"If there is a god, why did he make me an atheist? That was his first mistake." – Ricky Gervais
This is one of those "filler" posts that happen when I'm not really in the mood to write something. But, to provide a diary entry:
I watched the 2009 JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek last night, and liked it more than I would have expected. I'd actually avoided it up until now. It was clever as a reboot, since it took the characters from the original series and literally rebooted them into an alternate timeline, via a time-traveling psychopathic Romulan – and don't we all need one of those now and again? By dumping everyone into the alternate timeline, they needn't ever concern themselves with complaints about canon-breaking. It reminds of the way Heinlein resolved all possible issues with inconsistencies in his future history(-ies), by just saying "They're ALL true – parallel universes!"
Yesterday after work I took the subway in to Itaewon to meet my friend Basil, who’d recently returned from a holiday in Turkey. We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant there, of course. I like hearing Basil speaking Arabic with people in Seoul. It feels very international.
We stopped at the food store there that sells things like coriander powder and split peas and lentils, and I stocked up. We wandered around the neighborhood because Basil was looking for the hotel where he wanted to stay – I guess he’d been there before but forgot where it was. There are a lot of interesting halal grocers and restaurants and things on the side streets to the south east of Itaewon station. I said… “it’s like visiting New York.” Then, as an afterthought, looking at the uninspiring architecture, I said, “Or maybe Newark, New Jersey.”
I came home last night and made some soup and have had a very lazy Sunday today.
Here’s a picture of dusk from the hill in Itaewon, looking toward Yongsan.
What I’m listening to right now.
Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, “Down From Dover,” 1972.
Originally written and performed by Dolly Parton. And riddle me this – why does Lee Hazlewood have the same singing voice as Mr Snuffleupagus?
A student presented me with this picture a while back. I like when they give me gifts – even when they are inexplicable (or perhaps, especially when they are inexplicable).
Perhaps I spoke too soon in stating, last week, that my job is relatively unstressful.
And now, I’ve been having a really horrible week. It’s enough to feed into that superstition that speaking positively about something will jinx it, making it worse.
Rhetorically: why do my coworkers ask my opinion if they choose to so consistently ignore it? Several times in the last two days I’ve been asked what I think of the placement (or re-placement – movement from one class or cohort to another) of students. I’ve given my opinions, which have been consistently disregarded. I think I need to just quit stating my opinion – it’s a little bit humiliating to not be taken seriously as a teacher after all this time.
Although… I must acknowledge that simply stating my feelings here constitutes a kind of passive-aggressive “push-back” vis-a-vis work, given that this blog is an essentially public forum, right? Hah. We’ll see if anyone’s reading this.
I saw the graffito below in a classroom. Does it really require comment?
Translation: “This hagwon is really boring.” Below that, in different handwriting, “dude” (not literally “dude,” but in the usage / pragmatics in teen slang, “헐” works the same way).
It was a hard day at work. I think I shouldn't complain about it, though. Just move on. As recently observed, overall, it's one of the least stressful jobs I've ever had. So… I shouldn't let it stress me out.
Changing the subject, the concept of the dangling participle was annoying today.
In fact, English also has something called an absolute construction, and many sentences criticized for including a dangling participle can be explained as including an absolute instead, which is considered grammatical. Is the green sentence above an example of a dangling participle or an absolute construction? I believe it's the latter.
Really, then, I wonder: can something dangle absolutely?.
I was in one of my random internet-surfing modes that I sometimes get into, and ended up watching the video below. I sometimes consider that India is a country near the top of my list of countries that I would consider “moving to next” if I give up on this “South Korean project.” The natural scenery in the video (Ooty, Tamil Nadu state in South India) reminds me, vaguely, of some train trips I took in southern/eastern Mexico in the 1980s, or, also, the tropical setting that is my mother’s home in the Atherton Tablelands of Far North Queensland, Australia.
