If you know me well, you know that I have a strange love for language – not just living language or specific languages, but also language as an abstraction. When I was still quite young, this interest in language as an abstraction showed itself in the form of a past time of inventing made-up languages – by the time I was nine I had invented some rather elaborate ones, no doubt under the influence of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and others.
One in particular, which I recall I called Urka, included complex and very un-English grammatical rules, intentionally obscure irregular word forms, carefully crafted lists of vocabulary purged of anything that might appear cognate to English, and its own writing system. I had attributed this language to an imaginary race of fuzzy, toothy beings for whom I also invented strange cultural practices and to whom I granted a broad commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution. I was such an idealist.
Anyway, I was reminded of Urka recently, as I came to one of those eerie, deja-vu realizations. I was studying my Korean, a bit, and it suddenly struck me – perhaps my weird interest and fascination with Korean lies in the fact that it is the real world language that most closely resembles old Urka, with its conflation of adjective/verb, plethora of grammatical particles, emminently logical and strictly phonological writing system.
Not everything is the same, of course – in particular, the Urka writing system was more like one of the semitic abjads (i.e. a system that relegates vowels to optional diacritics, like Arabic or Hebrew) than the hangeul syllabary. And visually of a style like, say, Sanskrit. Nevertheless, in retrospect I now remember such a thought (i.e. the striking resemblances between Urka and Korean) occurring to me almost 20 years ago, sitting in a comparative grammar class as a linguistics major in college, when I was first exposed some of the delicious oddities of Korean grammar, if only at an abstract level – which is to say that, like many linguists, I have known for 20 years about the conflation of verbs and adjectives in Korean, yet I only actually bothered to learn an actual verb or adjective about a year and a half ago.
Anyway, as I walked back to the subway from the bookstore I found yesterday, I was suddenly struck by this weird insight: Korean is my Urka. I hadn’t thought of that, last year as I studied in college, but I must have realized it at some level, as I began obsessing about wanting to try to learn the language.
I was surfing the web last night, and found a strange list some guy had put together, in which he would give “difficulty ratings” to various languages, with regard to how easy or hard they are to learn for English speakers. These ratings were in the form of a number, one to five, of “cacti” – kind of like granting stars to restaurants. And he said something to the effect that Korean was definitely a five cacti language. And another thought this provoked in me, that perhaps my interest in trying to learn Korean lies more in my sheer perverse interest for trying deliberately difficult things, at least intellectually.
Note that above, I have been careful to say “try to learn” rather than “to learn” – I’ve been feeling discouraged about my potential for success, lately: feeling overwhelmed by the difficulties of pronunciation, of sorting out the wacky vowels when listening, the inevitable infinite lists of new words.
안녕히 가세요!
Caveat: Fall
Thursday was windy and rainy, but there was an unexpected coolness to the air, and the wind was from the northwest. It tasted of fall, for the first time, I thought. Friday was partly clear and breezy, and the humidity had dropped substantially. I keep looking for changing tree colors, but I think that happens later here than in Minnesota.
I went into Seoul yesterday, and walked around. I really love this city, I’ve decided. An infinite collection of neighborhoods. I started walking at Gyeongbokgang, the old palace at the north end of the old city, where the kings ruled during the golden age of Korean civilization in the 1400s. Seoul was founded to be a new capital in the 1300s, and this palace was the first and largest built, though later dynasties and regencies moved to other palaces.
I ended up walking all the way to Itaewon, the touristy area east of Yongsan, which is the old military base used by the Japanese during their occupation/colonization and subsequently by the Americans. Slowly, pieces of real estate have been repatriated, so the base is much smaller than it was even when I was here in 91 – for one thing, the golf course was given back and turned into a park. But the base is still huge, and the long walls topped with concertina wire are eerie in the midst of the bustling city. The base has often been a point of contention, and the intention is to eventually repatriate all of it and have the American Forces Korea headquarted elsewhere. It seems a recurring imperial pattern of the Americans, not really in keeping with the stated objectives of milatary operation, that our army often makes the former rulers’ palaces and bases into their headquarters – think of the Green Zone in Baghdad. And I doubt it is ever a very smart idea – leads to unnecessary resentments among the people being “assisted.”
I saw the war memorial. I think this is new… I don’t remember it at all. It’s quite monolithic, and saw the Namsan tower looming in the background, lighting up the night.
So Itaewon is mind-blowing. That inescapable smell of “down-range” (the old military slang for “off-base entertainment zones”): leather and food. And lots of Americans – not just off-duty soldiers, but hippies and tourists too. Stores and nice restaurants. And, surprisingly, zillions of thirdworld immigrants – this was unexpected and new to me. I would hazard a guess that Koreans are a minority in the area. Especially south of the main drag, I swear it was “little Africa,” with Nigerians and Congolese and I overheard plenty of Arabic too.
The contrast of American crewcut soldiers buying trinkets from a middle-eastern-looking, long-bearded, youthful vendor in Itaewon was strange.
I was trying to find a foreign bookstore Marlene (from work) had mentioned – still shopping for a place to get my weekly fix of news and commentary magazines. I didn’t see it – might go back in today and spend less time wandering aimlessly, and more time trying to follow the directions she gave me.
Caveat: Dead Zone
The last several days have been a dead zone. After getting my new phone on Saturday, I went home with grand ambitions to enjoy my long weekend. Instead, I vegetated in bed with a cough and fever, taking medicine and vitamins and feeling useless. I was unable to concentrate on writing or reading or even surfing the web. I guess I made it through a few chapters of Los Dioses de Marte, a Edgar Rice Burroughs novel I'm reading (John Carter: Gods of Mars, translated to Spanish). I monkied around a bit making lists of vocabulary I should be memorizing, from my Korean textbook. But mostly, just pure vegetable state.
I'm finally feeling a bit better today. I made it to the store last night to buy some fresh tomatoes and broccoli, and have been craving some pasta which I'm preparing to go with these.
So, lurking in my apateu, I haven't been much of a cultural explorer, these days. Feel like I'm not exploiting the opportunity, but I remind myself, I'm here for at least a year – I'll get better and have a chance to do plenty of exploring.
Caveat: Time flies when you’re hacking up a lung
Well… I haven't done much except work and sleep, the last couple days. Letting this headcold I've got run its course….
But I suddenly have an unexpected long weekend – turns out this is Korean Thanksgiving holiday (Chuseok), this weekend. So that gives me some time to get healthy again.
I got my cellphone, now! I am trying to figure out how to use it. The manual has about 6 pages in English, the rest is in Korean. Time to break out the dictionary, again – just like using the washing machine.
I was planning to go out and do a little photo-essay of my neighborhood today – cover the walk from my apateu to work, all the buildings and avenues and public statuary and stores. But I'm just not feeling up to it. I'll relax and surf the internet with my new fast DSL connection, and go to sleep early I think. Maybe tomorrow.
More later.
Caveat: Preciouse; Dreams; Alienation
"Happy ingredient for happy meal with preciouse [sic] family. Good ingredient makes delicious meal!" – this was on a packet of garlic powder I bought at the Homever store. I went there last night, having decided to buy some makings for some pasta, and stock up on orange juice and the little cans of cold coffee I'm becoming addicted to.
