Sometimes I go off finding unusual or interesting things. I was surfing around some Korean traditional music. Here’s one I found of the style called 산조 [sanjo]. It’s a kind of improvisational folk style that seems to have emerged in the 19th century, based on what little reading I did about it.
What I’m listening to right now.
황병기류 가야금 산조.
Category: Banalities & Journaling
Caveat: Gazing
This is something I drew: “Gazing.”
Caveat: Merry Tuesday
The morning dawned icy, sunny and cold, with a fresh sprinkling of snow on the roof-ledge garden of the building across the alley. I leaned out my window and snapped this picture.
To all my family, friends and strangers who read This Here Blog Thingy™, Merry Tuesday! Smiles and best wishes to all, and I hope we all can give and receive all our gifts with sincerity and grace.
Caveat: The Christmas Eve Hamburger
My student gave me a hamburger for Christmas. It was cold.
But I felt that it meant a lot, coming from a student (or perhaps a generous mom). I brought it home and reheated it. It wasn’t very delicious, but I appreciated the thought. It was my most significant Christmas present.
Grading journals, today, I ran across these two things. First, more love from Lucy:
Second, a philosophical sentiment at the end of a book-review by a 4th grader who goes by Harry.
“I think freedom is not always good.”
Caveat: canada(electron) = neutrino
I’d heard of people who don’t believe in Belgium before, but not believing in Canada was new to me. This blog entry at Crooked Timber was stunningly hilarious.
The author writes how he doesn’t believe in Canada. It’s great writing and great satire.
Even many of the comments, following, were brilliant. I laughed a lot at the joke that goes:
Q: How do tell the difference between a Canadian and an American?
A: Ask him a question about American history. If he knows the answer, he’s a Canadian.
And, I especially liked the fractal theory of Canada, by a commenter who goes by the handle of Don Cates. It goes something like this (I will quote from the comment at length, hopefully I will be forgiven, it is sheer brilliance – note that it’s not just Canada-humor, but math-humor, which may be lost on some readers):
Given a community A and an adjacent community C, such that A is prosperous and populous, and C is less populous and prosperous, and nonreciprocal interest of C in the internal affairs of A, often C will need ego compensation by occaisional noisy and noisome display of its superiority over A. In this case C is said to be the _canada_ of A, C = canada(A).
For example, it has been previously established that
canada(California) = Oregon
canada(New York) = New Hampshire
canada(Australia) = New Zealand
canada(England) = ScotlandThe Fractal Theory of Canada.
For all A there exists C such that
C = canada(A)
For example,
canada(USA) = Canada
canada(Canada) = Quebec
canada(Quebec) = Celine DionIt would appear that the hierarchy would bottom out an individual.
However, an individual is actually a community of tissues, tissues of cells, cells of
molecules, and so forth down into the quantuum froth.canada(brain) = pineal gland
canada(intestines) = colon
…
canada(electron) = neutrino
Speculation: what is x, if x = canada(South Korea)?
I’m not sure. But I will suggest canada(Seoul) = Ilsan.
Meanwhile, this photo:
I took the photo at Morris, Manitoba, November, 2009.
Caveat: Spelling Bee & Speech Contest
Today was a very busy day at work, for which we've been preparing for a long time. We had a spelling bee and speech contest event for the elementary kids. It was a madhouse of children eating a massive number of snacks and shrimp-burgers (bleagh, by the way). But the spelling bee and speech contests went well, I think.
If I find some good pictures or video, maybe I'll add them later, but nothing at the moment. After it was over, I ran some shopping errands and now I just feel tired.
Caveat: I have been in Korea for a long time
A former student stopped by, today. Her English name was Irene. She was possibly one of my first Korean students, among that group of middle-schoolers I inherited from the very famous Gary-teacher at Tomorrow school in 2007. She was in 7th grade, then, and I taught her through the time at LinguaForum, in early 2008. Well, she is starting college in a few months at Seogang University [update: my friend has informed me that the correct spelling of the name is Sogang University, but this violates the official revised romanization standard as established by the South Korean government – the Korean spelling is 서강, which is unambiguously romanized as seogang; the spelling sogang should be reserved for the Korean 소강 – I’m not sure if this is a word or name or not]. I remember her well – she was an excellent student, so her going off to such a good university is hardly shocking. But I felt very old.
I realized I have been in Korea for a long time.
