Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: Tárrases

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Geofiction / Less Banal Than Usual / Life is a Dream / My Drawings & Paintings

I’m not exactly in the closet about my geofiction hobby – I’ve blogged about it once or twice before, and in fact I link to it in my blog’s sidebar, too – so alert blog-readers will have known it is something I do.
Nevertheless, I’ve always felt oddly reticent about broadcasting this hobby too actively. It’s a “strange” hobby in many people’s minds, and many aren’t sure what to make of it. Many who hear of it percieve it to be perhaps a bit childish, or at the least unserious. It’s not a “real” hobby, neither artistic, like writing or drawing, nor technical, like coding or building databases. Yet geofiction, as a hobby, involves some of all of those skills: writing, drawing, coding and database-building.
Shortly after my cancer surgery, I discovered the website called OpenGeofiction (“OGF”). It uses open source tools related to the OpenStreetmap project to allow users to pursue their geofiction hobby in a community of similar people, and “publish” their geofictions (both maps and encyclopedic compositions) online.
Early last year, I became one of the volunteer administrators for the website. In fact, much of what you see on the “wiki” side of the OGF website is my work (including the wiki’s main page, where the current “featured article” is also mine), or at the least, my collaboration with other “power users” at the site. I guess I enjoy this work, even though my online people skills are not always great. Certainly, I have appreciated the way that some of my skills related to my last career, in database design and business systems analysis, have proven useful in the context of a hobby. It means that if I ever need to return to that former career, I now have additional skills in the areas of GIS (geographic information systems) and wiki deployment.
Given how much time I’ve been spending on this hobby, lately, I have been feeling like my silence about it on my blog was becoming inappropriate, if my blog is truly meant to reflect “who I am.”
So here is a snapshot of what I’ve been working on. It’s a small island city-state, at high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere, with both “real-world” hispanic and fully fictional cultural elements. Its name is Tárrases, on the OGF world map here.
Here is a “zoomable and slidable” map window, linked to the area I’ve been creating, made using the leaflet tool.


There were some interesting technical challenges to get this to display correctly on my blog, involving several hours of research and coding trial and error. If anyone is interested in how to get the javascript-based leaflet map extension to work on a webpage (with either real or imaginary map links), including blogs such as typepad that don’t support it with a native plugin, I’m happy to help.
I have made a topo layer, too. I am one of only 2-3 users on the OGF website to attempt this – But the result is quite pleasing.

I have always loved maps, and since childhood, I have sometimes spent time drawing maps of imaginary places. However, I never dreamed that I’d be producing professional-quality, internet-accessible maps of imaginary places. I believe it is a kind of artform.
So that’s where my time off sometimes disappears to.
UPDATE NOTE 1, 2016-12-05: The topo view is currently broken due to some work I’m doing. It will be repaired eventually.
UPDATE NOTE 2, 2017-02-16: The topo view has been repaired.
UPDATE NOTE 3, 2019-08-15: I noticed while doing other blog maintenance that the leaflet embeds were broken. I spent a few hours fixing them – apparently some recent leaflet.js update wasn’t backward-compatible (argh).
UPDATE NOTE 4, 2021-10-13: I noticed while doing other blog maintenance that the leaflet embeds were broken (again). I spent some time fixing them (again). Using a leaflet plugin for wordpress, now. Let’s see how long that works…. 
[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: Nonnet #50

A Daily Poem / Banalities & Journaling / Book 1 / My Poetry & Fiction / Nonnet

I kind of forgot to post on my blog earlier today. I got distracted by something inside my brain. So here’s a nonnet, anyway.
(Poem #75 on new numbering scheme)

I know when I walk to work each day
the best route is based on timing.
The intersections are slow
if you miss the signals.
The first light I meet,
exiting my
apartment,
sets my
path.

– a nonnet
picture[daily log: walking, but not to work]

Caveat: Textbook-making

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

This has been a quite busy week at work. Basically, I have spent the week crafting a textbook for a special debate class that will start next week for middle-schoolers who are not participating in the full 내신 (test-prep) schedule, due to the always-changing vagaries of parental demand.

I have made my own debate textbooks before, but this one is being driven by Curt's desire to see me integrate better with the other teachers who will also be teaching the same cohorts.

Textbook-making is a lot of work. I long ago gave up on vague ambitions to make an actually-publishable debate textbook,  although for my middle-school Karma debate classes I have been using variations of my own book, in print-out format, for many years now. And I still get "writing team" emails periodically from Darakwon, the Korean EFL textbook publisher with which I'd started a tentative relationship that never amounted to anything. This tends to keep the textbook-writing concept always floating around in the periphery of my consciousness.

