Category: Banalities & Journaling

Caveat: Fragmented. Exiled.

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

I’ve commented before that I don’t read books “normally.” I do read a great deal, but I have a short attention span, I skip around. I’m almost always non-linear in my approach. Many people complain about this – not about that I’m doing it, but that it seems to be a common affliction, these days. People like to blame the internet, and blogs, and e-readers, and things like that. I don’t think I have such an excuse – I was reading books via what I termed my “random access method” long before the internet even existed. I read non-fiction non-linearly even when I was in high school, in the early 1980’s. I would pick up an interesting history book, and I would read a page here, and a page there. At the next sitting, I would do the same thing. If I recognized a page, I would read some other page. The book was considered “done” at the point in time when I recognized all the pages I tried. More or less.

With novels, I still at least try to read linearly. But since I rarely use book-marks or other current-page-recording methods (e.g. the turned-down page corner, which I view as wanton and profoundly anti-book, from the standpoint of books-as-physical-objects), I often end up re-reading pages or even chapters of novels as well, or, on the other hand, missing chapters, too, as I flail about trying to find where I’d left off.

I do read a great deal online, lately. I can count on one hand the books which I’ve “finished” – such as it is, by my odd methods – in the last year or so.

pictureSo I’ve been feeling extremely “retro” in that I’m about 80% finished with a book that I’ve been pursuing in essentially linear, front-to-back fashion. I can’t even say why I’ve managed it. It’s just working out that way. The book is A Review of Korean History, Vol. 1: Ancient / Goryeo Era. It’s badly translated, and there are parts where the nationalist “Korea-can-do-no-wrong” subtext is annoying, but I think that’s part of why I like it, too – the Konglishy syntax and “view-from-inside” perspective means the book reads like a particularly ambitious essay from one of my sincere-yet-naive middle-schoolers.

Anyway, I’m mentioning it because of a passage that, unexpectedly, made me laugh. I’ll quote: “Cheok Jungyeong abruptly changed sides and banded with other subjects such as Kim Hyang, Yi Gongsu, and Jeong Jisang to arrest Yi Jagyeom and send him off to exile in Yeonggwang in 1127. This proved to be the end of the Inju Yi clan that had been at the center of power for some seven  generations.”

I laughed, of course, because of the phrase I put in bold, above. I had a year of exile in Yeonggwang, myself. It seems that even 1000 years ago, Yeonggwang was a backwater, exile kind of place. That seemed funny, to me. I could just imagine poor Yi Jagyeom, former prime minister to the Goryeo king, coping with a dumpy Yeonggwang apartment and being forced to eat Gulbi every day and growing tired of it. I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t like that – but that’s what I visualized. And it makes me think it might make for a funny episode in my never-to-be-completed (erm, always-in-fact-barely-started) novelization of my year in Yeonggwang.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 잘가친구

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

pictureEveryone knows my plastic alligators. I had Kevin the large plastic alligator and a recent acquisition, Baby Kevin 2.0, in my EP2 classroom earlier today. I was letting the students “hold” Kevin, during class (portrait of Kevin at left). But unfortunately, one boy was having trouble not playing with Kevin as we were trying to listen to a CD of some listening dialogues. So finally, I had to take Kevin back.

“Hojae-ya,” I said. “Give me Kevin.” The boy made a sad face. “He can sit over here,” I explained, sympathetically. I placed him on the podium at the front of the class.

Hojae gazed at the plastic alligator longingly. “잘가 친구 [chal-ga chin-gu],” he said, mournfully. That means “farewell, friend.”

It was like the tragic ending of a sad movie.

What I’m listening to right now.

Punch Brothers, “This is the Song.” The rain was falling steadily as I walked home, but the air was chilly. It reminded me of the winter I spent in Valdivia, Chile (August-October, 1994). It rained for 4 months. Without stopping.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: I’m alive, how about you?

Banalities & Journaling

I'm really bad about staying in touch with people, sometimes. Lately, I've been in a very hermetic phase. Lately? Well, for the last few years, I guess. Haha.

My mother sent me an email, this morning, that underscored this fact. She wrote:

"I'm alive, how about you?"

I answered.

Caveat: Preternatural Student Skills

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

We were giving a month-end test today. I was giving a listening test to a group of 7th graders, and one student, who I know has moderately high ability but who is stunningly lazy about studying or doing homework, stared at me during the entire time of the test.