Unrelatedly, a smart-alec kid named Kevin said the following in debate class, with respect to the proposition: “My soul is PRO, but my body is CON.” The proposition was a sort of “joke proposition” such as I sometimes do: “Night is better than day.”
Caveat: The Ajummocracy Comes Out
I coined the word “ajummocracy” a while back in this blog. I think today is a good day to return to it – because now South Korea has an ajumma for president – although Park Geun-hye breaks the stereotype in many ways: most importantly, she breaks the stereotype by becoming president, rather than just running things behind the scenes.
I was confident enough in my prediction that she would win to have published that prediction. My prediction was based mostly on following the news, and the atmospherics of my classroom discussions of politics with my middle-school students. I find the electoral map exactly matches the prediction I had made in my own brain, too – not that anyone cares. I think the electoral map is very interesting – I’ve written about that before too.
I want to be clear that I didn’t “support” Park, however. Most of my coworkers are either disturbingly apolitical (“what, me vote?”) or else vocally liberal (and therefore they voted for the opposition, Moon Jae-in). Several of them were rivetted by following the election returns on their web-browsers last night, and they were moaning and crying and gnashing their teeth. “Korean people are so stupid,” one of them remarked. Another said, “There are too many old people voting.” As you can see by these remarks, Korean electoral politics aren’t that different from in US: people get very partisan, and the tropes are similar.
I don’t really think it’s my place to say which candidate I personally prefer – it’s not my country. But I will say I think each of the candidates offered some important things. Park’s election is ground-breaking in so many ways: she’s a woman, she’s the daughter of an asssassinated dictator, she’s a leader of a conservative party but she’s made several quite progressive proposals, she’s unmarried – this last may be more surprising than the fact that she’s a woman.
So in February, Park will return to the Blue House – the home where she grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s. Can you imagine entering the presidential mansion, as president, and recognizing and remembering a closet where you may have played hide and seek when you were 9 years old? That seems novelistic, to me – psychologically interesting.
I’ll be intrigued to see how this plays out. I’m sure I’ll be disappointed – I almost always am, in politics.
Caveat: December Busyness
Lately, work has been ramping up quite a bit. I think that December may be, on average, the most difficult month for foreign ESL teachers working in Korea (except, perhaps, university-level teachers, where the academic calendar is much more generous with time off). Unlike in the US, schools don’t typically start vacation until after Christmas day – in fact, for many Koreans Christmas is little more than a holiday similar to, say, St Patrick’s day in the US – it’s an excuse to go shopping or for a party or some kind of “ethnic” (i.e. Western) experience, not really more than that. So December is full of the end-of-academic-year stuff, and you have to be preparing for the winter classes (which are like summer school classes, in the US).
I really don’t like how much emphasis is placed on what they call 예비 [yebi = preparation] in Korean schools and hagwon – the process whereby immense amounts of classroom time, including entire special sessions, is dedicated to “prepping” for things – next levels, next tests, etc. It’s what they call “cram schools” in Japan. Why not just teach the stuff in the first place? If you teach the stuff that’s going to be on the test reliably and consistently in your regular curriculum, you wouldn’t need to stop everything and cram once every 3 months. But that would require a better designed testing system, too – so until that happens, the yebi remains. Grumble. I’m talking about it now because it’s ended – resuming the regular curriculum always feels like trying to start a new school year, but once every few months rather than once a year.
It was three years ago tomorrow that I finished my 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat – essentially living like a Buddhist monk. In retrospect, some of the lessons I learned during that experience have stuck with me, but my meditation practice has lapsed into disrepair.
I feel a little bit gloomy about that.
Caveat: Alternate Tracks
I’m not a musician. At all. I’m intimidated by the mere idea of trying to learn to play an instrument – I have hangups about it, even. Sometimes, I think I could have been a musician, though, given a very different childhood, where my parents weren’t so forgiving of my complaints of “it’s too hard” with respect to my brief forays into trumpet lessons or piano lessons. I like music, and I think about it a lot.
I have an acquaintance who was a coworker of mine back in the database days. I respected him hugely for his multitalented approach to solving business problems, and we had worked together some, though not as much as I would have liked, on a few projects.
So… in facebookland, he’s been sending me links to his son’s musical projects. His son seems to be attending the highly reputed Berklee in New England. I know something of this rarefied musical world, 3rd-hand, because of my bestfriend Bob’s musical career as a conductor and professor of music.
