Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: “an unsatisfied feeling”

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

In about 24 hours, I'm flying from Seoul to Tokyo.  I'm saying goodbye to my job at LBridge, but only a very brief farewell to Korea.

The plan: 2 weeks in Japan, 1 week back in Korea as a tourist, then to Minneapolis. After that… road trip (Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, LA, Humboldt, Portland — big circle). Expecting a month or more pause in LA, though. After that… ? Back to Asia, most likely. Looking at Vietnam, Tawain, Mongolia, and/or back to Korea. I'll have to see what sorts of opportunities turn up. It's best when all is in flux…

And here's why I really like this teaching thing.  I feel like I'm promoting myself by sharing this, but this letter I received from a student really touched me, and affirmed why it is I like trying to be a teacher so much.  Here it is, mistakes-and-all:

Dear, Jared teacher
Hi, teacher.  I'm Shaina.
I write this letter because I want to give expression to thanks.
For the past six months, thank you very much.  I was very shy, and I have no confidence about English.  But you were bring conviction to me, so I gain confidence about English.  Untill now, I announced many speech.  But always I was tremble and wobble, but teacher was always praise me.  So I can get good scores.  And you teach our very funny and interesting.  So I always respect you.  But you will go will go back to America.  So I have an unsatisfied feeling.  And I'm sad.  ^^
Even though you go back to America, I will not forget you.  Thank you, teacher.  and good-bye.
from Shaina.
 


Caveat: An Almost Korean Breakfast

Banalities & Journaling

Yesterday was my last day at work, and I came home feeling sad and tired.  Of course, I made no progress in packing, last night.  I basically just read for a while, finally finishing the first of the 6 or so "books-in-progress" that I was hoping to finish before moving out.    I doubt I'll actually finish the others.  The book I finished was a desolate piece of Korean-Lit-in-translation called Three Days in That Autumn, by Pak Wanseo.    Hemingwayesque, spare prose, that may be partly an artifact of translation, but well-written for all that.  Unfortunately, there was a bit of an annoying subtext, a kind of anti-abortion screed, with a dash of evangelical Christian redemption thrown in for the last few pages.  Then again, the take on it all was sufficiently ambiguous that there could have been some intended irony, too.   It would be hard to decide, if I had to work it through "semiotically."

I woke up this morning and gazed around my cluttered, packing-up-in-progress apartment.  It's frustrating, if not downright embarrassing, to find myself harboring vague home-decorating fantasies so close to my day of departure.  I satisfied them by cooking the last of my brown rice, and then ate it with the last of my excellent cucumber kimchi.   Except for the fact of it being brown rice, that's a totally traditional Korean breakfast, and I've grown to find it very appealing.   A simple, completely sugar-free and fat-free breakfast.

Caveat: 나는 전지전능해

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

My student Anastasia wrote “나는 전지전능해” on her workbook cover.  She translated it as “I’m almighty” but the dictionary suggests  “I’m omnipotent” might be a better translation.  In any event, it shows a lot of self-confidence, huh?
Saying goodbye to all the kids is hard.  Then there are the moments when I just have to laugh, too.  My student Brian (3rd grade) put on a very serious face and said, “teacher, I wrote you a letter.”  He handed me an index card.  I turned it over,  and read a single word: “~bye”
My student Paul (4th grade) came up to me right after the end of class and spontaneously hugged me.  That was great, but it wasn’t so great when he immediately poked me (well, gently) in my gut and said “I will miss your stomach soooo much.”  Maybe that’s a sign I need to lose a bit more weight?
Lastly, I got the following card from Sally.  She did the cover art herself, obviously inspired by my many alligators.   I was touched by what she wrote.
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Caveat: What about Gitmo

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

The Obama administration has proven disappointing in lots of ways, so far, although it's early to pass judgement.  But one thing I'm surprised about is how stymied they seem over the Guantanamo issue.  There was a proposal by someone named GUÉNAËL METTRAUX in a recent New York Times that seemed like a plausible and workable solution to the dilemma created by Bush et al. 

In a side note… I may have to stop reading the New York Times online… more and more, I'm getting "you have to pay for this section" or "you have to be registered for this section" notifications.  It's annoying.  I quit reading the Washington Post for a similar reason.  Everyone says… well, papers have to support themselves.  True.   But sitting in South Korea, it's not necessarily convenient to have some kind of online subscription to a website, given unreliable access issues (due to being inside Korea's weird, unpredictable national firewall, and having a crappy DSL provider, among other things).  So I just shop around for what's convenient, I guess.

Caveat: Trip to the bookstore

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Videos

I played with my new video camcorder today, and took a trip to Seoul, and then spent the last 4 hours trying to learn how to load and edit.  The result is my first edited video, ever!  Of course, very amateurish.  But you can see my world "through my eyes" as I take the subway into Seoul for the afternoon.   I can see how playing with this stuff can become addictive.

Caveat: Are you devil?

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / My Photos / Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

I use my cellphone as a stopwatch in class when students are giving speeches. Further, I occasionally allow the students themselves to be “timekeeper” for a given other student’s speech. This means my students are often playing with my cellphone.  It doesn’t really bother me, although more than once, I’ve gone back to it later and found its most recently used application was something under the “game” heading — I rarely play games myself on the cellphone because, since it’s a Korean cellphone, it tries to help me play the game with instructions in Korean.  I did once manage to get a 37% score on a quiz game entirely in Korean, basically by viewing it as a linguistic abstraction game.
pictureSo… I was pulling photos off my cellphone last night, and found the following. I have no recollection of when this photo might have been taken. Is it flattering? I’ve definitely been making a lot of use of my plastic black and red pitchfork (lower left of photo), lately.
I don’t know how to put on the fancy frame, either. But whoever did this picture of me apparently had no problem not only surreptitiously taking this snapshot but then managing to add the fancy frame without my having a clue. I think it was a time when they were brandishing their own cellphones and I was hamming a little bit, so it’s not like I wasn’t aware of having my picture taken. In today’s modern (Korean) classroom, it’s ubiquitous, and something I accept as a matter of course. I suppose that technically, there are rules banning the use of cellphones in class, but I view such rules as both reactionary and irrelevant, and rarely enforce them except maybe during quizzes or when they’re clearly proving too distracting.
…
“Are you devil?” Gina asks, every time.
“Maybe,” I hedge. It’s all part of the schtick, right?
Every teacher needs a schtick. Or a fork. And a coupla alligators (made in China).
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Caveat: Each Day…

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Kids / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

I've been trying to decide if I will continue my monomaniac effort to post to this diary each and every day, after I cut myself adrift.  It will be less convenient to continue doing so — I imagine a search each evening for a PC방 (Korean internet game room) or the local equivalent wherever I am.  I've never been good at keeping up habits in the face of inconvenience.  One of the favorite creative bits of language I've ever run across in any of my EFL students' writing was Ella's "inconvenience is the mother of invention."  So what would I invent?  No need, here.  I can always "post date" / "pre date" my blog entries.  But that kind of feels like cheating.  Well, it's of no major consequence, actually. 