Here's what's weird. He got the high score – by a great deal: 97%. And I had this weird feeling that he was somehow watching me, as we listened to the listening test, and was somehow reading my facial expressions or gestures to determine the answers. I think of myself as keeping a "straight" face during these tests, because I know that sometimes it is possible for a teacher to "give away" answers during a listening test in how they react to the possible answers given. But really… am I giving away the answers in some transparent way? Some tic or something?

Well, who knows? Should I ask him? Is it cheating? It's unconventional… to be certain. I should sit in the back of the class, maybe, next time, and see how he does.

Caveat: My ZeroG Dumbphone

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

I hate my cellphone. I got it because when my old cellphone died two years ago, I just took the cheapest phone on offer (that could go with my particular contract) at the cellphone store in Yeonggwang. But now that ALL of my students have iPhones and Samsung Galaxies, I'm beginning to feel like a luddite. Some of my students asked me, earlier, when I was going to get a new 3G or 4G phone. I lied, and said I was happy with my "zero G dumbphone." Which made them laugh. But I'm not happy with it. Then, I saw an article at Atlantic Wire about "Dumbphone Pride." It's interesting, as some of the reasons in that article for avoiding the smartphone bandwagon resonate with me. Most notably, I, too, worry about "addiction," and, also, the cost of my current phone's usage plan is quite unbeatable – for 11 bucks a month I get more text and calling capacity than I'm capable of using. Most smartphone plans in Korea are going to run upwards of 50 or 80 bucks or more a month, and I'd probably find myself finding out I was capable of using more data than allowed under those plans, too.

In fact, I have not been much of an "early adopter" of cellphones – I was late to the cellphone bandwagon, having gotten my first in 2004. But in some other technologies, I have been a proud early adopter: I was using word processing in the late 1970's (Apple ][) email in the late 1980's (before the world wide web existed). I taught myself HTML and designed and posted my first webpage in 1995. It was even useful – it was a means of communicating with my students at UPenn, where I was a grad student.

I think if everything goes smoothly with my renewal at Karma (about which I'm feeling anxiety at the moment), I'll end up shopping for and getting a new smartphone. I really want a phone with a dictionary, for one thing. And having the internet in your pocket is clearly useful – I see my students using it all the time, both recreationally but even in educational ways, looking up words, finding pictures or information that pertain to classroom discussions, etc.

Caveat: Culinary Misadventures

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

I’ve posted before about my habit of sometimes pursuing rather random culinary undertakings. Today I attempted to make a vegan curry from scratch (even making my own curry powder). I attempted to use some tofu I had… I breaded it and fried it up in a style similar to abura age (as in kitsune udon). When the tofu was fried it was quite tasty (see picture below), but when I added it to my curry, it got rubbery.

picture

picture

And the balance of spices in my curry was off, too. So it was a rather atrociously mediocre creation.

Maybe next time.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: SoB

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos / The Wonders of Work

In one of my classes, we were discussing the fact that English has a plethora of vocabulary terms for young animals:

cat – kitten
lion – cub
goat – kid
pig – piglet
duck – duckling
etc.

Then I asked, “so what’s the term for a baby dog?”

All Koreans know the word “puppy,” but they don’t necessarily use it, semantically, as in English – it seems to just mean a cute dog (admittedly English can do the same thing, too). I assumed someone could think of this word, though.

Without even a pause, however, a bold seventh-grader raised his hand.

“Yes?” I said.

“Son of a bitch.”

Brilliant. I laughed for a few minutes.

Unrelatedly, a picture of the Ilsan power generation plant, on the east end of town, taken from standing across the street from the Costco. I was struck by the stark tree and the grey scudding clouds. The picture isn’t that good, though. Just random.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Purple Cat and Yellow Lion

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Kids

I do “telephone teaching” sometimes, with the elementary students. Not very many, but about a half-dozen a week or so. I have some rules about how this works, since I designed the concept and suggested it as a way to build goodwill from parents (parents love the telephone teaching because they get to see their child actually using English on the phone – it’s a demonstration of the hagwon’s commitment to the students). So really, the telephone teaching is a sort of marketing gimmick more than it’s a valid pedogogical technique.

And it’s true that most of the students are pretty low ability. One thing that I do is that I ask the student to draw a picture based on something we’ve attempted to talk about. The conversations are pretty simple: “What do you like? What are you doing right now? What will you do this weekend?” Anyway, I tell them to draw something and present it to me the next time I see them. It’s a sort of comprehension test, too, then, since if I get the wrong picture (or no picture), I know they haven’t understood.