Last night I had a dream – what I call synthetic, not in the contemporary connotation of "artificial" but in the etymological sense of a compositional bringing-together of many disparate elements. The dream was very vivid and the most remarkable I've had in some time – perhaps the touch of fever from this cold I've got?
As I remember it, the dream picks up in medias res with Michelle insisting on a "big wedding" – but the setting is here in Ilsan, Korea – more or less. And it's not like this dream is taking place in the past, exactly, though there are a lot of people around from different points in my life – family, friends, etc.
I'm really disconcerted by the idea of a wedding of any kind, and so I argue back, "but… we're already married." This seems like an important and incontrovertible point; I feel confident this will win the argument. Michelle nevertheless persists, complaining that we never had a "real" wedding, and, well, it's her due, somehow. I get less diplomatic, and decide the only way to win this argument is to bring up the unmentionable: "but… you're dead, Michelle." How can she argue against that?
But Michelle says, seriously, without a pause, "we're ALL dead, Jared."
This leaves me stunned and almost paralyzed – I feel like a minor character in Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo (the absolute greatest Mexican novel, period). So in this stunned state, the huge wedding proceeds. The location is a vast, palatial hotel located incongrously out on the tidal mud flats near the Incheon airport. Very modern, full of those Korean luxury decorative touches – statuary in poor taste, mirrored walls, faux marble floors, fountains. I become aware that both Randy and Jeffrey are present – contemporary versions of them, not old versions: Jeff is clearly a grown man, somewhat disgusted and definitely uninterested by the goings-on.
The ceremony itself is quite hazy, but I recall feeling very upset to find an orthodox rabbi officiating (where'd this guy come from?), and I remember that the soundtrack included a pop song by Madonna – a haunting bit whose name I don't recall [update – it's "Ray of Light"], but I have a vivid memory of the first time I heard this song: I was in the Burger King in Craig, Alaska, in October, 1998 – nice bit of temporal indexing by the dream-maker, eh?
After the ceremony, but before the reception, Michelle wants to take a walk, to look at the chemical plant next door. Her fascination with machines and factories… you know. But we end up out on the mud flats; we're barefoot. There are people selling things in little stands – shoes, cell phones, clothing – like at any busy street in Korea, or Mexico, for that matter. The mud is firm – really it's like the way sand feels on the beach, when the waves roll back and leave the sand bubbling and wet. I remember thinking this is not the way I would expect the mud flats out by Incheon to feel.
We see a boy flying a kite. It's a younger Jeffrey. Michelle takes my hand, and announces: "Jared, did you know that I can fly?" Of course I'm skeptical. But she simply raises her arms, still holding my hand, and begins to fly. I'm taken along with her. We circle over the chemical plant, and Michelle waxes poetic about the processes involved, all the pipes and distillation columns and such. We circle among some birds.
Some time later, I'm at the reception, which is going well – but Michelle is missing. Randy is roaringly drunk. The dream ends with Randy and I wandering through the enormous hotel looking for a restroom, but unable to find one – my Korean is not adequate to the task of asking about one, and it seems in poor taste to try to mime the necessity to the attendants we find.
End of dream.
This morning I went to the immigration office, took a number, and waited. The number on the display read 55… the number on my ticket said 112. The employees went to lunch, came back, I kept waiting. Finally, after 3 hours, it was my turn – it took 30 seconds for them to hand me back my passport and give me my new alien card. Now, I'm a LEGAL ALIEN. This is so… amazing.
It was raining very hard. There's a place that I walk by where there's a cat I've seen – it has a collar, so I think it might be owned, but it seems kind of feral. I saw it one night, chasing a rabbit into some bushes. I wonder what it's like to be a cat in such an intensely human environment, so densely populated with apartment buildings and businesses?
Caveat: Snort
Yesterday was amazingly clear, sunny, lower humidity with a strong north breeze, though still quite warm. Today dawned with drizzle and overcast, however.
I am definitely sick – just cold symptoms but nevertheless unpleasant: sore throat, fever, aches – you know the deal. So I'm not going to be doing a lot, except work and sleep, I think. Just try to get better. I often get sick during the 3rd week of extensive travels – it's like my body suddenly realizes, "hey, the environment's changed" and goes on strike, or something?
Caveat: Mexican Independence
Happy Mexican Independence day. Or, really, days – the Mexicans cleverly place their anniversary at midnight of September 15th (this is el grito del padre Hidalgo, in 1810), thus ensuring they have two back-to-back holidays each year, the 15th and 16th.
I've joked that one of the reasons I have always felt such a resonance with Mexican culture is because of the coincidence of el grito with my birthday. And because I'm now living on Korean Standard time, I decided that, properly speaking, I should celebrate today (16th) since that's when 21:15 Pacific time is actually occurring. Well, whatever.
To celebrate, I did a load of laundry, listened to internet radio (KCRW of Santa Monica, then the BBC News), and had some ramyeon with cabbage chopped into it. I'm actually feeling a bit under the weather, like an incipient cold or flu, so I've decided not to go off exploring or challenging myself today, but just kind of lurk hermitwise in my apateu.
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon amidst the infinite grid of globalized small-retailer capitalism that is the Myeongdong neighborhood of downtown Seoul: people watching, strolling, looking for a bookshop that would give me a fix of my favorite magazine, The Economist (but in this venture, failing). A man stopped me and asked in halting English if he could interview me – he was holding a video camera. I almost said yes, but suddenly an attack of shyness made me shake my head and decline politely. I had visions of myself as some kind of online video spectacle, the hapless foreigner abroad in Korea.
I'm trying to discipline myself and drag out my Korean textbook that I brought with me, thinking I must work on building my vocabulary and making sure I know what to do with those verbs. But I'm having a bit of a muddle with inertia, and reassure myself I have plenty of time to work on this.
Annyeonghi gaseyo.
Caveat: Unusual Things
I saw several unusual things today.
Walking to work, I saw a right-hand drive SUV. I thought maybe it was from Japan – there are auto ferries between Busan and Shimonoseki – but the car had local license plates, so who knows? perhaps just someone's eccentricity?
Then I saw a woman carrying a large bag of vegetables on her head. It took me a few moments to realize this was unusual. It might be that I'm in a very middle-class part of Korea, now, but this is not a common sight. Yet my recollection of traveling around the country back in 91 is that there were women with large bags of vegetables on their heads everywhere. So either I'm in the wrong place to see such things, or there have been radical changes in Korean bulk vegetable transport over the last 16 years.
After work it was raining hard. Fortunately, I had brought my umbrella "just in case," but even still, with the wind and rain, I was rather wet by the time I got home last night at around 11.
But, walking home, I saw a female bus driver. I actually did a double take. I remember an exchange with my dad when we were in Mexico in July about the notable absence of female bus and truck drivers there, and just the other day I'd been reflecting that the same certainly applies here. So, that was an unusual thing, too.
Finally, as I crossed the last major street on my way home last night, dodging raindrops and trundling buses (I've been wondering if there's some kind of traffic-law exemption for buses, here, given how often they run red lights and make contra-indicated right turns), I saw a new MINI and a new Beetle, both dark blue – I shouldn't be surprised, as BMW has dealer outlets here, but I haven't seen any VW dealers yet, and this was the first one of each vehicle that I'd seen here.
These are very banal "unusual" things, but I guess I'm groping for something to write about.
I love the rain – I went to sleep to the sound of the rain through the open windows of my little apateu (=apartment).
