Sometimes I look at the online comic xkcd. It's quite nerdy, and sometimes the author crosses over from funny to informative. He posted a radiation dosage chart that I thought was interesting – given my own brush with radiation. It was particularly notable that, in terms of ionizing radiation (i.e. the kind that is associated with cell mutations and necrosis), a banana puts out more of that kind of radiation than a cellphone.
Apparently, a banana puts out about 0.1 µSv of ionizing radiation. If my math is correct, with my 3-monthly CT scans, I'm getting about 80,000 bananas' worth of radiation per year. I'm not sure what the dosage was of my radiation treatment, but at minimum it was the equivalent of about 30 full CT scans, which would amount to 210 mSv, or 4,200,000 bananas. Given I have a (mild) banana allergy, I think the radiation was a better deal.
Notes for Korean (finding meaning)
외방 = "upstate" – the parts of Korea outside of Seoul
버팀목 = one of those wooden supports attached to trees to hold them up or force them to grow in a certain direction
미륵 = Maitreya
돌무덤 = a cairn, a grave
육군 = land army (as opposed to navy)
해군 = navy
공군 = air force
중위 = army first lieutenant
대위 = army captain
대령 = army colonel
-기는 하다 (긴 하다) = a "concessive" verb phrase ending, perhaps "… although …" or "… admittedly …"
I'm not sure what's changed, but lately it seems like several times a week, walking to or from work, I pass or run into someone I know, in the neighborhood where I have worked for 7 years, called Hugok. Former students, mostly, or in a few cases former coworkers or parents of students with whom I developed a nodding acquaintance at some point.
Last week, for example, I ran into a former student, now a senior in high school, and it was a pleasing and gratifying conversation for both of us – I remembered him well enough to immediately speak to him by name (which I know pleases students and is not always something I can pull off well – my memory is porous with names), and we made small talk about his post-high-school plans (still vague, but he wants to study economics).
One afternoon, walking to work, I saw a former fellow teacher on a bike, and we nodded and waved. Last night, I saw another former coworker standing at a bus stop. We had not interacted much, but there was the same nod-of-acquaintance.
Today while I walked home, I saw a young 2nd grade elementary student riding her bike. She likes to come and play with my alligator puppets in the teacher's room, and she's very verbal, in Korean, but trying to speak English makes her shy. I called her name and she was surprised but said hi, and then I realized she was next to her dad. He introduced himself and, half in Korean half in English, we talked for a while. He wanted to know what to do about his other daughter, who I taught a few months ago. She apparently doesn't like to study – the eternal Korean parent's lament.
These do not seem to be exceptions.
It's as if the number of people I know in Hugok has recently reached some critical mass, due to my having been here for so long. It's weird. I'm not used to being "known" in a neighborhood – I've moved far too frequently in my life, and I'm not very social, anyway, so it's not like I go out of my way to be known.
Nevertheless, there is something gratifying in all these chance encounters. They have a mostly fairly positive feeling.
Strange things happen to English when it gets deracinated, adopted/adapted in a new country and culture. I frequently run across examples that are puzzling or simply amusing.
Clever marketing of a pizzeria? Or just too many American crime-drama re-runs seen on TV?
Yesterday, I went into Seoul in the morning. I really don’t do that very often, anymore – I wasn’t even able to remember the last time I went to Seoul on a weekday morning. The reason is that my friend Peter is back in Korea (again!) and we met for lunch, before I rushed back out to Ilsan and back to work. I was happy to see him again – he’s starting graduate school in the fall at Johns Hopkins, and is trying to consolidate his Korean Language skills in the meantime – he’s long ago far outstripped my ability, which leaves me feeling both proud and jealous.
Anyway, my main observation is that working after what should just be a relaxing jaunt into the city for a few hours was remarkably exhausting. I guess I just don’t have the stamina I used to – it makes me feel geriatric and decrepit.
Work, yesterday, was a challenge, anyway. Too much alternation between having to be the “heavy” teacher one moment, because kids aren’t being responsible, and having to reassure them the next, because they’re fragile and burst into tears when things get too hard. To be honest, I personally don’t feel the desire or need to be the “heavy,” but it’s essentially an external requirement of the job – in hagwonland, teachers who never play the “heavy” get criticized for being “too easy” or being only entertainment. The stereotypical Korean parental expectation is: “if my kids are having fun, they must not be learning anything.”