So I'm tired. And I haven't even started the special classes yet. That's next week.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: The Unknowable Girlfriend

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

Yesterday, in the Newton2 elementary cohort, a boy who goes by Jhonny (the mispelling is deliberate and he's quite adamant about it) announced to the class that he had a girlfriend. He's always a bit of a clown, so this interruption wasn't completely inconceivable.

"That's nice," I said, blandly. "What's her name?"

"I don't know," he said, sheepishly.

"You might want to find out her name," I suggested. "Girls like it when you know their names."

"I can't," he protested.

He's not great with English, and it was clear he wanted to explain more. He explained, in Korean, to the boy, Jerry, next to him, who is better at English.

Jerry said, "A girl gave him a note. Secret note."

"Aha," I said. "That makes sense. So you don't know her name."

Jhonny nodded, vigorously. The girls at the front of the class tittered. "It's so horrible," Jhonny complained, burying his face in his palms dramatically.

"I can see that. Well good luck," I said.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: H┴∀Ǝp

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

As I’ve written before here, I sometimes use my Tarot cards in my classes, as a kind of cross between communicative listening exercise and entertaining reward. Many (maybe most) of my students are fascinated to have me “read their future” about some question. They ask about their upcoming test scores, their health or the health of family members, about their careers and future prospects for marriage. I keep my readings pretty generic, and of course, like any Tarot reader, I use clues in their questions and things I know about my students to make the answers more interesting and relevant.
Last night, I had a confident fifth-grader, Soyeon, insist that it was her turn to “read” the cards for me, instead. This doesn’t happen often – the kids are intimidated by the 30 pages of printed out “card meanings” that I use with the cards, to lend some legitimacy to my interpretations and to find plausible meanings – I don’t have the 178 possible meanings memorized. Most of the kids understand the principle that an inverted (reversed) card would have an opposite meaning, too, so I can play with that when it happens.
Soyeon was happy to lay down the cards and page through my printout of meanings, however. She told me to ask a question. Keeping to a nice, “safe” topic, I asked about my future health. Most of my students know about my cancer saga – it’s been the background of many a spontaneous classroom discussion. So that gave her something interpret against, too.
She laid down three cards: a past card, present card, and future card. She turned over the past card, and it was “The World.” She looked at the printout, but she didn’t just read it out loud. The printout, to be honest, has a lot of difficult vocabulary. I made it that way on purpose – it gives me a chance to teach something when I read the cards, and it also allows me to “hedge” meanings when I feel like things are too gloomy or creepy or anything else. Soyeon thought about what she read for a moment, and complained she didn’t understand it. I told her to just look at the picture on the card and use the words she did understand to come up with her own idea.
“You traveled everywhere the world. It was good.”
Not bad, right?
RWS_Tarot_13_DeathNext, she turned over the present card. It was the 9 of wands. This was one of those eerie moments when random Tarot hits really close to accuracy. The meaning of this card, as I’d put on my printout, is something like “a warrior has won a battle but now must rest.”
She said something like, “You got sick and it was like a battle. Now you’re tired.”
Then she turned over the final card. It was “Death,” but reversed (upside-down).
She laughed. She only glanced at the printout, before saying, triumphantly, “You should be dead, but you keep refusing.”
That seemed really clever, and exactly the right way to read a card like that.
It was a successful class.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]
 
 

Caveat: On Utopias and Anti-Utopias

Banalities & Journaling / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

I don't actually currently have with me either of the books, The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin, or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Yet over the years, I have found myself recalling both books frequently in my meditations on philosophy and the nature of human societies, although until just now, never really at the same time.

I had a very weird epiphany, the other day, however. In my mind, anyway, these books are actually in the same category. Most thinkers would be alarmed by this suggestion, I imagine. LeGuin and Rand are hardly philosophical comrades-in-arms.

Both books, thematically, are about utopias. In fact, both are about flawed utopias, though the flawed utopia of each one is the dystopia (anti-utopia) of the other. Yet both tread the ground of the conflict between the two topias. Both authors influenced me hugely in my own thinking about utopias and intentional communities of all kinds.

My epiphany is "incomplete" – I need to work through how these books connect. They may even be in a kind of accidental dialogue.

Interestingly, my curiosity prompted a quick googlesearch, which revealed to me that LeGuin has explicitly claimed she was NOT influenced by Atlas Shrugged. This is almost humorous, in light of my epiphany. It makes me want to try to prove otherwise. If LeGuin read Atlas Shrugged, as she admits, then it suddenly becomes inevitable, in my way of thinking, that there must be some influence, if only that LeGuin is writing against Rand. I am recalled to mind of critic Harold Bloom's influential work,  The Anxiety of Influence.

