Caveat: How to use a giraffe

Banalities & Journaling / Kids / Life in Korea

I have these little prizes I give to my students for good performance.  Little trinkets I buy at Insadong, for example – never more than a dollar or two each.  One thing I'd acquired were some cute little hand-crafted stuffed giraffes – I'd been inspired by that Korean language giraffe tongue-twister (naega geurin girin geurimeun etc.) I've managed to memorize. 

Today I had a student select one of these as a prize.  She seemed pleased with it.  But as it stood in its red-spotted glory on her desk and she studied it carefully, she uttered the following deeply-thought question:  "How do I use this?"

Indeed.

How does one "use" a red-spotted stuffed giraffe?  I was unable to answer her question unequivocally, and I wanted to turn it into an opportunity to use the language, too – we English teachers can be very sneaky, that way.

"What do you think it is used for?" I asked back.  She shrugged, and several of the other girls in the class began to whisper to each other – so I extended the same question to the rest.  "How should she use this?" I asked. 

It wasn't, actually, a very successful class discussion, as class discussions go.  We decided maybe she could use it as a christmas tree decoration, next December, or perhaps she could use some thread to attach it to her cellphone, as a sort of chunky-but-cute decorative device.  And there was always the option to "play" with it, but with these older kids, that seemed like a kind of last resort. 

This afternoon, I left work, and the sky was a deep cerulean.  Not the par-for-course yellowish haze that makes me feel like I'm living in a sort of extremely cold version of Mexico City, sometimes.  The result of two days of continuous snow and wind, with warmer temperatures that had meant very little of the snow stuck.  But now it was much colder, and with the blue, sparkly sky and fragments of crunchy ice on the sidewalk, it was very Minnesotaey. 

I've almost never run into anyone from the school outside of the school – Ilsan is too big and densely populated to accidentally meet people, maybe.  But I was about halfway home when I passed a student, Isaac, on the street.  It's an odd thing, how context defines behavior.  In class, Isaac is one of those students who is brilliant but insolently lazy and imperious.   Not a bad kid, but not one characterized by fawning politeness or traditional Korean notions of  deference, either.

But here on the street, passing on the sidewalk, with no one else around, he executed one of those quick but deep bows Koreans reserve for their much elders.  I nodded my head, hopefully the right level of return respect courtesy, and then waved "hi," American style and grinned at him.  And puzzled on the what makes someone behave one way in one social situation, and another, in another.

I came home and had some rice. 

Caveat: Life’s Small Ironies

Banalities & Journaling

I quit my last job, among other reasons, because I had become burned out on the notion of trying to sell poorly designed and executed software to skeptical end-users.  Behold the irony of finding myself in essentially an identical position here where I'm supposedly working as an English teacher – with the further complication that the end-users in question are a bunch of variantly-motivated Korean teenagers.

Caveat: Lousy Technology

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

LinguaForum Language hagwon has a website.  It's trying to create internet-based curriculum support, including a means for providing teachers an ability to assign web-based homework and evaluation tools that students can use.  This is an admirable goal – but jeez, are they falling short.

They want me to use the web-based tool to assign writing assignments to my "comprehensive" classes.  I had been under the impression that there was some web-based pre-built curriculum-compatible questions, but in actuality what I was given was a blank form where I had to fill in what the assignment was, give it a title, explain it, etc.  I was reduced to a time-consuming effort to copy an assignment onto the website from the paper materials I already had.

Further, I was then unable to edit or delete mistakes.  How is this any kind of improvement over a piece of paper from a photocopy machine?  Further, the LFA (RingGuAPoReom EoHagWon) website uses technology that is apparently quite fragile – the site crashes when I try to access it using either Firefox or IE 7.0 under Vista – it only works when I log on using IE 6 under XP.

So, argh.

It was snowing beautifully this morning, but by this afternoon it was blustery but above freezing and the air was damp, and the sky was gorgeous, full of scudding clouds.  I had a flashback to an October morning in Hornopirén, Chile, and Spring snowstorm-turning-to-rain.  Same hint of woodsmoke in the air, but the setting there was ends-of-the-earth, and here in Ilsan, it feels closer to the center-of-the-world, with high rises all around and taxis and buses bustling by on broad boulevards.

