Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: We made our down payment a decade ago

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

The other night I was discussing with my friend Seung-bae Korea's apparently rather efficacious management of the current world financial crisis – of all the OECD countries, Korea has experienced the least recession and least impact on economic statistics such as growth and recession, although there has been some inflation, linked to the somewhat-managed slow-motion "crash" of the won (currency) a year and a half ago. 

My friend Seung-bae made the following wry observation:  "we made our down payment a decade ago."  This is a reference to Korea's "IMF" crisis that occured in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.  That's true – from everything I've read, that was quite a mess.  What's perhaps disorienting or odd, at least to me, is the idea that the country's government and economic leadership may have actually learned some lessons from that experience that have allowed them to better weather the current crisis.  To me, it doesn't seem like very often that economic leadership is actually capable of learning lessons.

Caveat: Continuous

Banalities & Journaling

It's been snowing continuously for about three days.  Actually, I know it hasn't, but it has sort of felt that way.  The first half of the week was all about rain.  It rained a lot, and felt like part of an impending Korean Spring.  But I think it was Thursday, it changed to snow.  Quite a bit accumulated (well, by Korean standards – a few inches), but then it sort of slacked off into a very light snowflake-floating-down-now-and-then.   But that's been going on now, ever since.  Sometimes fewer snowflakes, sometimes more, but it's not been possible to walk around outside without crashing into an occasionaly airborne, fluffy blob of snow.  It's quite beautiful.  It doens't seem to be accumulating much.  But it's keeping traffic snarled (of course, the giant Lunar New Year Holiday, starting today, hardly helps either).

Caveat: So, ya wanna teach English

Banalities & Journaling

I have a job interview later today.

[update, 8 pm KST … it didn't go that well, but I don't blame myself.  I didn't have the impression they were that interested in hiring me.  It was more of a "go through the motions" type action on their part.  Considering those circumstances, I don't feel I did badly.  Let's call it "practice."]

Caveat: Plateaux

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

Learning a language has lots of little plateaux of ability.  I was feeling good yesterday, as I was feeling that I was finally climbing off the one I'd been feeling stuck on since starting my class.   Small things:  being able to simply repeat, with comprehension, some little bits of a short dialog we working on in class.

But then after the class I went into a cafe to sit and study and tried to order, and I thought I was doing fine, but the guy behind the counter looked at me with incomprehension.   The thing is, it wasn't even hard, weird stuff to order:  it was pure "konglish" – a coffee and scone are simply keopi-hago seukon….  Oh well.

Caveat: 3rd Class

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Some people have observed that being a foreigner on a work visa in Korea is like being a 2nd class citizen.  I've always said that, in fact, that's perfectly logical – really, a foreigner working in Korea isn't a citizen at all, so by the logic of national chauvanism, a term like "2nd class citizen" really is actually too good.   I mean, "citizen" is exactly what a person is not, in those circumstances.

I'm not writing to complain about that, however, but rather I want to talk about what it's like to try to spend time in Korea as a foreigner without holding even a work visa.  I'm not talking about working illegally, either.  I'm doing exactly what a tourist should do:  I'm sitting in the country, spending my money. But things can be so difficult.

First, there was the cell-phone thing.  I couldn't get a "normal" cell phone, because I had no National ID card.  I have to subsist with a rental.  It's not actually that much more expensive, but it's just the hassle of it.  Next, I've realized there is a lot of free wi-fi in the country (e.g. at every single Starbucks location) that I simply cannot use, because there's a sign-on page where you have to put in that same National ID card number.   It's all about tracking what people do online, I'm sure, and enforcing that national firewall.  But still – it's not very "tourist friendly."  Finally, last night I realized I can't watch Korean TV online, because I don't have that number.  If I was outside of the country, I could, as they make allowances for that.  But within the country (which my IP-address tells them that I am), the only way to register for the website is to put in the National ID number, which I don't have.  Argh.

Caveat: A World Worthy of Invention

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I used to read a lot of science fiction.  I liked the complex, imagined futures, the invented civilizations and cultures.   It was a sort of escape, obviously. 

I hardly ever read science fiction anymore.  I haven't stopped, entirely, but I will plow through less than half-a-dozen novels of the genre in any given year, anymore.  I had a weird insight, yesterday, as to a possible reason:  the real world is more interesting, more complex.

Take, as an example, one particular aspect of the sort of thing I like about those science fiction and fantasy novels:  imaginary languages.  I used to spend time inventing languages, myself.  A strange hobby, I know.  And at least once before in this blog, I've alluded to the fact that the Korean Language is in many ways a surrogate for those invented languages:  whenever I feel that language-inventing impulse, I simply pull out my Korean reference grammar and browse a few pages.

Yesterday, I was walking down the street, watching the people, looking at signs, thinking about the world's complexity, and realized the whole of Korean culture was the same kind of surrogate.  At some point, the real world became just as interesting and complex as any possible imaginary one.  In that sense, the sort of escapism I used to achieve by reading a book  I can now achieve simply by looking around.   Maybe that seems strange.  Or even trivial.  But it felt like a great insight, at the moment.

