We listened to a fairly long passage about the history of air transport, focusing on the role of Pan Am in the pre-WWII era. My middle school student Brian wrote a summary that begins:
The sky was limited. Pan Am is the first flight bring the passengers into a reality.
As a summary of the passage, it's utter nonsense and incoherent. As poetry, I admit I rather like it.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Sometimes I get weird food cravings. I have moved in the direction of ignoring them, because every time I go to satisfy one of those food cravings, I’m deeply disappointed. My food memory is intact, but my actual taste and “mouth-feel” mechanisms are essentially permanently rearranged since my surgery.
Today, for whatever strange reason, I found myself remembering and craving the birria that I used to buy as a lunchtime snack at one of the puestos on San Cosme (in front of the subway station) where I lived in Mexico City. I suppose that birria (a kind of goat-meat soup or stew – which it is depends on consistency, and the kind I got was always more brothy than stewy) would be hard to come by in Korea in any event. So it’s just as well that I mostly let these cravings just pass by. But it’s a fond memory in any event.
Here’s to birria – the picture is a random picture found online that matches what I used to get pretty closely.
It’s strange… the random stuff that pops into one’s mind.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
A minimalist Sunday. I had a relapse of my flu.
"Success is a lousy teacher," Bill Gates once said. "It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."
[daily log: walking, 1 km]
Do you know about the Antikythera Mechanism? I remember reading about it a few times, but recently found someone who made a working replica using Legos. It's not clear to me if it is merely a functional replica or if it also replicates the specific arrangement of gears – i.e., does it produce the results the original mechanism produced using modern gear arrangements, or does it use the actual reconstructed gear arrangements? I suspect the former, because I doubt there are Lego gears with the specific characteristics of the orginal mechanism.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Walking to work in the falling snow, I saw a sign that announced that Goyangites (is that what people who live in Goyang can be called?) should clean the snow. I was struck by the fact that I just kind of “read” the sign without really working at sorting it out, just overlooking the words I didn’t know. That felt like a kind of banal linguistic milestone. This picture utterly fails to show the sign – I thought it would when I took it, but I was wrong. It shows the snow, though.
What I’m listening to right now.
Son Volt, “Dust of Daylight.”
Lyrics.
Hand in hand there are angels that are holding warning signs
Show you the way like teachers and prophets of doom
Everyone has their idols, there will always be a story to tell
The search goes on, a balance in the final say
When you’re lost in folly, out of luck in the worst way
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
The dust of daylight holds you down and makes you wait
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
There will be words and fault lines to fill the hours of the days
There are ways to buy trouble but a bail bondsman finds friends in jail
Time to leave now, time to pack up all that you’re leaving
Your contest’s here but you’ll be judged just the same
When you’re lost in folly, out of luck in the worst way
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
The dust of daylight holds you down and makes you wait
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
Love is a fog and you stumble every step you make
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
After about a week of "special classes," which provide a kind of transition for middle-schoolers between the 내신 (exam prep time) and the post-exam regular schedule, I had my first full-schedule of regular classes today. I don't really like doing the special classes – mostly because the middle schoolers are all so depressed-seeming and desultory in the immediate aftermath of their exams, but also because the odd schedules mean that I get mixed bunches of motivated and unmotivated students who don't know each other well because they're not in their regular cohorts. It's often challenging to put together a successful one-up lesson plan.
Anyway, today I got my regular middle-school classes. So that was good, I guess. But very tiring. I always feel compelled to be a little bit "scary / hard" with returnees, so they don't start off on the wrong the footing.