Caveat: Subway Maps

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

I discovered a website this evening that features subway maps (and descriptions and histories) from everywhere in the world.  I managed to waste an immense amount of time there.  So the interesting question is, what city has the largest subway, that you've never heard of?

Caveat: Original of Laura

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Photos / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

Vladimir Nabokov, one of the great writers of the recently ended century, left an unfinished manuscript when he died, which is called “The Original of Laura.” He had explicitly requested that it be destroyed, and now, years later, his son (Dmitri Nabokov) can’t decide whether to go through with it or not.
Nabokov, of course, is famous for the novel Lolita. Personally, I like both Pale Fire and Ada much better – especially Ada, with its alternate-universe North America which seems partly inhabited by vaguely frenchified tsarist Russians. I would be fascinated to read a “lost” work of the author’s, but something about respecting a person’s last wishes comes into play too. Dmitri is stuck with a terrible dilemma.
Meanwhile… here is building I saw a while back, a few blocks from here on the other side of the Jeongbalsan (Jeongbal hill).
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Caveat: A dumb war

Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

The following is excerpted from a speech by Barack Obama, in 2002.  Yes, 2002.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income; to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the middle east, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, in other news, the incoming president, 이멍박, is saying he plans to merge the republic's foreign and "unification" ministries.  This seems like a very good idea – currently, there is a sort of dissonance between the tones of the two – almost as if the republic has two completely separate foreign policies.

The foreign ministry keeps a somewhat hard line and handles positions in multilateral negotiations involving the north, e.g. with the U.S., China, Russia, et al., trying to contain the north's weapons programs.  At the same time, the unification ministry is a much kinder, gentler bureaucracy that seems focused on nothing so much as extending South Korea's immense wealth and successful social welfare programs to the miserable north, regardless of the extent to which the north's government is complicit in creating all that misery.

Caveat: Working

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / My Photos

I’m feeling kind of exhausted from work.  Number of hours are up; a lot of documentation being required by new employers, which I actually approve of, conceptually, but it’s a lot of work getting used to it.
And I’m engaged in a bureaucratic tangle with my bank over the close/transfer of my stepson’s trust account, now that he’s reached age of “majority.”  Argh.
So, meanwhile, here is a picture of the public school (문화초등) that’s half a block from where I work.
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Caveat: Klingons

Banalities & Journaling / Internet & Blogging / Language & Linguistics / Life in Korea / My Photos

Did you know that a group of people are working to translate not only the works of Shakespeare, but also the Bible, into the Klingon language?  Is this a great world, or what?

In other news, I definitely despise my web host provider, hostingdude.com. Since coming to Korea, I have not once been able to complete any kind of transaction with the hosting admin website without also having to call them up to get them to accept a credit card number, or unlock a password which has been locked (probably because I’m coming at it from some disreputable “foreign” IP address), or some other problem.

This, despite the fact that I was very careful when trying to choose a provider to find one that allegedly would allow me to work with them exclusively online. So… they suck. But transferring my domains and website away from them while in my current overseas location will likely be very painful and possibly expensive. Which leaves me in that most unpleasant of positions, the helpless consumer. Maybe the people who run hostingdude.com are grumpy, human-hating klingons.

Below is a picture of where I work, with it’s new dark purple LinguaForum Eohagwon sign across the second floor. So those second-floor windows under the purple sign are classrooms where I teach.
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Caveat: It’s raining helmets… and the Mexican snowplow squadron

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online / Life is a Dream / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / My Photos / My Poetry & Fiction