This morning, I've been reading Lucian's A True Story – I may have read this a long time ago, but I don't recall, and it was one of the "books in progress" that I threw into my small "books to take with me" pile (which my friends Mark and Amy ended up mailing to me because I couldn't fit them into my luggage, but I wish I'd managed to fit them in, as mailing books to Korea is not a discount proposition).
Lucian of Samosata is one of the most amazing writers of all time. The True Story is a veritable 2nd century work of fantasy fiction, in which he explicitly states it the only true thing he will say is that it's all untrue. My interest in Lucian goes back years, and interrelates with my work in grad school on Cervantes, who clearly was at some level familiar with works by Lucian and his late classical imitators. In tone and style, it actually reminds me most of something like Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth.
Not sure what I'm doing today. Going into Seoul today, but what to do? Want to look for some postcards and/or souvenirs for my nephews, Jameson and Dylan, and perhaps for others, too.
Caveat: And thems the rules
Almost two weeks here, now – the newness begins to wear off.
Walking home last night, I felt tired. There was that foggy haze hanging among trees and over streets, that you see with high humidity on hot nights, as the ground cools faster than the air. I guess I had my first "bad day" yesterday, as the routine is established and I begin to take certain things for granted, and then something goes amiss. Just this one group of kids (a medium-ability cohort called 왹고-2) who seemed profoundly uninterested, and couldn't stop chattering among themselves, checking their cellphones, writing notes….
Relative to my experience teaching in the U.S. (which was years ago, and in a fairly privileged private school, admittedly), there are very few disciplinary problems with kids here, but it still was getting to me. It doesn't help that the book we're working in seems a little "easy" for them, and that they seem uninterested in the topics being covered (the text tries to be "hip," providing articles covering things like video games and the internet, but in the area of computers and the internet, a few years amounts to decades, so the book's 2003 publish date means that the material being covered is ancient history as far as these kids are concerned).
Well, anyway, I tried to break up all the chattering pairs and roughhousing triplets, moving the seating arrangement around – this was the first time I'd done such a thing, and the reaction was sobering: suddenly the class went from carefree and chattering but entirely unfocused to somber, very focused, and with a palpable atmosphere of teenage resentment. They literally sat there glowering at me, with a sudden peculiar solidarity that forgot all their internecine squabbles and tribal affiliations of moments before. Ah well. It was bound to happen sooner or later – and I'm not about to back down – that's what they hope to achieve, of course. I know enough about classroom management to understand that the main thing is to be predictable and consistent – being a new teacher, I'm still showing them my boundaries and tolerances and expectations, and to back down would be handing them an irrevocable victory.
But still, it left me in a gloomy state of mind as I walked home later. Let's see how things go today.
Caveat: Alone in a crowd
Many people express surprise and befuddlement when the learn how much I do things alone "for fun." On Monday, when I was talking with Danny (the school director) about what I'd done over the weekend, I told how I'd gone into Insa-dong and explored, walking around and seeing the streets and neighborhoods and crowds everywhere.
"By yourself?" he asked. "Just looking around?"
I said yes, and his response was a shrug indicating discomfort with the idea, and he muttered "strange." This is not just a cultural-based response, as I have had similar reactions from North Americans, too, or any other group. I guess I am strange. But I genuinely like being alone – and most especially – perhaps paradoxically – I like it best when in a crowd: a mall, a busy street, in the subway or on a bus. I don't really know how to explain it.
Being really alone is certainly less pleasing to me – as when I was living on my uncle Arthur's land in Alaska for 4 months, or even sitting about my apartment here. Somehow, when not surrounded by others, being alone causes me to be too introspective, and I can go off on unproductive meditative tangents.
And it's not that I dislike being around people in a more social way – one of the reasons I seem to like teaching is that it does give me lots of structured opportunities interact with others. But what most people don't GET about me is that I really am a very shy person – I have gotten so very good at seeming extroverted and self-confident in social (especially work) environments that they find it implausible that I'm actually shy.
So my enjoyment of being alone in crowds is, I suppose, a compromise position – a way to be around people but without feeling called upon uncomfortably to interact with people I don't know well. And I'm such a consummate people observer – a sort of cultural explorer, I think I called it at some point – that sitting or walking among a crowd gives me plenty to think about.
Well, this is a sort of rambling, introspective entry. But I've been thinking about it, I guess.
Caveat: Heat
It's been hot the last few days… with the monsoon clouds absent, the air gets hot and steamy, like the East Coast of the US in summer. Last night, walking home from work, the humidity was so high it congealed into fog hanging between the highrises and hovering over the boulevards.
Some people have asked what I eat, here.
Let's see… in the spirit of the rather reduced calorie intake I've been practicing the last year or so in Minnesota, I still try to eat less than I crave. It's difficult, but important to keeping my weight under control. For breakfast I have fruit – an apple or orange or peach, and maybe some bread or crackers, and one of those cold canned coffees so popular here. Right before leaving for work I have a quick meal of ramyeon (instant ramen noodles) with boricha (barley tea – an odd-tasting tea concoction served cold, kind of grows on you). I like some of the flavors of ramyeon available, including kimchi and a barley/seaweed thing I found. I always add even more hot pepper sauce than is already in the mix. My main meal is at work, as there is always lots of food around that can be eaten during break (around 5.30-6pm). Generally bibimbap (rice with bits of meat, fried egg, various veggies), or kimbap (rice wrapped in seaweed, japanese-roll style but with fragments of cucumber, spam, fruit, etc., inside). Lately, something called sundubu has grown on me quickly – a seafood and tofu soup, very spicy and lighter. One day, Diane brought some home-made american-style spaghetti that was quite tasty. Lastly, when I get home I have some fruit juice, maybe a diet coke or cold coffee, and some yogurt. Is this interesting? Not sure… but when more than one person asks, via email, I figure it's time to put into this blog thingy.
My wireless internet (wifi) that I've freeloading at my apartment has proved less reliable the last few days… perhaps they're catching on? I definitely downloaded a big chunk of updateware over the weekend with my flurry of OS reinstallations. Anyway, I'm at the school plugged into a wired internet connection with my laptop. I may have to look into buying a wifi router and setting it up at the school so I can roam here with my laptop. That would be convenient, probably worth the investment.
Caveat: Computerlessness
Well, I got ambitious Saturday night, and decided to try to "fix" a few of the small things that have been annoying me about my triple-boot laptop. Consequence: I ended up reinstalling all three operating systems yesterday and this morning, and in the meantime, I was, naturally, without a computer. Ah well.
The problem with the triple boot config is the battle of the bootloaders… still trying to resolve. But I've got all three running again, but now the Vista bootloader is dominant, whereas before I had the GRUB (linux) one running the show – not sure I like this better. But I did get my "factory original" Vista Business edition working on the laptop on its own sector again – so that's a big step in the right direction.
Yesterday, taking a break from this computer stuff, I took the subway into Seoul and wandered around Insa-dong (a downtown neighborhood) a little bit. Perhaps, like when I lived in Mexico City 20 years ago, I could make a goal to eventually visit and explore the surroundings of every stop in the Seoul Metro. This would be very ambitious, but I may try it.
Caveat: Internet Radio
The internet is an amazing thing. I can listen to radio stations in Minnesota, Los Angeles, or Mexico City, from where I am right now. And I do. I've been surfing around the internet radio world this morning, found a very strange, eclectic station in Bilbao, Spain, that played Aaron Copeland one minute and some kind of Catalan punk the next. And then the Star Wars theme.