Jeonghyeon drew for me a Purple Cat and Yellow Lion, based on telephone instructions, on some scrap paper. She presented it to me yesterday, proudly.

picture

What I’m listening to right now.

Madonna, “Frozen.”

I distinctly remember when this song came out, in 1998. I remember I was sitting in the Burger King in Craig, Alaska. The video and song came on, on the TV in the restaurant. It was raining outside. It’s always raining in Craig, Alaska. It’s weird how some songs associate to such vivid memories.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 할아범탱이

Banalities & Journaling

One of my students called me 할아범탱이 [harabeomtaengi]. I didn’t really know what this meant, but I could guess it was related in some way to 할아버지 [harabeoji = grandfather, old man]. I asked my colleagues later what it meant, and they said it’s kind of an informal way of saying grandpa that can be either condescending or affectionate, depending on context. I would guess since it was coming from a second grader, it’s more likely to be the latter than the former. I’ve decided the best idiomatic translation would be a word like “gramps.”

I confess that, as has happened before, it’s really disconcerting if not downright depressing to be called “gramps,” regardless of context or language. I’m only 46.

It’s the gray hair, I would guess. And receding hairline. The fact that Korean men universally dye their hair in middle age and late middle age means that only genuinely really old men have gray hair. So that sets the cultural context.

I think I want to join a monastery.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Captain Janeway’s Advice

Banalities & Journaling

"You can't just walk away from your responsibilities because you made a mistake." – Captain Janeway, in a homily delivered to the character Neelix at the end of the episode "Fair Trade" (Star Trek: Voyager, Season 3, Episode 13). That's so Korean. Or something. But the point is, I was watching that episode, somewhat listlessly (it's really a pretty dumb episode, and not that well conceived or written), and that line just jumped out and grabbed me.

I've been struggling with a strong desire to "flee." To give up on the Korean project and go do "something else" with my life. It was very clear that the situation down in Yeonggwang County, last year, wasn't sustainable, but there is no objective reason why this situation here isn't sustainable. They've in no way affronted my basic humanity in the way that was almost routine at Hongnong Elementary, and the work itself isn't impossible, and it's sometimes fulfilling. So am I wanting to quit just because it's frustrating? Captain Janeway explains that that's a lazy response – which I already know (knew).

I had a rather uncomfortable conversation with my boss today. I tried to remain humble, and explain that I was hurt by his remarks last Friday. He continued to make some rather broad accusations regarding my "tone" and "mood" – which may, in fact, be somewhat valid – but I still resented them. I resisted getting angry, though, this time. I need to make changes in my life. But the changes required are mostly on the inside, not on the outside. There is therefore no valid reason to be listening to the man in my head yelling "abandon ship! abandon ship!"

More on this theme later. No doubt.

On the matter of Star Trek, I've probably said it here before, but one should never, ever lose track of one essential fact: none of the "rubber forehead" aliens that inhabit the trekkiverse are so alien to the human culture of the Federation (AKA Americans) as the Koreans in 2000 AD.

So… here I am: a Vulcan in voluntary exile on the Klingon homeworld… it's year 5. How's it going?

Caveat: 엎드려 절 받기

Banalities & Journaling / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

엎드려      절  받기
face-down bow receive-GER
[…like] receiving a bow [while?] face-down.

This means receiving a courtesy such as a bow and disregarding or ignoring it, according to the proverb guide I found. I suspect I make a lot of mistakes with this type of thing in Korea – the rules are so different from how courtesy normally works in Western culture, although I sometimes think they’re not as different as we think they are – they just seem really different.

I’m feeling really down. I’m engaging in major escapism, playing a game on my computer and ignoring reality.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: OK, so I’m feeling insecure…

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

I had a bad, bad day. On top of a pretty crappy week.

I've been feeling really lousy about my teaching ability. And today, I got in an argument with my boss. Nominally, it was about the fact that I have this very low-ability 6th grader who has been placed into a class of slightly higher-ability 2nd through 4th graders. My concern is that – given Korean social dynamics, especially – he's setting a really bad example to the younger students. And frankly, I personally have no idea how to control him, or what to do with him.

But it turned into an argument about me complaining "all the time." I don't think I complain all the time. So that made me angry, that he would accuse me of that. And then the last straw was when my boss said something to the effect of, "well, it's the job of a good teacher to manage this kind of situation." The obvious implication was that, in complaining about this situation and insisting it was insoluable within the classroom, I was… a bad teacher.

