Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood

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

Last night, it was snowing.  Or sleeting.  Or freezing raining.  Something like that.  A blustery, damp, wind-driven, granular sort of snow.  And it didn't really stick.

Today, there are patches of white, but the sky is thickly hazy, yet it's quite windy.  A western wind, it seems like.  That's a spring pattern, here, a deviation from the north wind (bitterly cold) or south wind (warmer but wet) that normally seem to alternate in winter.  And yet it's quite cold, which means that it doesn't FEEL springlike – it feels like Minneapolis, this time of year, with the winds having whipped up across the plains.

That haze is the famous Chinese pall, I'd be willing to bet.  The Mongolian desert sands, from a 1000 km to the west, saturated with some juicy Chinese industrial wastes.  A bit early in the year for that, but the direction of the winds, and the color of the sky, make me suspicious.

Walking to work, these days, it's almost inevitable that I run in to some students, former or current.  I feel like a Mr Rogers, strolling like a conspicuous alien through his Ilsan neighborhood.  Putting on my teacher "happy face" despite the occasional turmoil inside.

"Hi Kevin!"  "Hi, Annie, how are you?"  "Hello, Joseph.  Don't forget you have a test tonight."  And I get those weird, disorienting bows that kids give to adults in public places (but that are utterly absent from the inside-the-hagwon environment, which I suppose is a tribute to the hagwon's efforts to instill a more "Western" atmosphere). 

Soundtrack:
Beastie Boys
임형주 (that 행복하길바래 song I like)
Radiohead
Madonna
Spagga y La Raza (Nueva York)
PM Dawn

Caveat: … restart your dog.

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I dreamed an eerie, very coherent dream.  Real plot.  Real characterization.  A story.

In the dream, I was driving in my pickup truck along an unpaved (or very poorly paved) stretch of highway.  A very desolate place.  There were two of me.  Not like two sides of myself;  not like a doppelganger or something;  just two of me.  Side by side, one driving, the other staring out the window.  Traveling companions.

It was near sunset, and bitterly cold.  The landscape was not mountainous, but not flat.  The vegetation was Patagonian.   Really, the stretch of road was like that long, mostly straight rise from Osorno to the Argentine border in Chilean Patagonia.  Like… driving up to Bariloche, on the Argentine side, with the volcano Igi Llaima (err, I think it's Igi Llaima) hovering like some undiscovered, exotic Fuji above the distant lake, below and behind.

It was starting to snow.  And although the landscape seemed like Chile, the roadsigns were in Korean.  Of course.

It was getting dark, and I was worried about something.  One of me was worried.  The other just shrugged, and muttered, do what you want.  So we stopped.  We pulled up a steep stretch of side-road, up against a fence under some gnarled, twisty, Japanese-painting pine trees.  Darkness fell.  We climbed into the back of my pickup, to sleep.

We awoke to the sounds of traffic.  I looked out and it was morning.  There was at least a foot of freshly fallen snow, but it was heavy, wet snow, like heaven throwing snowballs at Earth.  Still falling.  On the road below, there was a traffic jam.  All the cars had Korean plates, but I saw a group of Chilean carabineros monitoring the situation from the comfort of their idling car, a ways up the road.

Several vehicles had pulled off the highway behind us, up the steep drive to stop near us under the trees.  One truck, driven by a smoking team of Korean blue-collar types, was trying to negotiate around a pile of snow that appeared to have a car buried inside it.  And suddenly, the truck began to skid sideways down the steep drive.  It plunged into the traffic below, with almost no sound — in the weird, puttering silence that comes in blizzards.  Squoolurshshsh…

There was a weird yelping sound.  I saw that a dog lay in the road near the bottom.  Like a golden retriever puppy.  I popped the back of my camper top on my pickup truck and ran down the slippery road to pick up the dog.  It was dead — struck by the out of control truck.

The other me came down beside me, looking on impassive.  I was horribly upset, but I didn't say anything.

And then I said (the other "I" said):  "You'll need to get to level ground, if you want to restart your dog."  Like… giving advice to someone who's trying push-start an old car.  It made strange sense, but it was still utterly useless advice. 

I woke up.

Caveat: Subversive Hilarity

Banalities & Journaling / Quotable / Teaching & Methodology

As part of our curriculum, we have these newspapers (which are presumably level-appropriate current-events newspapers that the kids can read, and from which we get many of our debate topics).  I actually rather like the newspapers, despite their many mistakes, as the kids seem to get into actually being able to talk about relevant current events in class.  I had a funny experience, however, recently.  And some of my students actually "got it" when I pointed it out to them.

You see, with the newspaper comes a workbook, which includes some pages of difficult vocabulary to review.  At the top of the page, it says, "반복 학습을 통해 반드시 암기하고 Reading Comprehension과 Writing을 통해 그 쓰임새를 학인합시다." (rough translation:  blah blah memorize these words blah blah")…. Then, farther down, in the list of vocabulary words to memorize, they give this word with its example sentence:  "proficiency 숙달, 능숙 example: Pushing children to memorize vocabulary or grammar rules will not lead to a high level of language proficiency."  This is subversively hilarious.

Caveat: The Richard Nixon of Operating Systems

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers

Really? Check this out: “In many ways, Windows Vista has become the Richard Nixon of operating systems: controversial, scandalous, perhaps unfairly vilified at times, but ultimately reviled by many.” – at ChannelWeb.
Hahahaha. Cry. Cry. Etc. Truth is stranger than fiction. And true metaphors are stranger than fictional ones?
Alternately, in the spirit of the just-passed V-day, consider this: “Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites who never meet.” – Andy Warhol. Indeed, my life is profoundly, inexcusably exciting.
The attitude barometer, episode 4:
* Number of times I’ve opened my resignation letter and edited it:  1
* Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only):  1
* Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only):  2
* Number of students that have said something to the effect of “teacher, you’re so funny” while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles:  2
* Number of times I’ve told someone that I am “much happier than when I was in L.A.”:  0
* Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the “fake it till I make it” approach I’m fond of): 0
* Days I was late to work this week:  1
* Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early:  15
recent soundtrack:
Last Alliance (JPop with a sanitized grunge flavor)
KoRn (pure anger from Bakersfield)
Bob Dylan
Elis Regina
Queens of the Stone Age
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Caveat: Reflections on (of) Glass Houses. And the Future.