Until now, I hadn’t really paid attention to these links – there’s so much in facebookland that I simply don’t pay attention to, at all. But this morning I clicked the link and surfed around this music-for-musicians type website: mostly for people doing “high art” of various contemporary styles of music, such as house, electronica, hip-hop, etc. The site is called indaba.
Here’s the song that sent me there. I’m trying out the embed function for the website.
What I’m listening to right now.
[UPDATE: The embedded music from the site called “indaba,” stopped working. This called “link rot” – a common problem on any long-running blog. I had found replacement link, but THAT link rotted, too. So now, there’s no link.]
Trick Smil3y, “Drenched (Trick Smil3y Remix).” I guess there’s some contest to remix this piece and he’s participating. I know very little about how remixing even works or what it means, artistically. But I enjoy listening to it and many of the various other tracks I surfed across on the site. I didn’t actually “vote,” however – registering a vote required integrating to facebook, which I have resisted for data privacy reasons because I deeply distrust facebook corporation despite using it – the same reasons that I have taken to almost always putting my own images, links and thoughts on this blog rather than on facebook directly. [Update: I confess I finally voted. I’m not very good at sticking by my corporate boicott principles, am I?]
Caveat: I’m Boring
Student: "Teacher! Are you boring?"
Me: "Yes. I am. Now go away, before I bore you more."
Student: laughing, ran away.
You see, it's quite difficult for Korean-speakers to get the difference in meaning between English pairs like "boring / bored" or "exciting / excited" because Korean adjectives describing feelings of this sort work differently, such that the same word can have both meanings. So the distinction between something or someone being bored or boring is difficult to explain.
So I welcome the opportunity to make stupid jokes of their frequently erroneous deployment of boredom-related words in particular. This was exceptional only because the student was sufficiently advanced that he recognized his mistake and got that I was making a joke.
Caveat: Korean Presidential Debate
I watched the last of the Korean presidential debates. I understood almost zero of what the heck they were talking about. Yet I watched it, nevertheless, because politics is interesting to me even when I don’t understand it. Because I’m weird.
I remember a lot was made of analyzing the body language of Obamney during the US presidential debates, and at the time, I thought, that’s dumb – there are more important things in a debate. I still think it’s dumb for serious political analysis to talk about those things, but in watching this Korean debate, I nevertheless basically did more of that than any actual content analysis, given how poor my Korean listening skills really are. Seriously – when I all I understand are the conjunctions and transition words, the debate is a sort of kabuki where I’m looking for nonverbal signals.
Here’s one thought – Moon (the male, leftistish candidate) needs to get the stick out of his butt. He’s about as charismatic as Michael Dukakis. Uh oh. Did I just say that? Park (the female, rightistish candidate) is much more personable. She will win. Admittedly, I’m bringing other information to the table – not least, the informal polls I periodically conduct in my middle-school classes. Over the years, these have proved remarkably representative of Korean public opinion. I’m not sure of the sociological reasons why tiny samples of Korean middle-schoolers in above-average-income suburbs of Seoul accurately reflect Korean public opinion, I’m just sayin’.
Caveat: Bionic Breakdancer
It's Sunday morning. I'm not really online – this is a queued blog-post. I've decided to take Sunday off from the internet. See you later.
I'm not going to provide much commentary – this video is awesome, if you grew up in the 1970's, like me.
What I was listening to at some point in the past.
DJ Keltech, "Six Million Dollar Man Break Dance Remix." I like this Keltech guy a lot. Some good stuff there.
Caveat: Monkey Darts
It was supposed to be a one-off thing.
I have this rainbow-colored plush monkey that I bought at the Minneapolis airport last summer. He has magnets in his hands and feet, and it says “Minneapolis” across his tummy. Because of the magnets, he sticks to the whiteboards, and the elementary students can entertain themselves endlessly with it. One day, seeing a student toss the monkey at the white board and trying to make it stick, I made a joke about playing “darts” with it. We ended up drawing a target on the white board and tossing the monkey at the target in an ad hoc game of darts.
And then it spread to the middle school – perhaps I wasn’t entirely guiltless in this. I’m always on the lookout for ways to get the middle schoolers to do anything besides nap in their desks and mess with their phones. This, apparently, was it.