The video is interesting in part because it was apparently a low-budget, no-special-effects undertaking – those people dancing on the train are really just people dancing on a moving train (picture at right). The song, like most Indian hits, is Bollywood in origin, but according the wikithing article about the song, its lyrics come from a Sufi folk tradition. Which perhaps incidentally explains why I ended up discovering the video due to an article somewhere about Urdu, not Hindi (Urdu [Pakistan] and Hindi [India] are dialects of essentially the same language, often mutually comprehensible). But the video and song are clearly Hindi, although the setting of the video is South India (Tamil Nadu) which is neither Hindi nor Urdu, culturally.
Well, I’m kind of rambling. If I went to India, the South and Northeast are the parts that most interest me.
As a digression… I once came rather close to taking a month-long trip to Kerala (in the South), when I was still considering myself a computer professional. The story was that I’d worked out that, in net financial terms, it would cost me the same to fly to India and enroll in an Indian computer certification program as it would to stay in the US and get a much higher-priced but precisely identical (content-equivalent) certification. So I was going to go to Kerala and become a Microsoft Certfied Database Administrator, or something in that vein.
I never went to India. But I still think about it. My current status as an EFL teacher doesn’t really “work” for India – India has plenty of EFL, of course (it’s an official language, still, even), but it’s so large and so “self contained” in EFL terms that they’re mostly uninterested, as far as I can tell, in foreign native English speakers (especially American-accented ones) – there seems to be no market for my type of work, there. So if I went, I guess it would just be as some kind of long-term tourist. Or else something like the above, where I was trying to break back into computer work.
What I’m listening to right now.
Malaika Arora and King Khan, “Chaiyya Chaiyya.”
I like the somewhat obscure, almost mysteriously ominous ending of the video – perhaps a reference to the movie from which the song is taken, or some other pop-culture reference that is lost on me.
We had an end-of-school-year "level test" today, since the new Korean school year starts at the beginning of March. I asked an advanced student named Jaehwan how the test was – did he find it difficult. He answered, laconically: "It was not boring."
I like kids with a sense of humor – although I'm not even sure he meant it that way. Though I sort of suspect so.
I overheard a student saying this in the lobby of work, and it was a fabulous moment, because I was able to parse it instantly. "니가 해 봐" [ni-ga hae bwa] means something like, "You try it!" It's a protest, where someone is complaining about something the other did, saying "oh, it's not big deal," and so the other says, "Well, you try it, then!"
Anyway, it's a tiny, incremental victory. That's all we get, in trying learn a language. But I'm happy to have had it.
According to my blogomatic interface thingy, this will be my 2000th blog post. I feel so excited, on this significant anniversary. Well… not really. [UPDATE 2018-10-15: the alleged “blogomatic interface thingy” is no longer relevant, as I have moved my blog to self-hosting. The link is retained for historical accuracy, but the company linked to is no longer one I will endorse.]
But I will take this milestone to reflect, again (as I have before), on what this blog means to me.
Um. It’s surprising how few people actually read it. Fewer read it than two years ago, when I made my 1000th post. I’m not sure what that means. I suppose that one thing that it means is that my friends and family have better things to do, or I’ve been in Korea so long that they’ve mostly forgotten about me. I guess that’s okay – I’ve come to realize that I mostly write just for myself.
It’s true that I get a limited number of random visitors who link through to the blog from google searches. Currently, the number one search that leads to this blog is: “오승근 떠나는 님아“. Go ahead – try it. Why? I think that for whatever reason, I’m one of the few bloggers who’s successfully posted a clearly-labeled link to a video of this Korean singer’s song.
Recently, someone came to my blog after typing in “the world is messed up” into the google’s search box. That was funny.
I enjoy the fact that I have the ability to “look over the shoulders” of the people who visit my blog in this way. I’ve learned where the google spiders live (Taiwan, Mountain View CA, somewhere in Belgium, Council Bluffs IA) – they often visit shortly after someone follows a link to my blog from a search page, and crawl through various random pages of it.
Since coming to Ilsan, I’ve become very discouraged about some aspects of my “stay in Korea project” – as might be evident reading between the lines (or simply reading the lines, at times) of the blog. Whatever I do next – whether I stay or move on to some other thing – I will continue posting here. It’s cathartic, and entertaining, and it’s a good self-discipline, too. Since the beginning of this year (2012) I’ve posted twice a day.