This is not something I take well, even on good days. But in the light of my recent insecurities regarding my teaching, it was a brutally unpleasant blow.

I've been toying with the possibility that I may not renew at Karma, despite everything I've said in the past, and despite my intense desire to remain in Korea. This was a further nudge in that direction. Leaving Karma would be a big decision, not to be made on a whim. I have to realize that, all said and done, it's the best job I've had since coming to Korea, and one of the best jobs I've had, in general. It's really mostly my own insecurities, along with my frustration with a feeling of "stasis" in the non-work-aspects of my life, that are driving this desire… this restlessness.

It's not a restlessness to travel. Even a year after I made a renewed commitment, last March, to never "travel" alone, again (in the touristic sense, I mean), I'm still steadfastly uninterested in being a wanderer, anymore. I have a huge level of a weird kind of comfort with my corner of the world, and if I were to leave Karma, that corner would be hugely destabilized – I can't say I would feel anything but dread about that. It would probably result in my returning to the US, because if I can't be satisfied with the "best job" in Korea, my prospects for other Korean jobs would be quite poor. Returning to the US has about the same level of appeal for me as entering a mental hospital – given the US media's self-portrait, as seen from here, my home-country is going patently off the deep end.

The fact is, though… I'm becoming painfully disillusioned with respect to my teaching ability, these days. I like teaching. I love the children, I get so much from them. But if I can't be a decent teacher, then… for everyone's good, I should get out of it.

Caveat: Hawking Radiation and XRay Telescopes

Banalities & Journaling

I have a really smart cohort of middle-schoolers. For our English listening-skills class, we use one of the highest level iBT (internet-based TOEFL / Test of English as a Foreign Language) test-prep textbooks. The topics on the actual TOEFL are often similar to the content of college-level coursework, and thus we end up talking about some pretty advanced material: geology, biology, 19th c. American literature, etc.

Today, we were talking about astrophysics. I was trying to explain Hawking Radiation, despite not being very clear on it, myself. The listening passage was one of those simulated college lectures. It was talking about XRay telescopes. One of my students was more clear on the issues than I was – XRay telescopes must be deployed in space, he noted. Like I said, these students are very smart.

Caveat: 중국산!

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / The Wonders of Work

pictureYesterday in one of my elementary classes, we were playing a game. One of the 4th grade boys was so excited that when he raised his hand, he fell out of his chair. It was quite comic – it had the appearance of someone yanking up his arm so hard that he flew into the air and landed on the floor, but he did it on his own. The other kids laughed, and so he hammed a little bit after that.

The other kids began joking around (in Korean) that he was like a broken machine or toy, and someone said he was 중국산 (chung-guk-san = “product of China”). This was humorous, too. We all laughed. For the rest of the class, we had a little meme going, where anytime someone made a mistake, there would be a chorus of “중국산!” [Product of China]. I guess it was funny – it shows that China’s reputation for mass-produced crap is not just confined to the US.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Encyclopedias

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

I am going to join those in the interwebs eulogizing the Encyclopedia Britannica’s print edition – after 244 years, it’s going online-only.

I actually own a print edition of Britannica. I don’t have it with me here in Korea, obviously – it’s in storage, with my 4 or 5 thousand other books. It’s not exactly a recent edition. It’s 1950, I think –  I bought it, used, from a Salvation Army thrift store in Minneapolis. I would estimate probably read about 40% of it.

Reading encyclopedias is an old hobby, for me. We had a World Book Encyclopedia when I was a child, which I’m fairly certain I read from A to Z when in my pre-teens – but not in order (which is why I’m not really certain if I read the whole thing). One thing I miss about paper encyclopedias, when using Wikipedia (which I also love, nevertheless), is the ability to just keep reading: the article following the one you’d come to the encyclopedia for, and the one following that, and the one after that. This is not, in fact, something that’s not possible with Wikipedia – it’s actually only a design choice, that could be easily remedied, by adding prominent (or not-so-prominent) “next article” and “previous article” buttons to each Wikipedia page. But they choose not to do that – and it’s a loss, in my opinon. Nevertheless, I had another habit with my paper encyclopedias that’s quite easy to simulate with Wikipedia: I would take down a volume at random, and open it to a random page, and begin reading; Wikipedia’s “random article” button provides the same result. I use it many times every time I’m online.