This morning, we played monkey darts. I give out my play money to people who hit the target. I take money when they miss. So it’s got an element of gambling to it, which I suspect appeals to them, too – who doesn’t love a game of chance.
The monkey’s name, by the way, is “Dinner.” That’s because he’s the alligator’s dinner.
Caveat: Yerba Mate en Corea
No es lo que pensaría. Sólo que hice compras ayer y ví en el supermercado yerba mate (en saquitos de té).
Lo compré por lo novedoso que era.
Caveat: A net exporter of culture
Supposedly, Korea overtook Japan as an exporter of "culture." This is a little bit hard to understand or explain – what it means, or how it happened. There's an interesting article at Quartz online. I also remember hearing that South Korea was a net exporter of culture (in monetary terms – video games and music play a big part in these figures).
Caveat: 하지마
It's fairly typical that after working so much, I suffer insomnia. So now I'm kind of tired-grumpy.
Here's a trivial fact that I overheard on the radio and that I was too lazy to confirm using the internet: Indian laws allow deities to be parties to legal disputes.
What I'm listening to right now.
B.A.P., "하지마" [hajima = Stop It].
Caveat: 14 hours
14 hours is a pretty long day. Off to work at 8:30. Home at 10:30.
I didn't feel that much stress, but there's a lot going on – an informational / marketing meeting for parents in the morning, hoesik for lunch (with colleagues) then a full schedule of classes for the afternoon
OK. Now I'm tired. See you later.
Caveat: you can grow ideas in the garden of your mind
When I was a child I didn't like Mr Rogers. But over the years since, I've grown to appreciate him, some, especially in the context of working with children so much.
Here's an interesting and hooky video I ran across.
I rather like the main conceit: "you can grow ideas in the garden of your mind."
Caveat: the most perverse of all the perverse curly-bracket languages
I am no longer a programmer. My skillset has rusted to such a degree that it is no longer useful. But I still occasionally follow the field, broadly speaking. There is much writing, over at The Reg, that can make me laugh on a regular basis. But this bit… wow. A sample, at length (brimming over with inside jokes and strange, nerdly, programmer-humor):
Zany adventures with Zarco and Marco
- And the users of Delphi had become old with the passage of years, and had taken to sensible shoes, and elasticated jeans, and cosy Saturdayevenings in with BBC4.
- For their grizzled pates did sparkle in the morning sunshine, like the surface of that glittery sandstone stuff that one sometimes notices in rocks by the seaside.
- Yet still the users of Delphi turned out Windows code that was not so dusty, and demanded no runtime, and could fetch its backside off the disk and be begging for input before certain alternatives could so much as put up a 'Please wait' dialog.
- And if a few users of Delphi had turned their hands to writing JavaScript-that-is-the-assembly-language-of-the-internet, then most had not followed these filthy traitors into the perverse ways of the curly bracket.
- For it is well-known that JavaScript is the most perverse of all the perverse curly-bracket languages, that causes its users to cry Wat! and despair.
That little thing at the "Wat!" link is hilarious, too. Really. Trust me.
Caveat: Great Website, Worst Romanization In The Known Universe
I'm always on the lookout for places online with insightful Korean Language learning tools and information. They're pretty hard to come by. Some time back, I found a website by a guy named Ken Eckert, that includes a section he calls "sloppy Korean." I don't know enough to judge how sloppy the Korean is, but the romanization is so random and poor that I have to work hard, squinting my eyes, so I don't see it.
How hard is it to master the single page of rules published by the National Institute of the Korean Language? Or… if you really hate the South Korean government's official "Revised Romanization" (and I know some people do, including many linguists – but I'm not one of them), there's the perfectly acceptable McCune-Reischauer system, still in use by the North (as far as I know). Regardless, in what linguistic universe is romanizing 어떻게 [eo-tteoh-ge] as "auto-keh" a good idea? I suppose it's motivated by a hope that people will be able to more easily, accurately pronounce the Korean. But if someone is far enough along to be trying to learn phrases at the level presented, I think they'll be OK with hangeul at that point.
I suppose this is one reason why learning Korean is such a struggle for me. With my own background in linguistics, and a strong underlying perfectionism, I have a need for people who are experts in Korean yet who also have some good linguistic training or background. But, in fact, most experts-in-Korean are extraordinarily lousy linguists, and I get frustrated and annoyed very quickly with all their bald-faced linguistic misconceptions and inaccuracies.