Sometimes the posts are boring and self-indulgent journaling. Sometimes they’re random “found online” things: videos, pictures, humor, politics, poetry, philosophy. Sometimes they’re evidence of my dilettante’s approach to languages. Regardless, the whole of it is not that different in principle from the paper journals I maintained for much of my life before the advent of blogdom – and I don’t mind others reading along: the transparency is purgative. Which isn’t to say there isn’t some self-editing going on – of course there is. It therefore becomes a sort of self-creation, too. Or self-curation, anyway.
Anyway, thanks to whoever happens to be reading. ^_^
I saw that somewhere online. I must remember this quote – I can use it, should I ever fall in love again.
I had a pretty good day at work today, but I feel really tired – I have 6 1/2 classes (the half is a sort of tutoring thing I do before my first class). I have all these little tasks hanging over me, though. Having a full class load allowed me to avoid them, in good conscience – but they'll be back with a vengeance tomorrow, when a lighter class load will require me to confront them.
The weather felt spring-like, today. Above freezing, breezy – still cold, I guess, but a different feeling about it.
I have been in a sort of state of hibernation, these last months, I guess. Or avoidance. I came home to my apartment this evening, finished off some leftover borshch, watched some music videos on youtube.
I've started reading a book of Korean history. I was reading the introduction, where the author (a Korean historian? – the book is clearly a translation from Korean) explained in one paragraph that because Korea has four distinct seasons, the Korean people are strong. Does a Korean historian actually believe this? How does this pass for historiography? Somehow this concept is an article of faith among the Korean people, which they learn in elementary school and which they all believe, in somewhat the same way that Italians believe in the Holy Trinity. Personally, I find them about equally plausible as matters of fact.
I often tell slightly edited but mostly truthful stories from my life to my students, as a kind of reward at the end of a good class. I’ve had an interesting life, and so some of the stories are pretty remarkable, I suppose. One of the stories that the students seem to most enjoy is The Story About The Time I Got Shot At While I Was Riding A Horse.
I really did get shot at while riding on a horse – but the bullet missed. Here is a slightly less-edited version of this autobiographical cowboy story.
After I quit my job in Mexico City in January of 1987, I went to visit a friend of mine named Jon who was living at that time in Morelia, in Michoacan state, about 8 hours by bus west of Mexico City. Jon was actually quite a bit older than me, but he sort of treated me as a younger brother. So we hung out for a while in Morelia, and one day he made an outrageous proposal. Well, actually, he made many outrageous proposals, but this is one outrageous proposal that I actually assented to, and this was it: we should buy some horses and travel around the mountains of Michoacan by horseback for a few months.
We did that. We bought horses (quite inexpensive in rural Mexico in the 80’s) and some low-tech camping gear, and we played cowboys in the mountains. We met many Mexicans, and even Native Americans (in that part of Michoacan, they were P’urep’echa indians, known sometimes as Tarascos). We visited villages which were not connected to civilization by automobile. We found scorpions in our shoes and drank raw eggs mixed with coca-cola, which seemed to be a sort of local delicacy, offered by gap-toothed farmers by way of hospitality.
We met a tribe of American exiles (superannuated draft-dodgers) and Mexican hippies living on a farm in a town called Ihuatzio, and while my friend Jon flirted with resuming his previously defeated drug habit, I read back issues of Co-Evolution quarterly and Mexican comic books about Condorito and a battered copy of El Poema de Mio Cid, which conveniently had the 12th century Spanish and modern Spanish translations on facing pages.
After some time in Ihuatzio, we continued on around the Lago Patzcuaro to a town which was called, if I recall correctly, Santa Fulana de Tal, or something in that vein. Now, I should first explain, that my friend Jon had acquired a puppy. It was a husky, dirty white in coloration, which Jon, in his infinite naivite, dubbed “Negrita.” Negrita, unfortunately, although funny in a punny sort of way for a white dog, is a very bad idea for a name for your dog, becaues “negrita” is a way to call the attention of a woman of low-repute, in that part of Mexico: “Ey, negrita, negrita!” means something like “Hey, bitch,” or “Hey, baby.” That kind of thing. Or you could remark on the not-quite-accidental etymological relation it bears to a certain English-language slur, too.