Yesterday I had a student giving me a long, drawn-out excuse for unfinished homework, involving diarrhea and visits to the doctor, apparently.  I would have preferred the abridged version, to be honest.  But it did expose me to some unexpected vocabulary in Korean, and thus, as tends to be the case, I made it into a "teaching moment."  I don't know it it was appreciated.  But whatever.

Not-so-random notes for trying (still trying, only trying) to learn Korean
자신 = self-confidence, confidence -하다 to have self-confidence
할아범 = old man (according to dictionary)
할아범탱이 = not in dictionary, my students tell me it means senile old man
전염 = infection
변비 = constipation
설사 = diarrhea
모든 = each, every, all, whole

Caveat: 일산역에서

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

The brand new, shiny Ilsan Train Station. When I got off at this station in 1991 (it was on the suburban route connecting my Army base with downtown Seoul) it was just a wide spot in the tracks and the town next to it couldn’t have been more than 50000. Now Ilsan is half a million, and it just got its old center-of-town trainstation upgraded this summer.
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Caveat: Might Be… Collegeland for Kids

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Currently, the public schools are on break.  But the consequence of that is that the "kid" population along "Academy Road" here in Ilsan actually skyrockets.  The real name for the street is 일산로 (ilsanno), but no self-respecting Korean knows the names of streets, so I just mentally think of it as "Academy Road," because it's where all the after-school hagwon are concentrated for the Ilsan districts of Goyang City.   And that's where I work. 

Walking along, in the humid, overcast midday weather, buses and taxis whizzing past and cicadas crying deafeningly, there are kids everywhere.  They're all enrolled in special "summer session" morning classes at the various hagwon.  There are English hagwon (like LBridge, where I work), there are math and science hagwon, there are huge, generalist "5-subject" hagwon and test-prep hagwon.  There are music hagwon and art hagwon and there's even a "lego" hagwon.   Just after 12 pm, the kids are on break between one hagwon and another, and they stop to buy toseuteu ("toast" – grilled sandwich concoctions) or kkochi (skewer food) or kimbap (korean rice/seaweed wraps) or so many other things.  Hundreds of kids, ages 6~18 or so, gossip on the streets, play ball games, cram for tests and quizzes, ride bikes, scooters, skateboards.  They shop with parents or shop in tribes on their own, they get into and out of taxis on their own, they play games and talk on their cell phones, they make purchases with bank cards on their own.  It's like being in a busy college community, but everyone is on average 10 years younger.   It's quite charming.

In a two-block distance between my bank and my workplace, I see and say hello to 4 or 5 kids that I know.  They wave and say "hel-lo tea-cheueueu!"   The toast-selling lady beneath our hagwon does that short, automatic dip-of-the-head bow when she sees me walking past, and then goes back to her incomprehensible monologue (to me — I catch something about working fast or working hard) as she flips her grilled-egg-ham-and-cheeses for the gaggle of middle-schoolers clustered at her window.  It's definitely a neighborhood, despite (or because of?) the incredibly high density of the surrounding high-rise apartment blocks.  And despite the patina of post-modernity exuded by the dull, concrete-and-glass architecture, the wide boulevards and omnipresent video-monitors in store windows.  There are men hawking raw fish and watermelons, old women selling lettuce and garlic, helmeted (and criminally insane) moped delivery dudes ignoring pedestrians and cars alike, teenage girls clustered around displays of fancy new cell-phones, a pair of 10 year-old boys weaving their bikes way too fast among the sidewalk crowds, yelling at each other.

In my experience, it's so very different from the feel of similarly-aged, large groups of kids in the U.S.  Somehow they're both more mature and yet also more sheltered.   There are things that are very tough for kids here – they're expected to work very, very hard and unpleasant things like corporal punishment, although much declining, are still quite common.

Nevertheless, there's something very protective and nurturing, in my opinion, in how this society, collectively, deals with children, and if I was in a position to be raising kids, right now, I would very seriously consider the potential advantages of living in a place like Korea as an environment in which to raise them.

Caveat: Buyer’s Remorse, Deferred

Banalities & Journaling

I hate shopping for major purchases.  I'm terrible at bargaining and bargain-hunting, for one thing, but I also feel annoyed with myself for not being better at it.  So when I shell out for something big, I always, always have buyer's remorse.  I bought my camcorder today.  And I'm afraid to open it, because I don't want to be disappointed.  I guess I'm kind of weird, huh?  I'll update with more info when I get around to trying it out.

One of the reasons I felt a desire to get something like this is because I would really like to try to put together some kind of record of one of my classroom debates before I leave LBridge.  Something I could both use as a reference and as a way of remembering.  Of course, I'll only do it if the kids want to try it.  I think some of them will give it a go.  And I'll feel obligated to share a copy with my bosses at LBridge, which they'll no doubt want to use for publicity.  But that doesn't really bother me, actually.

Anyway, the first step is unpacking the box and learning how to use it.

Caveat: Cost of living

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

On average, I live very cheaply.  I probably average less than 20,000 won a day in expenses, including:  food, electricity, DSL, cellphone, transportation, and my magazine and book habit.  That's around $16 at the current exchange rate, or less than $500 a month.  I have no rent (that's covered by my contract).  Of course, I have another set of expenses – about $350 a month support my US-side dormancy:  storage unit, vehicle-in-storage, private mailbox.   Those costs make sense in the view that living abroad is strictly "temporary" but I'm beginning to question that.   But even including those costs, my overall "cost of living" is well under $1000 per month.  Of course, by most people's standards, I have a stunningly boring life.

What's interesting to me is that although my income is about 20% of what it was during its peak years 2004-2006, I'm nevertheless saving at a higher rate of net savings in absolute terms!  And I'm happier, besides.  So, at least in my case, money does not buy happiness, nor does it even buy security.

These reflections on my cost of living were brought to the fore of my awareness because I had one of those rare "extreme spending" days:  I bought two new pairs of glasses (much needed and much procrastinated), I paid for my tickets and some other reservations for my upcoming touristic trip to Japan, and I bought my last big installment of pre-move-out groceries, including my fix of good Dutch cheese, Spanish olives, several varieties of fresh kimchi (cucumber, white cabbage and radish being this time's selections), and some fresh fruits and veggies (I have some really excellent 국산 apples).   So, after months of extreme-cheap living, I spent over $1000 today!  It felt weird.  Plus, I'm still shopping for a camcorder, and I want to buy some "souvenir" type items to send back to gift to people in the states upon my return.