Oops. I ranted.
Having said all that, I don't really mean to complain. Or rant. I genuinely appreciate the effort put into it, and the phrase-level translations of colloquial Korean are well-organized and extraordinarily useful. The above makes me sound like the worst kind of ungrateful internet peever-troll imaginable. So I should apologize, forthwith, and not post this. But, um, I'm posting it.
Still, I highly recommend the site to anyone interested in working on Korean. Thanks, and sorry for the rant.
Caveat: 길고 짧은 것은 대어 보아야 안다
길고 짧은 것은 대어 보아야 안다
be-long-AND be-short-PP thing-TOPIC measure- try-YA know-PRES
[You will] know [when you] try to measure a long and short thing.
“You never know until you try.” True.
What should I try?
Caveat: Cold -> Heat
Is it just me or is it damn cold outside? I didn’t feel this cold in my apartment, last winter. I think last year was a mild winter. And it’s possible that the efficiency of my building’s heating system has been reduced in some way or for some reason, as compared to last year. The weather widget on my phone said -17 C this morning (that’s 1 F).
Here at right is a picture of the corner of my window frame this morning: see all the ice on the inside of the double-paned glass?
Regardless, I felt cold. And so for the first time since moving to Korea, I decided I needed supplementary heat. I’ve always been a “cold-blooded” person, in that being cold doesn’t seem to bother me as much as being hot. Hence I’ve never had issues with my apartment being 10 C or even lower. But maybe I’m getting older. Or maybe it was a lot lower than 10 C this morning.
So this afternoon I stepped out and took a brisk walk to the local Hi-Mart, in the snot-freezing cold. I shelled out 60 bucks, got complemented for speaking Korean by 3 different salespeople, and, in a very cheery mood, returned home and plugged it it. I feel better now.
What I’m listening to right now.
Laetitia Sadier, “Find Me The Pulse Of The Universe.”
Caveat: Ah, Retribution… PSY Style
So I suspect I might be able to mention Korean rapper and satirist PSY without too many people not recognizing him, at this point. I was slightly ahead of the curve when I posted about his “Gangnam Style” way back in mid August.
But I recently ran across something interesting. His current social satire is pretty mild. Back in 2003, he as was full-on radical. And angry-radical, too.
In this video, he’s performing a small part in a song called “Anti-American,” which is by the heavy metal band called “NEXT” and he’s smashing a toy model of an American tank. Apparently the song included lyrics such as the following.
싸이 rap : 이라크 포로를 고문해 댄 씨발양년놈들과
고문 하라고 시킨 개 씨발 양년놈들에
딸래미 애미 며느리 애비 코쟁이 모두 죽여
아주 천천히 죽여 고통스럽게 죽여Kill those —— Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those —— Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully
I did not do the translation, and it seems a little bit rough, but I found it online and it’s close enough.
I do not condone, and never condone, violence as a response to violence. I dislike the ease with which people transition from violence they oppose to the idea of retributive violence such as that being espoused by the PSY and his metal-headed friends, above. Having said that, I, too, was deeply troubled by the US behavior in, especially, Iraq. I have long felt that Bush, Cheney, and subsequently the disappointing Mr Obama should be held responsible for war-crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Yemen and Pakistan and other places where drone attacks are still being carried out). So without agreeing with his prescription for retribution, I do agree with PSY’s anger as expressed in 2003. And I actually find him more interesting, because he’s clearly a politically conscious animal – as indicated by both his recent, milder satire as well as this.
[Update added 2012-12-10] I just noticed that blogger Ask A Korean has a very brilliant post on this same topic. Please read it if you’re one of those people who are uncomfortable with PSY’s rhetoric. Or even if you’re not, but just curious about the context of South Korean anti-Americanism.
Caveat: 인디안 썸머
For my Korean movie of the week, I watched a movie entitled 인디안 썸머 [in-di-an sseom-meo = “Indian Summer”in transliteration – just sounded out and spelled in Korean letters]. A very slow-moving, slightly morbid romance between a lawyer and his death-penalty-eligible court-assigned client. I’m not sure I liked the movie that much. The courtroom drama was a little bit interesting, but the romance seemed implausible both because they talk so little but also because of their situations. But anyway. It doesn’t really have a very happy ending – the point of an “Indian Summer” is that it ends in winter quite quickly.