Yesterday was rainy, today is sunny – first really sunny day here – most days have been partly cloudy or overcast. And it's Friday, so I'll get my first non-jet-lagged day off, tomorrow, a chance to get settled, go exploring, whatever. Looking forward to it. Not much to say. Several people have accused me of being terribly "impersonal" here in this blog, but I guess I just don't know who is in my audience… could be anyone, right? And in at least two occasions, utter strangers have sent me little comments on one thing or another. So I guess that functions as a sort of constraint on my tone. I'll save the personal stuff, as appropriate, for emails, I guess.
I was online a few hours ago and got a surprise IM (instant message) from a former coworker, Aurel, from HealthSmart (the Long Beach company I worked for up through April). I hadn't heard from him since he left the company about a year ago. So now, he's making hoards of money doing consulting – a Romanian-Canadian with a definite genius level of programming skill. I was glad to hear he was doing well. He didn't seem that surprised that I'd changed careers – I suppose it doesn't take knowing me that long to realize the extent of my wanderlust, eh?
Caveat: Teaching
I really am glad to be teaching. Do I sound like I'm trying to convince myself? Maybe I'm at that stage where I'm asking myself, what have I gotten myself into? Really, it's cool to be teaching again, but currently feeling a bit overwhelmed – I really do want to do a good job.
So Tuesday was Gary's last day – he is/was my predecessor. Several of us teachers, along with Gary and the two directors/owners of the hagwon (academy) went out for food and drinks after work – since this is an afternoon academy, that means we were out from around 11 pm through 3 am. But Korea is definitely a night-owl culture, and many bars and restaurants and such are open very late. Social drinking is, of course, extremely pervasive, but I resisted the suggestions of soju (korean native vodka-type stuff) or beer and stuck with saida ("cider" = really this is 7-up or something like that).
But there's nothing like seeing your coworkers get drunk for getting to know them. Ha. So, Gary was the raison d'etre of the party, and life of the party too – the life of any party, such an expansive and energetic personality. Grace is a korean-canadian, fully bilingual, and has been with the school since it's founding, 4-5 years ago. Marly, a maori new zealander who's been around for about a year, and seems quite competent at teaching and is quite friendly. Lastly, Danny and his wife Diane are the owners/founders of the academy, a korean couple who lived in south africa for some years. So they're my "bosses." I really think Gary was right, I've landed in a good spot -they seem very conscientious and dedicated to providing a quality product to their students. I met an "alum" of the school Tuesday afternoon, who was visiting but was now enrolled at the University of Chicago – that speaks pretty well for the skills and competency imbued, given the high standards and reputation of that school.
So we stayed out till about 3 am, but since work starts at 2 pm, this is not really a problem. I feel for the students, who essentially go to school from 7 am to 11 pm (with food breaks, I guess) – public school in the morning, hagwon in the afternoon. And this practice is universal. No wonder Korea kicks U.S. ass in educational statistics, right?
Yesterday Danny and I drove to an immigration office, where I had to surrender my passport in order to get an "alien card" - I've always wanted to have my alienation confirmed bureaucratically. I feel naked without the passport, but I have a little piece of paper that I use as an ID, meanwhile, and I should get the card in 2 weeks, and this will allow me to do things like get my own cell phone, bank account, DSL connection, etc – all the accouterments of modern life.
I am, by far, the "old man" here, but I felt comfortable with these people and I'm feeling optimistic.
I have approximately 13 classes, most of which meet twice a week and several meet three times a week. I'll tell more about my schedule and students later, as I get to know things – for now I'm just going to go "by the book" and follow Gary's lead (to the extent I can make sense of his notes – heh) and Danny and Diane's curricula.
Given the quantities of free food on offer at work, and the fact that my rent is paid for, I can already tell that I'm going to be hard put to spend my earnings here – but that's good, I guess.
One piece of disappointing news: my vacation schedule is such that I probably won't be able to take any long excursions out of Korea – the 2 weeks are distributed across the calendar and there's not a lot of flexibility. So I guess people will have to come visit me, instead. I will have weekends free, regardless, and South Korea is small enough that you can see most any part of it in a weekend. But the slow boat to China, traipsing off to Darwin and points south, and other adventures will have to wait, it seems.
Caveat: Tuesday Morning
A few blocks south of here there is a large park with a Lake in it. Everyone seems to call it the Lake Park – I’m not sure if this an official name or not. I walked down there this morning, and there’s a nice little pedestrian bridge that gives some good views of the area. Below are 5 photos all taken from basically the same exact spot standing on this pedestrian bridge connecting the Ilsan neighborhood to this large park.
Looking east (well, kinda east-north-east, I think) there’s this weird looking bit of public art on the large plaza on the north side of the boulevard between Ilsan and the park.
Looking north you can see the Homever store I mentioned (a Walmarty sorta place), and the little Jeongbalsan hill. My apartment building is a few blocks behind the Homever store, and the subway station is a few blocks toward the little hill.
Looking northwest, North Korea is only about 20 km thataway – after you go through Munsan on highway 1, which is where I was stationed in the US Army.
Looking southwest, toward the Han River and then Incheon (which is where the international airport is, about 25 km), and then the West Sea (also called Yellow Sea) and, much beyond, Qingdao and Shanghai.
Looking southeast, toward downtown Seoul (about 25 km) – it’s city all the way.
In other news, I am coming to the stunning realization that most Koreans don’t know the names of their streets, and don’t particularly care – they often don’t put signs, they don’t put the names on maps, etc.. This is difficult for someone like me, who has always loved being able to study a map and then navegate around on this basis, and it’s surprising to me that it’s taken me so long to realize this. Regardless, it leads to an interesting, networked-node sort of view of the world, an interconnected web of buildings and landmarks on nodes, with unnamed spaces connecting them. I’ll get the hang of it, but getting directions is, well… interesting.
Caveat: A tough act to follow
Location: Ilsan-gu
Soundtrack: crickets, and morning city noise
The teacher whom I'm replacing is named Gary. He's a very energetic, dynamic guy from Yorkshire. I get to spend the next two days watching and working with him before he leaves, so there's an overlap to provide some transition for the students and for me. There are two cohorts of students – a Monday/Wednesday/Friday group and a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday group, each subdivided into classes based on age and relative mastery of English – so two days of overlap provides at least one day of time with both teachers for each of the classes I'll be doing.
Abilities range from lower level "elementary" students to quite advanced "middle school" students. I put the quotes as I think the terms aren't quite applicable as we would conceive them in the U.S. – the "elementary" are what I would think of a "middle school" – age 10 to 13 roughly, while "middle school" are more like high schoolers – age 13-16. The oldest student is 17 I think. The whole thing is compounded by the fact that Koreans are all 1 year "older," because they count the day of one's birth as the "first" birthday, and when they report their age to you, you never know whether they're subtracting that extra year because they know that we calculate from zero, or if they've forgotten and are doing a straight translation.
The advanced students are quite advanced – perfectly capable of having complex conversations on just about any topic, and toward the end of the evening Gary and I found ourselves enmeshed in a "discussion" (with the "T2" group) of Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee" that would do a group of American college freshmen credit. I put "discussion" in quotes as the whole classroom structure is, nevertheless, much more teacher-centered than I'm used to from the states – more "question and answer" than discussion. And no doubt some of this I'll just have to adapt to, but other aspects I may begin to try to change as I get settled into the academy.