I looked up at my television a while ago, which I had on on some Korean channel.  I saw a man on a motorcycle, he looked like a zombie.  He had a passenger riding behind him.  Suddenly it began to rain a large number motorcycle helmets from the sky.  The driver of the motorcycle was struck by one of the falling helmets.  The television had my attention.
It was apparently the scene from a movie – the show was some movie review show, where they show clips of movies and talk about them, but, since it was in Korean, I didn’t really have much ability to capture what this movie was.  But the scenes were pure magic realism, and I was captivated.  There was a scene where a woman was reading a white book that fell on her from the sky.  And a scene where an immense number of empty plastic bottles and containers (ie. trash) was growing into a giant pile in the center of some huge city.  It grew to such large size it towered over the skyline of the city, like a mountain.  People went and climbed and had picnics on it, enjoying the view.  And could throw their empty containers over their shoulders – so convenient!
So.  I had to know what this movie was.   Hmm… how to search?  Google.  I typed in “falling helmets” and “movie”.  I found a blog about movies – some woman in Minneapolis, of all places.  And lo, there it was:  Citizen Dog (Mah nakorn) – a Thai movie from 2004.
That, and yesterday’s snow, has me thinking about a story I started once – my own little foray into magic realism.  Like everything I’ve tried to write, it never got finished.  The story is set in my familiar haunts in Mexico City.  It starts on a morning I actually experienced, when I emerged one chilly morning from the Casa to see it snowing.  Of course it quickly changed to rain – it doesn’t really snow in Mexico City – except on the higher elevations surrounding:  Desierto de los leones, or Tres Marias.
But then my little story diverges:  in the story, it never stops snowing.  Partly, I was influenced by headlines of a freak snowstorm in northern Mexico – Durango / Chihuahua / Cd Juarez, which had recently received several feet.  I had been obsessing on the concept of hardworking squadrons of Mexican snowplows.  I thought ‘the Mexican snowplow squadron’ might be a great name for a rock band.
Back to the story.  For forty days and nights it snows.  Of course, this means utter social chaos and human tragedy writ large across the hyperinflationary, delamadridista Mexico City of the 1980s.  And meanwhile, snowbound in some small non-profit casa de huespedes, the main characters find friendship, love and meaning.  Really, I was trying to write this.  Once.  Several times.
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Caveat: Octopus and Potato Pizza

Banalities & Journaling

With my lowest level students we were working on a memorization passage about food, and were discussing pizza.  Everyone knows what pizza is, but when I asked the question, "what goes on pizza?" I got some unexpected responses:  e.g. potato, octopus, among more known ingredients.  I really haven't experienced much in the way of Korean pizza, though what I have had is good.  But I hadn't seen those particular toppings.  Still… this is Korea – it seemed plausible.  I'll have to see if I can have some, some time.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are so long.  7 classes back-to-back, and then one more after a short break.   I'm exhausted.

Maybe it will snow – it's in the forecast – but I haven't been particularly impressed with the forecasts, here.  I can hope.

Caveat: “힐러리!”

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Thus read the headline running across the tv news.  What do you suppose it means?  "Hil-leo-ri!" Which is to say, it was announcing Senator Clinton's recent victory in New Hampshire.  Of course, the slog has only begun.  But the result was unexpected, apparently – Obama had been leading in the polls leading into the voting.

I'm not a Clinton supporter.  Aside from my discomfort with the trend toward dynasticism that a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton alternation would suggest, I also feel Edwards, Richardson and Obama all offer more constructive, less cautious, less "stay-the-course" platforms.  And despite my libertarian tendencies – which sometimes make certain Republicans attractive to me – Ron Paul (who otherwise would be the closest match) is definitely not my sort of libertarian:  he's rigidly anti-immigrant and pro-life, neither of which strikes me as remotely libertarian.  So I guess "liberal" trumps "libertarian" in this election.

I have found Richardson the most appealing of the candidates – not least because he's a chilango agringado, which I can relate to, being a gringo achilangado myself. But it looks to me like he's running for Vice President, rather than President.  At least, his resume combined with his poll numbers hint that that would be the most likely possibility.  Maybe I'm leaning toward Mr Obama, then. 