A while back I began writing a blog entry about my weird relationship with Wikipedia. At the time, I wanted to focus on why it is I don’t write for Wikipedia anymore. I used to. I had some writing associated mostly with geography topics, and even originated a few articles in English Wikipedia on Mexican towns and municipalities. The short answer as to why I quit writing for Wikipedia is that I’m lazy – their standards for reference and citation grew gradually more stringent than I was willing to work with. But the long answer (or rather, the psychologically more insightful answer) is that I got tired of writing what I thought were well-referenced and well-cited articles and having others changing what I’d written beyond recognition. So I’m happy at this point to read other people’s writing. I’ve become a passive consumer of the output of egos less fragile than my own.

To return to the loss of the print edition of Britannica – I think it’s a little bit sad, because of my history with encyclopedias. But I understand it, and I’m not going to launch into a luddist lament. I think that technologically, we’re not far off from where we can turn any electronic content into a paper book whenever we have the urge to have a paper book – there are already automatic book-publishing devices out there (see this recent article and picture below).

Automatic-Flexo-Printing-and-Book-Stitching-Machine-LYRDT-930-

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: El Aparato

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish)

El grupo mexicano Cafe Tacvba siempre era un favorito. Tienen una canción sobre el tema de abducciones de extraterrestres que se llama “El aparato.” Mientras caminaba a casa esta noche, salió la canción en mi mp3. Miraba hacia el cielo, y ví unas luces detrás de los altos edificios, en el cielo coreano…

Lo que estoy escuchando en este momento.

Café Tacvba, “El aparato.”

La letra:

Ayyyy
Que hombre que maneja el aparato
cuando voltié lo tenía arriba
es una luz

Algun tiempo me dejó inmóvil
solo me quedó el zumbido
de la luz

Lo escuchaba en mi  cabeza
en lengua extraña me hablaba
pero entendí

Lo juro que no había tomado
solo estaba encandilado
la hora perdí

Ay yo sé que vendrá por mi aay
y me llevará a un jardín aayy

Ayyyy
cuando me encontré con Pablo
fue que me contó esta historia
no le creí

Eso fue algunos meses
desde entonces que no lo vemos
mas por aquí

Ya no se ni que pensar
desde que llegó una carta
del hospital

Pablo tiene quemaduras
y ceguera permanente
no quiere hablar

Ay yo sé que vendrá por mi aay
y me llevará a un jardín aayy

Ay yo sé que vendrá por mi
y me llevará a un jardín aayy

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: It is a dogs

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / The Wonders of Work

I have two students who are sisters. The younger goes by the English name Sally and is in one of my lowest elementary-level classes, and the older goes by Emily and is in my most advanced middle school class.

Today Sally drew a picture to accompany some practice/review material that I had put together in a “comics frame.” I really like the picture that she drew, just because it’s really cute… and in my subjective opinion, it shows that Sally really, really looks up to her older sister – it shows in how the two figures are drawn, it shows in the fact that she decided to use herself and her sister in an otherwise free exercise (I gave them no instructions about who should be saying these things to each other).

picture

Anyway… there’s no broader pedagogical intent in my posting this here. I just like the picture. The little dogs are very cute.

Meanwhile, what I’m listening to right now.

소녀시대, “소녀시대 (노래).” Girls’ Generation (KPop girl-group), self-titled song from self-titled song.

Here’s the lyrics.

태연: 날 아직 어리다고 말하던 얄미운 욕심쟁이가
서현: 오늘은 왠일인지 사랑해 하며 키스해 주었네
윤아: 얼굴은 빨개지고 놀란눈은 커다래지고
써니: 떨리는 내입술은 파란빛깔 파도같아
티파니: 너무 놀라버린 나는 아무말도 하지못하고
제시카: 화를 낼까 웃어버릴까
제시카,태연: 생각하다가 (yeah!)

모두: 어리다고 놀리지 말아요 수줍어서 말도 못하고
어리다고 놀리지 말아요 스쳐가는 얘기뿐인걸

유리: 날 아직 어리다고 말하던 얄미운 욕심쟁이가
효연: 오늘은 왠일인지 사랑해 하며 키스해 주었네
수영: 너무 놀라버린 나는 아무말도 하지못하고
태연: 화를 낼까 웃어버릴까
태연,제시카: 생각하다가

모두: 어리다고 놀리지 말아요 수줍어서 말도 못하고
어리다고 놀리지 말아요 스쳐가는 얘기뿐인걸

제시카: 조금은 서툰 그런 모습도 어쩜 그대 내맘을 흔들어 놓는지
태연: woo~ 바보같은맘 나도 모르겠어
모두: 그저 이맘이 가는 그대로
윤아: 어리다고 놀리지 말아요
제시카: woo~ 날모르잖아요
수영: 어리다고 놀리지 말아요

모두: 어리다고 놀리지 말아요 (태연: 놀리지말아요)
수줍어서 말도못하고
어리다고 놀리지말아요 (제시카: 놀리지말아요)
스쳐가는 얘기뿐인걸 (Yeah!)