If I had the texts in front of me, I would be tempted to re-read them in parallel and find out what relations might exist. Maybe I'll purchase copies on my next trip to the bookstore – I heard there's a new Kyobo Mungo store at 백석, a much closer trip than heading into Seoul – the Kyobo Mungo outlets there form my main source for English-language books.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: Coder’s Fugue

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers

This past week has been strange, as I took on – somewhat voluntarily – the challenge of "rescuing" my computer rather than just replacing it. I have a more-or-less functional Linux desktop working on my computer, but I've struggled with a basket of deplorable system configuration experiences. I'm stubborn, and I have this weird, "flow" state-of-mind that I get into as I try to solve software problems, that I don't particularly enjoy. I suppose it's why I was fairly successful in the computer and IT world, as I was last decade. But the negative aspects of the state bother me – affectively a bit "dead" feeling, and a bit too obsessive with feeling I must solve a given problem. These are the reasons I quit that career, and only a few days of returning to it, even part-time and in the context of my own computer at home, serve to remind me of why I quit.

I started having "code dreams" too, again, after their having faded away over the last few years. These are dreams that essentially consist of little more than staring at a screen and trying to solve some puzzling computer behavior. They're not nightmares, but they're plotless and vaguely kafkaesque-feeling. I call them "coder's fugue."

I had a whole string of them, all night last night. So I have decided to give this computer thing a rest, today – I mean, I still can use my computer, but I'm just trying to accept the aspects of its current set-up that annoy me, and not trying to fix them, and just getting up and doing something else if I feel frustrated by it.

[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: The Ides of September

Banalities & Journaling

This year Chusok falls on the Ides of September. So I get a holiday for my birthday. I have Ilsan to myself – everyone left. The streets are post-apocalyptically silent.

Happy Kthanksgiving.

[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: The Kimchi Croquette

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

KimchicroquetteIn the weird fusion culture that is South Korea, 2016, I can walk down to the corner Tous les Jours franchise (a pseudo-French bakery chain) and buy a "kimchi croquette."

I couldn't resist trying one. Actually, it wasn't that unpleasant – sufficiently moist and squishy, when heated up, that it was not difficult to eat for my jangae mouth. And the kimchi added a nice bite to what would otherwise just be a greasy blandness.

Today begins the most important holiday of the year, the Korean thanksgiving ("추석"). It's always "8-15" on the old, lunar calendar, but it floats around the September/October timeframe on the Gregorian – every year is different.

I have vast, megalomaniacal plans to do as little as possible with great mindfulness and intentionality.

[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: an obsessive tinkerer tinkers obsessively…

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Geofiction

At the risk of becoming boring, posting on the same essentially autobiographical topic for the third day in a row…

I continue to obsessively mess around with my computer, trying to figure out what happened to it. There is a component of my personality that is a compulsive tinkerer, and thus I somehow prefer to try to fix a clearly dying computer to buying a new one. I suppose partly I see it as an opportunity to "prove myself" and make sure I possess at least some of the skills necessary to be "self-sufficient" in the context of computers.

I made a very weird thing happen: when I gave my computer a complete "cold" shutdown (i.e. I removed the onboard battery, which forces the BIOS to reset), my USB bus returned to life! This seems quite weird and miraculous, but I can just barely grasp how this might work. If something happened that had caused my BIOS to break, which had in turn been the cause of the lost USB bus, by forcing the reset I recovered the original BIOS configuration.

Well, anyway, in theory this means my computer isn't actually broken, at the moment. But I have lost my trust in my computer – I'm working hard to make sure nothing would be lost if it should crash catastrophically. This is a useful exercise, which I don't resent.

I continue to tinker with Linux – it's interesting to me, at an almost obsessive level. I'm curious, now, to see if I can replicate ALL the functions I was performing on my home Windows machine – because my relationship with Windows was always a marriage not of love but of convenience. I had concluded 4 years ago that I could NOT replicate all those functions, but having solved the language issue yesterday, I feel optimistic that Ubuntu has progressed to the point where I maybe can do it.

There are some challenges:

  • getting my massive music collection (18000 tracks? – I didn't even know!) to be accessible and playable – every time I try to configure one of ubuntu's music players and point it to my music collection, it crashes;
  • configuring my  offline mapping tool (JOSM) that use for my geofiction hobby; this should be easy, since JOSM was originally written for Linux, but I'm running into problems;
  • replicating my "sandbox" database (postgresql) and coding environment (perl / python) – because I have a mostly dormant hobby of trying to keep my programming skills functional, in case this "teach English in Korea" gig falls apart, or if that worst-case-scenario related to my mouth health situation eventuates, and I experience a major impairment or loss of my ability to talk.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: The Hangul Toggle

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers

Mostly I don't post technical stuff on my blog, but I want to post this because it took a lot of googling and toubleshooting to solve the problem.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, for reasons having to do with a recent computer crash, I decided to give a try at using Linux again. I downloaded Ubuntu 16.04 and upgraded the never-used dual boot on my system, because my computer is currently USB-less, which has in turn left me mouseless. Linux offers more options for dealing with a mouseless computer, at least as a temporary stand-in until I can decide what kind of replacement or repair to do.