I really like teaching, but I regret that in all my different incarnations as teacher, I’ve always felt so constrained by external requirements that don’t match what I have as my idealized concept of what it means to be a good teacher. I don’t work well with those constraints. Other talented teachers are better at somehow sticking within the external constraints and still managing to stay true to their teaching philosophy, but I think maybe I’m too erratic or something, to be able to navegate that difficult path. It’s really the same problem of finding “moderation” or the “middle way” that plagues most aspects of my life. I’m either too much or too little. [daily log: walking, 6km]
I have student who goes by the English name of Vona. She is a middle-school student in my TOEFL-style speaking class. A while back, we were trying to answer a question from the book with one of the TOEFL-style 45-second "personal experience" speeches. The prompt was: "Describe the most difficult decision you've had to make in your life."
These poor 8th graders were at a loss, of course. 8th graders don't like to think about this kind of thing, and most of them are pretty sheltered, anyway, so they haven't had to make a lot of difficult decisions in their lives, so far. Several talked about things like whether to study for some specific major exam, or not, as being their difficult decision.
Vona spoke fairly coherently for 45 seconds, which is an accomplishment for her. What was her most difficult decision?
What to eat at the restaurant. The menu has too many choices.
The thing is… I suspect this may, in fact, be her most difficult decision. Such is life in among the upper middle-class in Seoul's northwestern suburbs.
Of course, it is well known that Korean speakers struggle with the phonemic character of the "L-R distinction" in English. In fact, Korean possesses both sounds (at least, approximately, and with some caveats vis-a-vis the retroflex character of the English R), but in Korean the distinction is not phonemic but instead allophonically complementary.
If the above paragraph is gobbledygook, that's OK. I'm just being a linguist.
My point for this blog post is that sometimes my students make humorous mistakes. My student Cody was trying to give a debate speech about why zoos are not good for animals, and he was trying to say that life in a zoo is boring for animals, but his pronunciation consistently and clearly rendered "boring" as "boiling" – this is not just an L-R mistake but I think he was genuinely confusing the two words. Added to this is the typical "agent/patient" confusion typical with Korean learners of English (i.e. "The sea lion is bored" being rendered as "The sea lion is boring.").
I was struggling to explain to him the difference. Finally, on a piece of scrap paper, I sketched a zoo with bored animals, and then added a boiling sea lion. This seemed to get the message across – even though I received a lot of criticism for the quality of my sea lion. I agree it's a pretty implausible sea lion, but he is clearly boiling.
I'm not sure how widespread this "clowns don't bounce" meme is. I had never heard it until my elementary student Sophia used it as a (decidedly absurd) reason during an impromptu debate the other day.
We were debating about whether computer games are bad or good for kids. She said she thought computer games were a good idea. I asked her, "What is your reason?"
She answered, deadpan, "Clowns don't bounce."
I couldn't help but begin to laugh – which I'm sure was her intention.
Eventually I asked her what prompted her to say it, and she explained that it was something she saw "online." Later she further explained that it was used in a tween-appeal sitcom called Victorious. This sitcom is one I may have vaguely heard of – it's produced by the same people who make the one called iCarly, which I know I have mentioned in this blog before. iCarly has a few redeeming qualities, and I understand its appeal to kids. I'm not sure about Victorious. It seems more of a knock-off, with the consequent lower quality. Anyway, I guess that show's writers are the origin of the "clowns don't bounce" meme.
Anyway, it worked well as a strictly absurdist reason in a debate – if that's what your objective is. Unfortunately for Sophia, in this particular instance that was not the object, and after laughing with her briefly, I asked her try to come up with a better reason.
Last Saturday morning, my friend Peter sent me a message saying that the day was 경칩 [gyeongchip]. As is usually the case when I hear about a previously-unencountered Korean "holiday," this turned out to be part of the old Chinese solar calendar. Gyeongchip is one of the 24 "solar terms," when hibernating insects are awakened. But somehow, a frog is involved, too. I'm not clear on the details, although its is likely that awakened insects might be good news for frogs.
The insects are awakened by thunderstorms. Naturally, as I left work on Saturday, there was a thundestorm. It was quite intense. I can imagine all the insects woke up.
The picture at right is just sourced on a rather meandering web-search, found at the KOCIS site (Korean Culture and Information Service). Note the characters in the upper-right: 驚蟄. These are "jingzhe" i.e. gyeongchip.
I used to love to sleep. Since my surgery, sleep is more problematic. It's harder to stay asleep – I am often repeatedly awakened by feelings of obstruction in my throat, which may be authentic tongue control issues I suppose, or might be more like "ghosts" that result from the lack of functioning nerve endings in parts of my mouth and neck. And I have long suffered a kind of "morning insomnia" that doesn't affect my ability to fall asleep but impacts my ability to stay asleep.