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Less Banal Than Usual / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Here are some disorganized reflections of mine on the subjects of facebook, the internet, the panopticon, and the glass houses. An extension to some initial thoughts I posted on February 6th, in reaction to an article in the guardian.

The web’s “transparency” has two aspects. There is the “taken” or “stolen” transparency (meaning that it grants organizations or individuals a power to spy – cf. a concept such as Foucault’s panopticon prison, which is carrying the problem to a philosophical extreme).  This is something that people fear. But there is also a “granted” or “given” transparency, which is fundamentally empowering, in my opinion – especially when viewed as an opportunity for those who hold power of any kind to “come clean” vis-a-vis those over whom they exercise power.  Or, at a more personal level, it is the power recognized from time immemorial in the liberating nature of confession.

In terms of potential, this power of revelation/confession trumps the power to monitor (panopticon). Governments and organizations are in glass houses, now. They try to throw up barriers and blinds, but it’s a losing battle, at best. There is a man in China who is in prison because some exec at Yahoo! (or group of execs, more likely – corporate ethical lapses are so often the consequence of groupthink) had an ethical lapse vis-a-vis the Chinese government, but, the truth remains… we KNOW about that man in prison. In past times, a similar man, in a similar prison, would have disappeared completely, and we’d only have known of his situation by extrapolation from the situation of others whom we’d heard about. Recall the many “disappeared” victims of past dictatorships. Such total “disappearances” are, erm, disappearing in this new internet-enabled world. Everything gets documented.

Bushcheneyian tyrants will always find ways to harass us, and they will be assholes, regardless of the technology available. Quakers, freethinkers and resisters were blacklisted by the CIA, the FBI, not to mention King George III, long before there were internet servers. Cheney and his secretive, Nixonian ilk are a fading breed… a failing adaptation. Or is this overly hopeful?
Perhaps if I believed in such a thing as divine providence, I’d be more inclined yearn for such a divine providence to be controlling our internet infrastructure, but there’s nothing divine: there’s only Al Gore – a deeply flawed human at best (and Al Gore’s not really controlling the internet, obviously, but he’s a good proxy for the human collectivities that ARE controlling it, and he’s an amusing proxy, too, since he “invented” it).

Broadly, my primary assertion is that the internet as a whole, and facebook in particular (mostly seen as a somewhat more intensely managed version of the internet as a whole), are AT WORST forces of an ethically neutral value, and AT BEST they offer the potential for radically transforming our human ethical space, mostly due to the eerie powers of grassroots transparency.

Partly, I’m thinking in terms of evolutionary psychology. Humans evolved an ethical space in which LYING and DECEPTION (including self-deception!) were easy strategies, and therefore those things were (and still ARE) also quite frequent. The direction in which technology is taking us has the potential to transform the social evolutionary pressures that led that way. Perhaps I’m guilty, here, of transhumanist (q.v.) thinking – which in general I find vaguely worrying. Be that as it may.

Writers like Tom Hodgkinson worry that facebook (and the internet in general) are primarily technologies that accentuate this potential of deception, and worse, that they can even facilitate oppression. That’s a very pessimistic view, and it will lead down the path toward luddism. Of course, all technologies present us with grave dangers: the warmongers and the kleptocrats will always be beating plowshares into swords, wherever and whenever they “need” them, and using campaigns of deception and spying to discover the weaknesses of their enemies.

My feeling is that the people who most fear the internet are the sorts of people who fear things in general, and that the people who extoll the internet are the sorts of people who extoll things in general – in other words, whether we fear the future or extoll it has more to do with our own inner selves than with aspects inherent in world-changing technologies.

There have always been future dystopians (once called millenarians, for example). There have always been pie-in-the-sky optimists regarding the future of the human condition. What’s true – or reasonable – must fall somewhere in between.
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Caveat: Trapped on Planet Earth

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Science & SciFi

pictureThe recent satellite collision in the news got me to thinking about a thing called Kessler Syndrome.  The idea that it’s entirely conceivable and possible that we litter our Earth-proximate space with so much high-speed junk that it becomes difficult or impossible to launch vehicles into space anymore, as the debris becomes a kind of space-borne mine field that will pelt and puncture anything passing through.   Humanity’s forays into space might be ended by humanity’s own shortsightedness vis-a-vis the appropriate utilization of it.
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Caveat: Chupacabras and other fine tropes

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Internet & Blogging / My Photos

It started out, because I was wondering, how does an originally Puerto Rican (and now naturalized Mexican, Brazilian, and even Texan) goat-sucking monster end up as a trope in a Japanese cartoon series? See the youtube, below, where the chupacabra creature is introduced in the Negima!? (the exclamation point and question mark are important parts of the correct spelling of the show’s name) series.
[UPDATE 2020-04-07: The video link here no longer worked, and I have been unable to find a replacement for it. So I guess just take my word for it.]
But then I began investigating, and found this most amazing, time-sucking website. A sort of intellectual chupacabra of my very own: tvtropes.org. Not only do they have these amazingly well-written, tongue-in-cheek meditations on everything from Hamlet to Battlestar Galactica to Chupacabras (of course), but they have such fun little time-wasters as the amazing “story generator“. I will never be able to spend my free time in only wikipedia. I’ve found something better.
So, that was yesterday. Today, I went exploring in Seoul, a little bit. Parts of Seoul seem like a very cold, temperate version of L.A., in terms of the urbanist style at work: these desolate mountain ranges push down into the heart of the city without really attracting development because of their steepness, so only a few subway stops north of downtown you can find a neighborhood that looks like this.
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Caveat: Books-embedded-in-memories