The reason I gave up on Linux before was because, as bad as I am at Korean, I still view having the ability to type in Korean on my home computer as an absolute necessity – a perusal of my blog will show why: I like to post my efforts at learning Korean, aphorisms, etc.

Ubuntu Linux (and other versions that I flirted with) has (had?) documented issues with keyboard internationalization. I had decided it was beyond my limited skills to deal with it. I couldn't get the "hangul toggle" to work: that is the keyboard button on Korean keyboards that lets users switch between ASCII (Roman alphabet) typing and hangul (Korean alphabet) typing.

This time, under 16.04, I gave it another try.  I did some googling to try to find if someone had found and documented a solution.

I found this page. It's in Korean, but the relevant Linux commands are there, and I could piece together the steps required to get things to work.

I followed the steps, and after a reboot (which had some frustrating, unrelated issues related to the weird way the Ubuntu-installed GRUB loader interacts with a Korean-speaking BIOS), the keyboard entry works!

After this, I also found this English-language discussion of a slightly different method, which someone can be free to try as well.

And now I can say, from this Linux window: 문재를 해결했습니다!

Ubuntu1604_hangultoggle

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Crashed and not yet burning

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers

I'm having kind of a horrible day.

My computer had a weird kind of crash, this morning. I think the hard drive is fine, but the ports bus seems partly burned out, so a bunch of the devices have become "invisible." Based on some rudimentary troubleshooting, I think it's a hardware problem rather than a software problem, since the problems are the same under Linux as they are under Windows.

I'm running under Linux at the moment, because it's easier to use Linux with a non-functioning mouse – which is one of the fatalities of this problem. I have no speakers, no mouse, no ability to plug in external storage – nothing USB works. I might be able to get a functioning mouse if I could find one of the old PC style mouses, but they're not sold in stores anymore – I have a quite old PC style keyboard I'm using, but the spacebar is "floppy" and the backspace is erratic. I am FTPing my most important files to my rarely-used server, because I guess I need to buy a new computer, and lacking USB ports means I have no other simple means of extracting data from my harddrive.

I went to the store earlier intending to shell out and buy a new computer, but changed my mind at the last minute because I feel such a major investment needs to be better thought out beforehand. Anyway, buying a Korean-speaking, Microsoft Windows computer is a major undertaking. Korean Windows is really the only option here – English-language Windows is possible as a pirated version, but every time I've tried to do an "official" upgrade I've been driven away by impossible-to-understand websites mediating the process – not to mention the exorbitant price MS charges for the English version in Korea. Korean Windows will mean spending a day with a dictionary in one hand and the system set-up windows on the screen, as I walk through getting it all working they way I want. Maybe I'll give a try at going to Linux full-time, again – it's been a few years since I last tried that, which might be enough time for them to have sorted out the truly annoying language-support issues that drove me away from it before.

I'll sleep on it.

[daily log: walking, 3km]

Caveat: Nostalgia for the 5

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

My 내신 (middle-schoolers’ test-prep period) started, which means I don’t have to work Saturdays for a few weeks. I feel supremely lazy today. 
Mostly I don’t miss living in L.A. But then I read something like this, and I get a little bit nostalgic for that truly weird city with the boring climate.
What I’m listening to right now.
Modest Mouse, “Lampshades On Fire.”
picture[daily log: walking, 1km]

Caveat: 50 million pancakes

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Teaching & Methodology

Based on how annoying this song is, I'm pretty sure it will be perfect for teaching to my younger students. Children typically like the most annoying song in a given set of choices, so that is how I judge whether it is a song they might like. I will report back if my instinct turns out to be incorrect. 

What I'm listening to right now.

Parry Gripp, "Pancake Robot."

PANCAKE ROBOT

Pancake Robot Come And Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

The pancake robot is coming to town
He’s mixing up the batter and he’s laying it down
Buttermilk, blueberry, chocolate chip
50 million pancakes he’s gonna flip

All you can eat, (yum yum)
All you can eat, (yum yum)
The pancake robot is coming to town
All you can eat, (yum yum)
All you can eat, (yum yum)
It’s a pancake explosion, come and party down

Pancake Robot Come And Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

The pancake robot is here at last
His flapjacks are flying supersonically fast
With his maple syrup cannon, and his butter pat blaster
He’s gonna feed the world, cause he’s the pancake master!

Stackity, stackity way up high
Stacking those cakes into the sky
Flippity, floppity down they go
Grab yourself a fork ‘cause it’s time to mow
Flat and round, flat and round
Griddle cake griddles hot and brown!
Everybody everybody chow down!
‘Cause the pancake robot’s in town!