Anyway, I was quite surprised to wake up at 11 am today. This is about 4 hours later than my usual wake-up time (which is always without alarm). Since I work afternoons, it doesn't create any problems if I sleep in, but I still felt quite surprised by it. Even rather disoriented – and it discombobulated my morning routines.
I suppose it's the "burnout" feeling from work catching up to me, but it might also be an impending flu or cold – sleeping more seems to sometimes be the first sign of such a thing.
Saturday there was a huge thunderstorm. It was a monsoon-style deluge. Yesterday the weather was very spring-like, but I was in a strange mood.
I'd dreamed I was one of my students, taking some test. But my version of the test was in Korean – of course. So I didn't understand the test. It was sad. I felt empathy for my students.
What I'm listening to right now.
Modest Mouse, "The View."
Lyrics.
Your gun went off. Well you shot off your mouth and look where it got you. My mouth runs on too.
Shouts from both sides, "Well we've got the land but they've got the view!" Well now here's the clue.
Life it rents us. And yeah I hope it put plenty on you. Well I hope mine did too.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer. Well it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, then I feel pretty blissfully.
Your gun went off. Well you shot off your mouth and look where it got you. My mouth runs on too.
Shouts from both sides, "Well we've got the land but they've got the view!" Well now here's the clue.
We are fixed right where we stand.
Life it rents us. And yeah I hope it put plenty on you. Well I hope mine did too.
We are fixed right where we are.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer. Well if feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, well I feel pretty blissfully.
For every invention made how much time did we save? We're not much farther than we were in the cave.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer, and it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, well I feel pretty blissfully.
If life's not beautiful without the pain, well I'd just rather never ever even see beauty again. Well as life gets longer, awful feels softer. And it feels pretty soft to me.
For every good deed done there is a crime committed. We are fixed. For every step ahead we could have just been seated. We are fixed.
As life gets longer, awful feels softer. Well it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, well I feel pretty blissfully.
We are fixed. We are fixed. We are fixed right where we stand.
Notes for Korean (finding meaning)
동등하다 = to be equal, to be on equal terms with, to be equivalent
I have one middle-school cohort of 9th graders that seems quite intrigued by US politics – unlike most 9th graders. I hadn't realized how much I'd revealed of my own opinions, however – normally I try to come across as fairly neutral, but not always successfully.
With great insight, the other day, one of my students said, "Teacher. If Trump is elected, you will have to study Korean very hard."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He answered, "You said if you can pass the Korean test, you can become a Korean citizen. I think you will want to do that."
I laughed. That was pretty perceptive, and interesting.
What I'm listening to right now.
Dead Kennedys, "Stars and Stripes of Corruption." As a side-note: the Dead Kennedys were the first musical group I saw in a live performance, of my own volition (i.e. not with my parents or other adults) – it was not really a concert, but at a club. I was 16 years old.
Lyrics.
Finally got to Washington in the middle of the night I couldn't wait I headed straight for the Capitol Mall My heart began to pound Yahoo! It really exists The American International Pictures logo
I looked up at that Capitol Building Couldn't help but wonder why I felt like saying "Hello, old friend"
Walked up the hill to touch it Then I unzipped my pants And pissed on it when nobody was looking
Like a great eternal Klansman With his two flashing red eyes Turn around he's always watching The Washington monument pricks the sky With flags like pubic hair ringed 'round the bottom
The symbols of our heritage Lit up proudly in the night Somehow fits to see the homeless people Passed out on the lawn
So this is where it happens The power games and bribes All lobbying for a piece of ass
Of the stars and stripes of corruption Makes me feel so ashamed To be an American When we're too stuck up to learn from our mistakes Trying to start another Viet Nam Whilke fiddling while Rome burns at home The Boss says, "You're laid off. Blame the Japanese" "America's back," alright At the game it plays the worst Strip mining the world like a slave plantation
No wonder others hate us And the Hitlers we handpick To bleed their people dry For our evil empire
The drug we're fed To make us like it Is God and country with a band
People we know who should know better Howl, "America riles. Let's go to war!" Business scams are what's worth dying for
Are the Soviets our worst enemy? We're destroying ourselves instead Who cares about our civil rights As long as I get paid?