Gary and I walked down to a Dunkin Donuts (yes, they have those) on break and got some coffee. He told me I had been very lucky, as I had landed in the best hagwon ("after-school academy") in Ilsan (and there are apparently 100's, many of which he's taught in over the last 6 years. 6 years! Anyway, of course I asked "so why are you leaving?" and he explained that he and his wife are moving to southern Seoul (she's soon having a baby) and that the commute out to Ilsan would just be too much. It's pretty clear that he's on great terms with the other staff members of the school and he said Danny (the director) is quite professional.
Most notably (in my opinion) he's on amazing terms with the students. After we finished that last class of the evening we walked out into the hall and all the more advanced students were lining the hall to say "goodbye." Many of them had cut out fat "tear drops" of blue paper and glued them to their cheeks ("see, we're crying because you're leaving" they explained), and they presented Gary with these large posters which everyone had signed with little paragraphs or anecdotes written with them, sort of the way kids sign yearbooks for each other in the U.S. None of the staff were aware the students had prepared this "farewell party" for Gary. I was touched and impressed by their degree of devotion to this guy.
He will be a tough act to follow.
The picture above shows my building, Urim Bobo County I. Within blocks there is a McDonalds, a Burger King across the street from the McDonalds, a Starbucks, a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf franchise across the street from the Starbucks, a Homever (this is, roughly, a Carrefour store – and Carrefour is just French for Wal-Mart). All amazingly high density. But so far, I haven't even eaten in a restaurant (at 3 days, probably already some kind of record for me, at least when being abroad) – I've bought food (yogurt, ramyeon, fruit) and eaten in my little apartment, and there's also apparently a lot of free food flying around the school, too – last night I had some cold Bibimbap for dinner (my favorite Korean staple). I have gone to the Homever store to get some houseold supplies and to be able to shop for food without overstretching my almost non-existent vocabulary.
Ok, well… day 3 begins now. More later.
Caveat: Korea
Location: 경기도 일산구 (Ilsan-gu, Gyeonggi-do)
Soundtrack: mostly sounds of crickets, cicadas, citysounds
I really meant to post more, sooner. I am entering my 2nd day here in Korea. I start my teaching job later this morning. Right now it’s 3 am and I’m unable to sleep, due to the confusion induced by the time-zone change. But I’ll adjust.
Last week was very hectic, in Minneapolis, getting packed up and all my stuff moved from my apartment to the storage unit I’ve rented in Eagan (near the airport). I got checked out of my apartment on Thursday afternoon, and Friday morning I was on my way, Minneapolis to Chicago and direct from there to Incheon – a 14 hour flight and a 14 hour time difference meant 28 hours in a suspended state of intraplanetary teleportation.
I slept a little on the plane, but never do much. I watched two movies – from the Korean movie channel on the plane, to get myself in the right frame of mind. They were actually very good movies: “Highway Star” (Bokmyeon dalho) and “Miracle on 1st street” (1Beonga-ui gijeok). Subtitles in English, so I wasn’t completely lost. If you want to get a taste of contemporary Koreana these would be excellent choices, I think.
The flight arrived at Incheon almost 40 minutes earlier than scheduled, and by 5 pm local time on Saturday night I was through immigration and customs and boarding a bus for Ilsan. I rented a temporary cellphone and was thus able to connect with my contact from my new job, who met me at a bus stop just west of Madu Station in Ilsan-gu and drove me from there several blocks to my apartment.
It’s just a little studio, hotel-room-sized, but with a kitchenette. And even has a washing machine. It’s in a highrise apartment building called Urim Bobo County. I have no idea what they mean by this – bobo means, roughly, bourgeois, but without any negative connotations. And “county” seems to imply a pleasant suburban living environment – it’s a transliteration of the English word, not the Korean word that means “county”. Overall, I expect the intended effect is like the infinite number of apartment complexes in the U.S. with names like “Park View Terrace” or whatever. Basically meaningless, but meant to evoke a kind of suburban arcadia.
But, unlike suburbs in the U.S., Korean suburbs (and postwar urbanization patterns in general) are overwhelmingly high-density – thus this suburban community (45 minutes by train northwest of Seoul) feels more like Manhattan than like any socio-economically equivalent American suburb, e.g. Thousand Oaks in L.A. or Burnsville in Twin Cities.
This picture (above) shows the main street a block north of my apartment, and the fire station that will be my landmark for finding the place. The school is northwest, about a 20 minute walk – I wasn’t able to find it yesterday, walking around exploring, but I did find a nice park with a little hill in it, called Jeongbalsan (which is also the name of my rail station), and I had a strange moment when the pine forest smell and the humid, red, sandy soil evoked memories of marching through Korean woods on infantry exercises when I was stationed here in the U.S. Army all those years ago. Smells are weird that way, so evocative.
Above is a picture of the big buildings peeking through the trees of the park.
Anyway, I’ve been trying to get a lot of sleep since I arrived, so as to at least be well rested if not quite on schedule when I go into work later today.
In computer news… I am trying to get my Linux installation to allow me to type Hangul (Korean writing system). I’m having some frustrations, but I can kind of get it to work through a bit of kludge at the moment, by typing in the one application I can get it to work in (gedit, the opensource equivalent to something like Wordpad under Windows) and then cut-n-pasting into the destination (e.g. Firefox browser, where I write this blog), hence: 정발산 (=jeongbalsan).
Caveat: Blueberries, Beer, Boxes, Boxes, Boxes.
Locations: Whitewater, WI; Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; and roads in between
Soundtrack: various, mostly NPR
I haven't written in a while. Last Monday I got notification that my work visa number had come through from the Korean State Dept., so I drove to Chicago to shepherd my paperwork and passport through the consulate there, in order to ensure I had the actual paper visa in time for my departure for Seoul (now in 5 days!).
I spent 3 nights with Bob and Sarah in Whitewater, WI, and it was good to see them before my departure. I enjoyed my time with Henry (their son of 9 months, now). Bob is into this show he had DVDs of, called "Corner Gas" – a Saskatchewanian sit-com, basically. Rather dry, but quite funny and entertaining. My last night there, we watched a few episodes, and ate blueberries and drank beer (I know, I'm supposedly a teetotaler, but seems like I've been relaxing my dogma a bit, lately).
So then Thursday I drove back up to Minneapolis, but didn't get out of Chicago with my visa till nearly 5 pm, and between rush hour and the severe weather they were having (thunderstorms, high winds, power outages), I didn't get into Minneapolis until about 4 AM. Oh well. So Friday was a lost day, I was tired. And so much to do!
Boxes, boxes, boxes, boxes. I have packed 75 boxes with books (almost exclusively books!) over Saturday and today, and placed them into my storage unit. Why couldn't I have opted to collecting something small and light, like stamps? No… I collect books. Oh well. They're all packed away, now. Must work on all my electronics stuff (5 computers, CDROMs, doohickeys galore), my paperwork (taxes for 2006 still due!), clothes, kitchen stuff. But the worst is out of the way – all them dang books.