All you can eat,
All you can eat,
The pancake robot is coming to town
All you can eat,
All you can eat,
It’s a pancake explosion, come and party down

All you can eat, (yum yum)
All you can eat, (yum yum)
The pancake robot is coming to town
All you can eat, (yum yum)
All you can eat, (yum yum)
It’s a pancake explosion, come and party down

Pancake Robot Come And Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: Another Go-Round

Banalities & Journaling

I have renewed my visa for another year. It's always year-to-year.

Not much incident to it. Sometimes when I'm frustrated, I spend time saying "I won't renew for another year." But I always do. I guess I prefer stability to instability, for now. 

I sat in the immigration office for about 30 minutes, listening to Arabic being spoken behind me and a mix of Uzbek and Russian being spoken in front of me, and passing the time deciphering a sign about amnesty for illegal aliens who self-deport – which is to say, if you leave we won't arrest you and put you in jail, which doesn't really strike me as an amnesty so much as a way for the government to avoid housing them.

The sky was almost green with a brewing thunderstorm. In the midwest, we'd call it tornado weather, but don't think Korea gets many tornadoes. 

[daily log: walking, 3km]

Caveat: Ya no voy a exposiciones ni a las fiestas de moda

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Not My Poetry

I had a rather braindead weekend. So I don't have much to say. Meanwhile…

What I'm listening to right now.

Mexican Institute of Sound, "Katia, Tania, Paulina y la Kim."

Letra.

Ya no voy a exposiciones ni a las fiestas de moda,
porque toda la rutina me recuerda a Paulina.
Ya no voy al colegio que es el General Prim
porque cuando voy me acuerdo de Kim.

Es que ya no me gusta salir de noche,
porque me acuerdo de las noches en el coche.
Tan bonitas y preciosas, todas con un defecto,
ya no salen conmigo, salen con un güey perfecto.

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim
(Qué Maravilloso!)

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim (x2)

Ya no quiero una novia intelectual,
que vaya en … y que lea Kant
que sólo baile salsa con sus amigas,
y que oiga Mano Negra a escondidas.
No es que no me importe la cultura,
pero a estas alturas no me hacen sabrosura
parece que en un siglo no me hubiera importado,
pero la verdad es que me he relajado.

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim (x2)
(Qué Maravilloso!)

Esta canción es un panteón de ex-novias
pero es difícil superar a todas.
Paulina tan chula y educada.
Tania tan güapa y sofisticada.
La Kim era adorable, inteligente.
Katia era alocada pero muy decente.
Aquí dejo un espacio libre en la pista
por si se ofrece mi siguiente conquista.

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim (x2)

Ya no voy a exposiciones ni a las fiestas de moda,
porque toda la rutina me recuerda a Paulina.
Ya no voy al colegio que es el General Prim???
porque cuando voy me acuerdo de Kim.

Es que ya no me gusta salir de noche,
porque me acuerdo de las noches en el coche.
Tan bonitas y preciosas, todas con un defecto,
ya no salen conmigo, salen con un güey perfecto.

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim (x2)
(Qué Maravilloso!)

Y de todas las mujeres en el Universo,
las que mas he amado están en el verso.
Y me quiero volver a enamorar,
pero esta vez me la voy a pensar.

Lo que estoy buscando es una chica cotorra,
que salga de noche y que no sea modorra.
Solamente busco una clase mediera,
que sea como yo pero que me quiera.

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim (x2)
(Qué Maravilloso!)

Katia, Tania, Paulina y La Kim

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: 밥 먹는 법

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Not My Poetry / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean)

One thing that happens every time my friend Peter leaves Korea is that I get a pile of books. I am his Asian book storage facility, because he knows I appreciate them.
One book he left with me is a book of poems entitled “A letter not sent” by Jeong Ho-seung (정호승). The book is bilingual, which I like, with translation by Brother Anthony and Susan Hwang. Brother Anthony is a Catholic monk based in Seoul and prolific translator of Korean poetry – I’ve written about him before on this blog. Peter actually seems to know the man through their shared membership in the Royal Asiatic Society.
I particularly liked this poem (note that I copied the poem’s text from the book, so any strange typing mistakes, especially in the Korean where my typing skills are imprecise, are my own and not in the original).

밥 먹는 법

밥상 앞에
무릎을 꿇지 말 것
눈물로 만든 밥모다
모래로 만든 밥을 먼저 먹을 것

무엇보다도
전시된 밥은 먹지 말 것
먹더라도 혼자 먹을 것
아니면 차라리 굶을 것
굶어서 가벼워질 것

때때로
바람 부는 날이면
풀잎을 햇살에 비벼 먹을 것
그래도 배가 고프면
입을 없앨 것
– 정호승 (한국 시인 1950년-)

How to Eat

No kneeling
in front of the meal table;
the rice made of sand should be eaten
before the rice made of tears.