The blind Me-Generation Doesn't care if life's a lie
so easily used, so proud to enforce
The stars and stripes of corruption Let's bring it all down! Tell me who's the real patriots The Archie Bunker slobs waving flags? Or the people with the guts to work For some real change Rednecks and bombs don't make us strong We loot the world, yet we can't even feed ourselves Our real test of strength is caring Not the toys of war we sell the world Just carry on, thankful to be farmed like worms Old glory for a blanket As you suck on your thumbs
Real freedom scares you 'Cos it means responsibility
So you chicken out and threaten me
Saying, "Love it or leave it" I'll get beat up if I criticize it You say you'll fight to the death To save your worthless flag
If you want a banana republic that bad Why don't you go move to one But what can just one of us do? Against all that money and power Trying to crush us into roaches?
We don't destroy society in a day Until we change ourselves first From the inside out
We can start by not lying so much And treating other people like dirt It's easy not to base our lives On how much we can scam
And you know It feels good to lift that monkey off our backs
I'm thankful I live in a place Where I can say the things I do Without being taken out and shot So I'm on guard against the goons Trying to take my rights away We've got to rise above the need for cops and laws
Let kids learn communication Instead of schools pushing competition How about more art and theater instead of sports?
People will always do drugs Let's legalize them Crime drops when the mob can't price them Budget's in the red? Let's tax religion
No one will do it for us We'll just have to fix ourselves Honesty ain't all that hard Just put Rambo back inside your pants Causing trouble for the system is much more fun
Thank you for the toilet paper But your flag is meaningless to me Look around, we're all people Who needs countries anyway?
Our land, I love it too I think I love it more than you I care enough to fight
The stars and stripes of corruption Let's bring it all down! If we don't try If we just lie If we can't find A way to do it better than this Who will?
Work has been quite busy. We started a new schedule yesterday. The kids started their new school year. It's weird to see the middle-schoolers back in their school uniforms after the winter break.
My new schedule feels "heavy" but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The issue is mainly the preponderance of "new" classes, which inevitably consume more prep-time than classes where I've been with a given cohort for a long time with a predictable curriculum.
Meanwhile, for your edification and hours of enjoyment, I'll send you to the Trump-et – no more dog-whistle politics! We're going loud and brash, now – screenshot below.
I saw snowy trees and fields while walking past the park. More later.
Update, a few hours later: I gained a clearer understanding why it is they seem to be procrastinating on doing further surgical work. The issue is that to dig down deeper in that area puts my right sublingual nerve at risk. This is a really big issue, because I lost most of the functionality of my left sublingual nerve during the cancer surgery. So my tongue has been operating all this time on the right nerve only. That's one thing the doctors mean when they say my tongue is asymmetric. So the one thing they really don't want to do is mess around with the right one. So anyway. They looked there, they said that some bone was showing (which somehow implies it's necrotic?), but they decided to continue to "wait and see." I'll go back next month.
It's a snowy Sunday afternoon on the Korean Peninsula.
My friend Bob asked me to help translate a song he's using (he is a music professor).
What I'm listening to right now.
Victor Heredia, "Todavía cantamos." This song commemorates September 11th (the other one).
Letra.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos, todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos, a pesar de los golpes que asestó en nuestras vidas el ingenio del odio desterrando al olvido a nuestros seres queridos.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos, todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos, que nos digan adónde han escondido las flores que aromaron las calles persiguiendo un destino ¿Dónde, dónde se han ido?
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos, todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos, que nos den la esperanza de saber que es posible que el jardín se ilumine con las risas y el canto de los que amamos tanto.
Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos, todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos, por un día distinto sin apremios ni ayuno sin temor y sin llanto, porque vuelvan al nido nuestros seres queridos. Todavía cantamos, todavía pedimos, Todavía soñamos, todavía esperamos…
My translation (I found a translation online but it was quite poor – perhaps merely an exhalation of the googletranslate).
We still sing, we still ask We still dream, we still hope Despite the blows That were dealt in our lives By the shrewdness of hate That exiled to oblivion Our loved ones.
We still sing, we still ask We still dream, we still hope That they to tell us where They have hidden the flowers That scented the streets Where we sought our destiny Where, where have they gone?
We still sing, we still ask We still dream, we still hope That they give us hope To know that it is possible To brighten the garden With the laughter and singing Of those we love so much.
We still sing, we still ask We still dream, we still hope For a different day Without coercion or hunger Without fear or crying When they return home, Our loved ones.
We still sing, we still ask We still dream, we still hope…
The Korean word 엉동이 [eongdongi] means both "butt" or "ass", as well as "hips." The meaning is completely ambiguous, and undifferentiated in the language. I don't see this as a defect – it's just how it works.
It can be difficult to explain to my students that there is a difference, and confusions are constant – and with elementary kids, you will not be shocked to learn that this is an important group of vocabulary items. Thus you get "Teacher, he hit my hips" when "he hit my butt" is meant, or "He was standing with his hands on his butt" when "He was standing with his hands on his hips" was intended.