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Drawings & Paintings

A couple books that I read long ago, that have been on my mind for some reason.
When the Legends Die by Hal Borland: described as a “young adult classic,” but it’s a just plain good novel, in my opinion. We’re reading a couple of stories about the American West in my Violet 2 class, recently, and whenever I think of the American West, I think of this book. It’s definitely in my top 100 books. It’s not really a western, although that’s probably the closest genre.  It’s a very spare book, with a strong, unreachable but sympathetic character. Alienation. Perhaps most striking: it’s got loneliness without the pain that goes with it. Loneliness as refuge. As salvation, even. That’s a loneliness I understand, sometimes.
The Chosen (part of the unfinished “The Stone Dance of the Chameleon” trilogy) by Ricardo Pinto: a weird novel. The sort of thing a secret love-child of JRR Tolkien and William S Burroughs might produce, if he were raised in the Guatemalan jungle.  But well-written, and very complex. Amazing characters, descriptions, a very alien universe, but peopled by multi-dimensional humans. I was thinking of this because I read somewhere recently that Pinto (from Scotland – can’t you tell by his name?) is finally planning on completing his trilogy. I’ll need to get the book.
The Friday attitude barometer, episode 3:
* Number of times I’ve opened my resignation letter and edited it:  0
* Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only):  1
* Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only):  0
* Number of students that have said something to the effect of “teacher, you’re so funny” while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles:  0
* Number of times I’ve told someone that I am “much happier than when I was in L.A.”:  1
* Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the “fake it till I make it” approach I’m fond of): 0
* Days I was late to work this week:  2
* Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early:  45
Current Soundtrack (as-I-write-this):

Zeromancer – “Fractured” from album Eurotrash
Linkin Park with Jay-Z – Dirt off your shoulder / Lying from you
Garbage – The Trick is to Keep Breathing
I drew this.

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Caveat: Friends like these…

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Internet & Blogging / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

My facebook friend Kray pointed to an article in the guardian about the darker side of facebook in a recent post.  I wrote the following comments.  I'm going to be writing more, maybe this weekend.  I think it's important.

Kray, this is a fascinating article, and I agree that much of it is disturbing, the way that whole parts of the "new economy" are disturbing.  I think I will try for an in depth meditation on some of the issues raised, but meanwhile, two short observations:
xkcd 1) While I agree that if you're using facebook to connect to your local community, then you're clearly short circuiting what could be much more productive "real" social interactions.  But for me, it's been proving an amazing way to maintain and restore previously "disappeared" personal communities that span the entire planet because of my current location.  That's a "good thing."
2) Yes, we are very "exposed" on the net, and I agree that having all that personal information out there is scary.  But I've always been a huge fan of the concept of transparancy as a way to ensure ethics in things like government and business, and while there are big-brother aspects to something like facebook, isn't it possible that we could be hypocritical if we are unwilling to apply the same standards of transparency to our own lives?  I'd rather have my "dark secrets" online in a medium I at least in some ways can monitor and control (e.g. my blog, or facebook) than in spaces I cannot control (e.g. that file the FBI/CIA undoubtedly already have on me, somewhere in Washington, or the file my past doctors have of me in some database). 

Caveat: elected for president!!!

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

Today I was a celebrity. Each time I stepped out of a classroom or climbed the stairs, I faced a battery of cellphone cameras wielded by students who had recently discovered they can make high-speed, shutter-repeating “picture movies” with their cellphones. I began to do crazy things, as the idea of taking little stop-frame movies of me and each other spread like a meme in a grade school. Uh… yeah, that.
One student “messaged” me a few frames, and explained, finally: “Jared is elected for president!!!”
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Caveat: 김家네에서 점심 밥 먹었어요

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

Last night a bunch of people from work went out to a Chinese restaurant in the “meat market” which is local foreigner-slang for the west end of the La Festa shopping center (which my apartment building is directly adjacent to).  I don’t know how the area got that name — whether because of the large number of restaurants, the existence of place(s) specifically selling meat (which I haven’t seen as something salient), or because of the nightclub scene (which as you know I tend to avoid).  Anyway, there are some good restaurants there, and the Chinese place is a regular haunt for semi-official LBridge staff outings.  Note that “Chinese” is interpreted broadly:  just as getting “Chinese” in America is hardly the same as getting food in China, I rather doubt there’s more than a passing similarity between China’s authentic cuisines and what they call “Chinese” in Korea.  But it’s pretty good.
Today, after the unhealthy food last night, I was craving kimchi bokkeumbap. I ordered some delivered from 김家네 (Kim Family’s House), the convenient take-out and delivery place on the corner. Having lunch delivered to the staff room at LBridge is nearly universal, but I tend not to do it except rarely, as the portions are always larger than I should eat regularly. There are lots of places that deliver, but 김家네 is the most popular – I think it’s part of a chain of Korean fast food joints.
It took me a long time to figure out the middle syllable (Kim-ga-ne) because on all the written material associated with the restaurant, they use the Chinese hanja to stand for the “ga.” In pure hangeul, it would be 김가네.  I don’t know why they use the hanja – it’s a strictly stylistic thing, but I never knew how it was pronounced as I have never managed to develop the skill required to search for Chinese hanja in dictionaries without already knowing the pronunciation.  I had to wait to overhear some coworkers talking about it to make the connection with the bags and containers I saw from the place.  “Kim-ga” means, roughly, Kim Family, and the -ne suffix means something akin to the way “chez” works in French, for example.

Caveat: 25 random things (cross-post from facebook to blog)

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Life is a Dream

I've been spending more time in facebook, recently.  I'm not going to make much effort to "cross-post" things between the two places, but the potential for a sort of "online personality divergence" makes me weirdly uncomfortable — I'm not sure to what extent my miniscule blog audience overlaps my miniscule facebook audience…

Anyway, in this instance, here is a cross posting from facebook.  A challenge is circulating there, to post 25 random things about oneself.  Here is what I wrote:

1. I like making weird lists of random facts about myself. So this task
should go well and prove entertaining.

2. I jokingly tell people that I'm on my 6th career, and it definitely won't be
my last. Let's see… in reverse order: 6) Elementary EFL Teacher 5) Database
Programmer and Business Systems Analyst (maybe that's 2 at once?) 4) High
School Spanish Teacher 3) Graduate Student (that's a career, isn't it?) 2)
Bookstore Flunky 1) US Army Mechanic 0) Itinerant Hippie-Type-Person

3. I wrote a doctoral dissertation proposal on Cervantes' under-appreciated
novel "Persiles," but I dropped out of the Univ of Pennsylvania program in
disgust with the departmental politics; they gave me an MA as a "consolation
prize."

4. In 2004 I wrote a "temporary" computer program that a former employer of
mine used to bill a Very Large Customer (let's say they have corporate HQ in
Detroit, and the monthly billing amount was approximately $1 million, with
invoices running to 300 pages). As far as I know, they were still using that
program in 2007. When you log onto the intranet site that runs the billing
program, I had placed a quote by Mao Tse-tung on the splash page. It's still
there.