So in this village named Santa Fulana de Tal, Negrita the dog ran off, and Jon, in his infinite naivite, began yelling at the top of his voice, “Negrita, negrita!”
Let’s just say, this was a bad idea.
Several of the women on the street appeared alarmed. It was a conservative village, where people came through on horseback frequently enough, but where gringos on horseback yelling “negrita” after their dogs where perhaps less well-known. One of the women who were inadvertently being offended by Jon’s yelling (and yes, I was yelling the name too, honestly, though I should have known better – my Spanish was better than Jon’s) had a husband or father who overheard this yelling, and this man decided to take offense.
Unfortunately, he was drunk.
Unfortunately, he had a gun, and so he decided to begin shooting at us.
Fortunately, he was drunk.
Fortunately, his aim was therefore really terrible. He hit my shoe. He hit Jon’s foot, with a graze. He was shooting low. For all I know, he hit a horse, though we found no wound on the horses later. Jon’s horse ditched him, leaving Jon sprawled on the cobblestone. My horse ran like the dickens, but I held on tightly. Several kilometers later, feeling more like Paul Revere than ever before or since, my horse stopped.
When Jon finally caught up to me, later, he blamed me for abandoning him. I said it was the horse’s fault, and I was just along for the ride. I blamed him for so stupidly naming the dog. Jon said I was saying the dog’s name too, and if I knew the dog’s name was offensive, why didn’t I say anything. I said that I had said something, but that Jon had been too drug-addled to pay attention at that time. And so we argued, for a while, there on the side of that hill among some scrub and cactus.
Our friendship effectively ended, that day. I ceded ownership of the horse to Jon, forfeiting my investment. I walked up the hill to a local road, and found a bus back to Mexico City.
My passport was stolen later that same week. It was a bad week. By the end of the month, I was back in Minneapolis. But it was a grand conclusion to my year-and-a-half in Mexico.
Little Yedam was pretending to have a terrible headache. But she wasn't really that sick – every time I looked away, she would resume wiggling and bouncing and avoiding her chair. Her classmate would remind her: "don't you have a headache?" (in Korean). Yedam would resume her agonized chair sprawl.
Then she got excited when she was reading out loud to me, and she began jumping up and down. She hit her head on the windowsill by accident.
"지금 정말 머리 아파! [now my head hurts for real!]" she revealed.
I tend to avoid thinking about Middle Eastern politics. It’s mostly depressing – the same way that I find Mexican politics so discouraging, maybe. But I was listening to some news reports, and then saw the video below and was feeling a twinge of optimism. Just because it makes things seem more “human,” maybe. Regardless, it set me to contemplating studying Arabic again – I studied اللغة العربية for a semester in 1996, during my time in graduate school. I’ve always thought it’s a beautiful language. Arabic was a major historical influence on Spanish, which is what I was majoring in for grad school – mabye on par with the influence of Norwegian on English, perhaps. I’ve forgotten most of it now. I can’t remember how to type it, for example – I cheated and used google translate to make that smattering of it in my title.
Anytime I contemplate studying some other language, though, I immediately realize the interest is largely being driven my feelings of despair vis-a-vis learning the Korean Language. So here I go, grumping about it again.
What I’m listening to right now.
West Elbalad (Egyptian group), “Voice of Freedom.” It’s a pretty good song, anyway.
I was walking to work today, and feeling stressed. And a pair of tracks from Apoptygma Berzerk came through my mp3 player, and I had an epiphanic moment.
Those Apoptygma Berzerk tunes were part of my "crisis soundtrack" during the difficult fall of 2008, when I was working at LBridge and hating my decision to be in Korea, hating my job, just generally really stressing out. And during that time, I made some decisions about how I would organize my life and prioritize things and indentify what was important, which I began slowly to implement. Today, I realized I'd mostly carried through with those "promises to myself" – not in terms of goals so much as in the manner in which I would live my life.
The fact is, my job is very nearly the least stressful job I've ever had. Not because it's inherently unstressful, but because I've made it that way.
"But why is it, then," I asked myself, "that I'm feeling so stressed lately?"