Yesterday with my 9th graders – who should already know this – I was explaining to Doyeong this difference. Probably, I've explained it before to him, given his potty mouth. I stood in front of the class, I put my hands in my hips. "Hips." I reached behind. "Butt." I explained, "They're completely different, in English. Different words, different concepts."
"Really," said Doyeong, after a long pause as, it appeared, the distinction was finally sinking in.
I was listening to Logan Vath’s song, “Ain’t It Like Nebraska,” yesterday, and had this very weird thought: how much of my life have I spent driving across Nebraska? For whatever reason, I have vivid memories of some of those drives – especially that perfectly straight 70 mile stretch of freeway between Lincoln and Grand Island.
Because my main two “homes” in the US are California and Minnesota, and because over the years I have on many occasions had a better reason to drive than fly between them, I would estimate that, conservatively, I have driven across Nebraska at least 15 times. Given it takes about 6 hours on I-80 (with appropriate stops for gas or food), that means I’ve spent at least 90 hours driving across Nebraska. Since I’ve been alive approximately 441,000 hours, that means I’ve spent 0.02% of my life driving across Nebraska.
Of course, I’ve spent much more of life driving across other stretches. The 30 minute drive between Long Beach and Newport Beach is much shorter, but since it was my daily commute for a year, adds up to much more. Likewise the one-hour drive between Lansdale and Cherry Hill and other daily commutes from different times in my life.
Perhaps this should be contrasted with 0.46% (over 2000 hours) – the percent of my life I’ve spent walking between between Janghang and Hugok, in my seven years living in Ilsan.
Sometimes I think about strange things. [daily log: walking, 6km]
I had this weird realization, over the weekend, as I did some little thing on my computer, that I have been hacking around with HTML for more than 20 years, now. I was first exposed to HTML in maybe 1994, when I was taking grad-level courses at the University of Minnesota in preparation for my formal application to grad school, and was messing around on the U of M's intranet, which was in its infancy but was well ahead of the technology adoption curve, since the WWW was only about 3 years old at that point – note that the U of M was one of the innovators in the WWW realm, having been the original home of "gopher," a hyperlinked, markup-driven proto-internet that was one of the coneptual predecessors to Tim Berners-Lee's creation of the WWW at CERN in 1991).
Less than 2 years later, as a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania, I "published" my first web page – several webpages, actually, a simple website that provided me with a means to communicate homework assignments and ideas with my students (I was a TA, teaching lower-level Spanish language classes). My website included a little compilation of interesting bits of Spanish language culture such as could be found online in that early period of the internet, and when I was no longer teaching, I moved the site over to a geocities site where it lasted a year or two more, but it eventually died (along with geocities, of course).
HTML (hyper-text markup language) was not that hard for me pick up. I was already familiar with the concept of "markup," since even in 1995 I had already been dealing with some other types of markup for almost two decades.
I was exposed to the concept of "markup" in middle school in the late 1970's, thanks to my computer-literate uncle, who had an Apple II that he'd kludged together with an IBM Selectric typewriter (well, not brand-name, I think it was a Japanese clone of an IBM Selectric). This unholy marriage allowed him to produce letter-quality printer output in what was still a predominantly low-resolution, dot-matrix age (picture at right, for those too young to remember). I wrote my middle-school English essays (and later high school essays) using this arrangement. To send the unformatted text files to this printer required the use a fairly arcane set of markup commands (possibly these commands were ancestral to what later became LaTeX? I'm not sure).
Later, as an undergraduate in 1983-1985, I had a work-study job in the department of Mathematics, and they discovered my mastery of the principles of markup and they made use of me for some departmentally published mathematics textbooks – even today, mathematical printing requires a great deal of markup to come out looking good – just look at the "source" view, sometime, on a math-intensive wikipedia page.
So, as I said, markup was already an "old" concept to me when I met HTML in grad school. And HTML is a conceptually quite simple implementation of markup principles.
20 years later, I've realized that despite all my shifts in profession and location and lifestyle, not a week has gone by, probably, when I haven't hacked a bit of HTML. Of course, having this blog exposes me to opportunities – but most people with blogs avoid the markup, sticking to the user-friendly tools provided by blog-hosts. I, however, somehow manage to decide to do some HTML tweak or another with nearly every blog post. Ever since I started keeping a separate work-blog to communicate with students, I have made even greater use of my HTML hacking skills, since it allows me a convenient way to bypass the Korean-language user interface on the naver.com blog-publishing website.