Vocab Notes for Korean
받은 = received, accepted (regular past participle from verb 받다)
공장 = factory
폭동 = riot
가능하다 = be feasible, be possible
인하다 = be a consequence of, be due to [attached to preceding nominals in -로 (?)]
매미 = cicada, cricket, locust
울다 = weep, sob
매미가 울다 = a cicada sings
면담할듯 = will converse directly (? how does this end up future tense?)
즉석 = instant, improvised
계약종료 = end of contract
경기안내 = game guide (i.e. schedule)
필요하다 = to need, to require

 

Caveat: “I want my America back!”

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

My contract at LBridge ends in just over two weeks. There are ways in which I'm looking forward to moving on from some of the more frustrating aspects of my job, but the truth of the matter is that I'm very much not looking forward to leaving Korea. I've been in Korea for almost two years, and I've never once felt homesick for my home country. I have felt homesick for some certain geographical or meteorological things: a California fog or a Minnesota blizzard or Lake Superior or the Chicago skyline. I have felt homesick for friends and family, sometimes. But my country, despite the election of Obama with is mandate for "change," seems downright nuts.  

Perhaps I spend too much time viewing my home country through the lens of Jon Stewart:  this recent episode underscores so many of the aspects of life in America that seem truly messed up.   I particularly enjoyed (maybe in an embarrassing schadenfreude way) the following exchange:

"I want my America back!" — Crazy lady in a townhall meeting about healthcare

"She wants her America back? Go tell that to the Indians." — Larry Wilmore

I know for absolute certainty that South Korea is no less messed up, in its own special ways… but living here as an alien, I don't have to worry about it so much.  I don't have to feel responsible.  I can look around and say, "Very interesting.  I'm sure glad this isn't my country."

Oh dear, oh dear… have I become (resumed being?  never gave up being?) one of those America-hating liberals?  I feel like a caricature.

Regardless, I'm kind of dreading my return to America.  Are things as bad there as my limited view seems to indicate?  Is there really that much acrimony, anger, and division?  Is the economy really that bad?  Have I been living in a fortuitous bubble?

Caveat: MacArthur’s Landing

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

Yesterday I went to Incheon with a friend, Peter. We took the subway, which is kind of an indirect way to go, since it’s straight south from Ilsan, but via subway one has to go into downtown Seoul (southeast 25 km) and back out again. But anyway. It took about 2 hours. We got off at the Incheon subway line station Dongchun, and walked west about 1.5 km to the Incheon landing war memorial. It was an impressive piece of monumental architecture. It was a very hot day.
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We went into the Incheon city museum after that, as it was right next door, and saw some historical things related to Incheon, which was the first Korean port to be opened to western (and Chinese and  Japanese) powers in the 1800’s, and therefore was the part of Korea to begin feeling the influence of the outside world after the 500 year-long “closure” that was the Joseon dynasty period.
Then we took a random bus (#8) that ended up dumping us at Incheon City Hall, but that’s not actually downtown, so then we took another bus (#41) to Juan Station on subway line #1 and then took the subway (which isn’t actually subway but is elevated) to the end-of-the-line at downtown (old part) Incheon.  That’s where the touristy chinatown is (arguably the only “authentic” chinatown in Korea, as it was actually a Chinese settlement in the 1800’s, whereas all the other “chinatowns” in Korea are just gimicky tourist things constructed artificially in the most recent 30 years or so). We walked up the Jayu (freedom) hill to hear some atrocious children’s music at some outdoor concert and then we saw the old general himself (well, his statue) looking out over the old “red beach” that is now the highly landfilled and developed harbor at Incheon.
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We walked around some more as the sun was setting, and the feel of the place was quite odd. I remarked to Peter that it was the first time I’d been in a Korean city in the evening where things were genuinely “dead” – the way that small American cities inevitably are after dark. “Man, this is like Long Beach,” I said, bemused.
Anyway, we walked some more and found an urban space more typically Korean, all neon lights and evening shoppers and half-drunk men stumbling about. Ah, the comforts of Korean civilization. We went into a Hweh house (a sashimi joint, roughly, but a dining institution in Korea).  I ordered Hwehdapbap (bibimbap style mixed vegetables, but with fish roe and raw sliced seafood) and Peter ordered chobap (sushi). We shared, and finished it off.  It was quite delicious.
Then we came home on the subway, all the way, 2 hours.  It was a long day, with a lot of walking, but it was good.
I feel very proud of yesterday’s blog post… I composed it in my own Korean, with only some minor assistance from my Korean tutor. Really, the first true blog entry I’ve managed in Korean, I think. I mean, that is at all substantial. Yet, in fact, it’s quite child-like and dull and repetitive and unnatural Korean, I’m sure. But one has to start somewhere, right?
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Caveat: Old Hand

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

Today, I felt like an "old hand."  Cynical and well-informed.  We had the annual summer speech contest today.  It's my third speech contest for LBridge, so I knew the routine.  Last-minute disorganization, great kids, but a bit scaled down from previous events.  I got to be the finalist speeches' MC again.  It's weird how I just kind of shrugged and went with it, when the boss came to me five minutes before and said, oh, by the way, can you be MC?  There was a time, I remember, when such cavalier deployment of my limited talents would have pissed me of f and made me uncomfortable, but I just went with the flow, and it was fine.

I was please to see several of my students place in the finals, including Willy (6th overall), Tracey (5th overall) and tiny Dana (4th overall).  I'll try to post a few pictures later, although I don't have as many as I'd have liked, since my camera ran out of batteries. 

Willy gave a speech about how parents shouldn't try to make their children into slaves.  "I can think for myself, so please let me think for myself," he explained.  Another boy, David (not my student) gave a really serious, excellent and compelling speech about "one thing about Korean culture I would like to change":  his choice?  Korean men's drinking culture.  That's a pretty heavy-duty topic for a 5th grader.  And he did a really good job with it.

Caveat: Narrative

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

I have always felt there was something central to the role of narrative in the human psyche.  And recently, as I evaluate myself and my progress as a teacher, I have come to realize that if I assess my "toolbox" (those various tricks and gimicks and techniques that I've accumulated over my recent several years of teaching EFL), there is one thing that stands out as a consistent "winner":  telling stories.  Telling good, interesting, compelling stories is possible at all levels of EFL instruction, and I have yet to have a bad reaction to a story, as long as I've taken the time to make sure it is well-structured (beginning, middle, end, character, etc.).   I used to give away prizes or play games with my students, but nowadays, when they clamor for some kind of reward, they generally say, "tell us a story." 