Caveat: Flaming Decrepitude

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I watch Jon Stewart's Daily Show online sometimes.  A dose of American current events seen through a very sarcastic lens.  

There was a bit he did with John Oliver, where they were mocking the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, making parallels between old age (senators) and possible gayness in soldiers.  John Oliver used the line, [approximately]  "I choose to ignore your flaming decrepitude."  It was a very funny line.

Caveat: The Party Crasher

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

As I've said, I've kind of made friends with the proprietor of this guesthouse that I'm staying at.  Two nights ago, he said he was going to a "younger brother's" opening ceremony, and asked if I wanted to go along.  I really didn't know what this meant.  But I went along.

Koreans use brother and sister to mean anyone in their social cohort.  And the fact of being younger or older is important:  it's about rank in the social hierarchy.  They have specialized vocabulary for all of this:  "older brother of a male," "younger brother of male," etc. – all are separate words.

After some quizzing and discussion, I figured out that this wasn't his "real" younger brother, but a colleague from his high school years that had been a few grades behind him.  In the U.S., we'd call such a person, having been in contact with him all the years since, simply a "friend."  But Koreans maintain these historical hierarchical relations throughout life.

Anyway, the friend was a successful businessman.  And the opening ceremony in question was in fact an anniversary celebration of the man's business.  A kind of business birthday party, which they labelled, in giant letters on a big sign in bad English, "Renewal Open!" 

It was definitely a business party.  A catered affair in a place similar to a wedding reception hall.  These kinds of events are mind-numbingly common in Korea.   They'll have a catered business event of some kind or another at the drop of a hat.  There'll be a DJ, some contests, some exhortations to work hard in the year to come from various vice presidents in dull black suits, too-loud music, a few aimless children running around having been dragged along by their parents, dancing girls (entirely G-rated and vaguely silly), karaoke events, a buffet table, soju and beer on each table, a company song to be sung, etc., etc.

I felt like an alien, of course.  The only obvious foreigner there, and no clear reason to be there except that I probably represented some kind of bragging rights for my newfound friend, the guesthouse proprietor.  I was a  "pet wegugin [foreigner]".

I had some food from the buffet and sat and tried to be friendly with the various men he introduced me to:  the founder/president of the business in question, his "younger brother";  some man of uncertain profession;  an alleged "artist."  It was interesting, to see one of these parties for a line of business outside of the realm of the hagwon industry.  Basically it was the same thing, but with a different crowd.  This was an advertising and marketing company, so there was a patina of creative types in attendence – Korean "longhairs" who wore no ties and had hollywoodesque goatees.  I've seen the type plenty on Seoul's streets and on television, but in the hagwon industry you don't get to interact with them much.

Their English was all stunningly atrocious.  But they were pleased and amazed at my own halting efforts at Korean.  At one point I had an almost-conversation with a man:  I'm here with a friend;  I'm American; I work as an English teacher;  Korean is very difficult.

I had a weird thought, I guess as sort of short story idea:  a foreigner such as myself, with a smattering of Korean, could perhaps almost subsist by crashing business events of this sort.  They're always going on, and by visiting the sort of catered halls where they take place, he'd find them easily enough.  As a foreigner, everyone would be afraid to ask too many questions as to who he was or what he was doing there.   Such a foreign party-crasher could avoid confrontation completely, with simple protestations of "sorry I don't quite understand, my friend is around here somewhere."  And many would be friendly just to be friendly.

It would be like a sort of perpetual party-crasher adrift in a Kafkaesque Confucian paradise, free soju, free food, hospitable people.  One would never have to buy one's own meal, and every night would be different.

Caveat: Commuting

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

I have had such terrible experiences with being a “commuter,” in the past, that I had some apprehension about how I’d organized my life, temporarily, around the long commute into Gangnam each day from Suwon, where I’m staying.

But it’s turning out that I actually really like it. I’m sure part of it is that there’s a giant difference between a commute that involves getting in a car and driving for an hour, generally in terrible traffic, and getting into a bus or train and riding for an hour – even if it’s riding standing up.  Driving requires concentration and singe-mindedness, whereas riding, one can daydream, doze, read, study….

Some of the worst periods of my life were when I had a driving commute: the hour and fifteen minutes from northwest Philly to Cherry Hill, when I was teaching H.S. in the late 90’s, was truly horrendous, and the hour from Long Beach to Newport Beach in 2005-2006 was almost as bad.  Yet I recall actually liking the hour-long commute into West Philly in 1996 when I was in grad school – because I had the option of taking the train in that case, I suspect, and I often did.

Anyway, the commute now, on the bus, is cool. I always assume it will take over an hour, but some mornings, if the timing is right at the bus stop and the traffic on the expressway isn’t terrible, it can be over in 50 minutes. It’s always nice to get a seat – standing on a bus for an hour is pretty uncomfortable, but not unbearable. I can lean on the side of a seat or against a rail or something, listen to my mp3 player, and doze. It’s very cool as the bus plunges through the 3 tunnels through the mountains separating Suwon from Seoul – the last tunnel must be about 2 km long, and as we pop out of that tunnel right into the heart of Seocho-gu with its high-rises and right-angled streets, it feels like arriving in Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel or something.