So … enjoy the fruits of markup – happy web surfing.
십일번 타고가다
sip.il.beon ta.go.ga.da
eleven-number ride-and-go
…take the number eleven [bus route].
Literally, it means “take the number 11 bus route.” But the number 11 bus route is a metaphor for walking. Why? The digits “11” resemble two legs, I guess. I think this an idiom I can find much use for, given how much I walk as opposed to other forms of transportation. I like when I learn such useful things to say. Although who knows when I might actually find myself saying it – the next time someone offers me a ride that I turn down, I suppose. [daily log: riding the number 11, 6.5km]
I have a small elementary cohort, called Newton2T, with a very fast student and a slow student. They were using class time to work on their essays sitting at the computer (i.e. typing – I use these classes as typing practice, too) – because they hadn't finished them as homework. The fast student, Brian, finished his 120-word essay in a matter of 15 minutes or so, and asked me, "What can I do?"
I suggested doing some work for another class, and he didn't like that idea. So I told him to write a story. "I can't think of a story," he complained.
"Write about about the alligator and the monkey," I said. He wrote this story – verbatim, below.
One alligater and monkey is in the box. One alligater name is Donald and monkey’s name is Jared Donald was hungry. So Donald look at Jared. Jared was scared. So, Jared prayed for Jejus. So Jejus gave super power to Jared. Jared was happy. Why?He was strongest in the world
Jared was King in the world. Jared have bad imagine. That imagine is jared kill Jejus and get EVERY SUPERPOWER. Jejus was very angry.. So thunder to jared. Jared fly to sky castle. And shouted for Jejus. “ Hey Guy Come on!” Jejus was SO angry. So Jejus said poseidon “ please help me, one crazy monkey have super power.” Poseidon said “ Okey dokey Yo!”
Since I teach debate, I sometimes have the situation where students express views or even “facts” with which I don’t agree or which I dislike. Only with the most advanced students have I ever tried to go into the realm of evidentiality and “sourced” arguments – mostly I focus on using debate as a means of expressing opinions using English and without regard to the veracity or even acceptability of what they’re saying. Also, since I often make students “switch sides,” I can hardly complain if they end up coming up with some implausible argument for a position which they wouldn’t have chosen in any event on their own.
The below, however, is not one of those cases – the student chose the position apparently sincerely, and furthermore, I can sadly say that the opinions he echoes are quite widely held. Most interesting, vis-a-vis the question of immigration to Korea, is the seemingly circular argument that foreigners should not come to Korea because, since Koreans are racists and nationalists, immigrants would therefore have a bad experience here. It boils down to: “Don’t come here because we don’t like you, and so it would be bad for you to come here.”
Still, perhaps the most bizarre are the beliefs about how dangerous foreigners are. Yet this kind of thinking is hardly unique to Korea – just look at the American discourse around immigration, and such views are easy to find.
There are many people who are coming from other country these days. Korea can develop by accepting these kinds of people, but there are many people in different opinion that disagree about accepting these kinds of people.
People who are coming from another country have different religions. IS which is one of the most dangerous groups of people in the world have the Islamic religion. They are very dangerous, so most people do not like to live in the same country with them. Korean people often eat fork after work, but Islamic people can not eat pork. Hindu people can not eat beef, so they can not join in the Korean company dinner. Many people who are coming from other countries can not live with Korean people.
There is the wall between Korean people and foreigners. This wall is called nationalism. Korean people express a very powerful nationalism. For example, Korean people do not like black people because they think that black people make scary situation. Korean people are also disregard immigrant workers who are coming from Philippines or Vietnam. Immigration is harmful for foreigners.
Foreigners make crimes. American soldiers make crimes almost once a week. They kill many Korean women and rape them. Chinese are psycho. Chinese kill Korean people, cut into their bodies and also they eat human meat. Foreigners are dangerous to live with.
In conclusion, immigration is sometimes helpful but not always. Foreigners have different religion and make many crimes. Korean people also have nationalism, so foreigners can not endure it. People should know that immigration is not always good for our country.
I can say that among my students, such views as these are not that common – just by virtue of being a middle-school student who is in the top quartile of English ability (such as is the case with my students, since I don’t teach the lower levels) means that one’s views of things like globalism and internationalism are probably moderate. Nevertheless, in the broader public, I can also say that such views are probably more common than anyone would like to admit.