Meanwhile, I have a pleasing announcement to make: I've got my new Sony Vaio running a "triple-boot": Ubuntu-Linux, Windows Vista Business, and Windows Server 2003R2. This is VERY cool. And I've transfered my email to Mozilla Thunderbird (ending my last horrible Microsoft addiction), and I'm doing most of my work most of the time under the Linux platform. I feel so… liberated!
I'll try to get my Win2K3R2 working well enough to run SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio, so I can continue to do my .NET development hacking and website stuff there – I'm not ready to take the huge step of migrating my DB work to Linux just yet. But my desktop is FREE!
Ok… back to all that stuff to pack.
Caveat: Slate Sky
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Soundtrack: "The Current" (Minnesota Public Radio 89.3).
One thing I love about Minnesota is the way that in a single summer week you can experience the various different weather patterns associated with an entire year in Los Angeles or even Arcata: Hot and sunny (although you rarely get as dry in MN as in Calif), overcast, fog, rain and high 50's. Last two days have been some of the latter – slate gray sky, rain on and off, 56 degrees.
So, that's weather. I was driving south on 35W across the Minnesota River yesterday, under that slate sky, and absorbing the incredibly lush greenery of the Minnesota valley, and was struck by an odd memory of a similar vista, years ago, coming down out of Tehuantepec into Villahermosa, Tabasco. Different climate, but so similar in some ways – at least this time of year.
Speaking of vistas, I'm hating Microsoft's Windows Vista enough that I've decided to try Linux on my brand new Vaio laptop. This means hosing the factory-original OS install (as I've been learning!), and this undertaking has already had, and will continue to have, its major frustrations, but I'm committed at this point, and will be transferring my main functions – email, document editing, etc., to the Ubuntu Linux platform. I will retain Vista for some multimedia functions – if I can get it so I'm happy with it at all. What's with that weird new Vista bootloader, anyway? – what a piece of obfuscated crap! And I may try for a triple-boot system, with Windows Server 2003 for my development work (e.g. website, etc. ), as I hate to have to try to get Mono (an ASP.NET compatible Linux hosting/development environment) working under Linux right now. My website may have to just stagnate for a while.
Sorry for delay in new posts, here. After getting back from my long road trip, I went into a bit of dormancy, obsessing over all the preparations I need to do for my move to Korea, and sort of bemusedly gazing at the immense amount of STUFF I own that needs to get put into storage.
Oh I love the rain, the overcast skies. Happy Minnesota. And, remembering Korea, I know I'll get plenty of that there, too! And some delicious, Siberian, intensely cold winters as well, though those tend to be drier than Minnesota's.
Caveat: A Wash
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Soundtrack: NPR News – debate about the replacement for the 35W bridge proceeds apace, already. There’s a big hue and cry about trying to ensure the new bridge is “light-rail” ready or incorporates a light-rail line, which to me is freakin obvious – they’re gonna have to build a bridge for the “central corridor” light-rail line at some point anyway, and if you just study the map, the 35W crossing would actually work quite well, allowing them to then use the old railroad right-of-way thru the U of MN campus (instead of tunneling under Washington Ave, which would be humongously expensive I suspect!) and integrating the north end of campus and Dinkytown to the LRT route, too, where you know you could accommodate lots of public-transit-minded residents. God I hope they don’t “pull an L.A.” as I call it, and allow short-sighted thinking to lead them into building transit component (bridge, etc.) that actually works against long-term needs and logic (I call it “pull an L.A.” because the L.A. “green line” is the most poorly planned piece of public transit I’ve ever examined).
Ok, enough ranting about local public policy – I’m leaving MN for a bit, now, anyway, right? I face an enormous task in the next several weeks getting my stuff together for the move to Korea, and I’m not feeling motivated, rather, kind of exhausted from the long drive back. And now that I’m in my own place again, I miss my cat. But I spoke with my sister on the phone and she says Bernie is adapting well, assiduously but successfully avoiding the dog and behaving in a friendlycat way with the boys. I’m so glad for that.
Yesterday was a complete wash, as far as getting things done.
I love being back in the Midwest , despite the hotsticky weather – there was an enormous thunderstorm on Monday night, which was wonderful.
Caveat: Pretty good plains
Location: Bismarck, ND to Minneapolis, MN
Soundtrack: surfing the radio; Radiohead (great for road trips), Dylan (of course), Mexican Institute of Sound (something new)
On the radio, I heard: an opera called ‘The Greater Good’ as I drove into a vast cloud of forest-fire smoke west of Billings; a christian radio station that turned out to have a less-than-conventional twist, which lead me to evolutionarychristianity.org – very interesting; the news that Karl Rove (AKA "Bush's brain") is resigning; a country music top 20 countdown; a new version of “la guantanamera” in which the role of pure cuban girl is played by some innocent named “habeas corpus”; and more, more, more! Listening to the radio while driving cross country is second only to television as a way of sampling the cultural insanity that is the USA – and it’s easier to do while doing other things, e.g. driving across Montana, which, at 700 miles, is interminable and occasionally dull.
I had a head-on collision, somewhere west of Bismarck, ND – with a butterfly. I noticed it when I got out at a rest area (see picture).
The sky transitioned from the hazy, smoky mordor of Montana’s forest fires to the wide-open hugeness of the plains, as North Dakota gradually flattened out to the utterly circular horizon of the land just west of Fargo. They call these the Great Plains, and, although I like them a lot, calling them “great” seems extreme. Let’s call them the Pretty Good Plains, and leave it at that.
Caveat: Eastbound
Location: Portland, OR and environs; then EAST on I-84 to US-395 to I-90 east east east, Spokane, Missoula, etc.
Soundtrack: NPR and then the MP3 player on shuffle: tracks of KoRn, Grateful Dead, Jobim, Suzanne Vega, Chemical Brothers… all strung together.
I had those famous waffles for breakfast yesterday morning at Juli and Keith’s, and Latif and Peggy were there. It was a short visit, though, but good to see them. Then I drove into Portland and had lunch with a friend, Arun, and his family – he’d prepared some very good Indian cuisine in the style of his home, Tamil Nadu, I think. I enjoyed it. Arun left HealthSmart not long after I did, he was one of the best programmer/developer types there, and now he’s moved on to bigger and better jobs – unlike what I’ve done, wandering off into yet another adventurous but not so remunerative career. But I want to try to stay in touch with him.
After a long afternoon taking a walk around his neighborhood with him and his older son Kiyosh (about 3 and intermittently charming and mischievous), I departed for the long drive east and back to Minneapolis. I drove until I got to Spokane, but was feeling quite exhausted and decided to splurge a bit and stay in a motel instead of my normal sleep-at-the-rest-area routine. So now I’m in Missoula, and the air is filled with smoke from forest fires, and it might as well be L.A. or Mexico City out there. Lovely.
Not sure if I’ll make it to Minneapolis now in one straight shot or not. But I’ll give it a try.
Caveat: River of Madness
Location: US-101 and roads from Humboldt to Cherry Grove, OR
Soundtrack: KSLG (Nine Inch Nails, the new Modest Mouse, etc.) and then my MP3 player on ‘shuffle’
I drove up yesterday after getting an oil change for my truck and spending a bit over an hour out at Mad River beach west of Arcata (in picture). I used to go out there a lot when I lived here, just to meditate on the ocean and be on the edge of the world. I’ve actually rather enjoyed being in Humboldt this visit, but I still think there’d still be too many ghosts here to be able to live here permanently.