Meanwhile, though, with my elementary honors class we had fun. We were getting ready to do a debate, and the kids said they wanted to be different "characters." Once, when I was doing one of my schticks where I have the whole debate myself (meaning I argue back and forth with myself, taking both sides), I made it more interesting by giving each person in the debate I was playing different personalities or "characters": so there was a lazy debater, crazy debater, stupid debater, annoying debater, etc. They wanted to play characters. I let them. I'm not sure it was a very good debate, but they sure had fun. I like seeing the kids being creative that way. Sally did an excellent job being shy, Fay was so good a being a confused debater that I thought she was really confused and wanted to correct her – I said, "you're arguing the wrong side," she said, "I know. I'm confused," and gave her winning grin, shrugging. It was a good class.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
You may have heard that the Chinese government is has officially banned puns. I ran across some (serious) discussion of it on a linguistics site I frequent, Language Log. Ultimately, however, another site (Slate Star Codex) I have taken to frequenting nailed it, punningly:
China bans puns on the grounds that they may mislead children and defile cultural heritage. Language Log is on the story, and discusses the (extremely plausible) theory that this is part of a crackdown on people who use puns to get around censorship. Obligatory link to the Ten Mythical Creatures here. There’s no censor sensibility to the law, and it seems likely to cause Confucian and dis-Orientation among punks and pundits alike in its wonton disregard for personal freedom and attempts to bamboo-zle the public. It’s safe Tibet that dissidents who just Taipei single pun online will end up panda price and facing time in the punitentiary or even capital punishment – but those Hu support the government can Maoth off as much as they want and still wok free. I Canton derstand how people wouldn’t realize that this homophonbic bigotry raises a bunch of red flags. In the end, one Deng is clear: when puns are outlawed, only outlaws will have puns.
But even better was the following comment on Language Log by someone named Matt, in reaction to Slate Star Codex's punning:
You can definitely understand the Party's fears, though; after all, repurposing homophones or near-homophones in written Chinese has always resulted in radicalization.
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
Speculative Grammarian observed yesterday, "Today is Noam Chomsky’s birthday. To celebrate, discuss linguistics or hegemony. But never both at the same time! Why is that?"
More seriously, this is a Chomsky quote in linguistics that is worth remembering, and fundamental to linguistics.
The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the 'creativity of language,' that is, the speaker's ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are 'familiar.' – Noam Chomsky
What I'm listening to right now.
TV On The Radio, "Careful You." The lyrics aren't that interesting, but I like the song anyway.
Lyrics.
Oui je t'aime, oui je t'aime
À demain, à la prochaine
I know it's best to say goodbye
But I can't seem to move away
Not to say, not to say
That you shouldn't share the blame
There is a softness to your touch
There is a wonder to your ways
[Chorus]
Don't know how I feel, what's the deal?
Is it real? When's it gonna go down?
Can we talk? Can we not?
Well, I'm here, won't you tell me right now?
And I'll care for you, oh, careful you
Don't know, should we stay? Should we go?
Should we back it up and turn it around?
Take the good with the bad
Still believe we can make it somehow
I will care for you, oh, careful you, careful you
Oui je t'aime, oui je t'aime
From the cradle to the grave
You've done a number on my heart
And things will never be the same
Freeze a frame, freeze a frame
From a fever dream of days
We learned the secret of a kiss
And how it melts away all pain
[Chorus] x2
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
I finally actually finished a book. I read Arthur Herman’s popularizing history about the Scots, entitled, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It.
Scottish history is a topic I haven’t actually read that much about – although I felt comfortable in my understanding of the broad outline of English History (and therefore British history post-Union), I never really spent any time studying Scotland, specifically – unlike Wales or Ireland. So I picked up the book in hopes of filling some of that in. In its purely historical aspect, I got a lot out of the book, including a much better understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment and some of the historical events surrounding it (Knox, the Covenanters and the Scottish Reformation; Bonnie Prince Charlie; etc.).
In fact, my main complaint about this book is probably the same as one of the other recent history titles I made a brief review of some time back, which is: good book, bad title. The title’s thesis (i.e. the idea that Scots invented modernity) seems unproven (and unprovable). It occured to me in looking up the text online just now that the title might not even have been the author’s chosen title, but rather the work of some hyperbolizing editor.
In any event, if the title had been something more modest to the effect of the Scottish Enlightenment’s impact on modernity (Hume, Smith, et al.), and their disproportionate contribution to the Anglosphere’s modern global cultural dominance, I’d have been less preoccupied with trying to decide if Herman did an adequate job proving his main thesis. As it was, I kept hoping the next chapter would explain exactly how it was they invented modernity. I’d say inventing modernity was a collective endeavor, in which the Scots definitely played a suprisingly outsized role.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Lines for Winter
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
– Mark Strand (American poet, 1934-2014)
Mark Strand died last week. I was not familiar with his poetry. But having heard of his death, I went poking around and found one I liked.
[daily log: stalking, 1 km]
I think it was 10 years ago this week that I decided to quit my job at ARAMARK in Burbank. It was the beginning of the end of my brief but somewhat meteoric career as a business systems analyst and database programmer. I went on, the following year, to work at HealthSmart Pacific in Long Beach and Newport Beach, but from that December of 2004 I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be satisfied with doing computer work, at least in that vein, indefinitely. Perhaps not coincidentally, that same December was the month when I very intentionally ended my reliance on prescription psychoactives (as treatment for my run-in with dysphoric insanity 6 years earlier).