5. My television is broken. I like it that way. I use it to pile up my "half
clean" laundry… the stuff it's not time to wash but that isn't clean enough
to hang in the closet. If I need video, I watch it on my laptop.

6. I'm a language geek. I have studied 20 languages in some kind of academic
context for at least a few months. That doesn't mean I can speak them. In
most, I can barely say "hello, howareya?" In no particular order: Latin,
Ancient Greek, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Dakota (Native
North American Language), Mapudungun (Native South American Language), Korean, Medieval Welsh, Ancient Sumerian, Georgian (Kartuli), Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic, Purepecha (Tarascan, Native Mexican Language), Dutch, Catalan, German.

7. The languages in which I could truly claim any degree of competence are (in rapidly descending order): English, Spanish, French, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Italian… from there, don't even bother. I claim fluency only in English and Spanish.

8. I cook a mean mole poblano (famous Mexican Puebla style "chocolate chicken"). I haven't done so since moving to Korea, though. Ingredients hard to come by…

9. I love snow and rain much more than sunny days of any kind.

10. I died on November 17th, 1998, from intentional drug overdose. This is my 10th year as a ghost on planet Earth. I'm much happier as a ghost.

11. I love my family, though I don't communicate much with them.

12. I really want to learn Korean for 3 reasons: 1) the challenge — it is reputably one of the most difficult languages in wide distribution to learn 2) the novelty — it is very unique grammatically in the world 3) for my nephews (two Korean boys my sister adopted)

13. My childhood ambition was to be an architect. I feel like it's too late… but is it?

14. I secretly love cheesy romantic comedies.

15. There are still many places I want to travel to and visit. Top of the list: Phillipines, Japan, Mongolia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Finland, Russia, Turkey… uh, well, everywhere. OK? Everywhere.

16. I think I like being a "foreigner" — like when I was living in Mexico, or here in Korea, now. I think it helps affirm my inner alienation.

17. The big surprise of my recent career shift is that I actually enjoy teaching elementary kids more than older kids (and/or adults). It makes sense, but it honestly had never occurred to me before.

18. I own around 4000 books. They're in storage, in Minnesota. Except for, say, the most recent 50, lying around my apartment here in Ilsan. I can't seem to get rid of books, even if they're in a language I may never be competent to read.

19. If I go back to grad school, it won't be in Spanish Lit (which is what it was before). Maybe back to Linguistics?

20. I have more than 6000 music tracks on my computer. I admit… I'm a pirate. Argh.

21. I used to hate kimchi… but dang, that stuff kinda grows on you.

22. The place I've lived longest is Humboldt County (first 17 years minus a
half year in Oklahoma City plus a half year or so in 1990). 2nd runner-up is
Twin Cities, Minnesota (about 10 years cumulatively). 3rd place is Los Angeles
County, various locations (about 9 years total); 4th place is Metro
Philadelphia (about 3 years). 5th place is Northwest Gyeonggi Province, South
Korea (now about 2.5 years cumulatively). 6th place is Mexico City (about 14
months total). Other places where I've lived at least 3 months: Chicago,
Illinois; Valdivia, Chile; Boston/Cambridge, MA; Acuitzio, Michoacan, Mexico;
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala; Craig, Alaska; Oklahoma City, OK; Fort Jackson, South Carolina

23. Technically, I'm a widower. The real story is more complicated — we were
separated and discussing divorce when Michelle committed suicide in June of
2000. But I miss her nevertheless.

24. I have a stepson, Jeffrey, who is now 22 and a student at St Cloud State
in Minnesota.

25. An old friend of mine, Rosita (now 71), in Mexico City in 2007, asked me
why I'm single. "Porque todavia creo en el amor verdadero," I answered. (I
still believe in true love).

 

Caveat: 48 Questions

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

There was one of those list-note things circulating in facebookland, where you answer the questions and post them as a note in facebook. So I did that. Here's the result, crossposted here to this blog thingy.

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Well, there's that patriarch
Jared, in the Bible — Genesis something-or-other, and he makes a quick
appearance in the roll call at the beginning of Luke. But I think my
mother was just fishing around randomly.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
November 16th, last fall.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
It's horrible.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Pastrami (historically). Recently, K-spam (Koreans worship spamstuff).

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
One
stepson, turned 22 last month. Wow. He's in my facebook friends list.
He lives in St Cloud, MN. We're not super close, but I care about him
very much.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
No way. I'm insecure and excessively opinionated.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
Regrettably, far too often.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Nope. They got removed at Trinity Hospital, corner of C Street and 14th in Arcata, in 1970. I remember the jello vividly.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Definitely. It's on the list.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
I haven't eaten cereal in years. But, if I had to choose, maybe raisin bran.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
God, never.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Coffee.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Personalitywise: "openness"? Physically: hands.

15. RED OR PINK?
Pink. Only because of a current running joke with my E2M3 kids at work.

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
My indecisiveness / commitment issues.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
Sometimes
I miss Michelle (my former wife, died 2000). Sometimes I miss my dad
and brother in L.A. Sometimes I miss my bestfriend Bob and family in
Wisconsin.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
No. Someone has to resist the borg.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
I'm at home, after work. Blue shorts, no shoes.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
I
have more than 6000 tracks of music on my computer, on shuffle. Let's
see what comes up… LOL: Bee Gees, More than a Woman. ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Greenish

23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Honeysuckle
and asphalt (i.e. Southern California in the fall); diesel fumes
(really! makes me think of bus treks across Mexico); a Humboldt County
beach (the surging Pacific); a Minnesota spring;

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My friend Basil, former coworker at hellbridge (my employer).

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
I like most people. Weirdly. In my abstract way. But yes.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
Hmm. Probably soccer.

27. HAIR COLOR?
Brownish greyish.

28. EYE COLOR
Bluish greyish.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No.

30. FAVORITE FOOD?
Kimchi Bokkeumbap. Mole poblano. Mac n Cheese.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Happy endings.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
헨젤과 그레텔. Note this is a scary movie, which doesn't make sense, given the previous answer. But whatever…

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Um… bluish, sweatshirt.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Winter. Why else do I keep moving back to Minnesota? Besides, the sun is evil.