“While the secret knowledge is only available to some members of the society, there is an ideology, an ethics, and a phenomenology of ignorance that is shared, to some degree, by all.” -Jonathan Mair
I don't have much to say today – I had a rather braindead weekend, after that thunderstormy Saturday. Actually, right after writing about climate volatility, it started to get cold again. It's bright and sunny and about -6 C (21 F) now, midday on Monday.
I have been so tired lately. I came home from work and took a nap today – the work-in-the-mornings Saturday schedule always discombobulates me slightly.
I awoke to a thunderstorm outside. In February? The weather is weird. This moment, an hour after sunset on February 13th, it is 16 C (60 F) in suburban Seoul. Meanwhile, according to the internet, it's -20 C (-4 F) in Minneapolis. Last month, these numbers were reversed. Both situations are abnormal. People like to argue about anthropogenic global warming and climate change, but I wonder if new terminology might improve the acceptibility of the concept to the sceptics, borrowing from the world of finance: "increasing climate volatility."
I awoke very early so I could have time to face my day before heading off to the hospital. I walked into the rising sun feeling my normal mix of apprehension and the weird, uncharacteristic optimism that I only seem capable of experiencing when facing imminent discomfort and adversity.
Now I sit waiting among the near-ghosts and their attendants and hangers-on, on the utterly familiar east wing, 2nd floor of the superfun cancerland theme park.
Sometimes, waiting is the hardest part.
Several hours later – update…
Good news: No more necrotic bone presented.
Bad news: 3 weeks after the surgery, there has been almost no healing. This is due to necrotic soft tissue in the same area. Basically, I have big hole in the back of my mouth where they took out the dead tooth and bone. This is exactly why this procedure couldn't be done by a regular dentist. It requires monitoring and maintenance. Low grade infection is inevitable. Impact: eating will remain problematic, and mouth hygiene is critical and remains tedious. "Come back in 2 weeks, we'll decide what to do next."
I have had terrible insomnia, the last few days. It impairs me sense of feeling productive in my life, and renders me even less motivated than usual.
I suspect it has to do with the discombobulation of my regular schedule due to the long weekend, but mostly due to my apartment flood, last week, which forced me to make do with a temporarily altered sleeping arrangement – substitute bedding that is less comfortable.
Yesterday morning, I woke very early (3 am), and then lay down to take a nap later on, after the sun came up. During that nap, I had a very strange repeating dream. It repeated many times. I was a police officer. I was going down an escalator. My colleagues – the other police officers – were all children. Yet they were more aware of what it is we were supposed to be doing than I was, and they were telling me what to do. I was at a loss – so much so, that I couldn't make it to the bottom of the escalator, no matter how hard I tried. I could see that I was needed at the bottom, and everyone was telling me to go there, but I couldn't get there. As I looked around, the whole arrangement of the moving stairs was like a complex Escherian machine. All the children were leaving me behind. On and on and on…
I awoke from the nap and took a walk outside. The weather is springlike, despite it being the midwinter festival. I went into a bakery and bought a sandwich, the first since my surgery (and in anticipation of my next surgery, coming up tomorrow). I had all these preconceptions of how I might enjoy that sandwich, but they were preconceptions that were mostly based on experiences from many years ago. In point of fact, eating the sandwich wasn't really very enjoyable. I hate when that happens.
Today is 설날 [seollal = lunar new year]. A holiday, and the beginning of the Year of the Monkey.
Koreans celebrate the lunar new year by eating seaweed soup with ttoek (plain rice-cake) for breakfast. I had some "instant" 미역국 (miyeokguk = seaweed soup) and had bought some tteok in a bag from the convenience store downstairs yesterday.
So I did that – picture at right.
Utterly apropos, because of the video…
What I'm listening to right now.
Coldplay, "Adventure Of A Lifetime."
Lyrics.
Turn your magic on Umi she'd say Everything you want's a dream away And we are legends every day That's what she told me
Turn your magic on, To me she'd say Everything you want's a dream away Under this pressure under this weight We are diamonds
Now I feel my heart beating I feel my heart underneath my skin And I feel my heart beating Oh you make me feel Like I'm alive again Alive again Oh you make me feel Like I'm alive again
Said I can't go on, not in this way I'm a dream that died by light of day Gonna hold up half the sky and say Only I own me And I feel my heart beating I feel my heart underneath my skin Oh I can feel my heart beating Cause you make me feel Like I'm alive again Alive again Oh you make me feel Like I'm alive again
Turn your magic on, Umi she'd say Everything you want's a dream away Under this pressure under this weight We are diamonds taking shape We are diamonds taking shape
If we've only got this life This adventure oh then I And if we've only got this life You get me through And if we've only got this life In this adventure oh then I Want to share it with you With you With you Yeah I do Woohoo Woohoo Woohoo
I decided to rearrange my apartment today, to prepare for the monkeys, as well as to recover from the flood a few days ago, and it got complicated – I disabled my internet somehow. It appears to have been temporary, or my fiddling around fixed it, as it is working again. I'm not sure what happened. Maybe the cable was bad, or suddenly discovered its innner badness when I moved it around.