I tried to pay attention to the dialogue, and managed to understand some Korean. I guess that’s progress.
Good night.
Caveat: Illustration
My 5th grade student drew this pretty good picture in his workbook.
Caveat: Junior Counterfeiters’ Club
I use a color printer and print out and cut up my play money which I give out to students as incentives and rewards. They can then spend their savings in my “store” or use them to buy the conventional “Karma” stamps that the other teachers use and which can go toward coupon books for local businesses (this is boring and not very incentivizing, in my opinion, which is why I started doing my play money).
My play money is called “Alligator bucks.” And long ago, when I was doing it at Hongnong Elementary, I became aware that there was a certain class of student who would use technology to try to increase his wealth. I have a student, currently, who took some alligator bucks home, scanned them, and then printed them out on a color printer of his own. Their quality is pretty good, and they are now in circulation. But they’re not perfect – and mostly I got lucky because I had preemptively taken to using a stamp with a fairly unique design to stamp the backs of the alligator bucks. Two-sided color copying is more challenging.
This is all par-for-the-course when dealing with a large and diverse group of grade-schoolers. But what’s interesting and funny to me, today, is that I saw this enterprising young future mafioso passing out his counterfeit alligator bucks to his friends for free, and he was signing each one – like little works of art. This seemed to defeat the purpose of counterfeiting them, but it was very cute. He was buying status with his fake alligator bucks, just winning the admiration of his peers for having tried to make them. He signed one on the back and gave it to me, grinning. “Do you like it?” he asked. “I like it so much.”
Caveat: Emptor
It was a schadenfreude moment when I ran across this blog post about how the marketers at Rosetta Stone language-learning software are bad at translating, the other day – because I’d decided I didn’t like Rosetta way back shortly after I’d acquired it. I’d decided I’d wasted my $300 and had forgotten it, basically.
Apparently, the marketers were putting German or Dutch or Swedish noun forms in place of the English verb form for “snow” in a multilingual play-on-words based on the song line “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” Which, of course, indicates a rather poor apprehension of the grammatical issues at play. But then there was a comment on the blog post that made me reconsider, and decide that the criticism of the Rosetta marketers was irrelevant: the commenter (who went by Breffni) wrote:
I don’t get the idea that mixing English with German, Swedish and Dutch is an acceptable conceit, but using nouns for verbs is an incongruity too far. ‘Let it Schnee’ is wrong, all wrong – but ‘Let it schneien’, that would be fine? It’s bilingual word-play, from start to finish.
And so, my schadenfreude moment quickly faded. Because… here’s the thing: I totally agree with this point – if you’re going to play with mixing languages, what does it matter whether you’re getting the grammar right – it’s like complaining that the pieces don’t go together when playing with Legos and Lincoln Logs at the same time (which I did as a child, and I’m sure there are more contemporary equivalents). The point is, you’re mixing things up, so just go with it. That’s what makes it “playing with language,” and not, say, Chomsky’s “government and binding” theory or abstract grammar. In fact, it’s the over-emphasis on grammar vis-a-vis communicative efficacy that I dislike about Rosetta, and thus internet grammar peevers are criticizing from the wrong end, as far as I’m concerned.
So regardless, that doesn’t change the fact that I deeply resent having wasted $300 on Rosetta. But I’m not blaming the marketers. I’m blaming the designers’ poor grasp of foreign-language pedagogy and methodology. The only thing the marketers did wrong was successfully convince me to shell out $300.
Caveat emptor.
Caveat: 어리버리하다
My boss earlier was talking about me to another teacher, in Korean. I understood only fragments of what he was saying, but, as will happen when someone is talking about you, I was trying hard to understand. Eventually I interrupted, saying, "what?" and interjecting myself into the conversation, because I was feeling self-conscious.
One phrase he was using was using was "어리버리한" [eoribeorihan] which would be a derived participle of a verb form ending in -하다. He was at a loss to explain what this word meant in English, and at the time the best I could puzzle out was that it meant vague or hazy. He was using it to describe the way that I was when he first met me. Recall that my current boss has been my boss before – he was in 2008 at LinguaForum. So he's seen my evolution in my latest career as EFL teacher in Korea for most of its length.
I decided to try to puzzle out the meaning of this word he was using to describe me, but it's not a dictionary word as best I can figure out. One slang entry I found says it means "sucker." The google agreees. Another slang entry I found says "someone who is easily taken advantage of." This would make it like the English word "rube," maybe.