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Hugs. Despite years in Latin America, I never got comfortable with the kiss-as-hello thing.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Me. See? … I just did.

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
I refuse to respond to this.

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
I
never read just one book at a time. Current in-progress
(pile-on-the-shelf-by-the-bed) list includes: Zarathustra (Nietzsche);
The World Without Us (Alan Weisman); Rational Mysticism (John Horgan);
Mainspring (Jay Lake); Progress and Poverty (Henry George); 프래니 (Koren
language translation of American children's book Frannie K Stein by Jim
Benton); Audacity of Hope (Obama).

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
I use the track-pad thing built into my laptop. The mousepad at work is black and unattractive. There is a mouse on it.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
My
TV is broken. I download old tv shows or movies sometimes, and watch
them on my computer. I was watching a Korean series called "Rooftop
Cat" a while back. And some Hawaii 5-O episodes. Bookem, Danno.

42. FAVORITE SOUND(S).
A
not-too-busy freeway, as heard from about 3 blocks away; cicadas in the
height of a Korean summer; the crunch of snow after a fresh fall, when
the temperature is below 0F.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
I don't really like either, but if I had to choose, I'd opt for Beatles, because of the childhood soundtrack thing.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
Uh,
which home? My current home is the farthest from my first home, I
think. But Tierra del Fuego is really damn far from both, and so is
Krakow, Poland. Hmm, how about Tasmania? That's farther from most of
my homes than other places, I guess.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
I used to be able to sleep anywhere, under any circumstance. I seem to have lost that ability. It's very sad.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Trinity Hospital, Arcata, California.

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
Whosoever…

48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER?
We
were next door neighbors in 1992, in south Minneapolis, but also both
attending Univ of Minnesota. Michelle and I separated in 1998, and she
died in 2000.

Caveat: Centering

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I had a profoundly traumatic fourth grade year, split between Edgemere Elementary in Oklahoma City (for that half-year we spent there when Ann and Mara and I were staying with my grandparents), and Sunnybrae (which at that time was an elementary school – it didn’t change to a middle school until a few years later, just in time for me to attend there again in 7th and 8th grades).
I really hated my fourth grade year, although I remember being sort of friends with Kray, and close friends with Colin Brant and Tom McConnell.  But the following two years, for 5th and 6th grades, I went to “Centering School.”
pictureI laugh it off sometimes, in trying to explain it to others who don’t know or understand what a Humboldt County upbringing can mean. “It was a hippie school,” I’ll joke. “We meditated after lunch, and they let us vote on what to study next,” I will explain laconically. The very last may be a bit of an exaggeration. But overall, they’re not inaccurate. And the fact of the matter is, they were the best years of my long, complicated education. I will remember teachers like Rita and Peggy forever. I still feel close to especially Peggy, who I describe to people using a word like “godmother” – she’s probably the closest thing I’ve had to one. Admittedly, Peggy was not just my 6th grade teacher, but also one of the residents of the extended A Street menagerie, and had been part of the community that raised me from infancy.
And my best friend was Steven Rossa. We used to stage mock battles in the halls, when Centering School was located at the Methodist Church on 11th Street, or go hunting evil villains in a sort of superheroes roleplay across the parking lot and around behind the buildings. The school was small, so what age you were meant little about who you hung out with… so it created a much more natural, human kind of interaction between the kids, with lots of mentoring of older to younger. There was a huge emphasis on arts:  drama, writing, drawing, etc. Appropriate, since the school’s founder was a HSU art professor.
Here’s what’s strange, now, all these years later. I’m a bit old to be part of the typical facebook demographic. As would those who are in my generation, which is to say, my Centering School peers. But lo and behold, it seems as if vast numbers of Centering School alums are facebookers, and everyone’s friending everyone else like mad. Perhaps something about the original environment drawing and encouraging creative types leads, all these years later, to a high rate of internet adoption and comfort? All I know is that there are more people from 5th and 6th grade Centering School in facebook than there are from my college years… at least that I’ve seen. That’s a strange statistical improbability.
Regardless, it’s very cool to be meeting up with people, online, who I haven’t seen since 1977, the year I finished 6th grade…  if rather disorienting. It was such a great community! I have sometimes said that I was subjected to two horrible traumas during my childhood: my parents’ divorce, and my departure from Centering School at the end of 6th grade – and I’m not really joking when I say that of the two, the latter was worse.
picture

Caveat: 술 안마셔요

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

Today we had the semi-annual speech contest. I was there as a “judge,” and a coach for some of my students, and also “emcee” for the second round. Jeez… talk about conflicts of interest.
I managed to compartmentalize, and hopefully I was as objective as possible in my judging. I was feeling shafted when one of my hero students, Jessica, didn’t make it to the second round, as I thought she’d done amazingly well, but then I learned that she had in fact placed second out of everyone in the first round, but that her mother had withdrawn her. Hmm… the motives of parents are indeed obscure, at times. Sarah-teacher reported to me that Jessica was in tears over having to leave without a prize despite her excellent performance. I felt bad for her, but better that at least in this instance, it wasn’t hellbridge who was being a collective jerk.
I was proud of Willy (who I quoted just yesterday). And little Dahye didn’t do badly, though didn’t advance to the second round. There was a bittersweet moment, because I’ve been trying really hard to help Dahye feel sufficiently confident to stand up in front of adults and peers and give a speech: she’s a tiny 8 year old with near-perfect English, but is terribly shy. But I heard she did pretty well… I wasn’t there because I was judging a different group.  After the first round, waiting for the announcement of the 20 students who would advance to the second round, she ran up to me and declared, “it’s like a prison in there!”  She was referring to the “waiting room” that her group of kids was in.  And she grabbed my hand and held on.  And at that moment, two 6th graders, Sydney and Eunice came up, and said, “Oh, teacher… is that your daughter?”  I think they were joking, but it was very sweet:  Dahye just grinned up at me with big eyes.
After the contest was finally over, the prizes given out, the parents herded out, teachers and staff and “guests” (corporate types from hellbridge corporation) went out for a late lunch.  And as is my custom, when the soju (Korean rice vodka) started flowing, I demurred, “술 안마셔요” (sul an-masheoyo = I don’t drink alcohol).   They were so impressed with this bit of Korean, but they were of course dumbfounded at my rejection of alcohol — foreigners in Korea have a reputation for being heavy drinkers.  It isn’t really true that I don’t drink… but Koreans are so hardcore about drinking that I find it easier to simply pretend I don’t do alcohol when socializing with them, as I’ve never been one to hold my liquor well.