I love the feeling when I get off the bus at Gangnam-yeok and walk toward the subway entrance. I go into the subway station and through it but I don’t get on the subway – it’s just a convenient way to get across the main Gangnam intersection at Teheran-no (yes, the main east-west street in Gangnam is named after the Iranian capital – it’s kind of as if Park Avenue in NYC was called Teheran Street). Everyone is busily going to work or school or wherever they’re going, and Gangnam has a very different feel than later in the day when people are strolling around shopping or on dates or beginning a long evening of nightclubbing.

The picture shows the pre-dawn light as I arrive at my bus stop at about 7 AM, with that weird Suwon First Church in the distance down an alleyway. Keep in mind that it was about -10 C (15 F) and windy. It’s not an idyllic, gentle dawn.

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Caveat: 어제

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

어제 5시반에 일어났습니다.  일기를 썼습니다.  일기를 쓴 후에 또 블로그를 했습니다.  6시반에 샤워한 후에 아침을 먹었습니다.  강님에서 7시에 버스를 탔습니다.  도착한 후에 카페에 갔습니다.  8시반부터 9시40분까지 한국말을 공부했습니다.  9시50분에 한국어 학원에 갔습니다.  한국어 수업에서 학생 다섯명 있습니다: 중국 한명, 태국 한명, 필리핀 한명, 캐나다 한명 하고 미국 한명 있습니다. 어제 12시에 우리 같이 점심을 먹으러 멕시코 식당에 갔습니다.  1시부터 1시30분까지 교보문고에서 지냈습니다.  1시반부터 버스로 수원에서 돌라왔습니다.

Caveat: Wishing for the disease

Banalities & Journaling

The shuffle function on my mp3 player was making me feel international, yesterday, during my bus ride.  I heard Korean (임형주), English (Depeche Mode), Portuguese (Elis Regina), Japanese (LAST ALLIANCE), Spanish (Silvio Rodriguez), Senegalese (Youssou N'Dour) and French (Yelle), all in succession.  I guess that's cool.

I wonder if I will learn Korean better, or more quickly, if I only eat Korean food?  I wish language truly functioned as a disease, as William Burroughs once suggested.  I could just get infected, and I would be able to speak it.

Caveat: Random Wanderings-Around

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

I went to class yesterday. And then studied for like 4 hours. Solid. Then I decided to go on one of my random wanderings-around. I ended up “downtown” (the old part of Seoul), and it seemed very cosmopolitan and crowded. There’s this one high-rise at Jonggak that I’ve always thought looks really cool:

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After that, I went back to Suwon on an oddly-uncrowded #1 subway train, and walked back to my guesthouse. I studied for another 3 hours. 한국말을 힘들어요.
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Caveat: Oh, so that’s what he’s doing…

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

I’ve always suspected that Kim Jeong-il had a secret life in Ilsan. It’s such a modern, prosperous and exciting city, and it’s well within tunnelling distance of North Korea. He could have his troops put in a new, 15 km tunnel and pop out right at WesternDom (a big mall). There’s great shopping, multiplexes, good hospitals and the giant KINTEX convention center. Beautiful parks, museums (included the famous Korean Toilet Museum, never to be missed) and sports facilities.

Finally, my friend Peter found evidence of Kim Jeong-il’s secret: in the form of a business card he found lying on a sidewalk. It turns out Dear Leader Kim is moonlighting as a nightclub representative. This is a perfect job – he’s got the looks, he’s got the wide network of influential people, not to mention, he’s got “muscle.” The nightclub is a chain called “Shampoo.” With a club name like “Shampoo,” he’s got the hair for it, too. Wow, maybe he owns the whole chain? He could integrate it with his network of spies and tunnels.

Below is a photo of the business card in question.  The name says Kim Jeong Il, of course.
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Caveat: Rule of Law

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

I think "rule of law" is important. 

I have been depressed and alarmed, of late, by the number of offers for illegal employment.  I realize that this is an endemic problem in Korea, and I will acknowledge that the often inconsistent and bizarre application of the poorly designed laws that surround employment of foreigners in Korea probably encourages the practices in question.

But it's just frustrating.  I think one area where Korea's made so much progress in recent decades is in "cleaning up" its reputation for corruption.   It's part of what has led to its remarkable growth and new-found prosperity, too.  Although that's an unsubstantiated opinion. 

Basically, people find out I'm looking for a job, and they make offers for me to teach English (as a tutor or as a classroom teacher) in exchange for cash – without getting a regular work visa and without participating in the formal economy.  On the one hand, my sympathy for the situation of "illegal immigrants" in the US causes me to question my own discomfort with these sorts of arrangements, but I worry a great deal that the Korean immigration authorities are sufficiently competent that if I were ever to be caught, their system of deportation and blacklisting for illegal workers would essentially ban me for life from Korea – I like it here too much to want that to happen.