모두: 어리다고 놀리지말아요 (티파니: 난 모르잖아요)
수줍어서 말도 못하고 (태연: 말도 못하고)
어리다고 놀리지 말아요 스쳐가는 얘기뿐인걸
어리다고 놀리지 말아요

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Karmameter

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

I’ve been spending a great deal of time on visual arts websites like my modern met or empty kingdom. I love sites like these.

I’m not sure what I’m doing or looking for, exactly. I have certain vague aspirations in the field of visual arts, undeniably, but they’ve been largely dormant. I find striking images or ideas on these sites, and enjoy the variety of them. Just as an almost random sample, here below is a graphic image I rather liked for its visual simplicity and yet difficult-to-understand referentiality, by an artist named Aaron Hogg.

Design-KARMA1

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 영광법성포 굴비

Banalities & Journaling

OMG flashbacks.

I was walking around Ilsan near Juyeop subway station, and heard a man advertising Yeonggwang Gulbi on a loudspeaker. This gave me flashbacks to last year, when I lived in Yeonggwang. Here’s a picture of his truck.

picture

It says Yeonggwang Beopseongpo Gulbi on it – Beopseongpo was the next town over from Hongnong, where I taught at the elementary school. Weird to run across this in Ilsan.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Riceball & Tortilla

Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink / Life in Korea

pictureFrankly, “Riceball & Tortilla” sounds like the ill-conceived name of a 1970’s TV dramedy with a politically-incorrect ethnic twist, perhaps in the buddy-cop genre (e.g. Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey).

Instead, it’s the name of a fast-food joint in my neighborhood. One of my coworkers brought me something from there – a 주먹밥 (which I’ve blogged before) but coated in something vaguely resembling corn meal instead of seaweed – I guess that’s the “tortilla” part of the name. In Korean, it’s named 주먹밥&또띠아 전문점 [ju-meok-bap & tto-tti-a jeon-mun-jeom = riceball & “tortilla” specialty shop].

Here’s a picture of the container. I ate the actual riceball before taking a picture – sorry.

It’s not bad. I like the kind with seaweed on the outside, better.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: When I Trip With Doctor Who

Banalities & Journaling / Quotable / The Wonders of Work

I’m not, personally, a big Doctor Who fan. I was always a trekkie, when it came to inordinate otakuosity vis-a-vis sci-fi shows (and by the way, I just invented the word “otakuosity” so don’t complain – look up the Japanese slang term “otaku” and you’ll understand).

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be very impressed and pleased to see an 8th grade Korean girl write the following speech composition for me in 2012 (and note that, as always, I will type what she wrote verbatim – without corrections – I think she did very well for her level):

pictureHello my name is Yeongeun. I’m going to talk about my plan for camping trip. I want to go to Tardis. Because Tardis is a very interesting spaceship. Tardis can go anywhere even future and past, too. If I go to Tardis, I have to bring some food, water, a sleeping bag and clothes. I have to bring weapons, too, because when I trip with doctor, that I have many happens. Also, I will have to see many aliens, and they will attack me and doctor and I will be scared. But maybe doctor can’t kill them. So, I have to attack aliens with weapons. This is my plan for camping trip. Thanks for listening.

Please note, I did not in any way plant this idea in her mind. It emerged utterly on its own, and in the hostile environment of Korean hagwon-based English education, which for the most part stultifies imagination and creativity and discourages interest in unusual cultural artifacts from foreign cultures, such as Doctor Who.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: No one smiles when using the dictionary

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

My students were writing essays in my RN2T cohort. When I have them write, I have no problem allowing them to use dictionaries – I will be going through and correcting their writing with them, anyway, and I think it can be valuable because it encourages them to be more creative with language, which in turn allows them to become more engaged in the learning process.

Allowing them dictionaries in this day and age means allowing them to pull out their cell phones – that’s where the dictionary apps live, along with online (internet) dictionaries and such like. I don’t have hang ups about this. It’s part of the world as it is, today.

One student, Hojin, had his phone out and was grinning at it.

pictureI said you could use your phones for dictionaries,” I said to him – “Not to surf the internet or play games.”