Caveat: “Dear Blockhead Ants, … “

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

My student Jin wrote a story about a grasshopper and some ants.  It's based on an old folktale that we'd read the text of.  But in his version of the story, the grasshopper does well for himself, and he writes back to the ants, "Dear blockhead ants, I am in Hawaii now and very happy."  Or something like that.  It was cute.

My student Emily S. created an "alien from Saturn" character for a little almost socratic-style dialogue, and the alien's name was Nanarishtititana.   Which is a perfect name for a Saturn alien.

Today in E1aT1 class, we were discussing animal rights.  Toward the end of the class, Jenny N, who often makes no sense at all, said, in a distressed but clear tone:  "But… teacher! We don't need to learn this, because we are not animals."  I laughed so hard at this — I'm sure she understood she was making a joke.  We had a lot of fun.

Willy is a fourth grader, and a near genius.  He may have had some help in composing the following, but I've spent enough time with him to know he's capable of it, himself.  It's not just that his English is amazingly good, but that the degree of complexity of his reasoning and his "knowledge about the world" is close to what we would call college-level in the States.   Here's Willy, in his own words, on neocolonialism:
As I mentioned, we think about America when we say brands like 'Starbucks', 'Boeing', and 'McDonalds'. All these are famous. And how does it make us to speak English? The answer is: naturally. Actually, it is because we are colonized in culture. We can't feel that we are colonized but we are colonized in American culture slowly and we start to learn and use English slowly.

The attitude barometer, episode 2:

  • Number of times I've opened my resignation letter and edited it:  0
  • Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only):  1
  • Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only):  1
  • Number of students that have said something to the effect of "teacher, you're so funny" while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles:  1
  • Number of times I've told someone that I am "much happier than when I was in L.A.":  2
  • Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the "fake it till I make it" approach I'm fond of): 1
  • Days I was late to work this week:  0
  • Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early:  -75 (meaning I came to work early and wasn't much late)

Caveat: Timeline

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging

Lately, because of facebook, I’ve been “reconnecting” with people I haven’t interacted with or known about for up to 25 years. People from high school! Jeannine, Kray, Richard…. Anyway, questions crop up: didn’t you go to university in Missouri? (No). I heard you joined the Army? (Yes).
Being a fundamentally lazy person, I decided to answer a whole pile of these questions at once. I’ve added a year-by-year timeline [UPDATE 20210520: Link repaired, old link was broken] of my life-since-high-school to the bio page of my website: Jared’s Bio. Each year has 1 to 5 telegraphic sentences summarizing what I recall as the salient aspects of that year. I can now point people to it.  If they’re interested. More me out there, for all the world to see: I believe in transparency – it cleanses the soul.

Caveat: Among the redwoods in Ilsan

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

picture
Redwoods in Ilsan?  Well, I’m pretty sure.  They’re not Sequoia sempervirens… I believe they’re Metasequoia glyptostroboides, Chinese “dawn redwoods.”   They’re quite common as ornamentals throughout the temperate climes, now, because they are hardy and grow fast.   Here in Korea, they’re not actually that far from home — I think their native area is within 500 km or so.
Unlike California’s sequoias, they’re deciduous — they get naked for the winter.  But they have very redwoody bark, and the needles are strikingly similar.   See the picture I took, at right.
I walked down to the lake park, and took this picture, below, of the arranged rocks in the frozen lake, with the bridge in the distance over the lake.  It seemed beautiful.
picture
picture

Caveat: Love with no need to preempt grievance

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

Elizabeth Alexander's poem that she read at the Space Emperor's inauguration has received some unkind reviews.  But I found the text of it, and despite its reception, I think I rather like it.  At the risk of annoying a copyright god somewhere, I will reproduce it.

Writing a poem for such an event, in an era when poetry, especially poetry for public reading, is largely moribund, and for such a diverse audience as "all of America"… well, this is no small challenge.  She could have done much worse.

"Praise song for the day."
by Elizabeth Alexander
[2009 Obama Inauguration]

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; we walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self." Others by "First do no harm," or "Take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

 

Caveat: Maps

Banalities & Journaling

I like maps.  My rather spartan apartment has recently been decorated by maps on the walls.  I have a map of Korea.  A map of Argentina/Chile.  A map Seoul.  And a map of the world (with the place names in Korean.

Gives me something to look at.  Kind of dormroomesque, though.  Will I ever grow up?  Is that required?

Caveat: шоколад, хлеб и борщ в Сеуле

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea

It’s now been 20 years since I studied Russian in college.  And unlike some other things I’ve studied, I’ve not made much use of it.  At the time, I was quite good at it.   I completed a year of college Russian and got one of the highest grades on the end-of-year final that the department had recorded for a first year student — high enough that I remember being contacted by a CIA recruiter (remember that 20 years ago, the cold war had not yet ended).  I was flattered but uninterested at the time.  Imagine if I’d pursued that?  How different would my life have been?
pictureAnyway, I was with Basil today, we went to a bookstore and then we went out for Russian food at a restaurant in the Russian neighborhead near 동대문 (dongdaemun).  After having some pretty good borscht and kebabs, we went into a tiny Russian cafe (picture at right) where we drank some kefir and I bought a loaf of dark Russian bread.  And then in a Russian supermarket I bought some Russian chocolate (for the novelty, of course).
I was stunned to realize that I was interacting with the Korean-Russian lady behind the counter in Korean, much more comfortably than if I’d been forced to use Russian.  And it felt like a weird sort of linguistic milestone, to be in Seoul’s Russiatown interacting in Korean… it means Korean has passed Russian in terms of my linguistc comfort and competence.  That’s not really saying a lot, of course.  The Russian is very very rusty.  But it felt good, in  a very weird way.
The title says шоколад, хлеб и борщ в Сеуле (“chocolate, bread and borscht in Seoul”). I ate the borsht in the restaurant, but here below is a pic of the bread and chocolate I brought home with me.
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Caveat: Apples and Socks