The job has nothing to do with my stress. And unlike in Yeonggwang last year, the auxiliaries of the job – housing, location, social context – those things aren't stressing me, either. Those things are much more stable here in Ilsan, and most definitely much more under my control. I would hazard to guess that if I had to look at things carefully, my job is actually a net stress reducer. The kids (except for certain ones who must remain unnamed, here) wash away my stress and make me feel happy.
So, then. Where is this stress coming from? I can know, easily enough (and what a Konglishy turn of phrase that is, yet it comes so naturally to me, now). That was my breakthrough, today.
I'm making this stress for myself. It's about those personal goals, personal self-perceptions, and how those aren't working out for me.
I have set goals such as "learn Korean," that I can't seem to do. I feel unhealthy, and rather than work harder or make behavioral changes to get healthier, I stress out over how I'm unhealthy. I even beat myself up for not meditating. As if… as if getting angry over not meditating would bring me closer to inner peace, right?
I've got all of these stressors in my life, but they're not from my job, for the most part. They're traps of my own devising.
This is only a breakthrough in the sense that I thought it all through from start to end today, with a high degree of clarity (not to mention a dose or two of ironic self-honesty). I've not been unaware of these things. And… to announce here that I've "figured it out" is only another invitation to stress out later when it doesn't lead to some improved lifestyle change, I suppose. But This Here Blog Thingy (the runner-up title for Caveatdumptruck – jus' sayin') is nothing if not a place where I can unlaconically overshare my personal mental hygiene activities. So there.
As is generally the case, I was letting my mp3 files cycle on shuffle on my computer, providing an utterly randomized soundtrack to my rather-dull-yet-lucid life.
Sometimes I hear things I don't even know I own. Often, actually – I'm a compulsive downloader and collector of music, and I will download things on impulse and drop them into the infinite music folder of my soul, and forget I've done it.
This morning, suddenly a version of Depeche Mode's "Never Let Me Down" came around. Sort of a metal/gothic remake. I used to live in a Depeche Mode-only mode, and I still get thrown into a very dark, nostalgic mood when I hear anything by them. But this remake, by a German group called Farmer Boys, was excellent, since it wasn't so nostalgia-inducing in that way, while still capturing the awesomeness of the original song. I listened to it about 5 times.
What I'm listening to right now.
Farmer Boys, "Never Let Me Down." The video is cheesy and dumb, though.
For reference, here's the DM original.
Depeche Mode, "Never Let Me Down." Perhaps it deserves mention that this song is very likely about heroin addiction – a topic that has a particular strong, strange, and deeply personal resonance for me, but not for precisely the obvious reason you would assume. Perhaps someday in the future (or past) I will explain. Here are the lyrics, which would make this observation more clear.
I'm taking a ride With my best friend I hope he never lets me down again He knows where he's taking me Taking me where I want to be I'm taking a ride With my best friend
We're flying high We're watching the world pass us by Never want to come down Never want to put my feet back down On the ground
I'm taking a ride With my best friend I hope he never lets me down again Promises me I'm as safe as houses As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers I hope he never lets me down again
Never let me down
See the stars they're shining bright Everything's alright tonight
모로 가도 서울만 가면 된다 sideways go-even seoul-only go-if becomes Even going sideways one will only get to Seoul.
I’m not sure about the grammar of the last part – it seems to be a kind of periphrastic future using the verb 되다 (become). Regardless, this seems to offer a number of possible proverbial meanings. At first, it seemed to mean “All roads lead to Rome.” But looking it up, you also see offered “The ends justify the means,” as well as “It doesn’t matter which way you take to reach your destination.” These all seem related.
Yesterday I must have gone sideways into the subway, because I ended up in Seoul. But that doesn’t seem to happen much, as I commented – perhaps I don’t go sideways often enough?
Why do I spend so much time studying grammar, when it’s vocabulary that’s my problem? Because I enjoy studying grammar, whereas vocabulary causes me pain.
I made it into Seoul about once every two months when I lived down in Yeonggwang-gun (Glory County). Last night, I went into the city to a bookstore, and realized the last time I'd taken the subway beyond Ilsan was back in October – 3 or 4 months ago. So it's official – I don't go into the city much, despite citing that as a reason for liking living here.