I have never seen the highway between Arcata and Portland up the coast quite so sunny – it’s almost disorienting.
Caveat: Firewood
Location: Arcata, CA
Soundtrack: Inner silence.
This is my home town – I was born here and, with a few interruptions, spent much of my first 18 years here. There are some ghosts, still, but mostly, when I come back, I’m overwhelmed by the natural beauty of this place I grew up, and the warmth and centeredness of the home I grew up, though now Peggy and Latif own it, they were part of the broader community that was involved in my upbringing all those years ago, and there’s huge continuity in things.
The house where I grew up now has gardens all around it, and is very different from when I lived here, but it is strikingly beautiful – Peggy and Latif have done spectacular things with both the internal and external spaces. All surrounded by gardens and greenery, the redwoods off to the northwest still, but both front yard and back now filled with paths and patches of plants.
Drove to David and Vivian’s “up the hill” and helped David move some firewood, and talked for a few hours.
Old books were found – I’ll take them with me back to Minneapolis to put into storage while I go off to Korea.
Caveat: Tree flesh [Cold – End of the World]
Location: US 101 to Humboldt County
Soundtrack: Cold’s “13 Ways to Bleed on Stage” (on of my favorite albums of all time).
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
But then Beck’s “Loser” came on my MP3’s shuffle, and I remembered when that song first came on the radio, in 94-95, and I was commuting every night on the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi – the one that just collapsed – and I imagined that if the bridge had aged a little faster, it might have been me sampling the river bottom’s mud with my bumper… so I said goodbye to the bridge, even though I’m in Northern California.
By the time I got onto US 101 at Ukiah, the litter on the roads was no longer tomatoes, but instead the familiar fragments of redwood bark that falls off the log trucks. Because of the fibrous nature of the bark, and its reddish color, this, too, looks a quite a bit like road kill, at times.
I think I would not do well, moving back to Humboldt (which is where I grew up) – but I always love that feeling of “coming home” that I get driving down into the greenness that is the far north coast.
Caveat: Tomatoes
Location: I-5 Up the Central Valley
Soundtrack: NPR via various valley stations
I left L.A. early – 4:30 am., to beat the traffic out of the city. Dawn at the summit of the Tehachapis. Then tomatoes littering the sides of the highway all the way up the valley, falling off of trucks from the harvest, I guess. A sort of vaguely macabre asphalt marinara.
Quote: “No animals were humped during the making of that song.” Meredith Brooks, regarding her 97 hit “I’m a Bitch”, during a discussion of a recent New York City Council initiative to “censure” the use of the word “bitch” in public discourse, in which she suggested the label was as much empowering as derogatory.
Caveat: Chupe de pescado [Korn – Evolution]
Location: Newport Beach, CA
Soundtrack:
KLoVE (Spanish soft rock station in LA: más romántica);
KoRn’s new single _Evolution_
[I retroactively added this embedded video on 2011-06-24 as part of my Background Noise project]
I spent the morning in Burbank again, catching up with a few people (Vesper, Diana, Luz…) who I didn’t manage to see yesterday. Then I drove all the way down to Newport to have lunch with Tyler (colleague from HealthSmart) at my favorite Peruvian restaurant, Inka Grill just across the line in Costa Mesa. I love their Chupe de pescado, it’s possibly the most delicious soup in the known universe, in my opinion: potatoes, egg, onion, fish, spices, something that makes it chowdery – I ate here often with Tyler and the rest of the HealthSmart crew during those long months now memorialized as the “battle of Lytec” (which we lost spectacularly to the enemy forces, which fought under the banner “poor project scoping and planning”).
We went back to the Newport Beach offices and I chatted briefly with some of the other folks there, and I had weird flashbacks of T-SQL code as I walked the aisles between the cubicles. Too many very late nights practicing slash-and-burn database programming, I guess. Visiting ARAMARK was better for my sense of accomplishment, and it stoked my ego to see the accomplishments of my era still percolating on the screens of the National Account Reps, but visiting HealthSmart’s IPM offices has served to remind me why I’ve decided to change careers and try something different: more people-oriented, perhaps less remunerative, but hopefully more spiritually fulfilling. Not that I’m particularly spiritual person, as many of you know, but I don’t know how else to express the idea I’m trying to get across.
Why do I listen to Spanish soft, romantic rock, when I abhor the same genre in English? It’s a nostalgia thing, I think. It was the soundtrack of too many hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Mexico, too many 2nd class bus rides. Not the same songs, 20 years ago, but the genre is full of songs that, 20 years on, can’t be differentiated from those older ones… it’s all a sort of weird slightly enchilada-flavored aural blur.
The smog in downtown LA was atrocious, driving down, I couldn’t even see downtown from the 5 as I went by – much worse than anything we saw in Mexico City last week. But this is smog season in Lalatopia, while this is precisely NOT smog season in Chilangolandia at the moment – which is why we went at this time, of course. Which is why I always go to Mexico DF at this time of year.
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Caveat: “There is great chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent”
Location: Los Angeles
Soundtrack: my brother playing L7 and Echoboy on his turntable – good stuff
The quote above is from Mao Tse-tung. Many years ago (maybe 5? 6?) I had placed that quote on the home page (splash page) of my National Account Data Analysis intranet website that I built at ARAMARK (the application affectionately known as Reportomatic). At the time, it seemed very apropos to the IT/database situation there, but I’ve always assumed that the Reportomatic would eventually be upgraded or replaced.
At right is a screenshot of the page under discussion (click image to see larger).
Yet, yesterday morning I went to visit with old friends there: Joanne, Judy, Paul, Tom, Carol, and all the rest, and Joanne showed me that it was still there, exactly the same, all these years later. I was so pleased to have left such an ambiguous legacy!
Not surprising, perhaps, that things have changed so little there, but I still reflect that that company still seems so much more forward-looking and IT savvy than my more recent job, which was a sort of permanent IT disaster-in-progress.
Anyway, Paul and I went out to lunch in Burbank, and had some pretty good sushi at a place called Kabuki. Paul is the most brilliant database administrator I know, and I was surprised to learn he was still with ARAMARK at first, until I learned he’s a new father – this explains a great deal, as suddenly one’s need for stability and reliability in a job becomes more important than one’s frustration with the job’s nature, I suppose. I can sympathize if not quite relate. Anyway, he’s always great to talk with, and parenthood seems to agree with him.
My brother has the most amazing music collection – all kinds of ripped/burned CDs and tons of stuff on vinyl. He’s going through and playing stuff and it makes for a nice sound track.
Caveat: Vista
So… back in L.A., I bought my new computer on Friday. A Sony Vaio, again, because, aside from this recent screen failure on my beloved laptop, I’ve had pretty good luck with these machines. My new machine is not, strictly speaking, a clone or replacement of my previous – it’s a bigger machine, with shorter battery life (which is a sacrifice), but with a dual core processor, 160G harddrive, 2G RAM, it’s a much zippier little machine, and has a nice screen and graphics card, too. I opted for it because, since I’m now definitely moving out of the country, I’ll not have a “desktop” anymore, so this will be my sole computer, and I wanted something a little more versatile for my programming and DVD-watching and so on. But the big change – the huge difference – with this new machine is, of course, that it comes installed with Windows Vista. And THAT is almost PURE suckiness.