Above all else
rice on display should not be eaten;
if you must eat it, you should eat it alone;
otherwise you should fast;
by fasting you will grow lighter.

From time to time
on windy days,
you should mix grass with sunlight and eat that;
and should you still feel hungry
you should do away with your mouth.
– Jeong Ho-seung (Korean poet, b1950)

One comment on the title. The translation of the title, “How to Eat,” isn’t completely literal. Literally, it is “Rules for eating rice.” But “eat” and “eat rice” are essentially synonymous in Korean (in a way that can sometimes lead to confusion for Westerners).
I very much prefer the literal title, and I think the poem is playing with the semantic overlap between “eat” and “eat rice” which means the title should include “rice.”
I have written a nonnet as a kind of “response” to this poem. I will post it tonight as my daily nonnet.
picture[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: Breezy Farewell

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos

I went into Seoul yesterday to bid farewell, once again, to my friend Peter.

Mostly it was just hanging out and watching him finish packing. A few of his other friends came by, too. I'm not sure my social skills are very good, anymore.

It was a cool, windy day, relative to the recent oppressive heat of August. A squall of rain crossed the city as we were leaving. The air was quite clear and the clouds were many stark shades of gray, like an abstract coloring book pattern in the sky.

Here is a picture of Peter, with a friend of his, and me, after going out in the street from his apartment (well, former apartment, now). In fact it is raining lightly in this picture, but it's hard to tell.

Peter_farewell_v3

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: I’ve said I don’t like to complain on this here blog thing but here let me complain some more

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

I've been feeling a lot of stress, lately. The work cycle is at that typical September peak, as kids start their Fall semester at school, we wrap up the summer special classes, and enrollment starts heading for that hagwon-biz Fall surge. I have month-end writing tests to score, student comments to write, and new student interviews.

Further, there has been a kind of rumbling of parental dissatisfaction with the current state of the curriculum in the youngest cohorts. That means lots of wasted time in incoherent discussions and meetings about curriculum, and the resulting decisions which, inevitably, will not be the ideas I advocated for.

Layered on that is the fact that September 1 is the annual contract renewal date, which always forces me to contemplate, once again, the occasionally Faustian nature of my current, complicated, and unsatisfying relationship with my job, my host country, and the Korean healthcare system. It is easy to begin to wonder if it's all worth it.

Additionally, I was "volunteered" for some extra work, at work – of the least favorite kind, which  involves sitting and mucking with a computer trying to transcribe some simply atrocious English conversations: Bad, non-native speakers talking buzzword-filled English to the worst kind of consonant-glottalizing, modal-verb-abusing, corporatese-spewing Britishers with stunningly loud background noises and interruptions. I feel like my willingness to be helpful is being abused, and of course it's hard when the utility of the work at hand seems dubious at best.

I have a hospital appointment coming up, too. I always dread those – anticipating them is much worse than just being there dealing with it. Having moved past the worst of the jaw necrosis problem last Spring, I enjoyed a relatively hospital-free summer after the Big Anniversary Scan in July. So my "just deal with it" reflex is rusty. 

All said and done, I feel unhappy.

I am going to Seoul today to bid farewell (version 3.0? 4.0?) to my friend Peter, who is once again returning to the US, this time to start graduate school.

[daily log: walking, 3km]

Caveat: A Case Study in the Efficient Allocation of Limited Intellectual Resources by a Third Grade Elementary EFL Student

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

In my low-level TQ cohort, including second and third grade elementary students, we were practicing a very low-level "interview" format, starting with "What is your name?" Beforehand, I had given them formulaic "frames" where they could fill in their answers, and had helped them fill them in.

Teacher: "What is your favorite color?"

David: "I like yellow."

Teacher: "Why do you like yellow."

David: "I like it because chickens are yellow."

… later…

Teacher: "What is yoru favorite animal?"

David: "I like chickens."

Teacher: "Why do you like chickens?"

David: "I like it because chickens are yellow."

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: Talking Through Britain

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Language & Linguistics

I found these two videos rather fascinating – essentially, in both cases the presenters step through discussing various dialects of the British Isles while at the same time reproducing those accents quite well.

I have a difficult relationship with various English language dialects: on the one hand, I find them fascinating and I work hard to be able to tell them apart; on the other hand, I am utterly incapable of consistently reproducing them in a sustained manner, which is weird to me, because I'm actually somewhat able to do something similar with various Spanish dialects. Is it perhaps that my own mother-tongue – Northern California English – is too deeply embedded and thus I can't seem to override it, while with Spanish, since no single dialect is deeply embedded, I'm more able to shift around the dialect space? Or, more likely, perhaps I'm really not that good at doing it in Spanish either, but I'm sufficiently incompetent that I don't realize what I'm doing wrong. 