I guess in some ways most of the city things I like and value are already present in suburban (but very dense compared to US suburbs) Ilsan (Goyang-si). Things are walkable, first and foremost.
Anyway, I'm not really thinking very interestingly, lately. So that's that. More later.
One of my advanced elementary students had an ingenious if somewhat cruel plan for helping the homeless people for which Seoul Station is somewhat notorious. He said he would make counterfeit money and give it to them when they beg for it. This would get them arrested, he explained, and they would end up in jail. In jail, he explained, they would have a warm bed, better meals, and help with their alcoholism. I decided not to disillusion him by discussing the fact that it's still quite common in Korea for police to beat up suspects, etc. He's speaking to an idealized notion of what the police should be as he is to any actual reality, obviously.
Obviously, I can't endorse this idea. It's got aspects that seem both immoral and inhumane. But… You've got to give him credit for creative problem-solving.
I have a sixth-grade student named Yungyeong who hits me all the time. Not hard hitting – it’s that kind of reflexive, playful, ‘oh I’m just kidding around’ slap that some people seem to adopt as a way to reduce the awkwardness or formality of interactions. It’s a little bit annoying, although I also accept it as a rather inept, low-level expression of trust on the part of the student, and in that way, I’m even flattered by it. We were discussing my alligator (the green plastic Chinese alligator) before class, and she did it again – whack, on my arm.
“Why do you always hit me?” I asked.
“심심해서,” she protested immediately. [Cuz I’m bored]. And she whacked my arm again.
The below picture is of my niece Sarah and nephew James, who live in Colorado. My sister posted it on facebook – I hope she doesn’t mind if I share it here. The picture is just like a Calvin & Hobbes image. So amazing, awesome action shot.
I made curried broccoli, using some Thai green curry paste and spices and onions and coconut milk.
Después, lo comí.
What I’m listening to right now.
Pastilla, “Colores.”
Letra.
Ya es muy tarde No es tan tarde Espera un poco Espera un ratito Dame tu mano Nada importa Etamos solos Yetás mojada. (coro) Cuando todo es de color El azul es el mejor Cuando quieras descubrir Y tu piel quieras abrir Cuando todo te va mal Piensa solo en mi voz Toma una navaja Y córtate las venas. Por la mañana Abres los ojos… Y te levantas Te tomas un baño Llama un taxi Hacia el estudio Todos te esperan Yestan enojados (coro).
I have recently been exploring googlebooks. There are some interesting and unusual out-of-copyright materials there. This morning I have been perusing a text by someone named Francis Hopkinson entitled “A Pretty Story,” originally published in 1774 and reprinted (I suspect from the original proofs since the text is full of 18th century typography not matching the 1860’s edition date).
The story is a sort of political allegory, a rather thinly veiled account of the colonization of North America by the British, and relevant to the impending American Revolution (note that Hopkinson was apparently a signer of the Declaration of Independence).
I think I enjoy reading texts such as these as much for their archaic style and language as for the actual content, although making cultural comparisons of the then-to-now sort, in the style of a time-traveling anthropologist, is fun too.
On a technical side, I’d like to rant.
<rant>
Googlebooks’ interface annoys me, because it keeps reverting to Korean Language, because of my IP address. I’m not opposed to using the Korean interface, per se, but I see it as a technical glitch whenever default language of web sites is driven by the geotagging information attached to the user’s IP address when so much other information is available to the browser (e.g. my computer’s preferred language setting, my browser’s preferred / installed language, not to mention the language of the text being viewed – why would someone viewing an 18th c. political tract written in English not prefer [or at the very least, not be uncomfortable with] an English language web interface?). I especially resent internationalized web content that fails to offer a clear control to change languages when viewing the page. Googlebooks apparently doesn’t like to offer this option clearly on their page – although, if you scan it carefully, the extended URL contains a language flag, but even when you toggle this manually (changing the “ko” to “en”), the page nevertheless reverts if you follow any in-site links.
</rant>
Here are some screenshots from this archaic text.
The introduction, below.
First page, below.
I like the old-style “long s” in the word possessed (roughly, “poffeffed”).