So, to be a better, and better-equipped teacher, I need to work on building my repertoire of narratives.  Many of the narratives I tell the students are semi-fictionalized (some more, some less) episodes from my own life:  the time I cut my hand on a machine at work, the time I got shot at by a drunk man in Mexico, the time I was in a small airplane struck by lightning.   Lately, I've been telling purely fictional stories about mad scientists transplanting brains, since we're doing a unit in my Goldrush classes reviewing parts of the body.  They really seem to enjoy these — I came into class today to cries of "draw the man with the brain."  That's reference to the sketches I do on the whiteboard.

Caveat: wiu-wiu-wiu-wiu-wiu-wiu-wiu-wiu-waaaaaaa

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

There's that really distinctive "Asian cicada" sound.   Sustained, repetitive "wiu wiu wiu" and then suddenly a shift to slightly lower, flatter tone that is held for four or five beats "waaaaaa."   My musicologist friends could describe it better, I'm sure, if they heard it.

I don't recall hearing that particular, very distinctive cicada sound anywhere in the US (that doesn't mean I've never heard it… just that it never seemed salient).  But I remember it from summer in Korea in 91, and from my summers here more recently.  The one other place I've heard it and really noticed it, is in Japanese anime — it seems to function like an audio signifier for "hot, humid, summer stillness," kind of the way traditional crickets chirping signifies "silence" in American cartoons.

I really like the sound.

Caveat: No Bowing, Please

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

My friend Basil returned to the U.S. last Friday, and after 3 years of living in South Korea, is suddenly in West Virginia about to start graduate school.  He sent me an email with an interesting line about the subtle complexities of cultural re-adaptation:  he writes, "I am trying to remember to not bow or give money to people in a Korean way."  

I suspect that when I get back the U.S. in September, I'll be under similar pressures.  There are small things with body language and composure that you find yourself doing, after living here — even if you never manage to control the language, really.  I remember that each time I've lived abroad in the past (Mexico, Chile), returning to the U.S. is always more of a culture shock than the initial departure.  I wonder why that is?  And, is it just me, or do others have that experience too?

Caveat: Sleepless in Suburban Seoul

Banalities & Journaling

Periodically I seem to suffer from an annoying insomnia.  It manifests not as an inability to fall asleep, but rather as an inability to stay asleep.  I went to sleep last night at around 12:20, but then woke up at 3:30 and was unable to go back to sleep.  Dawn came.  Still not sleeping.  I sat and read.  No sleeping.  Finally, I gave up.  But now I'm having an exhausting, unproductive day on only 3 or so hours of sleep.  Argh.

Caveat: 바쁜게 좋은 거예요

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

바쁜게 좋은 거예요 => busily good thing is => “it’s good to be busy.” This is what it seems nearly every Korean says when one complains about being busy. I don’t entirely disagree, either.
I saw my friend and former coworker Basil off at the airport today. He’s returning to the U.S. with intentions of starting grad school in a few weeks. I wish him best of luck, but I’ll miss being able to occasionally hang out with him and BS about various topics.
I’ve been working on mastering the distinction between Korean ㅅ/s/ and ㅆ/ss/, which are phonologically quite distinct but which sound essentially identical to English-trained ears. The /ss/ (revised standard transliteration) is not just a geminate (double) /s/, but rather something quite different… it’s “tense” or “faucalized” featurally, and seems to involve something like a pharyngealization of the subsequent vowel. So far the best pronunciation tip I’ve received is to try to remember holding my teeth together, touching, when making the /ss/, but letting them relax on the /s/. This may be why some transcriptions render ㅆ  as /ts/ instead of /ss/. Here’s a horrendous tongue-twister based on trying to practice the distinction: 싸서샀어요 /ssaseosasseoyo/ = (it) was cheap so (I) bought it.
Vocab Notes for Korean
외계인 = a space alien
주요 = main, essential, important
구하다 = search for, look for, demand, desire, buy, purchase
순수하다 = be pure, be genuine, be true
평범하다 = common, featureless, humdrum-looking
아담하다= elegant, graceful
일탈하다 = deviate from, depart from 일탈 deviation
행위 = act, work, conduct, behavior …so… “일탈행위” deviant behavior (?)
장 애자 = a handicapped person; a brain-damaged person (this is very important vocabulary for comprehending the joking around of 5th graders – see picture below for what is apparently an exemlar of a “jangaeja” – probably best not to ask about the plastic pitchfork)
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Caveat: One year of not quitting

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

I have hang-ups about quitting.  Which is to say, I often have beat myself up, in the past, because I feel I quit things too easily.   And, in fact, I have quit many things:  jobs, relationships, careers….   One thing my stepmother Wendy (whom I hugely respect and admire) said to me, long ago, that meant a huge amount to me and that I remember often, is that she believes that one of the reasons she is on this earth is to learn patience.   Actually, I think in my own case, I'm pretty good at having patience with others, at least in some ways, but I definitely lack patience with myself.  And this manifests as a frequent, premature notion that it "must be time to move on!" Or that moving on will somehow make life suddenly easier, or solve some grave motivational deficit that I'm suffering from.

So to make her words my own, I would say that I believe that one of the reasons I'm on this earth is to learn how to "not quit."   That is why, when I so desperately wanted to quit my job, last fall, I "stuck it out" — not because I thought it was the best thing, necessarily, but because I felt that quitting, right then, would have left me feeling more like a failure.   In essence, although there were many, many logical reasons why any person who had a modicum of self-respect might have decided it was healthier to move on, I chose not to quit simply because "not quitting" was (and is) the current priority in my life. 

I will acknowledge that this is probably not entirely healthy, psychologically.  But having taken on the project to learn how to "not quit," I would do very badly indeed to quit that project, wouldn't I?  Hmm… this is sounding circular.  Well, welcome to my brain!

Why do I choose to reflect on this business of "not quitting" at this moment?  Because today, July 21, 2009, is my exact one-year anniversary of working at LBridge.   I have successfully "not quit" for one year, and I'm on track to finish my contract on good terms at the end of August.  And I feel a huge sense of success and accomplishment, because of that.

Just sayin…. 

Perhaps that's one real psychological advantage, for me personally, in working on a time-delimited contract, is that I can leave a job with no guilt whatsoever, on the scheduled end-date of the contract:  no loose ends, no feeling that I'm abandoning something prematurely.  It's perfect for me.

Caveat: Libertarian Utopia

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I had kind of a bad day yesterday, as sometimes happens when I have one of my "one-day weekends" (the result of working Saturdays).   I don't know why that makes me particularly blue, but it does.  I didn't accomplish any of the things on the "to do" list.  I read some books, surfed the internet, watched part of a movie (and didn't like it enough to even finish it).  I took a long walk.