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: umop apisdn

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

UPSIDE DOWN can be spelled upside down using right way up letters of the alphabet:

umop apisdn. 

Note that this only works if you use a font with a "double-storey" "a" - which is to say, if you use a "single-storey" font like the notorious Comic Sans, or anything in italics, it doesn't quite work: 

*umop apisdn. 

*umop apisdn. 

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: Enslaved on an alien planet

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

HamelsjournalA few weeks ago I finished that book my friend Peter loaned me – Hendrick Hamel's Journal. Essentially, I read it in one sitting – it's not a long book. Peter guessed correctly that the parts I found most interesting were the appendices and footnotes. In general, however, it reads pretty well – it is a remarkable gateway to a truly alien world: a 17th century Dutchman stranded in an even more alien 17th century Korea. Yet I was impressed his remarkable equanimity and his refusal to categorically condemn his captors (indeed they made him a slave, which was the typical fate of foreigners landing in Korea in the period).

I recommend this book even to those without a specific interest in Korea. In some ways, the narrative most resembles those "stuck on an alien planet" tropes common to certain types of science fiction. That, in itself, makes it quite fascinating.

I have often joked that in my long-term residence in Korea, I have "emigrated" to one of those alien planets that so fascinated me when I was younger. This book captures the same idea. Korea of the present day is hardly alien at all, compared to the Korea of that era.

[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

Caveat: The hardest part of my job is going out to dinner with colleagues

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

Last night we had one of those post-work dinner meetings as is the Korean custom, called 회식 (which is one of the few words where I find the "official" romanization highly dubious as far as implied pronunciation: officially, [hoesik], but what you hear might be better written in English as "hwehshik").

It was unlike most hwehshik of this sort, however, in that it was spontaneous - meaning there was no advance notice. Curt even admitted this, trying to teach me a Korean word which means "spontaneous" but which, as so often occurs, failed to stick in my calcified brain. 

I don't really deal well with unexpected demands on my time. I think in general, I can cope with unexpected occurrences – meaning when students do unexpected things in class, or there is a sudden schedule change at work. Indeed, some of my colleagues comment on my seeming equanimity in the face of these kinds of things. But these types of unexpected things occur within the boundaries of my normal working hours. On the other hand, after-work activities infringe on time I perceive as my own. As long as I know they're coming, I don't really have a problem with them – like a pre-work meeting or a morning parent-centered event that we all know is coming, I work them into the calculus of my "work time." But unannounced, I don't deal with them well. 

Anyway, this is all to say, I had an unpleasant time, and it was unpleasant from the moment I knew it was happening, 5 minutes after coming out of my last class at 10pm. The after-work dinner is stressful for other reasons, too.

It involves eating. I don't enjoy eating, and I feel self-conscious of this fact, because the people around me make eating and the enjoyment of food such a focus of social interaction. I'm sure I've written before that I don't see this as a specifically Korean trait – it's a universal human characteristic. With my post-surgical, handicapped mouth, with my lack of taste, with my constant struggle to swallow things correctly without devolving into a fit of gagging or choking, eating is task that exists in my mind at about the same level as cleaning my toilet: not at all enjoyable and only to be done because it must. 

Furthermore, of course, during these times everyone is babbling on in rapid Korean, and so my sense of shame and failure around my lack of mastery of the language impinges. At work, by nature of the work, I intereact with my students in English. That's my job, and there is no guilt in it. But for socializing in a country where I have lived so long, I feel a moral obligation (not to mention the practical necessity) to do so in Korean – so the fact that it still doesn't come easily feels like a moral failing. I'm letting the people around me down, and my fundamental incompetence is on display. 

This morning I feel gloomy and discouraged, because of these things. Perhaps I should do like Grace, and simply refuse to participate – although clearly her reasons for boycotting the hwehshik are different from what mine would be.

In fact, I have always rather liked the concept, abstractly. It seems a strong and useful and important social custom, as a way to build a cohesive social unit out of a group of people who work together. But the way that it challenges me personally, I really doubt if it's useful for my overall mental equilibrium.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: 6502

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers

When I was in middle school, we had an Apple ][ computer. I messed around with programming – not very seriously, but I taught myself the rudiments of the MOS 6502 Assembler ("machine language"). The 6502 is perhaps one of the most famous CPUs in the history of personal computing, since not only was it the CPU in the first Apple computers, it was also the heart of early Nintendo and Atari game systems. Even today, there are "6502 fan clubs" and "retro computing hobbyists" focused on the platform.