I think what Curt was meaning was that I was insecure in my teaching, and not showing a lot of confidence. Since the word was being applied to me, I might charitably prefer to translate it as something like "newbie" or "newb."
Caveat: Empire With A Smile
I got up early and went to the US embassy this morning. I have to renew my passport – which means it’s been almost 10 years since that panicked moment right before my departure for my 2003 trip to Australia when my passport wasn’t showing up and I had to change my schedule at the last minute, which is why I came to Korea as a tourist as part of a layover on that trip to Australia which is why I considered coming to Korea to teach in 2007 which is why I’m still here 5 years later. And my passport is full of stamps.
I went to the embassy once before, here – it was in 2008, when there was some quirk of my visa situation at that time that required a visit. The embassy is in an oldish (1970’s? – that’s old in Korea) building a block south of the restored Gyeongbokgung (Joseon Dynasty Palace), but until the 1990’s it was the location of the Western-looking, German-designed, Japanese-built capitol. I actually rather liked that old building, but amid much controversy it was torn down as a lingering symbol of the Japanese colonial period, the palace that had formerly been on the same location was restored. I remember the capitol vividly from when I was in Korea in 1991.
I had a pleasant experience at the embassy, but it’s always such a strange experience visiting a US embassy. The US is the closest thing, in today’s world, to a world-spanning empire. But the imperialists treated me much better at this outpost than they do when I’m actually at home in the country itself. Very friendly, organized and courteous, despite the massive amount of security involved – entering the embassy is a bit like getting on an airplane in this TSA era.
Here’s the embassy.
Turning the other way (about 90 degrees counterclockwise), you can see the statue of Sejong the Great, who reigned in the 15th century, the pinacle of Joseon civilization. Behind him, the palace gate and behind that in the distance, Bukhansan.
Caveat: Crunch Crunch
It’s pretty rare for the weather to get colder after snow, in Korea. Normally, in Korea, after a snow, it warms up – because moisture (and thus snow) always comes from the south. So snow-followed-by-bitter-cold is more Minnesota-style. After a lot of snow today, however, things have gotten quite cold. I love how that makes the snow go crunch crunch as you walk, and the way that cars make a muffled skwunka-sound as they drive past.
Caveat: Mientras baja la nieve
Mientras baja la nieve
Ha bajado la nieve, divina criatura,
el valle a conocer.
Ha bajado la nieve, mejor que las estrellas.
¡Mirémosla caer!Viene calla-callando, cae y cae a las puertas
y llama sin llamar.
Así llega la Virgen, y así llegan los sueños.
¡Mirémosla llegar!Ella deshace el nido grande que está en los cielos
y ella lo hace volar.
Plumas caen al valle, plumas a la llanada,
plumas al olivar.
Tal vez rompió, cayendo y cayendo, el mensaje
de Dios Nuestro Señor.
Tal vez era su manto, tal vez era su imagen,
tal vez no más su amor.– Gabriela Mistral
Hoy veo la primera nevada acá en las cercanías de Seul. Los coreanos tienen una tradición de que la primera nevada trae buena suerte, o algo así.
Saqué esta foto desde mi ventana hace momentos.
Caveat: Johnson’s Finger
I have a sixth grade student who goes by the English nickname of Johnson. He is the absolute lowest-scoring individual currently enrolled at KarmaPlus English Academy. He has some weird behavioral issues. He chose his English nickname, for example, fully aware of its slang meaning, which I needn’t elaborate upon here.
The other day, I was making the kids in the class – the lowest level class that I teach – memorize a dialogue from our book. I was making them write it out. Johnson decided to add pictures to his version, which I reproduce below. I realized his pictures are pretty faithful to the pictures in the textbook, except he’s introduced a plethora of middle-finger gestures, to liven things up. The boy on the skateboard in the first frame is clearly presenting his middle finger proudly to the other person. And in the second frame, the one person is clearly meditating on a whole string of F-U icons.
Such is life with adolescents immersed in our fabulous global culture. I don’t really find it that offensive. I often pretend to be more offended than I am, if only in an effort to convey to the students that there might be some limits to inappropriate behavior. Mostly, I hope that showing them kindness and tolerance can induce them to pursue the same values. I’m not always successful. But I try. And I like to document their oddly entertaining quirks and foibles.