhat exaggerated, but hardly simplified, at least in my opinion. This particular show I’ve been watching has me hooked.  I’m waiting impatiently for the next subtitled episode to appear.
picture

Back to Top