It’s not that I’m adverse to change for change’s sake. I understand the impulse. But why must Microsoft change, for example, which “hot keys” cause things to happen, each time they upgrade? And then document in such an obscure way what the new hot keys are? There seems to be a belief in Redmond that no one actually uses hot keys, that everyone is slavishly devoted to their mouse and that hot keys are some weird concession to the handicapped and luddite faction and deserve minimal attention at best and downright obfuscation at worst. And this happens not just in the operating system upgrades – it’s even more common in upgrades to, e.g. Microsoft Office. God, what a ghastly new “look” they’ve managed there – do they believe users of word are illiterate, now? As much as such a hypothesis has compelling aspects, it seems a bit contradictory to presume the user of a word-processor program can’t read labels on menus, and needs little Egyptian-looking hieroglyphics to know what gadget does what. And these things are forced down your throat: there’s no “go back to the old look and feel” option – the help file even admits so, explicitly.
So I’ve spent my weekend learning, adapting, porting data and files from my old system over to the new one. A decidedly unpleasant two days, after a great time visiting with my friend Jay and his friend Cuong on Friday afternoon/evening – we went to a Thai place on Wilshire in Santa Monica (Jay lives in Brentwood) and sat and talked politics, Jay’s amazing business plan, life, the universe and everything for at least four hours – I think the waitstaff at the place was getting a bit annoyed with us, even. But it was good to see him. I’m thinking of trying to reconnect with some other former coworkers today and tomorrow, before I begin the looping drive back to Minnesota.
Caveat: No sé nada, pero me la sé muy bien
Yesterday we returned from Xalapa. A very clear day, but despite this the descent into the City from the east was still a sort of diving-into-smog.
I've been struggling with a bit of bourgeois guilt (or first-world guilt if you prefer) – that feeling one gets when traveling in places like Mexico City (or south Chicago for that matter) when one resides comfortably. The guy named Colin whom we met the other day here at the Casa accepted the label "freelance anthropologist" but my question is: how is this different from being a sort of "cultural daredevil" – i.e. someone who goes out into the world from the safety of middle-class America, whether the urban nightmare labyrinths of Tepito or the destitution of rural Guatemala?
Not that I'm placing a value judgement on it – but let's not fool ourselves into thinking we're somehow helping or even showing solidarity with the "masses" – all we're doing is "having fun" exploring alien cultural spaces, aren't we? Is this wrong?
Phil and I went to the main modern art museum at Chapultepec this morning, but he wasn't feeling too hot (maybe a bit of elevation sickness finally hitting? not sure…), so we returned to the Casa for a few hours of relaxation before we run off to the airport this afternoon for the flight back to L.A.
I took a long walk toward Metro Hidalgo, the little park there where Aura and I used to rendezvous and go on our "dates" all those years ago. Such fond memories of such dysfunctional relathionships… but haven't all my relationships been dysfunctional?
I then zig-zagged my way toward Chopo, enjoying the feel of the little neighborhoods; the streets; the school kids loitering; the policemen (and a few policewoman, in fact) chatting, guarding inobvious things; the vendors selling aguas and jugos; the old women begging; the young men with punk haircuts and a lot of body jewelry cursing; the dogs sleeping; the smells.
I love Mexico City.
Caveat: Jalapeños
We are in the Mexican city of Xalapa (or Jalapa), Veracruz. This is where jalapeños come from, of course. But it is also one of my favorite Mexican places, right on the edge of the altiplano as it drops to the rainforests of the gulf coast, it is a bit steamier and much wetter than mexico city, but still not like being at sea level.
This morning we went to the state anthropology museum, which is one of the best outside of the main, national one in the DF. Lots of giant heads and interesting masks and statues. I found myself thinking of a story that could develop in relation to confusing the statues with reality, somehow. A hallucinatory experience inside the museum. It was sunny when we got there, and cloudy, sporadically thunderstorming, when we left. We had some chicken at a chain restaurant, and walked toward the centro again. Stopped in a spectacular park, all jungly and in a sort of arroyo, birds and koi swimming in ponds at the bottom and flowers and children running about playing. Quite idyllic and earthy.
It began to rain quite hard, and we sat on some steps of a building under construction, and watched the sky wash some motorcycles on sale on the sidewalk. I took a photo of the license plate of the car in front of me, with a flower fallen from some tree above it on the bumper like a dead creature. Striking and strange picture, I was thinking. I will post when I get a chance to upload pictures.
So now we are back downtown xalapa, and Phil is resting in the hotel while I strolled downhill to this internet cafe. Got an email from my new employer in Korea, confirming receipt of a photograph I emailed him since I had failed to include one with the packet of other documents sent by courier last week with the signed contract. An emergency ad hoc photo taken by someone at the Casa in mexico city, I find it striking/weird that my visa photo for my new Korean job was thus taken of me standing against the wall of the lounge of my first overseas job 21 years ago. I love little synchronicities of that nature.
Caveat: Historical Revisionism
I ask myself, what is this process of going back to "old" places (where I once lived or traveled) that I've been doing so much of? Being here in Mexico City causes me to examine my "agenda" in remembering things, reciting old narratives, visiting with old people or remembering people. Many people (most) acquire a sort of rose-tinted vision of the past, and conversations about "old" things seem fraught with "it used to better" kinds of remarks. I, too, practice this rose-tinting – I know I do. But perhaps that's the difference – it's intentional on my part, and there are other times when I can revise my own historical narratives in profoundly negative directions, too. I feel that, objectively, the past is merely different – neither better nor worse.
I went to see Guti Aviles this morning – she was a former member of the Casa staff, and was a sort of godmother to me during my year and a half here, feeding me garlic and papaya ("para tu salud m'hijo") and such. A very caring, gregarious person, now over 70 and with an inoperable brain tumor, nevertheless she seemed cogent and after a bit of chatting seemed to remember me at least enough to repeat my name a few times as we talked.
Yesterday, an afternoon in the Casa like so many from so long ago – long, long hours of political and cultural debate or discussion with interesting, engaging people – a young man named Colin from Seattle, anarcho-socialist and with experience in developing-world communities from western China to Guatemala. Another mellow world traveler Yaniv from Israel (though currently resident in Madrid) with fond recuerdos de la casa and a very generous, wide-open personality. These sorts of people and the wonderful, brief relationships that can be build are part of what make this "casa de gringos" (entre otros) so unique in my traveling experience.
Today Phil and I are going to leave for Xalapa for a day or two, so as to experience something external to the gran ciudad podrida.
Luego, más.
Caveat: “Un hombre que grita no es un oso que baila”
La frase citada arriba aparece en una columna llamada "navegaciones" en la edición de hoy de mi periódico favorito La Jornada (traducción del original en francés del poeta Aimé Césaire: "un homme que crie n'est pas un ours que danse"). El autor de la columna, Pedro Miguel (también tiene blog) lo cita aludiendo al fenómeno del reality show, esta tendencia en la cultura popular contemoránea del convertir todo en espectáculo, incluso la guerra en Iraq. Acerta que la vida real no es espectáculo: de acuerdo. Sin embargo, yo he vivido y sigo viviendo, de cierta manera, una vida de espectador, y suelo mirar al mundo de una manera pasiva pero interesada. ¿Significa ésto que me he sometido a esta cultura de epectáculo a que el autor alude? ¿Representa entonces alguna deficiencia moral para mí?