I was reflecting that my in-Korea teaching career is now extending to nearly the same length as that more conventional career did. It doesn't feel like a career in the same sense, at all. It is in some ways more fulfilling – I get a lot out of the kids, even the desultory post-exam teens like I had this morning.
I had some idea that writing this "anniversary" post would be somehow cathartic or meaningful, but I think I'm just filling blogspace because I have my rule to post something each day.
The other night, I dreamed I was speaking Korean, almost fluently. There was one major problem with this fantastic scenario: I had no idea what I was saying.
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
Ciceronian humor:
A senator in Late Republican Rome is running late for the day’s session of the Senate. He comes into the senate chamber about 15 minutes late. Cicero is out in front giving a speech. The senator quietly sits down next to one of his friends, and leans over, quietly asking, “Have I missed much? What’s he talking about?”
To which his friend replies:”I haven’t got a clue… he hasn't even gotten to the verb yet.”
I feel this way about Korean sometimes. When listening to a conversation, I ponder: what was the verb? Did I miss it? Was one provided? The verbs tend to come at the end (as in classical Latin), but there are all these transitional forms that do coordinating and subordinating things that, in casual speech, don't always seem to get followed up on.
Unrelatedly, another joke:
What are you doing?
I'm maximizing the availability of my cognitive resources. [when you work this out, this means "doing nothing"].
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
The hardest period of the foreign hagwon-worker's calendar, in my opinion, is December and January. Schools are finishing up their school year, and after the hard crush of exam prep in November, which actually sees a lot of students skipping hagwon so they can just focus on studying, the hagwons have to ramp up activities for the winter break.
We have to "level-up" our students who need to change levels – elementary 6th graders up to middle school, middle school 9th graders up to high school, etc. This involves a lot of level-testing and parent-orientation sessions. We have to make any expected changes and tweaks to curriculum, as this is the expected time to do so. We have to offer "special" extra classes for the winter break – this ties in, partly, with the "day-care" aspect of the hagwon business that no one wants to admit – when the schools are closed, what are parents to do with their kids? Let them sit at home playing games on their phones?
So the easy days of naesin (easy for me, as a foreign teacher) are officially over as of yesterday. I worked an 11-hour day today. Although, to be honest, it was more long than difficult. There was a lot of waiting around. More such to come.
Between the morning orientation session held for parents and classes in the afternoon, we went to lunch – 회식 [hoesik]. Curt insisted I should order 청국장 – a kind of fermented soybean soup, allegedly healthy for me. It wasn't bad – very pungent smelling (which caused some of the other teachers to complain) but of course I have such a limited sense of taste, anymore, that it doesn't really matter if it has a strong taste.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Linguistics humor:
"I believe that the relationship between the signifier and the concept it signifies is arbitrary."
"Oh yeah? What makes you Saussure?"
[daily log: walking, -5 C]
I ran across this poem, in translation, by accident, while searching for something else. But I was deeply impressed by it. It may become a favorite.
A Pebble
On the path before my house
every day I meet a pebble
that once was kicked by my passing toe.
At first we just casually
brushed past each other, morning and night,
but gradually the stone began to address me
and furtively reach out a hand,
so that we grew close, like friends.
And now each morning the stone,
blooming inwardly with flowers of Grace,
gives me its blessing,
and even late at night
it waits watchfully to greet me.
Sometimes, flying as on angels’ wings
it visits me in my room
and explains to me the Mystery of Meeting,
reveals the immortal nature of Relationship.
So now, whenever I meet the stone,
I am so uncivilized and insecure
that I can only feel ashamed.
– Ku Sang (Korean poet, 1919-2004)
– Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
It took some creative googling and some time with a dictionary doing some ad hoc reverse-translation (reverse engineering poetry?) to find the original text, but I’m confident that this is it.