But there's a broader philosophical concern:  I truly believe in the importance of rule of law.  I'm not going to make the outrageous claim that I'm a 100% law-abiding citizen.  Clearly not.  There are the occasional downloads.  The jaywalking.  The 10 miles-an-hour over-the-speed-limit.  And, when traveling in Latin America, things get much more problematic than that, very quickly.  I've paid bribes to border officials in Central America, for example.  And to cops in Mexico, in the 80's.  Most famously, in my own life, is the fact that my work in Mexico in the 80's was irregular – it was, essentially, the "gringo's revenge," because I was an illegal immigrant in Mexico, working a hotel job without visa or paperwork.

These are part of existing in societies made of imperfect laws.  But, in general, I feel badly about these violations.  I make rationalizations about why they've occured.  I suppose, I could easily make rationalizations about working illegally in Korea, if it came to that.   But I really think that one should make at least some degree of effort to "follow the rules" even when they appear illogical and inconsistent – as Korea's immigration and work-permitting processes so clearly do.

It's one thing to race across the street between crosswalks late at night when the light refuses to change.  It's another, somehow, to take envelopes of cash from people who feel their government places undue restriction on their ability to hire "foreigners."  Maybe the difference has to do with where the petty violations become unduly wrapped up in financial gain – something like the difference between illegal downloading for personal use, which feels OK, and illegal downloading for financial gain, which feels wrong.  Is this irrational?  Probably.  But it's pretty much the way I seem to draw the line, in my own mind.

Caveat: Mole poblano en Osan

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Food & Drink / Life in Korea

He encontrado un nuevo amigo acá en Suwon.  Es un coreano hispanohablante, que parece ser una clase de persona tan rara como un gringo coreanohablante, por ejemplo.  Parece que se ha afiliado conmigo porque se dio cuenta de que yo podría ofrecerle oportunidades de practicar el español.  No siempre hablamos español, porque siente más cómodo en inglés.  También, me brinda lecciones en coreano con mucha paciencia. 

Anoche me llamó y anunció que querría invitarme a cenar en un restorán mexicano que conoce.   Entonces, fuimos manejando casi 40 minutos, partiendo directamente hacia el sur de Suwon, para llegar en la ciudad de Osan.  Lo interesante de Osan es que es una ciudad donde se ubica una de las bases más grandes estadounidenses en toda Corea.  Me acuerdo haber pasado una noche allí en 1991.  Por esta razón, hay muchas tropas estadounidenses residentes en el pueblo, y hay muchos comercios orientados al negocio con estos extranjeros.  Así, se explica la presencia de un restorán mexicano, bastante auténtico (digamos según un estandar norteamericano si no según un estandar mexicano puro).

Comimos una cena temprana de sopes y mole poblano, y tomamos horchata.  Pareció un milagro, poder hacer esto en Osan, Corea.  La comida era bastante bien, aunque el mole era un poco débil, probablemente para mejor adaptarse al gusto de las tropas gringas más que por acomodarse al gusto de los coreanos.

Tuve la oportunidad de hablar con el cocinero, un verdadero mexicano chilango de Ecatepec, bastante amigable si no tan entusiasmado de su estadía en Corea.  Me explicó que al terminar su contrato, volvería a México, pero que la oportunidad de vivir en un país extranjero "tan extranjero" como Corea había sido muy interesante.

Después de nuestra cena, exploramos la ciudad de Osan un poquito, y finalmente volvimos a Suwon.  A las once, mas o menos, comimos otra cena más ligera, como es la costumbre coreana en noches sociales, de 회 (sashimi, pescado crudo). 

Igual con casi todos los coreanos que he tenido la oportunidad de conocer, este nuevo amigo mio tiene un sinfín de conceptos difusos sobre posibilidades de futuros negocios, en el campo de intercambios interenacionales de jovenes y agencias de empleo para extranjeros en corea.  Incluso, me quiere reclutar como partner de negocios.  Siempre hay que aguantar tal clase de vagos ofrecimientos, porque Corea parece ser un reino de entrepreneurs frustrados.  No me molesta de ninguna manera, aunque a veces tengo que cuidar mi cinismo.

Aquel fue mi noche vagamente mexicanizada.  Hoy, vuelvo al estudio del idioma coreano.  Estudia, estudia, estudia!  파이팅!

Caveat: Institutionalized Infantalism

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Like most, I'm disappointed with Obama.  It's hard for me to explain why or how – I actually didn't have as high hopes for him as so many of his supporters apparently did.  I saw him as a consummate politician, an insider, and viewed the rhetoric of hope and change as nothing more than that:  rhetoric.  Still, even in that light, I feel dismayed.

A recent blog entry by Jason Linkins at Huffington Post perhaps expressed my frustrations fairly clearly.  He wrote:

I'm particularly struck by the way this proposal [the 3-year spending freeze on certain symbolic sectors of the federal budget] marks a return to the institutionalized infantilism that so defined the Bush presidency. One of the most significant things that Obama promised to do during the campaign was to simply level with the American people — deal with them in straightforward fashion, tell the hard truths, make the tough choices, and go about explaining his decisions as if he were talking to adults. But this plan is so lacking in fundamental seriousness that it cannot be said to play any part of a mature exchange of ideas.