I was listening to NPR (streaming KCRW of Santa Monica) and I heard a reporter talking about working in Somalia.  Explaining that it was MUCH more dangerous than Iraq, because in Iraq, there's an occupying army trying to control things, and offering places to take refuge from the danger.  No such refuges in Somalia.  Lack of functioning government, and all that.

I didn't catch his name, and I can't confirm what he said.  But it was terribly funny, in a gallows sort of way.  He offered an anecdote about landing at the Mogadishu airport, where he was given an "entry form" or something like that to fill out.  The form only had a few questions:  Name?  Date of Birth?  Nationality?  Caliber of Weapon?

Hahaha.  "Caliber of weapon?"  It reads like something straight out of a vaguely Heinleinian future-libertarian utopia.  But we all know that Somalia is not particularly utopian.  I grow more cynical about the possible advantages of libertarianism as I get older.

Caveat: Saliendo del túnel por fin

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Acabo de terminar la novela El Túnel de Ernesto Sabato.  Me costó mucho tiempo terminarlo, porque me dediqué a leerla únicamente en el metro.  Incluso, sólo la leía durante los períodos cuando el tren se metía debajo la tierra… en el túnel, por supuesto.  Era mi 'subway project.'  No tengo la menor idea porque se me ocurrió leerla de tal manera, aunque al fin y al cabo, fue una forma de leerla muy fiel a sus monomanías novelescas.  

No sé decir si me gustó o no.  Lo cierto es que nunca me aburrió, y a pesar de mi decisión de leerla sólo en el subte, a veces me fijaba bastante para que siguiera leyendo algunos momentos en alguana estación, después de bajar y antes de buscar mi destino.  La terminé sentado en un Starbucks, esta tarde, bebiendo un cafe helado y mirando afuera el tormento a truenos, con fuertes lluvias y viento, que se sintonizaba con la tormenta al final de la novela.

No estoy seguro de que fuera una novela posmoderna, como la califica algunos.  Tiene su cara kafkiana.  La primera mitad me acordó bastante a Gombrowicz, por ejemplo.  Pero al final, es tal vez más que otra cosa un sencillo estudio sicológico, con parecer a una novela decimonónica — como algo de Galdós (Niebla) o de Henry James (Turn of the Screw). 

Hace mucho tiempo que me dedico a un analisis literaria.  Es la primera vez hace casi cinco años que leyo uno de los libros de la maldita lista de los 300 que eran los libros requeridos por mi programa de doctorado en la U de Pennsylvania, de la cual sólo logré leer menos que 50 antes del examen de maestría en 96.  Aquel fue el peor verano de mi vida.  Salí del programa, en parte, porque no quería llegar a odiar la literatura hispana.  Me alegro haber terminado y gozado de este libro, si sólo porque sirva de prueba de que he logrado no odiarlo por pertenecer a la literatura hispana.

Ahora vuelto a casa, he cenado muy sencillamente de arroz con un gimchi de pepino (오이김치) muy sabroso que compré en un mercado el otro día.  Estoy escuchando algunos nuevos tracks en mi computadora y estoy organizando mis notas y pensamientos.

Lista de música recientemente disfrutada…

  • Metric – Gimme Sympathy
  • Empire of the Sun – Walking on a Dream
  • The Herbaliser – Same as it Never Was
  • Hyperbubble – Better Set Your Phasers to Stun
  • Marina & The Diamonds – I am not a Robot
  • Moby – Pale Horses
  • Yelle – Qui Est Cette Fille
  • Röyksopp – This Must Be It

Caveat: Cheating (on testis)

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

I managed a situation badly.

The background.

I had two students, let's call them Jim and Jerry.  They're among my more advanced cohort, both 6th graders.  Normally, cheating isn't much of an issue, with these high-level kids.  If a kid relies on cheating to get ahead, it's unlikely that a sustained habit of it can get them to this advanced level — there has to be real ability.

It wasn't a major test — just a quick vocabulary quiz.  The sort of thing I wouldn't even bother with, if I could design my own curriculum.  Certainly not in the "memorize the English words to match the Korean definition" format that these kids are given.  But… anyway.

I don't keep an eagle-eye on the kids when they take these quizzes.  If anything, I keep up a bit of a monologue laden with (hopefully) clever uses of the vocabulary words, mostly as a kind of good-spirited effort to give some hints as well as distract them to make the quiz more challenging.  I'd rather have a more interactive classroom with slightly lower scores, to be honest.

Anyway, I guess Jim and Jerry cheated.  One of them copied the other's paper, and I didn't notice during the quiz.  There are occasional roving eyes, and I will sometimes say something like, "Keep your eyes on your own papers, please."  But, at least in the advanced classes, I've never caught anything that looked much like blatant cheating.

But when I was correcting the quizzes, the evidence for copying was overwhelming.  If two kids get right answers, then obviously they're the same right answers, and whether they've cheated or not is not something that can be determined after the fact.  But Jim and Jerry both got very low scores (in the area of 20%).  And they had lots of peculiar wrong answers, which were exactly the same between them.  Some examples:  "facillity" for "facility"; "endangerous" for "endangered"; and, most hilariously, "testis" for "attest to".  There was, in fact, only one word where their answers differed at all — one of them got it correct, and the other left it blank.  It was a word near the bottom.  You can see, I hope, why I concluded that there had been cheating.  

I jumped to a further conclusion… though with less certainty.  Jim had studied for over a year in US, while Jerry has never studied abroad (I don't think).  And I feel it was much more plausible that Jerry copied from Jim than vice versa, based strictly on linguistic evidence.  Why?  Because misspellings like "facillity" and ANY use of the word "testis" by a 6th grader reeks of what I think of as "native-speaker error."  No Korean, exposed to only Korean English education, will know the word "testis," whereas almost any American child will have been exposed to term in some playground or locker-room context, and will find it funny or strange or mysterious or all of the above.

So my working hypothesis is that Jim wrote his answers (mostly wrong, a few right) and Jerry copied, except in one instance near the end when he happened to remember on his own a word that Jim hadn't gotten.

Whatever.  That's not why I'm frustrated, now.  I'm frustrated, because I managed the situation badly.

I circled their scores on the quiz papers, and was due to give them back to the students today (Friday).  I intended to discuss my observations and concerns with the two boys, and keep the problem entirely "close to the vest" i.e. "in house."  But I also left blanks for their scores in my grade sheet (rather than make a note – my first mistake).  Because we just finished mid-terms, I was trying to get caught up in entering grades into the computer system, and so I turned around and at another point in time I was tearing through my grade sheets, entering grades.  I wasn't really paying close attention — just making sure everything I had was in.