조약돌
집 앞 행길에서
그 어느 날 발부에 채운
조약돌 하나와 나날이 만난다
처음에 우리는 그저 심드렁하게
아침 저녁 서로 스쳐 지냈지만
둘은 차츰 나에게 말도 걸어오고
슬그머니 손도 내밀어
친구처럼 익숙해갔다
그리고 아침이면 돌은
안으로부터 은총의 꽃을 피워
나를 축복해주고
늦은 밤에도 졸지 않고
나의 安寧을 기다려 준다
떄로는 천사처럼 훌훌 날아서
내 방엘 찾아 들어와
만남의 신비를 타이르기도 하고
사귐의 불멸을 일깨워도 준다
나는 이제 그 돌을 만날 때마다
未開하고 불안스런 나의 現存이
부끄러울 뿐이다
– 구상 (시인 1919-2004)
I played around with understanding the translation in a few places, without really making an exhaustive study of it. I was impressed by the fact that one line in particular represents all kinds of Korean grammatical bugbears in one helping: “내 방엘 찾아 들어와” has doubled-up case particles (can a noun have two cases at once? yes, it can in Korean) and a three-member serial verb, yet it was surprisingly not that hard to figure out.
내 [nae = my]
방 [bang = room]
-엘 [el = locative particle -에 + accusative particle -ㄹ]
차 [cha = ‘look for’ verb stem]
-어 [eo = verb ending which I have always thought of as the ‘finite’ (conjugated) verb ending but which Martin mysteriously calls ‘infinitive’ and which I have no idea what it “officially” is called]
들 [deul = ‘go in; enter’ verb stem]
-어 [eo = ‘finite’ (conjugated) verb ending again]
와 = [wa = irregularly conjugated ‘come’]
So all together: “my room-IN-OBJ looks-for enters comes,” translated above “it visits me in my room.”
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
This was an adaptation I made of a group of "kindergarten" songs into a kind of musical that I put together several years ago while working at 홍농초 (see [broken link! FIXME] post from that time).
I decided to try it again with the kids of my Vega class. Last Friday, we had our month-end roleplay "test" and they did well, with not much practice or "extras" (zero props, costumes, etc.)… and "a capella" too!
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Korea’s weather is often predictable by the calendar. Like clockwork. December first: first snow… the view out my window just now.
When I was a child I had an inordinate fondness for Richard Scarry books. They weren’t really stories at all – they were cartoonified reference books with only the barest hintings of plot. Although which would be cause and which effect is not clear, I have ever since enjoyed refence books more than seems appropriate.
I ran across a comic in the series TomTheDancingBug, which I reproduce below. It is in Scarry’s classic style, “updated for the 21st century.” Funny.
I never realized that Lowly Worm was an immigrant. But seeing here that he is, it makes perfect sense. I read once that Lowly was the “true protagonist” of all of the Busytown books. Now I see that he is possibly illegal. Suddenly I want to write a postmodern novel about him. This feeling will pass.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 hm]
Yeah. It was Saturday.
What I'm listening to right now.
Metric, "Breathing Underwater."
Lyrics.
I'm the blade
You're the knife
I'm the weight
You're the kite
They were right when they said
We were breathing underwater
Out of place all the time
In a world that wasn't mine to take
I'll wait
Is this my life?
Ahhh
Am I breathing underwater?
Is this my life?
Ahhh
Am I breathing underwater?
I'm the blade
You're the knife
I'm the weight
You're the kite
They were right when they said we should never meet our heroes
When they bowed at their feet, in the end it wasn't me
Is this my life?
Ahhh
Am I breathing underwater?
Is this my life?
Ahhh
Am I breathing underwater?
Nights are days
We'll beat a path through the mirrored maze
I can see the end
But it hasn't happened yet
I can see the end
But it hasn't happened yet
Is this my life?
Ahhh
Am I breathing underwater?
Is this my life?
Ahhh
Am I breathing underwater?
Am I breathing underwater? [x2]
[daily log: walking, 2 km]
A truly awesome, minimalist video I ran across: a triumph of text-art.
A Tax on Bunny Rabbits from Nathaniel Akin on Vimeo.
"A Tax on Bunny Rabbits" premiered at the 2011 Ottawa International Animation Festival. This short film is all text animation, ascii style! No bunnies were harmed in the making of this film. See more of my work at https://oxen.tv and https://riotsquad.tv
[daily log: walking, 6 km]
… by which I mean, the end result of the interview with me last week. Below is a screen-cap of part of the interview posted on KarmaPlus’s “blog” – I use quote marks because “blog” in Korean internet context isn’t quite the same as “blog” in the sense that this here blog thingy is a blog thingy. It’s a sort of “advertorial website” – some of the material is produced by the advertising agency that Curt hires to do publicity for our hagwon, and some of the material is things we have said. It’s all mixed together. If you click the picture it will take you to KarmaPlus’s website – it’s all in Korean, which makes perfect sense for an English hagwon, right? Nevertheless I urge you to visit it – it will give you a very different window on my world and life and work, I think. [Update 20200316: I guess the “blog” linked has disappeared. But the screenshot is preserved.]