My primary optimism with respect to Obama was merely that he seemed quite intelligent and reasonably honest, and that would have been a nice change from the business-as-usual:  either intelligent or honest but never both in the same president, thank you.

It's almost as if somehow politcs will render otherwise honest people dishonest, or otherwise intelligent people stupid.  And thus it goes…

Caveat: 밥 먹었어요

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Life in Korea

I ate dinner.

A very Korean dinner. To start with, I went shopping at the market area east of the 팔달문 (Paldalmun, which is the south gate of the city wall), rather than at a 슈퍼 (shu-pa = supermarket).  I got three kinds of kimchi (regular, “white” and radish), I got some tiny dried fish that I still haven’t figured out what they’re called [update, 4 hours later: my friends Christine and Jinhee both made comments and told me what they’re called. 멸치 = myulchi, little dried anchovies. I’ll put a picture down at the bottom of this entry. Thanks!], I got 오뎅 (odeng = “fish sausage”) and a bag of polished (sticky) rice. Finally, I got some 김 (kim = “dried squares of seaweed”).

I came back to the kitchen at my guesthouse. I stir-fried some chopped onions with the odeng and a dash of salt. I cooked rice in the rice cooker.  I put my varieties of kimchi in tupperware buckets. And I sat down with the guesthouse owner-guy to a meal cooked rice, kimchi in containers, tiny fish, kim, and the bokkeum odeng wa yangpa, eating chopsticksfull of each thing from each container with the rice.

I’ve decided to stay in this guesthouse in Suwon. It’s terribly inconvenient, since my class is in Gangnam, but the rent here simply can’t be beat.  And the owner is really friendly without being overbearing. The regular nightly charge is only 20,000 won (around $18 at current exchange rates), but the owner gave me a 50% discount if I committed to staying a full month. That means less than $10 per night – cheaper than rent in a regular studio apartment anywhere in Seoul (and that would require a 1 year contract). There’s internet here, and a kitchen and all the basic necessities.  So even with the cost of the commute (about $5 per day round trip to Gangnam), it’s a pretty darn inexpensive living situation.

I can use the commute time to veg out or study or whatever. It’s about an hour on a direct Suwon-Gangnam bus (the #3000 is almost door-to-door, guesthouse to hagwon), or a slightly circuitous subway + bus takes about an hour and a half (but runs more frequently, so timing is less of an issue).
Finally, Suwon has grown on me a little bit, in its extraordinarily mercantile, unglamorous way – it’s kind of the polar opposite of the Beverly-Hills-like character of Gangnam. A nice antidote, as it were, at the close of each day’s studying.

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Caveat: Visionarily Fashionable

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

When you see it once, it's just someone being eccentric – or else they're having some kind of bad day, maybe.  When you see it twice, on the same block, it's two schoolgirls trying to make a statement.  When you see it a third time, down at Suwon Station, maybe it's a peculiar local trend.  But when you see it a fourth and fifth time, on the subway around Seoul, you realize it's an all-out fashion movement.

What's this, I'm seeing?  Women wearing heavy-framed plastic eyeglasses, generally high-end designer frames like Ray-Ban or DKNY, without lenses.  Personally, I think it looks cool, but it does strike me as a bit out there, as a fashion statement.  Most of the few comments out in the interwebs that I could find are overwhelmingly negative, attributing the behavior to "emo posers" and the like.  But… whatever.

Caveat: Full-time Student

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

Well, my class doesn't start until Monday, but I've been contemplating what I'm attempting.  I've been worrying about my ability to really, truly, single-mindedly pursue this.  I always approach things so dilettanteishly, in life.  In fact, I've made a bit of a positive personal philosophy out of being a dilettante in many fields rather than an expert in any one subject.

All of which is to say, I'm actually feeling a bit terrified at the prospect of trying to be a full-time student, with virtually nothing else on my agenda, and no excuses not to study.  Even if it's only a one-month commitment.  Well.  We shall see.

I just barely placed out of the absolute beginning level on the placement test at the hagwon I'll be attending.  I would have been slightly mortified if I'd actually ended up in absolute beginning Korean 101.  As it is, I'm in something roughly equivalent to 102.

The problem, as I suspected, was entirely due to my weak vocabulary.  There was a section where I had to fill in noun case-endings, for example.  I know, quite well, my Korean case-endings.  But getting the right ones is next-to-impossible if you don't what the verbs are in the sentences in question.  So… not such a good score, there.   I actually did better on the spoken section, where the woman asked me questions and I had to answer.  But she said I was too informal, and my tenses were wrong.

I have decided that between now and next Monday, I'll try to work through the first half of the textbook, which is the Korean 101 that I just barely placed out of.  

Caveat: Actual Footage of Me Actually Teaching

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

I’ve finally done it – only six months later than originally planned. I’ve posted the video clips from my last day at LBridge, and specifically, for that class where I went in and from absolute scratch I taught a simplified debate format and we had an actual debate.