I’ve been in a dark mood lately. Ever since last week when I realized even some of my students agreed that my progress in learning Korean was unacceptable. Walking home in freezing rain or sleet or whatever it was, the air was smelling dirty or dusty – I wonder if we’re getting sand from China and Mongolia?
An elementary student of mine wrote the following essay, which was supposed to be about an imaginary trip. It could be read as a depressing reflection of shallow values and crass materialism and at least a small dosage of racism thrown in, to boot… but I've decided instead to read it as a satire in the vein of Swift's Modest Proposal. Hereforthwith I present her writing, unedited:
I will go to Africa with small boat just by oneself. At first, I will go to African's village and give lots of money and play with them. Second, I will go to the diamond mine and dig many diamonds with African children workers and take it to Korea and sell at a high priceㅋㅋ Third, I will go to national park and photographing all of the animals and plants and I will take small and cute animals put in the small case. Then I will go back to home and sell diamonds, cute animals, and I will be very very rich person in the world. finish..
Think of it as a perfect description of the modus operandi of contemporary global capitalism. As explained from the mouths of babes…. Even if it's utterly presented at face value, there are lessons to be taken here.
I finally ran across some beets during my most recent visit to the Orangemart supermarket across the street. Grace had told me that they had them, but I had never managed to see them until this time. Maybe it’s a kind of sometimes thing.
I love beets. And beets make me think of borshch (or borsht or borscht, Борщ). So I made borshch. I didn’t follow a recipe. I’d been reading a while back about a way of making it where you oven-roast the beets and potatoes first, to carmelize them slightly and give them a stronger flavor. I don’t have an oven – I don’t even have a microwave – but I was trying to think of ways to achieve a similar carmelizing effect.
Here’s the recipe I made up as I went, with occasional illustrations.
I peeled and cut up one large beet into thin bite-sized slices. I did the same to one carrot and two smallish potatoes. This seemed about right for one “batch” which I imagine will be three servings for me.
I sliced two small white onions and added a few cloves of crushed garlic to a pot and began to fry them in about a tablespoon of canola oil (I have a several-years’ supply of canola oil, as several bottles came embedded in my Seollal gift-set from my boss this year). I added the chopped beets, carrots and potatoes, and some spices. I used ground bay leaf, thyme, oregano, dill seed, a dash of salt, black pepper, a squirt of lemon juice, a teaspoon of brown sugar (to bring out that carmelized beet and onion flavor, right?).
Then, I “stir fried” it all on a low flame. I didn’t add any additional liquid. I figured when it started to burn, I would add the liquid, but I wanted to try to get the carmelizing effect. And much to my surprise, it didn’t start to burn, for almost 30 minutes. The onions and beets and the lemon juice seemed to provide enough liquid to prevent the stuff from sticking to the pan. I stirred it a lot.
The stuff cooked down a lot. It bubbled and smelled delicious.
Finally there was some crusting on the bottom of the pot, so I added a half cup of red wine (which I keep for cooking and use when recipes call for vinegar). Then I added a cup of tomato juice – which is a great instant, convenient vegan substitute for any recipe that calls for broth or soup stock. This bubbled up and boiled I periodically added some additional water, for another 30 minutes.
The recipe is purely vegan up to this point.
I broke that rule because I put a pat of butter on it and sprinkled some dried thyme, for serving it. I didn’t have any sour cream or yogurt on hand, which is what you’re supposed to put on borshch.
Borshch always makes me think of Doukhobors. Doukhobors are like slavic Quakers (and there’s an important link to Tolstoy). I like Doukhobors. If I had to be a Christian, I would have to be a Doukhobor, maybe. The name means “Spirit Wrestlers.”
The personal connection, for me, was in the summer of 1989 when I made a road trip with my brother and father in the moonwagon (my dad’s 1949 Chevy suburban) from Minnesota to the Kootenays region of British Columbia. My father had spent some time during his childhood there, in a Quaker semi-utopianist intentional community named Argenta, that was linked to the one his parents had founded in Southern California. There are a lot Doukhobors in that part of Canada, and we visited someone who served us some home-made Doukhobor borshch, which is one the most delicious meals I have ever eaten in my life, perhaps in part the context, but truly good food, too. Ever since, I keep trying to reproduce that experience, which is why I so frequently obsess on borshch-making.