When I saw those blanks for those two boys, I decided to put in zeroes (my second mistake — blanks should be blanks, never zeroes).  I did that with the idea in my mind that the two boys in question weren't stellar students, and that there was some issue, but I wasn't specifically remembering the cheating problem.  I've done this before, rarely, and mostly what happens is one of two things:  (a) neither the students nor the parents (who see the scores online once they're entered) care; (b) the student or parent comes to me and asks to resolve the issue somehow — doing a make-up or something like that.  No problem.  Normally.

But Jerry's mom saw the zero online almost immediately, and then called his homeroom teacher.  Jerry’s homeroom teacher sits right across from me, so when she got this "alarmed-mother" call, she immediately just said, "hey, Jared, what's the deal with Jerry's quiz grade?"  

I looked in my grade book, and saw the quizzes with the circled scores, and, remembering the cheating concern, I simply explained, immediately, the whole story.  That was my third, and biggest mistake.  I have always felt, believed, and tried to practice the idea that things like cheating controversies should be strictly between student and teacher until at least one conversation has taken place between them.  But I'd not seen Jerry since quiz day, and so I hadn't met my own criteria.  Yet I nonchalantly dumped the whole problem out there in public view.  

If I'd followed my own rules, I'd have (a) never typed a zero into the computer (b) never said anything to Jerry's homeroom teacher about it until talking to Jerry.  The fact that both things happened in sequence meant that the thing exploded (predictably), and got completely out of my control.  The mom was furious.  Of course, she picked a peculiarly "Korean-mom" way of being furious:  she declared that I must be a terrible teacher, because I wasn't doing my job, which was, apparently, first and foremost, to "prevent her son from cheating."  It has been reactions like this, in the past, that caused me to make up my own policy regarding keeping such controversies "in house" as much as possible.  

So the whole thing escalated to the campus director.  The mom's anger has been assuaged, a little — by removal of the zero, a commitment on my part to "talk fairly" with her son, and, most importantly, a chance to "retake" the quiz for a better score.

But the whole thing has been a bitter experience.  Embarrassing.  Frustrating.  Depressing.  I'll get past it.  But.  Argh.

Random Notes for Korean
답장 = reply
전달 = delivery, conveyance
인쇄 = printing
목록 = listing, catalog
방울 = drop, dewdrop, little bell
완화하다 = mitigate, assuage, mollify
거짓말 = lie
언론= speech, discussion
언론의 자유= freedom of speech

Caveat: Let’s put a moratorium on fun

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Kids / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / The Wonders of Work

"Let's put a moratorium on fun."  – my timid student Sarah, when asked to use the word "moratorium" in a sentence in a workbook.

And Ellen, summarizing an article, had some problems with a certain homonym:  "Ulsan asked the International Wailing Commission to allow wailing on a limited basis."

Meanwhile, I was surfing around earlier today and found reference to something I'd explored a while back but never got around to posting (I don't think, anyway… I've been blogging long enough that I don't actually know everything I've posted, but a cursory autogoogle says "no").   I've always been into abstract art that looks like writing or maps (but isn't actually writing or maps).  This is sometimes called "asemic writing" apparently, and I found an interesting commentary on "asemic art" recently at a blogger named The Nonist.

If I ever ventured to be a "real artist" in the field of visual arts, that's one sort of aesthetic I'd try to pursue, I'm pretty sure.

Caveat: Floor Mats

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Science & SciFi

During my years in Burbank, working for Paradise, I learned more about the commercial floor-mat market than I ever dreamed possible.  Certainly, it was more than I wanted to know.   Why am I mentioning it now?   I saw the guy changing out the floor mats here at LBridge hagwon — replacing the dirty ones with clean ones.  These are "logo mats" — they have the hagwon's name on them (maybe sometime I'll sneak a picture and post it).   And I felt this weird kinship with the man rolling out the mats and lugging the dirty ones to the elevator. 

"I've done that," I thought.  Well, I wasn't the delivery guy.  I was a "corporate office" guy, doing database things.  I analyzed customer buying patterns across different product lines, and helped tell the marketers who they should target for their next promotion, or worked out more cost-effective ways to enforce large corporate contracts with respect to our unruly branch service locations.  But all of us central office types had gone on the occasional "route ride," where you accompany the delivery guys as they go out and deliver the uniforms, mats and other laundered paraphernalia to the customers.   I'm not sure if LBridge rents these mats, or if they own them and pay a laundry service to clean them.  I have no idea if the company cleaning them operates giant computerized plants all over Korea or is a mom and pop business that spreads them out on concrete somewhere and hoses them down.

But I spent way too much time thinking about it.  Speculating about the secret lives of our hagwon's floor mats.  Or maybe it's not bad to spend time thinking about it.  Mostly, most people never think about things like the vast number of rubberized floor mats that exist in businesses all over the world:  how they get there, who owns them, what they're made of, how much they cost, who cleans them.   I remember when I worked at the Casa in Mexico City, watching the maids taking them into the courtyard and having to hose them off and scrub them.  Unpleasant business.   And I had to do that with floor mats myself, when I worked at that 7-11 store in Boston, that summer.  Where were the rental and laundry guys, then?

And… there are wider cultural questions.  What's the cumulative carbon footprint of all rubberized floor mats, in all the world?   I mean, there's manufacturing issues, the wasted water and toxic chemicals involved in cleaning them, and disposal issues, too.  Are they really necessary?  Are there alternatives?  What are those alternatives?  Would western civilization be the same, without them?  Would we all be languishing in hospitals with fractures acquired from slipping on slippery floors?  Would retail business models collapse due to a lack of repeat business, because there were no snazzy floor mats establishing brand identity in the entryways? 

Oh… that gets deep.

Caveat: 쓴경험이 있었어요.

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

My students, especially at the lower level, often write about some bad thing that has happened to them, leading to being reprimanded by parents or teachers, and they will conclude with a sentence that looks rather formulaic:  “I had bitter experience.”
That’s not bad English, but it’s not really idiomatic.  It’s clear to me that they’re translating some Korean idiom.  I’ve been trying to figure out what that idiom is.  My best guess has two variations:
1)  쓴경험이 있었어요 = bitter experience (subj) there was
2) 쓴경험을 했어요 = bitter experience (obj) I did
Both seem like good Korean.  But I still haven’t gotten clear feedback if either of these is really a common idiomatic phrase.  More research required.

Caveat: Vowels are a scarce resource

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Language & Linguistics / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

There are not many jounalistic spaces on the web that I would consider personal "destinations," in the sense that I save bookmarks to them and return to them regularly because I enjoy the content and find it reliably entertaining.  This is doubly true for blogs and news sites related to technology.  I'm much more likely to simply find myself surfing to locations because of some specific interest being pursued via one of the big aggregators of news and opinion, e.g. Google News or Wikipedia, etc.