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

It's lunar new year, this weekend.  The hagwon got gift boxes of apples (presumeably those high-quality greenhouse-grown apples so popular here in the winter — I rather doubt they're imports from warmer climes) for all the staff.  I guess that's better than the gift boxes of Spam we got for Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving, back in September).  And one of my students gave me a gift box of socks, yesterday.  Yes, socks.  This is not the first time I've received a gift of socks from a student.  I think it must be a custom, of sorts.  In any event, it's probably right up there on my list of convenient job-perks.  I mean, which is really more useful, when you get down to what's really important in life:  stock options or sock options?  I'll opt for socks.  ㅋㅋㅋ ^_^

Caveat: Jared’s Friday Attitude Barometer

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

I haven’t done very well with coming up with what might be called “regular features” in my blog. I did really well over the summer with my “Notes for Korean,” but with the press of that nightmarish fall term, I abandoned it. It’s not even that I stopped posting notes… I simply stopped studying Korean altogether. I’ve been having a hard time getting back into a routine, now.
When I’m traveling, I like to say where I am. But that’s not really a feature.
And I love the idea of giving a “soundtrack,” although I haven’t figured out how to actually link in songs and all that… partly, I worry about copyright issues, and also, I’m so anti-Apple that the best online apps out there, which use Apple’s iTunes universe, are kind of off-limits for me.
Just for the sake of trying, today’s soundtrack, walking to work: Cat Stevens, Cafe Tacuba (mexi rock), 소녀시대 (k-pop), BigBang (k-rap), Cold (grunge / alt).  “Shuffle” is awesome.
pictureMy student Tammy (2nd grade) sent me a message from her cellphone to mine which consisted only of a “cute” animated picture.  I managed to capture it, but it’s not animated, now. See at right.
Anyway, I’m going to try for a weekly feature: an attitude barometer. Like most things in this blog, it’s vulnerable to the primary criticism I’ve received… it’s basically narcissistic. Of course. This is really just a diary, right? As long as we’re clear on that, hey, if you don’t want to read it, then don’t, OK?
The attitude barometer consists of a few questions that will have numerical answers. Some positive questions, some negative. Kind of like those questions in the Harper’s Index. The variation in numbers from week to week will provide an indication of my general mood and attitude, mostly about my work.

  • Number of times I’ve opened my resignation letter and edited it:  1
  • Barrier-surpassing moments of Korean-language usage (outside of work only):  0
  • Spirit-destroying moments of Korean-language communication breakdown (outside of work only):  2
  • Number of students that have said something to the effect of “teacher, you’re so funny” while fighting off an apoplectic fit of giggles:  3
  • Number of times I’ve told someone that I am “much happier than when I was in L.A.”:  3
  • Number of times I really meant it (as opposed to the “fake it till you make” approach I’m fond of): 2
  • Days I was late to work this week:  2
  • Total number of minutes I was late, minus total number of minutes I showed up early:  45

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Caveat: Borrarlo de tu vida!

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Less Banal Than Usual / Life is a Dream

I step out of my building at 1:05, running late for a second day in a row. I try to operate in a happy medium between insolence (always late) and subservience (never late), thus reflecting my dissatisfaction with my management on the one hand and my guilt-driven work-ethic on the other. Two days in a row is perhaps pushing the insolence direction.
The day is overcast, and that lifts me. Heaven is closer when the sun is hidden.  I’m weird, that way. I remember a day, during one of my aimless wanderings in Mexico.  I was about 20, and I was walking along the side of a highway, I think on the outskirts of La Paz, BCS. That’s one of the hottest parts of Mexico – tropical desert. The sun was beating down on me like an angry Pharaoh, and I vividly recall thinking to myself that there was something malevolent in it. I wanted to stand there at the side of the road and shake my fist, like a madman in a movie. Perhaps this is merely the result of having grown up in a place where there was so little sunshine.  The sun comes to represent something  alien, unknowable, not always an entirely welcome visitation.  I don’t know.
When it’s extremely cold and also sunny, it’s an odd thing.  The earth is ignoring the sun.  “I’ll be cold, anyway,” she argues, and shrugs a pale, frozen shoulder.  I feel close to the land when the weather is like that.  And when there are clouds, I am close to heaven.
Anyway.  It’s a mild day (as overcast tends to be).
Linkin Park kicks in on my MP3 player. I turn up the volume and start the walk to work.  I refuse to take a taxi, even when I’m running late – on average, it only takes me 7 more minutes to walk the 2.x km than to go flag down a taxi and drive there through several inevitably long waits at red traffic lights.  And it gives time to reflect.  And I need the exercise.
Why am I late today?  It’s kind of embarrassing – I was reading some of my own old blog posts. There was a moment of self-revelation, reading a post from April, 2006 (Caveat: angst). Not particularly deep, but it put me into one of those introspective fugues for half an hour.  I won’t quote my own writing… that seems indulgent – go read it if you’re really curious. I think you’ll see what I found striking about it:  I listed a series of alternate futures for myself, and one of them is exactly true. That’s… disorienting.  I’m not normally very good at predicting my own future.
A track from The Who’s Quadrophenia shuffles onto my player. Last night I received a puzzling yet wonderful email from a former student, Jeong-eun. She was in one of my most advanced elementary classes at LinguaForum, and was one of the most interesting, intelligent, introspective 5th graders I have ever met. Without being at all “nerdy” – that’s a difficult combination to pull off. Anyway, she was saying she had fond memories of the class and adds, “Teacher, with us you always laughed and never showed even when you had hard time.”  Which is pretty good English, too.
But she also says an odd thing, about that “now you are going away so I am very sad.”  Does she know something that I don’t? I wonder to myself. And this brings me back to my current never-quite-resolved dilemma:  am I going to stick it out with hellbridge (my current employer) to the end of my contract?  Or am I going run away? (metaphorically speaking… I would try to negotiate a fair-to-all-parties letter-of-release if I decided to quit). Which brings me back to that blog post from almost 3 years ago, and my friend’s comment about me being a “serial quitter.” Hmm.
I see a tiny girl, maybe 7 years old, in pink jacket, confidently riding her bike on one of the pedestrian paths that grid Ilsan between the blocks of apartment towers.  Standing up on the pedals, and holding a cell phone in one hand, and coming to an adroit stop at a red light at a crosswalk. I feel an odd mixture of admiration and envy.  Envy? Sometimes I yearn to just do all of life OVER again.  But just at that moment, the Mexican rock-en-espanol group Control Machete is playing their song Amores Perros (title song to an amazing movie, by the way), and they declaim into my ears with an angry growl, “… la codicia… borrarlo de tu vida!” (… envy… erase it from your life!).  Interesting synchronicity, there.
As I approach the last turn in my right-angled zig-zag trip to work, a track by Absurd Minds shuffles into my headphones. Something more recent, a teutonic-toned goth/industrial electronic bit. And the decisions and exhortations are deferred. To work.  To grading, and into that insufferably hot, stuffy, staff room.  The annoying pesterings and chaotic emendations of the middle-managers, and the dipped heads of deference:  네, 부원장님 (Yes, Mr. Assistant Director), in non-confrontational tones.
And then, a few hours with the kids, absorbing their reflexive optimism, to see me through another day.
What I’m listening to right now.