These kids were at best high-beginning or maybe low-intermediate level students. They had never had debate in English class before. So in 35 minutes, we went from zero to exactly what I was doing with my advanced students. Well… obviously, their speeches were quite short and the topic I gave them was quite simple, but  I was very proud of what we accomplished. And I ran the video camera the whole time. So, here it is. [UPDATE: this link was broken when I dismantled this website, some years ago. The videos are still on youtube, however: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV]
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Caveat: 내 한국어 능력을 향상하고 싶어요

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

Today I will make the commitment:  I will take a placement test and pay for my one-month full-time Korean Language class.  Based on grammar and passive understanding abilities, I’d be sure to place out of the beginning level, but my active vocabulary is so poor, I may get stuck in one of the beginning levels anyway.  I’ve been trying to cram vocabulary a little bit, but, as usual, to little real effect.

Caveat: Circumperambulation

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

My friend Peter came down from Ilsan today and we took a long walk around Suwon, which is where I’m staying for now – just be somewhere interesting and different, if not terribly well-located vis-a-vis the Seoul metropolitan area.

Suwon has old city walls around about 80% of it’s old-city perimeter, but it’s otherwise a rather stark, industrial city. Together the old fortress elements combined with its proletarian character make it seem vaguely European.

Peter and I walked a full circle along the top of the wall.  Here is a view of the weird, gothic-industrial church to be found just southeast of the old city wall.

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Here is a picture of a bird.

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Here is a picture of Buddha, perched against the mountainside in the western part of the walled-in old city.

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Caveat: Navigating

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Everyone who knows me knows that I love maps.  And I love online maps, too, and the amazing things that can be done with them, for example, google earth.  Unfortunately, google earth, yahoo maps, and related "international" (really, US- or Europe-based) mapping websites don't have very good data on Korea's mind-numbingly complex urban geography.  Google earth, for example, is inconsistent in their romanization of Korean place-names and therefore it can be impossible to find locations because one has no idea how the google-earthians might have spelled them.

But, in fact, there are excellent online mapping resources for South Korea.  Every single Korean vehicle has a GPS-using map-o-matic device of some kind on the dashboard, which delivers down-to-the-building navigation information.  It's definitely out there.  The problem is that it's not in translation.  You've got to be willing to work in Korean.

So, recently I have begun to feel competent using naver.com's map section.  I have figured out bus routes, located ATM's for my bank (외환은행), and located "addresses" (not street-number-based, as in the West, but rather based on "block numbers" and neighborhood names).  It's extremely cool, and I can spend hours poking around with it.

Caveat: The New Me

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / The Wonders of Work

Per the advice of several people I have been interacting with during my job search, I have been implementing a new website dedicated to presenting myself professionally.  I went "live" with it today. It's still missing some pieces, but I'm fairly happy with it so far.  It's quite spare and simple, but I think that's best for a professional presentation.  https://www.raggedsign.net/jared

I would welcome any feedback or observations.  I'm not always good at following advice, so I won't necessarily follow yours, but I still would gladly hear anything anyone might have to say.

Caveat: 엉덩이에 사과한다

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

Oh dear, oh dear. Sometimes, I can understand just enough Korean to create hilarity and confusion in my brain.

I was riding the subway, and in a sign above my head, right in front of me, I read “엉덩이에 사과한다.” Now, as best I can figure out, this means “Apologize to your ass.” Really.  Here is a picture of an ad (found via naver image search) that roughly resembles the one I saw.

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It’s advertising a product called “apple hip”. There’s a lot going on here, perhaps more than anyone should want to know.

First of all, it’s important to realize that the Korean “엉덩이” can mean all kinds of things, from the innocuous “hip” to the dirty-sounding “ass” – the same word is used for all of these things.  I’ve had humorous moments in the classroom, when a student, after a short session with their little electronic dictionary, will innocently and confidently use the word “ass” where we would use the word “hips.”

Secondly, there is a common pun involving the word “사과” which means both “apology” and “apple”. So they work in the name of their product and make a joke about how you need this product to improve your butt. It is also drawing on the huge popularity of Apple Corp. products (and note the Applesque design look, below), making an English-language pun on the word “hip,” drawing on the Korean meaning of “butt” and the English meaning of “cool”.   Which is to say, you need this product if you want to be “hip,” or cool, butt-wise.

Now, I could get this far, but I still had no idea what the hell the actual “apple hip” product is. Obviously, something to improve your butt, in some way. One of an apparently infinite line of Korean “beauty” products of dubious intent and claim. Some more research… The best I can figure out, it’s some kind of butt massager. Here is another picture I found on naver:

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Seriously!  I would expect to see this advertised in my email spam box, not on the subway. But hey (butt, hey?), this is Korea. Strange country.
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Caveat: 행복하는 것이 중요해요

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable

I have a little book where I occasionally will write down little aphorisms, that I hear or that I make up.  I found the germ of the following that I’d made up last fall.  I’ve made some changes to it and thought it sounds very… aphoristic.
“I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state.  It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you.  Happiness something that you do.  And like most things that you do, it is volitional.  You can choose to do happiness, or not.  You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.”
Really, I should point out that this insight partly derives from studying the Korean Language.  In Korean, the predicate “to be happy” is “행복하다” literally means “to do [or to make] happiness”.  When you say “행복해요” (“I am happy”) what you’re really saying is “happiness [I] do.”  “행복한 사람” (“a happy person”) is literally “happiness doing [who-is] person” (taking into account the almost exact reverse word-order compared to English).