And as a stunning non-sequitur, I offer: what I’m listening to right now.
Mexican Institute of Sound, “Yo digo baila.”
Y además:
Mexican Institute of Sound, “El micrófono.”
Que chango tan chistoso, ´nel video.
Mejitecno. Jeje.
There is really nothing quite like sitting in a cozy apartment on a frigid February day, in Northwest South Korea, eating homemade borscht and listening to Mexican techno.
What’s with me and pea soup? If you look around this blog, you’d think it was the main thing I cook. It’s not. It’s just the main thing I cook and then blog about having cooked, I guess. Maybe I just really like the pea soup I make for myself?
I made pea soup last night. It’s good on cold days. It feels nutritious and healthy to eat. This time I added dill spice (because I have a lifetime supply) and carrots and celery (the things added depend in part on what I run across in the produce aisle across the street – those wacky “foreign” veggies [i.e. celery] aren’t consistently available).
My friend Seungbae called last night – one of my “Gwangju friends” whom I haven’t visited because I’m too lazy to travel to Gwangju. And it turns out he’s being transferred by his work to the south side of Jeju Island – the Korean equivalent of being transferred to… hm, maybe Bakersfield (nice climate, but backwater town). Now it’s even less likely I’ll visit him, I suppose.
We were doing an exercise in my debate class this evening, and these four mild mannered middle-school girls were turning into the most blatent populists and nationalists imaginable.
I was having them develop hypothetical presidential campaign platforms (for president of Korea, of course, although I also talked about the neverending campaign taking off in the US this year). They proposed everything from eliminating SAT tests (pandering to students) to providing free massage-chairs to everyone over 60 (pandering to the elderly). They suggested war with North Korea as well as Japan (just for old times' sake, I guess). One girl proposed building a protective dome over the country first, which I thought was clever, but it made me think of Newt Gingrich's moon colony for some reason. Another girl wanted to execute all prisoners. I said… even non-murderer criminals? Oh yes… prisons are expensive. Hmm.
Well, next week, I'll give them a chance to try to come up with rebuttals to some of these outlandish proposals. And I hope I can lead them to some degree of thoughtfulness about these things.
After learning that I'd been in Korea for more than four years, my new(-ish) student, Sumin, a 7th grader with amazingly good English, only had one question: "Then why is your Korean so poor?"
Indeed.
I'm now plunged into a black, black depression.
Why, indeed, is my Korean so poor? Am I lazy? Inept? Hopeless as far as learning this language?
Yesterday at work was hard. Every time I have that PM2 cohort, I struggle – they are bright kids, including a few too bright for their own good, but they are unruly and uninterested in academics of any kind, as far as I can tell. This is a hard consituency for me to teach toward – I'm one of these people who thinks that if kids don't want to learn, and are clearly smart enough to be making that choice with some degree of self-awareness, then it's not really my role, as a teacher, to try to change minds. That's a waste of my energy, as such changing of minds is difficult and resource-intensive on the part of the teacher. That kind of mind-changing is the job for parents or other role-models – if they can manage it. And sometimes, adults simply have to accept the kids aren't going to do what you think they should – and be accepting of their choices, even if we believe they're bad choices. As I've said before – sometimes kids have to fall down on their own.
OK, that got philosphical fast.There were other small incidents that left me feeling gloomy about work yesterday: greedy parental demands and irrational complaints.
It's become quite cold. I like this kind of weather. Hopefully today will go more positively.
I have always had a special interest in what I think of as ephemeral visual-arts media: sandcastles, doodles, graffiti, etc…. and now, office whiteboards. Seeing Bill Taylor’s cubicle whiteboard artalmost makes me wish I worked in a cubicle, again. I say, almost. Maybe I should just buy a whiteboard for my apartment, instead. He draws these things on the whiteboard in his cubicle at work – a month or more for each one, during his spare time.
Bill Taylor, imitating Picasso’s “Guenica,” whiteboard and dry-erase marker.