“Teacher!” he objected. He turned the screen away so I couldn’t see it. Then, thinking… “How did you know?”

“No one smiles when they’re using the dictionary, Hojin,” I explained, sardonically.

“Oh. You’re so clever!” He laughed. And he put his phone away.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Further Allegations

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

I’ve made allegations before. Allegations are what alligators do, right? Um… no?

Alligators are my “brand” as a teacher, in a way. I have my alligator schtick, which comes in handy especially with younger students. To recall a conversation I had some years ago with a student: “Teacher! Why do you like alligators?” “Because you like alligators!” But the fact is, there’s no reason at all – I don’t have any reason to like alligators. It all came about by accident.

Here is a doodle that I had to retire from my desk. Rather than just throw it away, I decided to immortalize it on the interwebs, first. Isn’t that exciting?

picture

Go ahead, make your baseless allegations.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 말보다 증거

Banalities & Journaling / 한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) / 한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs)

말보다      증거
word-THAN evidence
Evidence [is better] than words.

Evidence for what?

I had a list of proverbs I was trying to go through them in order but I skipped about 5 of them, because they were too difficult to figure out. Seeing evidence of my poor Korean Language skill (and doing nothing about it) is better than learning new Korean vocabulary. There, that really confounds the intended meaning of proverb.

And here is the best explanation of this kind of problem.

I was hoping to get some stuff done yesterday, too.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Creating

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Quotable

Here's Ira Glass (who I'm not always a fan of, but, well…) on the topic of creativity, with a creative accompanying animation by someone named David Shiyang Liu.

Is it possible for me to follow this advice? I did some writing today, but when it comes to the recommended focus on volume, I'm not really doing that well. My perfectionism (or my "taste" as Glass calls it) is too annoyingly interfering.

Caveat: Stop Talking

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

Here's a scary technology – some Japanese company is developing a device that can be pointed at someone, gun-like, and stop that person from talking. Here's a discussion of it, at Language Log.

Walking home I stopped by my bank's ATM to take out some cash, and it occured to me that I hadn't updated my bankbook in a long time. I don't receive mailed bank statements for my Korean bank account(s), and I don't have online banking configured, although I reckon if I tried, I could get either of those things set up. I just never bothered to. So if I need to get a list of transactions, Korean ATM's have a function where you insert your savings/check-card passbook into the machine and it prints updated transactions into the passbook. I stuck my passbook into the machine and it printed 5 months' worth of transactions. There weren't any surprises – the only reason I'm mentioning this is because it was really surprising to me that I'd not done so in so long – time has really been flying by quite fast since I came back to Ilsan from my sojourn in Yeonggwang.

What I'm listening to right now.

Morphine, "The Night."

Caveat: 55

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

I had a group of 7th-graders who didn't know my age (either they were relatively new students who hadn't been through an "introduction" class with me, or else they'd completely forgotten).

I had them attempt to estimate my age. I do this when they ask how old I am, unless I make a joke and say something outlandish, like "I'm 647." Kids are notoriously unreliable in estimating my age, but I nevertheless feel discouraged that the average age estimate was almost 10 years too old: 55. Normally the average, at least, comes out not that far off, despite some outlying individual estimates.

Am I looking old, lately? Acting old? Is my ennui showing?

Sigh. Again.

Caveat: Frontier Psychiatrist (with Curry)

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling / Food & Drink

What I’m listening to right now.

The Avalanches, “Frontier Psychiatrist.”

This song was on the radio in 2001, I think. I associate it with living in Burbank, California, and driving on the 134 toward Pasadena to visit my dad. I imagined going to visit a frontier psychiatrist, who would help me in some difficult-to-define but appropriately frontiery way. The video is pretty entertaining, in and of itself – I can honestly say I never saw it before this current moment.

pictureI made a Tomato & Yogurt Curry from a pre-mix (“seasonings only”) package, earlier. This is quite adventurous, since the directions on the package are entirely and solely in Korean (see right).