Caveat: The Job Situation

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

A number of people have messaged me or sent emails:  "Jared, what's the job situation?"

So, here's a summary, so I don't have to tell everyone:  I didn't get the job I was hoping to get, but I knew it wasn't a "done deal" when I came here, so I had contingency plans.

Plan B is that I'm now looking for a job in Korea.  But, I'm not in a hurry.  Most (or very many) jobs start in March, since that's when the new school year starts for Korean kids.  And I'm prefectly OK with waiting until then.  I will take my time looking, and be picky about what I can find, at least for now.  If March gets close and still nothing, I'll get less picky.  I've actually already rejected one offer – it looked way too much like another LBridge in terms of excessive hours and unnecessary staff-room rules.

What I'm doing, instead, is trying to work on the Korean thing.  I'm really bad at learning languages – I know all of you think, "oh, Jared, he's studied linguistics, he's studied all these languages, he's so good at it."  Well, just to be clear… that last concept doesn't necessarily follow, logically, from the previous ones.  So, it's a struggle.  I look up the same word dozens of times in my dictionary.  It goes on my flash cards. And still, I hear it and wonder, "now, what the hell did that mean, again?"  Just yesterday I heard 모든 and thought, "I looked that up about 30 minutes ago.  What did it mean?"  I recognize that I should know a word, but not always know what it means.

Anyway, because of that, and because of my "Motivational Deficit Disorder" that I sometimes struggle with, starting around Feb. 1st I'm enrolling in a full-time "Korean Language Hagwon for Foreigners."  I think it will help structure my time, and give me opportunities to practice Korean with Koreans who will be patient and scrupulous with me, because they're being paid to be.

So, in fact, because that's a month-long commitment, I don't actually want a job before March 1st, at this point.  And that's fine.  It will give me time, hopefully, to find something that works well for me.  I'm looking at "after school at public school"-type positions, right now.  They're the latest thing, where, essentially, public schools are elbowing in on the traditional private hagwon market by offering their own higher-level supplemental coursework in the afternoons.

Caveat: Melting…

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

It was raining yesterday.  And foggy.  And all the snow was melting.

Korean weather has been very weird for the last month (I missed the first part of it).  More Minnesota-like than typical, with lots of snow on the ground and sustained cold. 

Now, the weather is back to "Korean normal":  warm front came through, last several days, with rain.  Then, today, it's clear and bitterly cold.

Caveat: “don’t get caught up on this planet, man, these humans are crazy”

Banalities & Journaling

There's a rap artist I've been listening to, lately, called K-os (sounds like an operating system made by anarchists).   He has a track I really like called "Emcee Murdah" with the line "don't get caught up on this planet, man, these humans are crazy."  Great line.

So… it's cool, man.  Personally, I like this planet.  But I agree, the humans are crazy.

I had delicious take-out kimchibokkeumbap last night.

Caveat: Rosetta

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

One thing I did before leaving the US, is that I broke down and spent a rather large sum of money on Rosetta Stone language learning software, for Korean.  I had a couple of reasons.

Firstly, of course, there is my desperation to somehow get better with Korean, and therefore a willingness to try new and different things, and spend money doing them.

Secondly, however, was that as linguist, I've been wondering what, exactly, they were doing that allowed them to believe themselves a premium seller of language-learning tools, for that's the way they market themselves.  Are they really that good?  I wonder.  There is so much in the way of really bad materials for language learning, devoid of any apparent familiarity with linguistic theory, often replete with errors and folk-judgements about things like sound change or grammaticality.

I've managed to work through the first 3 lessons of the first unit of my Rosetta Software Korean Level 1.  Here are my thoughts.

As software, it's extremely well designed.  Attractive, easy to figure out, intuitive, just as they claim.  My primary complaint with the interface is the speech-recognition tool… I got lots of answers "wrong" as I worked through it because it simply doesn't seem to "hear" me.  And it seems a little bit buggy in the way it handles not being able to "hear" you, leaping along and going "bing," "bing," (error, error) without giving you time to try again.  Also, A few times, I became frustrated with a new type of exercise and the lack of instructions on how to do it, but ultimately I recognize that this is part of the "method" being used: they want the user to solve each exercise, each section, as a little puzzle, and be engaged at a more-than-analytical level in using the language.

As far as awareness of linguistic theory, I'm less impressed.  They make the same sorts of grammaticality judgements as so many horrible  "beginning Korean" texts, and I'm not sure the focus on the highly stilted, fully inflected forms of the nouns is going to lead me to any kind of communicative efficacy, down the road.  Actual Koreans speaking actual Korean almost never use the kinds of singular-plural inflections they're teaching here, at least in my experience, for example.  I'll try to keep an open mind.