I was walking to work this morning, and noticed the political banners at the big intersection of Gobong and Jungang. I guess it’s not just political season in the US, but here too?
I tried to make sense of the 민주당 (Democratic Party) banner as I waited for the traffic light to change so I could cross the street. It said,
더불어민주당
deo.bul.eo min.ju.dang
[come] along with the Democratic Party
The dictionary gives “throw your lot in with…” as a gloss for 더불어 but that has a bit too much of a negative connotation (as in, just give up and throw your lot in with) in my mind to serve as a good translation of a political slogan, so I preferred to try to read it as “come along with.”
The Democratic Party is the slightly more leftward of Korea’s two parties – I was standing under the banner of their opposites, the more right-wing 새누리당 [sae.nu.ri.dang = “New Frontier Party”], who currently control the presidency through the dictator’s daughter. I don’t think it’s quite time to elect a president (that will be next year), but I think there are local elections and maybe parliamentary ones, coming up. [daily log: walking, 6.5km]
I won't say my kitchenette sink is broken. It's just a little bit wonky. The drainpipe under the sink is just snapped on. Thus, if I am moving something around under the sink, it's possible for the drainpipe to snap off. It's easy to fix – just snap it back on.
Yesterday I took out some of my recycling, and so I was pulling the bag out from under the sink. I guess the pipe snapped off.
Normally, when this happens, I notice immediately – the water runs down out from under the sink cabinet, instead of down its drainpipe, and onto the floor where I'm standing. This is hard not to notice, and thus I will stop, mop up the spilled water, and move on.
Last night, we had hwehsik (회식 = work dinner). It went quite late. I am not drinking alcohol, because of my ongoing surgical procedures, but… I was really groggy when I got up this morning. Fuzzy-brained. Out of it.
For some reason, I decided I needed to do the dishes, first thing when I got up. The sink was full of dishes, and they were in the way of filling my coffee pot. I have been busy with work, lately, so I had been letting the dishes pile up a bit – as much as they can, given my limited supply. So I started doing dishes. I did them all.
Somehow, I was utterly oblivious to the river flowing at my feet. I guess that sets a new standard for groggy.
I flooded my apartment.
My bed, being on the floor, served as absorptive material to mop it all up. Now I am doing a lot of laundry.
I've written before about how I reward my students with "alligator bucks" sometimes – a kind of point system or in-class currency. I also have a rare, special "Lucky Seven" bill, denominated at 7 alligator bucks. If you possess one of these "Lucky Sevens," you can use it as a homework pass, to get out of a zero point result for undone homework.
Yesterday, my student Sophia came to me right before our listening class. She brandished her "Lucky Seven" and I thought she was going to confess to not doing homework. Instead, she wanted to know if it also could be counted as a normal seven dollars, in our economy system. She was really hungry, she said. I sometimes have snacks on hand that I "sell" to my students. She wanted to buy some chips that she knew I had in my "snack drawer."
I shrugged, and said sure, if she wanted to spend her seven dollars on a snack, that was fine. "Are you sure you don't want to save it in case you don't do your homework, sometime?"
She grinned. "I always do my homework!"
"I seem to remember a few times when you didn't do homework," I observed.
She was adamant that she would never need the lucky seven. "I will always do my homework in the future," she promised.
We went into our listening class. "OK, let me see your homework," I began.
"We had homework?!" Sophia said, with a dismayed look on her face and a handful of chips paused, halfway to her mouth.
On Saturday I met my friend Seungbae and his wife, who came out to Ilsan to visit. Seungbae is one of my closest Korean friends, and was very supportive to me through my cancer two years ago, but I don't see him much, because in his current job, he has been living in Mexico City. He is my "Spanish-speaking Korean friend," whom I met way back in 2010 when I was living in Suwon and looking for a job – he was looking for a job at that time, too. He found one, and is doing quite well.
Anyway, recently Seungbae's been tasked by his company with setting up a new company office in L.A., but has been back in Korea for a few weeks. So he came to visit. We went out to eat at the 본죽 (Korean-style congee restaurant) that's across the street from my apartment, and had some coffee.
I am lucky to have so many good friends who stick with me despite my antisocial tendencies.