One place I have found myself returning to regularly is The Register, a UK-based news and blog site about technology.  The writing is reliably high-quality for the most part.  And I especially enjoy the dry, sarcastic humor of blogger Ted Dziuba, from whom I borrowed the observation that I used as the title of this blog.  It's not really relevant to anything in particular, it's simply funny.  It reminds me of the Onion headline from a decade or so ago, that said something along the lines of "Clinton deploys vowels to grateful Bosnia."

Then again, it depends where you are.  In Korea, if anything, they suffer more of a vowel surfeit than a shortage.  I think the language would be a lot more manageable if they would dispense with a few of their more challenging vowels and diphthongs.  Ah well.

Notes for Korean (while trying to use a computer)
검사 = inspection, test, examination
무료치료 = "no charge cure" (in context of antivirus ware.. seemed weird)
취소 = cancel
종료 = end / close

Caveat: … Survey Said!

Banalities & Journaling

Cue music, and Richard Dawson.
I posted a survey here and on facebook a little over a week ago. I got exactly one response (comment) on the version posted here on this blog.  That was my friend Bob, who wrote:

Teaching English in Mongolia, after completing a short certification program–and after visiting your friends and family in North America

In the spirit of your initial list from the previous post, I didn’t give this much forethought either–it was just the one idea on that list that jumped out at me as the type of a thing you should do. Living in Lisbon sounds intriguing too.

This was not entirely unprompted, since a little while prior, I’d posted a possible list (without having planned, at that time, to make a survey).
There were many more comments on the facebook page. Not what I’d imagined, but interesting nonetheless. I’ll meditate on the possibilities, and want to let everyone know (especially Colin, Kray and Jeannine, none of whom I’ve seen since high school and all of whom were close friends in around 3rd-4th grade) that I’m both stunned and yet weirdly comforted that, after all this time, they seem to know my soul so well. Whether I can act on their advice, I can’t say. Colin’s elaborate recommendations are appealing, in a mythical sort of way, though whether I will ever really be a poet… I have doubts (see post of two days ago). But I’m definitely leaning toward Mongolia for next year, after some time back in the states.
So here’s everything that people wrote at facebook:

 Gerri Smith Weiss at 1:59am July 4
Wow.. you must have very mixed feelings! I’ll keep you in my thoughts
Karen Choske-Anderson at 5:36am July 4
I know you love to travel and experience the world. If you come back to the States for other than a visit — it will still be a visit…just longer. 🙂 I wish you the best guidance possible while you make your decisions…and I would love to see you if you come through Burbank again.
Colin Brant at 7:15pm July 4
You have just enough time to get your applications in to the artist’s camps (Yaddo, MacDowell…) before you finish school and set off on a hitchhiking trip across Asia, (pack lightly: notebook, pencil, pocketknife, poncho, change of clothes) stopping in Mysore where you will meet an old, wise (wo)man by chance who will be able to guide you forward… Read More from that point. If you don’t meet that person, continue on through the Middle East, pause along the way (probably not Afghanistan) to learn the ancient art of falconry, make your way west and hole up in an obscure quarter of Amsterdam and write an epic poem about your adventure. It will be like a great necklace, looping across that whole region, with ancient and modern historic references, each line a pearl. Pepper the poem with falconry lingo and also words like
“tabernacle” and “pyjamas” for example “I slept at the foot of a sumptuous tabernacle/After dining on wild figs and sweet rice wine/My pyjamas heavy with the monsoon” .
Colin Brant at 7:34pm July 4
Well, I’ll leave the poetry to you! Anyway I recommend taking a lover during this time, perhaps a woman of Turkish or Armenian origin, with black hair and green eyes. She will be a muse, but also knowledgeable about arcane lore from that region that you can use in the poem. Go easy on the hashish unless you really need it, try espresso. At … Read Morethis point you will be hearing back from the residencies (next Spring?) and installed there begin work on editing the thing, making contacts,lining up readings…
First thing you need to do is print out two copies of these suggestions and laminate one, fold the other one up and double zip-lock in case you lose the laminated one.
In short I think you should concentrate on your poetry because you’ve got talent kid.
Kray Van Kirk at 3:18pm July 5
I think Colin has rather pre-empted the rest of us!! :-p
I think you should do an experiment by going insane a la Quixano, making cardboard armor and taking up the Quest Valiant. See what happens.
OR… Read More
Become a climatologist and work to overturn the sad and dreadful ignorance in the US regarding climate change
OR
I really like Colin’s suggestion regarding the Turkish/Armenian woman.
OR
Retreat somewhere for several years of contemplation and study to write a book on Cervantes, write poetry and draw pictures. Again, Colin’s suggestion is also very relevant to this scenario.
OR
Become governor of Alaska. Please. Seriously. Please!!
Colin Brant at 7:20pm July 6
I don’t think you want to clutter your brain with all the hassles being a governor must involve (budgets, special projects, long meetings, oil politics…). Wallace Stevens may have been able to compose poems on his way to a full time office job, but I think you need more space.
BTW I have a friend who is a poet, she’s from Mexico but lives in NY … Read Moreand teaches at Columbia and editor for a magazine called Bomb. She might be interested in seeing your work esp Spanish stuff. Is there a way to post a selection (blog?) so she could check it out?
Jeannine Rossa at 6:27pm July 8
Kray, as much as I love you, I like Colin’s suggestions the best. Besides, we’ll get interesting stuff to read! Can I also add a tiny bit? Before your trip, you fly into Phoenix, AZ and pick up your nephews for a camping trip in the Sangre de Christo mountains (I mean the name alone says GO! plus you should train for mountainous Asia) which … Read More becomes epic b/c you all get stuck up there in a snowstorm (freaking out your sister) but you’ve got plenty of food, so you teach the boys some Korean (thereby procuring forgiveness from sister) and tell long, drawn-out stories, which they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and when the storm is over, you return the nephews, and then fly off into the horizon for adventure and poetry as described earlier by Colin.
Don’t go to L.A.