A2_redbookLater, in college, I took a few computer science courses (enough to make a minor), including an assembly language programming class, at that point in time based on the platform of the Motorola 68000 (the CPU in the Macintoshes of the era). I'd had some chance to experience one of that chip's ancestors when in middle school, too, because my uncle had brought home a project he was working on involving a Motorola 6800.

That assembly language class was undoubtedly the most valuable computer science class I took, because if you can make something work in assembly language, you have a genuine understanding of how computers actually work, and this provides an excellent foundation for any future programming efforts.  I have long believed that assembly programming should be a foundational course in high school curricula – for all students, at the same level as courses like math, physics or biology. 

During the time I was taking that course (1988?), I dug out an already-at-that-time antiquated Apple ㅍ, and with some help from my friend Mark (who at that time was starting his career in embedded systems), I began writing a Lisp language interpreter for the Apple, using the 6502 Assembler directly, and using my battered, red-covered reference manual preserved from the middle school years (the picture at right was found using an online image search, but it looks exactly like my old copy).

I didn't really get much further than the rudiments of my interpreter – I think I got it to respond to some kind of "hello world" instruction, in the vein of

(DEFUN HELLO ()
"HELLO WORLD"
)
(HELLO)

I was unable to solve the "garbage collection" problem (memory management), and I never took the Operating Systems Design course that could have given me the understanding necessary to do that. But it was fun. Recently, remembering this activity, and aware that your average internet browser tab has much more abstract computing power than a 6502 chip, I was curious if there were 6502 emulators available.

Sure enough, there are. Many, many emulators – google is your friend, if you're interested. 

Apple_Invaders_AP2Not only are there emulators, but someone has taken the time to construct a fully-functioning "virtual 6502" which is visual – meaning you can watch the signals step through the fully mapped processor as it executes its instructions. You could run Space Invaders on the emulator (if you could find a compiled code for it), and watch the processor step through the execuation of the classic game.

Given I am a nerdly geek, this was interesting to me.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

 

Caveat: Lego Plane Crash

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

I'm happy to see that other adults are even more adept at wasting time in creative ways than I am.

These guys crashed a legoplane into a legotown and filmed it in slow motion, because it looks cool.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

Caveat: 30 years in a moment

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I had a very strange dream during that dawn twilight time when I often dream.

I was walking around Paris. I actually did that… about 31 years ago. It is strange how dreams dredge up old material like that. It was quite vivid.

There was a strange building (Centre Pompidou?) and I felt compelled to go inside. Inside it was like some kind of bar or nightclub, but the people were all just standing around – not drinking or eating or dancing or anything. I had this thought that they were ghosts.

I tried to leave the place, but I was unable to do it. It was like a maze, trying to get out. It became a maze – an image borrowed from some movie seen on TV, perhaps – a hedgerow maze with little gold flowers attached the leaves of the hedges. The flowers were like stars strewn across the sky. The sky whirled, as if time was moving rapidly.

I lay down, and the floor was asphalt. This has some precedent in reality, at some point in my past. I felt lost.

When I awoke, it was later than my usual wake-up time. The weather is hot, already at 7:30 am, and the sun is shining in my southeast-facing windows. The fan is blowing, and the air seems a little less humid than yesterday, but still my apartment is uncomfortably warm.

I have no idea.

[daily log: walking, ]

Caveat: Nonnet #7 “Azar”

A Daily Poem / Banalities & Journaling / Book 1 / My Poetry & Fiction / Nonnet

I’ve decided to take on the challenge I suggested to myself (with encouragement from my friend Bob) a few posts back: I will make a nonnet every day. The last few days I’ve tested, to see if it’s doable, and I have done it. So I have a little stockpile, now, of half-a-dozen nonnets. And I will move forward, and try to make a nonnet every day, and post it. I guess a side-effect of this is that I’m am, tentatively, returning to my old two-posts-a-day pattern, which I abandoned around the time of my cancer diagnosis, 3 years ago.

Counting backwards among the ones posted previously, starting with one last year, I think this would be number 7.

(Poem #32 on new numbering scheme)

Living is what we do till we die.
We take on difficult questions,
or we simply live each day.
We love that children play.
We can watch the rain.
We can see trees.
Then it ends.
It's just
luck.

– a nonnet
picture

Caveat: 선생님 잘했죠

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

20160811_basic-page-009I received some high praise from a first grade elementary student. He wrote, “선생님 잘했죠” [seonsaengnim jalhaetjyo = “teacher did well”]. My heart was warmed.
The note, appearing at the bottom of a quiz paper (at right – you can click to see a larger version of the paper), surprised me – because of his personality, since I have constantly struggled to rein him in even a little bit.
In fact, in terms of behavior, he is a “wild child” – never sitting still, constantly in the faces of other students, always demanding attention. But he’s smart, too, and can sometimes focus really well. I guess he is getting something out of the class, despite appearances.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]

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