So it was a cross between a Korean Language lesson and a cooking class. I wonder if this has potential as a means of motivating me to study Korean better. I kept confirming my understanding of instructions and vocabulary with a dictionary and/or googletranslate, worrying I wasn’t making it right. But the basics: veggies and potatoes (I left out the meat called for in the recipe), boil in the first packet of mix, add the second packet, then the third, serve over rice. Here it is.

picture

Dot dot dot. Life, it turns out, goes on.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: The Hill and The Mall

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

Yesterday I went with Curt to go on a small hike up a mountain (well, really just a hill). His daughter came along, who’s just entering 4th grade. The mountain we chose is called 심학산 [simhaksan]. It has a view of North Korea, like many mountains around here – it was hazy and not very distinct but I’m always very aware of it – I guess it’s just my geographical interest kicking in.

picture

After the mountain we went to a brand new giant mall and had dinner and bought his little one-year-old a Pororo-branded toy. It was fun. Here are some pictures. I didn’t get a picture of the boy with the toy. I should have.

This is near the top of the mountain.

picture

Curt and I.

picture

A view southeast, toward Ilsan. Somewhere near the center of that vast cluster of buildings is my apartment and workplace.

picture

Here I am looking dazed with the community known as Geumchon hidden directly behind me. Geumchon is important because it’s where I lived in 1991 when I was in Korea, as a soldier in the US Army.

picture

And here’s the striking view looking North – I’ve added some useful labels to this picture – you can click the picture to enlarge it.

picture

Anywhere in Northern Gyeonggi Province, if you go hiking on the hills and mountains, you will run across military structures – fox-holes, fortified hill-tops, bunkers and concrete tank traps and hidden installations. Here’s a covered “tank-parking-space” amid the trees on the side of the mountain.

picture

Curt’s daughter (and my sometime student at Karma, too), looking focused and tired on her way down the mountain. She was angry because Curt had promised a snack at the top of the mountain and he’d forgotten, and she failed to complain about it. We had a snack when we got back down to the bottom.

picture

Here’s a turtle-based monument seen along the trail.

picture

At the mall.

picture

Lurking in the dusky haze beyond the freeway interchange, there lies the Han River Estuary and the point of North Korea. I wonder what the Northerners think, watching this massive monument to blatant brand-name consumerism through their high-powered binoculars.

picture

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 삼일절

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Today is a holiday. March first commemorates the 1919 uprising against the Japanese colonial rule. I’ve blogged about it before, but I read something interesting in the wikithing article on the topic today: “A delegation of overseas Koreans, from Japan, China, and Hawaii, sought to gain international support for independence at the ongoing Paris Peace Conference. The United States and Imperial Japan blocked the delegation’s attempt to address the conference.” (Emphasis added by me).  Not to be a hater, but, looking at the historical record, ain’t it wonderful how my own country stands up so consistently for human rights?

I spent the day with my sometime friend / sometime boss Curt. I’ll post more later.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: Psychedelia et Banalia

Background Noise / Banalities & Journaling

What I’m listening to right now.

The Monkees, “Porpoise Song,” 1968.

I used to watch The Monkees TV show in rerun syndication after school when I was maybe 10 years old. I was only able to watch TV indiscriminately in those few hours when I was a latchkey kid – mom still at work, I would sit at home watching whatever was on. The selection was poor. We got 3 channels, if I recall, in Humboldt County at that time. So I just watched whatever was on. I saw the entire run of the old Batman series, which was my favorite. I saw many episodes of the Brady Bunch (not bad) and The Monkees (I abhorred it – I thought then that it was a sort of pandering cultural fluff – but I watched it anyway).

I was thinking about it today because I heard on NPR that Davy Jones, of The Monkees, has died.

Here’s a music video from one of those Monkees episodes.

The Monkees, “Gonna Buy Me a Dog.”

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: La revolución es un libro y un hombre libre

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

Cartel

pictureLa revolución es un pupitre,
es un estante en una escuelita
toda llena de lápices y papeles.

La revolución es el vestido,
es el estreno de los pobres en Domingo
y el pantalón y la camisa limpia para cada día.

La revolución es la comida,
es una mesa servida con su pichel de agua
y el tenedor y el cuchillo
sobre le mantel a cuadros,
teniendo además otro cubierto listo
por si acaso se aparece una visita.

La revolución es la tierra,
son los arados surcando los maizales
y una familia de azadones cultivando hortalizas.

La revolución es el trabajador
(La revolución es el obrero con una flor)

La revolución es el hombre
es el amigo que no piensa lo mismo
y vota en contra y sigue siendo el mismo amigo.

La revolución es el indio.

La revolución es un libro y un hombre libre.

– Mario Cajina Vega

Se trata de la revolución nicaragüense de 79. ¿Porqué estoy meditando sobre revoluciones? Pasé otro día no muy bueno. Me siento cansado y algo molesto.

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Back to Top