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
I've been so tired lately. I know that officially I'm not sick, but I definitely can assert that I don't feel my health is optimal. I feel as if I am "older" than my actual age – ever since my run-in with badly-behaved telomeres last year. I'm not used to that feeling – up until then I have always felt "younger" than my actual age. Now I have all these creaks and aches and twinges and I just feel that my body is decrepit and broken.
Random geographic trivia fact of the day:
King County, Washington, has a population of 2,044,449. King County, Texas, has a population of 285. Who's the real King?
[daily log: walking, 5 km]
I guess it’s thanksgiving week back in gringolandia. This is perhaps the only time of year when I feel vaguely homesick – thanksgiving means a lot to me.
I drew this on the board for my Honors 2T class.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Lo que estoy escuchando en este momento.
José José, "Lágrimas."
Letra.
yo siento hundirme y me extremesco
si veo caer tus lagrimas
yo me arrepiento del mal que halla hecho
si veo caer tus lagrimas
yo te consuelo te abrazo y te beso
si veo caer tus lagrimas
y no quisiera ya nunca
volver a enjugar tus lagrimas
coro
lagrimas
el lenguage mudo de tu pena
lagrimas
la callada voz de tu trizteza
lagrimas
la expresion mojada de tu alma
lagrimas
la visible muestra de que me amas
lagrimas
de pasiones ondas y de heridas
lagrimas
de dolor profundo y de alegria
lagrimas
la palabra fiel de tu amargura
lagrimas
la verdad final que tu la ocultas
lagrimas…..
yo siento hundirme y me extremesco
si veo caer tus lagrimas
yo me arrepiento, del mal que halla hecho
si veo caer tus lagrimas
yo te consuelo, te abrazo y te beso
si veo caer tus lagrimas
y no quisiera ya nunca
volver a enjugar tus lagrimas
coro
lagrimas
el lenguage mudo de tu pena
lagrimas
la callada voz de tu tristeza
lagrimas
la expresion mojada de tu alma
lagrimas
la visible muestra de que me amas
lagrimas
de pasiones ondas y de heridas
lagrimas
de dolor profundo y de alegria
lagrimas
la palabra fiel de tu amargura
lagrimas
la verdad final que tu me ocultas
repetir coro
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
I woke up feeling weirdly disoriented – perhaps from the break in routine yesterday. I peered out my window, and the fog was humboldtian (i.e. resembling the thick, persistent fogs so frequent in my childhood, growing up on the northern California coast).
My friend Peter posted a question to my post from yesterday. He asked what I meant by "the stream of almost jingoistic Korean semi-revanchism of the cultural component of the 'training.'" I suppose that's a bit of an exageration, but there were a few things that always bother me when they crop up in the nationalistically-toned "get-to-know-Korea" materials that are common in venues liek this.
Firstly, there are the historical inaccuracies. One video stated that Korea had never started a war with another country. I seem to recall several instances from the medieval period when the country entangled itself in conflicts with its neighbors. There was the citation of the 2333 BC date as the founding of Korea, without any kind of admission that this date has no foundation in actual historiography, and is simply fixed by tradition. There was the display of a map of "Korea" from the medieval period showing it including most of Manchuria and Primorskiy (I think from the "Balhae" period), which although accurate is difficult to justify when decontextualized. This latter is what I meant by "semi-revanchism." As far as jingoism, I would say only the several references to the Dokdo question, which seems to be a nationalistic narrative perpetrated by the powers-that-be mostly intended to distract regular Koreans from other, more relevant news (maybe not unlike the way conversations in the US get distracted by "there is too much illegal immigration" or "Obama is a socialist" narratives). What's doubly frustrating about that particular issue is that, given that possession is 9/10ths of the law, I don't see what Korea has to worry about vis-a-vis Dokdo, anyway. I don't foresee Japan starting a war over it.