[UPDATE 2011: youtube embeds added as part of background noise; UPDATE 20180603: youtube embed repaired due to link-rot]

Caveat: 아어에즈! and other random observations

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Quotable / The Wonders of Work

My student Gina was a veritable goldmine of one-liners today.
She said “아어에즈!” (which is apparently utter nonsense aeoejeu – kind of a howl of frustration – but they made sure I spelled it correctly, so I have my doubts, although Koreans take their vowels very seriously).
She said “Tiny green-skinned girl disappears!” somberly.
She observed that “A romance like wine is very expensive!” in response to a newspaper article we were reading.
And she announced, self-pityingly, “I memorized but I can’t remember” during the vocabulary quiz.
I decided to try some 잣죽 (rice and pine-nut porridge) for dinner (made from a little packet by adding water in a saucepan, boil, stir… just like any porridge I guess).  It was pretty good.

Caveat: Insomnia

Banalities & Journaling

So I admit it.  I've got some insomnia.  Mostly it happens, I go to sleep, and then wake up an hour or two later and can't get back to sleep.  It's horrible.  And I'm sure it's why I haven't felt very healthy.

Caveat: Space Station Ilsan

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Because my working hours are roughly 1pm to 11 pm, my sleeping schedule seems to get easily messed up.   I'll stay up late, and sleep in late, and it will progress until I'm falling out of bed just in time to make it to work, after going to sleep at 5 in the morning.  It's frustrating, because I always feel more productive in the mornings, but I'm happier in the evenings.  So there's trade off.

Weekends get weird, because I end up sort of missing the day.  I'll have a lazy "morning" that stretches from like noon until 4 pm.  And then if I decide to go out, that's when my weekend "day" starts – at around sunset.  That would be great if I liked going to clubs or bars, but I don't do that.  So… and museums are always closed by the time I manage to get motivated to go near one. 

Living in this intensely urban environment, and rarely being out during daylight, it starts to seem like I'm living inside a giant space station.   Which is cool.  But disorienting.

Caveat: Quiere Jared ser útil

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

Often, I surf to the google news site, but choose the “Mexico” view. Anyway, yesterday at work, I opened google Mexico and there, three or four lines down on the right hand side of the main portal page was the headline “Quiere Jared ser útil” (Jared wants to be useful). Obviously, I understood that it wasn’t, in fact, refering to me. But it was a weird moment when it was like one of those Gombrowiczean hyper-signifying events.
Jared has become an increasingly common first name in Anglo-America, but it remains extremely rare in Spanish-speaking America. What Jared were they referring to? Turns out there’s a champion soccer player of Mexican nationality, sufficiently famous to be referred to by only his first name, as often happens with celebrities. He recently signed with the Guadalajara Chivas pro team, and he “wants to be useful” to his new teammates.
Below is the googlepage – I snapshotted it since obviously those pages are constantly changing their contents.
picture
picture

Caveat: Industria del deseo

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

Leía en Mileno.com una reseña de un nuevo libro por Joan Ferrés entitulado La educación como industria del deseo.   Los conceptos, tales como resumidos por el reseñador, me intriguían, aunque el valor de la reseña no me parecía mucho, porque no ofrecía ninguna opinión propia acerca de la obra.  Era más bien un resumen. 

Pero, siendo yo educador con tendencias posmodernas, cierto que me llamó la temática.  Tal vez intentaré conseguir el libro, aunque hacerlo desde acá en Corea no será muy conveniente.  Saldrá o caro o imposible. 

Caveat: Blame Siberia

Banalities & Journaling

Bitterly cold.  The high today was around 16 F (-7 C).  And yet, that's not so bad, by Minnesota standards, where the high today was apparently -1 F (-18 C) in Minneapolis.   Yet we have the Siberians to blame for both of these… the same "Siberian Express" weather system drives both cold systems, half-a-planet apart from one another. 

In completely unrelated news… I recently discovered that a man who I went to grade school with (and middle school and high school) is now a folk singer who lives in Alaska.  I downloaded some of his songs.  Not too bad.

I remember Kray Van Kirk pretending to attack other kids using his imaginary sword, in 7th or 8th grade.   But he always seemed so much more confident than I felt.  Although, a bit wacky, too.  And now…

Caveat: Midterms

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

Midterm grades are due this week through next Monday.  As usual, I have a lot of unfinished grading to plow through, though nothing as bad as last term's.  But I'm having a difficult time motivating and getting to work earlier than absolutely required, to do the extra work;  meanwhile, I still stand firm on my "no work comes home with me" policy.  Hmmm. 

Caveat: Serial Non-serialist Ceases Seriality!

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Per my usual habits, I'm reading more than one book at once.  I tend to read non-fiction books non-serially, for the most part — by which I mean that I don't just start at the introduction and read chapter by chapter until I get to the end, but instead kind of browse my way through the book, eventually covering almost all of it, but in my own discovered order.  I have read non-fiction that way most of my life, but it occurred to me recently that mostly I read non-serially, serially.  Meaning I do it with one non-fiction book after another… since most books I have going at any given time are generally fiction, which is less forgiving of the non-serial approach.   Lately, though, I haven't been enjoying fiction as much.  So, it turns out, I'm not only reading non-serially, but I'm doing so simultaneously with multiple books.

Currently, those books are:  John Horgan's Rational Mysticism, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, Obama's Audacity of Hope, and Chomsky's Chomsky on Anarchism (which is actually a collection of essays, therefore exceptionally forgiving of the non-serial approach).  

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