picture

Caveat: Notapoet

Banalities & Journaling / My Poetry & Fiction

My longago friend, Colin (who is, apparently, an amazing visual artist), said in a recent facebook note that I should share some of my poetry. And he insisted that I was a poet. He knows my soul (or at least has read between the right lines in some bit of my confessional writing that’s floating around the internet). But I’m not. Not a poet. Maybe, just barely, I’m a writer.
Writing. I style myself a writer. I style myself poet, even. But really, I’m just a “poser.” I don’t do that much actual writing. It’s an ambition. A destiny. But it’s far from a vocation. Far from an avocation, even.
At least with respect to prose, I can say that I do, in fact, do some “writing.”  Which is to say, I have a large number of self-generated texts swirling through my personal cyberspace: on USB drives, uploaded to secured servers, or stored on my harddrive. I once lost over 200 pages to a Microsoft Word fiasco, which is why they’re now all in the form of raw .txt files. But they’re nothing I’m comfortable sharing, ultimately.  My perfectionism prevents me.
I’m desperately uncomfortable with the fact that basically, what I do, is write naked skeletons for complex but not particularly original fantasy and science fiction novels. Some of my friends know that I have a fondness for inventing imaginary worlds. It’s a fondness with an aftertaste of obsession. I think of my imaginary worlds as the possible spaces for speculative novels which, naturally, I never seem to get around to writing.  Another way I have often explained it, is that I am much better at writing the appendices to my novels than the actual content of them. Imagine a written corpus that consisted only of Tolkien’s appendices, without the main novelistic texts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, etc. That might be an approximation of what I have achieved, over the years.
There are two novels that have at least some germ of existence.
Only one has a good working title: Self-reliance. Despite the title, it’s basically a space opera genre work, set in a very complex future history called, alternately, “Rahet,” “Corporation Space” or “Rasf Sayan.” Unfortunately, it has yet to develop any kind of compelling protagonist. I have some characters I rather like, but no one has leaped out to take charge of the narrative, the way that good characters must. It’s not really just one novel. I have outlines for about six, which are interconnected in that they belong to the same universe, but not so interconnected that they constitute a single epic trajectory.  More like different snapshots on the same subject, where that subject is a future point in human history around circa 20000AD. I suppose if you have to compare it to something, you could look at something like Dune, though that is a bit hubristic of me to say.
The other novel is utterly devoid of a good working title, but is actually much clearer in my mind. A much more ambitious undertaking, from a genre standpoint, I guess you could say it is a bit “high-concept.” Littered with shifting points of view, odd Joycean (or Burroughsian?) turns and discontinuous narrative, it’s set in a sort of alternate present / alternate past (with unclear connections between), a la Nabokov’s Ada or Pynchon’s Vineland. And, like Vineland, it includes a fictional coastal county with fictional coastal college town somewhere nonspecific in California, which, for those who know me, will be of easy-enough-to-understand origins. But my little town of “Onirica” in “Las Urnas” county has nods to lots of fictional otherwheres, from Lovecraft’s Arkham to Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County to Pynchon’s Vineland to Garcia Marquez’ Macondo. Hah. Sounds ambitious, indeed.
Will these mythological spaces ever see “light of day”? My mother’s record as a novelist does not bode well for my own progress. Not that I’m that much like my mother, nor am I specifically imitating her in any way, but nevertheless it’s worth observing that she’s written some half dozen novels, all more publication-worthy than much of what’s “out there.” Yet she seems for the most part utterly uninterested in putting her ego on the line by attempting to publish. And I understand that, viscerally.
There are risks the fragile ego does not crave. I write plenty of garbage for this blog, but when it comes to things close to my heart, like my novels or my mostly virtual poetry, I have too much ego invested to risk sharing. I don’t dare face the potentially deafening indifference. So I guard it close. I don’t talk about it much. And in fact I don’t actually dedicate much time to it, for the most part.
picture

Caveat: The atheistic gyrovague – who me?

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

I'm cleaning house among my documents.   Here follows another set of collected "non-starters," from my list of "possible things to blog about."  Utterly random.

1.  "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don't exactly know what they are!" – Alice, after hearing the Jabberwocky poem.  But this reminds me of something Tracey said in class the other day:  "Teacher!  I understand the topic.  I just don't understand my ideas."

2.  Found at at https://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/07/kill-first-find-guilt-later.html:

Student Leader: In Iran we always use this joke to describe this situation: they say that a group sees a fox that is running away, they ask him, "Why are you running away?" The fox says, "The ruler has ordered that all foxes that have three testicles be killed." They note, "But you have two testicles," and the fox responds, "But first they kill and then they count."

This is exactly the situation activists in Iran are facing. Any crisis is an excuse to suppress them; their crimes have been decided beforehand.

3.  I don't normally have much interest in chess.  But I was surfing wikipedia and found a long article explaining some aspects of "fairy chess," which I found fascinating.

4.  What is a voodle?  [it's a "video doodle" … nice.]

5.  Comedy Central neologisms…
Stewart:  "obitutaiment" (RE Jacko's infinite death coverage)
Colbert:  "the dead can twitter!" (RE Jeff Goldblum's visit to his show)

6.  "Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?" — 'Cut-Ups Self-Explained' in Brion Gysin Let the Mice In, while reading about Wm S Burroughs' life in wikipedia…

7.  "not proven" is apparently a concept in Scots law, which creates a double opposition to traditional English law's "Guilty vs Not Guilty" … hmm, cf. Arlen Specter, years ago, on President Clinton's guilt during the misfired impeachment of that era.

8.  Multiculturalism in Korea … in the newspaper, and poking around online: https://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/05/expat-living-multiculturalism-in-korea.html

9.  "…the idiosyncrasies of civilization…" a sculptor talking on Canadian radio show "As It Happens," about his bronze sculptures being stolen by meth addicts.

10.  "A man of honor lives with whatever he does."  – the Rachael MacCloud character, in episode 4-15 of the Highlander TV series.

Notes for Korean:
부드러운= furry, soft, smooth (really! all of those meanings)

Caveat: Bing? uhhhh… Boogle.

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Internet & Blogging

I have been trying to use alternatives to Google, when searching things online.  Why?  It's not that I dislike Google.  It's that I always tend to favor the underdog.  It's some kind of instinct, almost.  I try to be anti-follow-the-crowd.

So, although I despise Microsoft in some respects, especially their Windows consumer franchise (can someone please repair Vista?  why does my computer crash several times a week under Vista, but never crashes when I boot under Windows Server 2003, and only crashes rarely under Ubuntu?), lately I've been making an actual effort to try using their newly branded search engine, Bing.

What a joke.  Today I was doing some searching on something Bing is supposed to be good at, according to the reviewers:  shopping.  I've been thinking of buying some "gadgets" before leaving Korea, to best take advantage of my hoard of Korean cash.    So I was trying to research camcorders and netbook and small notebook computers.   Hahaha.  The entire first page of results when I typed in "camcorder comparison shopping" were links to Google directory pages!  Which, in my personal experience, are useless for actually finding anything out.

Well, at least we know that Microsoft isn't skewing results to proprietary sites.  But, still… how could they allow this to happen?

Anyway, back at Google, I had much better luck finding some comparison buying guides, etc.

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