The other thing that bothers me a great deal about these presentations is that whenever they make a presentation of hangeul (Korea's writing system), there tend to be manifold linguistic inaccuracies that grate on my sensibilities as a linguist. There is, foremost, the inevitable confusion between the ideas of "writing system" and "language," as in "King Sejong invented the Korean Language." Further, the discussions of the actual writing system are full of terminology that is inappropriate for linguistic description: "a perfect match to the Korean sound system" (clearly not true, phonologically – consider as one example the issue of vowel length which is not written but which is phonemic, or the question of the phonemic -ㅅ- inserted between morphemes sometimes). Worse, the idea that Hangeul is able to represent "the most different sounds" is risible – the number of sounds represented by a given writing system is always a match for a given language's sound system, with whatever kludges are necessary to make it possible – e.g. diacritics, etc. Therefore the writing system that represents the most sounds would be the language with the most distinct phonemic sounds – perhaps Georgian?
Hm. So that's a bit of a rant, I guess. The only other negative were several of the foreign teachers themselves – it's inevitable when you have a gathering of nearly 700 foreign hagwon teachers in one place that you will get to see not only the high quality ones but a few of the bad apples, too – and there are definitely a few. One gentleman stood up during a question-and-answer session with an immigration official and asked why it was "the government's business" to know so much about us foreign workers…. um, excuse me, did you happen to notice you were a guest in this country? Did you happen to read the Korean constitution, which guarantees a number of rights — to citizens?You're not in that category. You can ponder why Korea doesn't grant those rights to non-citizens, but I'm not sure the lowly immigration official is the one to ask about it.
Having said that, I will return to the "other parts" of the seminar, yesterday. Except for the cultural presentations (which were only about 30% of the time), I was actually quite impressed with the quality of what was done. I was not, in fact, bored, as I'd expected to be. There was a dance/martial arts demo that was quite professional, there were several awards presented to some teachers, there were speeches by two foreign teachers that were mildly interesting, and there was the charismatic professor of education whom I mentioned yesterday.
[daily log: walking to the store]
I went to a provincial government-mandated "seminar" for foreign English teachers (e.g. E2 visa holders) who work at hagwon, as I do. Somehow, although I don't think it's a new law, I've always managed to avoid having to go for one reason or another (for example last year, I had cancer – heh).
It wasn't as bad as it could have been, though I was plenty turned off by the stream of almost jingoistic Korean semi-revanchism of the cultural component of the "training." In fact, though, the part actually dedicated to teaching was pretty well done, mostly focusing broad based, inspirational aspects of "why we're teaching." The main speaker, a woman named Kim Jiyeong who has been a USC TESOL professor as well as a consultant to the Korean Education Ministry, had a substantial amount of charisma.
The worst part of the whole program was the fact that it was in Ansan, which is in the far southwest suburbs of Seoul. Consequently, to attend a 3 and a half hour seminar I spent roughly 5 hours on the subway – 2 and half hours each way. And I had to wake up at 6 am in order to get there on time, which is hard given my normal work schedule.
Anyway. I was tired when I got home, but didn't want to sleep, because it would mess me up. I forced myself to stay awake all afternoon and watched humorous videos on the internets.
[daily log: walking, 4 km]
A "type 6" TOEFL speaking question requires the answerer to summerize some kind of classroom-style lecture on an academic topic. We listened to a fairly simplistic passage about global warming. There is a kind of shorthand in TOEFL answers where one refers to the lecturer as "the professor" – I don't really like this style but it is encouraged by the sample answers in our textbooks, so I go with the flow.
My student Tom had a kind of brain-freeze and was unable to answer very well. So he said something like this:
The professor loved his father. His father died. Because of global warming. It was very sad. Something to do with hairspray. And carbon dioxide. Yeah. Carbon dioxide. So sad.
I had to laugh. That would get a very low score. But somehow I couldn't feel upset. It was funny.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
I guess my problem with infinitely delayed posts from my phone continues: I posted from my phone while I was at the hospital, and it never showed up. Rather than post it again and then have it show up 36 hours later and thus have a duplicate, this post serves as a placeholder to show I am still alive until such time as that post from my phone actually shows up. Oh… and by the way… argh.
Update: I guess that email-based post will never happen. Or, perhaps by posting it here, that guarantees it will show up immediately. I’m deeply annoyed with my blog-hosting company now, but I’m frankly too lazy to bother opening a help ticket, since they’ve never been helpful in the past. I’ll just deal with it.