The single most frustrating thing is the speaking exercises.  Not just because of the wonky speech-recognition problems I described above, but because they give you little hangeul prompts for words to pronounce, but they aren't really useful at all — because they're not explaining or displaying or in anyway accommodating the extensive and overwhelming processes of sound change and syllable liaison that operate within Korean words and phrases.  I can figure out what they want me to do, because I have a degree in linguistcs and several years of effort behind me in sounding out Korean hangeul, but I think that if I was a typical, linguistically naive language learner, my simple, heartfelt reaction would be:  WTF!

I'm sure they have a couple lessons in the introductory part, where they're teaching you hangeul (which I didn't work through) — but honestly, exposure to the sound change and liaison rules is not the same as internalizing them — the software needs to hammer these rules home in these speaking exercises.  I've seen plenty of beginning Korean texts that will provide two "spellings" for each word:  a standard spelling and then a "sounded out" spelling that explicitly reflects the sound change and liaison rules in operation.  If the software did this in its presentation of speaking exercises, I think it would be a lot more transparent.  As it is, you hear a pronunciation and read the hanguel on the screen and wonder if the person narrating is looking at the same thing you are.

Lastly, I really think I'd have struggled immensely with making heads or tails of this software, if I hadn't brought with me the extensive background and previous effort in trying to learn the language.   I've already been exposed to much of the vocabulary, and all of the grammatical concepts being covered, on and off over the last couple of years, and most importantly, I'm comfortable with the Korean writing system and can recognize syllables at a glance.  And with all that, I'm getting only 85% correct on most of these units.  How frustrated would I be if I was coming at it "cold"?  I'd be giving up, is my guess, and muttering "impossible!"

So, that's my review based on about 6 hours of hard work with Rosetta.  I'll stick with it, if only because for me, it's very helpful with vocabulary.   But was it worth 400 bucks?  A tentative NO.

Caveat: 떡복기를 먹을 필요했어요

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

Last night I needed to eat tteokbokki.  This is not the first time I’ve suffered this craving.  It seems to be strong on cold nights.  It’s Korean glutinous rice cakes, simmered with fish-sausage in a slightly sweet carrot-chili-garlic sauce, sometimes with some dregs of vegetables if it’s higher quality.  Served in bags or bowls on street corners for a buck or two.

Caveat: It’s OK

Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel / Life in Korea

I was having dinner with my friend Peter out in Ilsan last night.  We went to the Hoa Binh (Vietnamese Pho seen through a Korean lens, roughly) at La Festa.  Talking about various things, I was feeling very patient with my current limbo. 

After eating I showed Peter the convenient 하이마트 (Hi-Mart) supermarket that's almost literaly across from his building, that he didn't know was there.  I used to shop there when walking back home from work, because it was right on the way and not out of the way like the other supermarkets I knew about. 

Peter and I parted ways, and I was walking to Juyeop station to take the subway back into Mapo-gu when I spontaneously decided to ride a bus instead.  I stood on the bus-stop island and waited for a bus to go by that had in its destination list a location not too far from where my guesthouse is (near Hapjeong).  I ended up hopping on a Number 72 bound for Sinchon.  Not super close, but I knew how to get from Sinchon to Hapjeong easily — it's only 2 stops away on the circle line and I've walked it before, too.

I felt very pleased and competent to be able to just get on a bus, at 9 pm on bitterly cold winter night (-13 C), in this vast, alien metropolis.  Meaning… it's not so alien to me. I know my way around.

It was a local route, and zigzagged through Ilsan, then Hwajeong, then Susaek.  It was about 50 minutes.  I listened to my mp3 player and gazed out the window.  Life is good.

Sinchon is Seoul's Greenwich Village, basically. Trendy, tons of shopping and nightclubs, a bohemian and university neighborhood.  I like walking through there, although it's so "youth oriented" that I sometimes get melancholy.

I took the circle line (green line #2) back to Hapjeong.   I'm craving tteokbokki really bad – it's great comfort food when it's cold — but I didn't see any places selling it on the walk back to the guesthouse.  Hmm, maybe tomorrow.

Caveat: Watching My Karma Unwind Around Me

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

I don't actually believe in Karma.  Not as Buddhist dogma would have it, with reincarnation and sankharas (sp?) and all that.  I believe we each carry a sort of karma within the frame of our own lifespan, as we make decisions, and those have consequences, and things we do to or for others are repaid in part or in full or passed along.  Creative expression is a means of extending the reach of one's own personal karma, in this respect.

I seem to have a tendency, in my life, to seek out and find myself in situations where I've deliberately created too many options for myself.  So many options, that it's very hard to make a move — I sit in a sort flux of indecision, like standing hip-deep in a stream and feeling the current tug at you.

So there I am.  I'm working on the job search.  But that's a slow, evolving process that requires a good deal of patience.  I'm working on studying Korean, but that's an even slower, evolving process that requires more patience than the Buddha himself has.  The Buddha may have lost his equanimity, had he decided to try to learn Korean.  Heh. 

I have a lot of "free" time, and I'm not spending it well. 

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