Meanwhile, here is the gist of my original post from yesterday at the hospital – it wasn’t really that interesting:
Caveat: Been there done that
It becomes almost routine after so many times: a return visit to good ol’ room 12. Later I will have a consult with reassuring Dr Cho and his disconcerting German accent.
The conclusion was: “nothing there to see.” Which is to say, no evidence of any kind of metastasis. So I get to stay alive for some more time.
[daily log: walking, 7.5 km]
I ran across an article about hippies-as-defense-contractors in Afghanistan, that I found compelling and read at one sitting, which with longer-form journalism as found on the web really isn't that common for me. More typically these days, I simply skim an article or will read it in parts over some period of time.
The article isn't that new – it dates from over a year ago – and the material it treats seems rather like the conceit to a novel rather than a simple journalistic account of something the really happened… it's a kind of William Gibsonesque or Thomas Pynchonesque take on the Afghan War. So it is like reading some kind of fiction, but I suspect it is mostly true. It almost (I said only "almost") makes me imagine going to Afghanistan. Perhaps if my inner demon metastasized, I would – just for a last hurrah.
Speaking of which, I get to spend tomorrow mid-day (before work) at the hospital, getting a regularly-scheduled CT scan and check-up. I always feel nervous for these things, even though it's essentially just a roll-of-the-die.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
Something was striking about this story. When they had the "dog salmon," (what's also called chum salmon), they had immortality. When the salmon were gone, then death returned.
[1]
A woman and her sweetheart loved each other very much. But the woman's brothers disliked (the man). Finally they killed the man.
[2]
You see, (the couple) had hid for a long time in a cave. So when they buried him (there), then the woman went there. And she lay on top of the corpse. Finally she got sick, the corpse was swelling. And she said, "I'm sick, let me go out!"
[3]
Then when she slept, she dreamed about him. And he said, "Is it true that you grieve for me?" And he said, "If it is true, let me tell you what to do. You must go there where we used to stay, in the cave. You will see a grave there. And you will see two eyes float around. You mustn't be afraid of me. You mustn't run.
[4]
So she went there. And she saw that. And suddenly (a voice) spoke. And it said, "You must weave a burden basket. And you must make many dresses. When you finish, you will see a buzzard sit there on top of a rock. You must follow it. You see, that is the bird of the dead."
[5]
And so then she wove. And she said to a woman, "Let's go together!" She was her friend. So she too wove and made the dresses.
[6]
Then they finished. So they left. And they saw the buzzard. So they followed it. And they traveled, it was many days that they traveled. They were following the buzzard that way. And sometimes it was a brushy place where they traveled, their dresses got torn.
[7]
Finally they arrived, the country was beautiful and green. And someone rowed to meet them and landed them on the other shore. And they saw two old women there. And (the old woman) said, "Look, the one you are wandering around for is making a deerskin dance uphill. Why is it that you have come here? People with bones (i.e., live people) don't come here. Come on, let's hide you! Let them not see you!
[8]
So they hid them. So they stayed there for a little while. Then they were told, "Go back home!" And they were given dried salmon. There it was dog salmon. You see, they call dog salmon "dead-man's salmon." And they were told, "When a person dies, you must rub this on his lips. You see, he will come back to life."
[9]
So (the girls) went back home. They traveled back again that way. The buzzard brought them back. So when they returned to this world, they are the ones who did as it is done in the land of the dead.
[10]
Finally no person died, finally the people filled up the earth. Then when the salmon was all gone, they died.
– Mammie Oldfield, in William Bright's The Karok Language (1957), pp. 266-269, Text 58
Found at Kuruk online texts. I didn't presume to include the original, although I was tempted.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
This is a complex sentence because it has a subordinate clause.
[daily log: walking, 5.5 km]
There is an analog computer, over a hundred years old, that does Fourier Analysis – a key underlying mathematical component of all digital entertainment. I sorta understand this.
Shades of a steampunk alterna-now are imaginable.
[daily log: intra-apartmental oscillation]
I was almost feeling healthier, yesterday (recovering from that never-ending flu that nailed me a few weeks ago), but today I felt lousy. I have been sleeping very badly, lately. I will sleep a few hours but then wake up wide awake and unable to go back to sleep. So for today I just tried to relax.
I have been reading history. I may even finish a book this weekend.
What I'm listening to right now.
King Tuff, "Black Moon Spell."
Shakespearean insult du jour:
Were I like thee, I would throw away myself. —from “Timon of Athens”
[daily log: walking, 2 km]