Caveat: Chocolate Rain Obsession

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

Today was a very long day at work.  I really liked my students today, though.  Especially the incurably silly Gavin, Cathy, and friends in the new ER2(T) class, with their “happy singing zombie students” act.
Not to mention the “8th grade princess mafia,” aka the new TP1(T), which by some quirk of exam-scores and fate has become a girls-only class.  They’re smart-alecky and unshakably in love with their cellphones, and only motivated under very generous definitions of the term… yet, they manage to be unmotivated almost exclusively in English, and thus I can’t bring myself to complain.  I was feeling sad for the super-smart Lainy and Julia, the only 7th graders in the group having recently been promoted into it, given the other girls’ very cliquey behavior, but they’re so smart they hold their own and put the others to shame with stunning performances.
So.  I stopped in the H-mart on the way home at dusk, and bought some food for my barren cupboards, including not just cabbage and tomatoes but a decadent bag of doritos and some chocolate milk.  Then I proceeded to spend the evening surfing wikipedia and other bits of the internet.  And became obsessed with a little internet meme that peaked over the summer, known as “Chocolate Rain.”
I’ll let you pursue it, if you’re interested – the tale of Tay Zonday, a University of Minnesota PhD candidate who, using a quirky youtube video, bootstrapped himself from obscurity into talk show appearances, big-bucks product jingles and endorsements, and major-talent collaborations.
And yet he continues to be a grad student, and the original ditty is actually an intriguing piece in its monotonous way:  a little allegorical study of racism, with references to, among other things, the riots in the Paris suburbs.  And, to quote:  “Chocolate Rain / Made me cross the street the other day / Chocolate Rain / Made you turn your head the other way.”  And continues, “Chocolate Rain / The bell curve blames the baby’s DNA / Chocolate Rain / But test scores are how much the parents make.”  People who complain that the song is pointless, haven’t read the lyrics.  And those who accuse him of selling out are missing the point completely, I think – publicity is a two-way street, and a thinking artist with a social-change agenda may in fact have a weird sort of  obligation to leverage offers of publicity and money from commercial interests in order to further that agenda however he or she can.
A Brazilian vlogger observes (and maybe I’m just quoting him to showcase my own multilingual erudition, but I liked the way he phrases it):

É impressionante como a internet consegue transforma em celebridades os mais inusitados dos seres e as suas mais toscas exibições de talento. Veja o exemplo de Tay Zonday, um garoto que gravou uma canção chamada “Chocolate Rain” fazendo uso de uma voz grave, quase que robótica.

I’ve certainly got the tune and words stuck in my head, now.  And so I listen to dozens of remixes and parodies of “Chocolate Rain,” while eating doritos and drinking chocolate milk, while I sit in my little apartment in happy Ilsan, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
To quote Mr Zonday: “This internet thing is wild!”

[Update: youtube embedded video added retroactively, 2011-08-03, a part of background noise.]
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Caveat: Fog

Banalities & Journaling

It was foggy this morning as I walked to work.  Later, when I left, the afternoon sun (yes, afternoon… with the odd "vacation schedule" for work) was a eerie silver disk hanging over the pointy-topped apartment high-rises and church steeples of Ilsan.

Caveat: Saved by hip-hop?

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

I was watching part of an episode of a program called American Dad on the AFKN channel on my television.  Something involving a criminal with a german accent, whose brain has been transplanted into first a fish, then into the body of a seventies-era-looking black man.  Meanwhile a hippie dude who says he is a "tree in a man's body" is running some kind of eco-terrorist thing.

And there's a werewolf subplot.  And the pet space alien, Roger (a regular, apparently, described at wikipedia as "sarcastic, alcoholic, surly, lonely, aloof, and flamboyantly effeminate"), loses a pair of sea monkeys he dearly loves, after feeding them some champaign.  Near the end, Stan says, "for the second time of my life, I was saved by hip-hop."  Bizarre cultural references abound.  Was this a good use of my time?  I don't know, but I laughed very hard, several times.

I sure get tired of those military public service announcements, though.  It's like watching them collectively, as an institution, try to convince themselves that they have a clue.

I am drinking something called citron tea, which is made from something that is inexplicably almost identical to orange marmalade jam – you scoop out a spoonful of it into a cup, add hot water, and drink:  presweetened vaguely tea-ey hot citrus drink.  I bought a huge jar of it for 3000원 (about 3 bucks) last time I was at the supermarket.  I like it.

Caveat: “how many times can this train wreck wreck?”

Found Online / Internet & Blogging / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc)

The above is a quote from a blog on the New York Times website, talking about Britney Spears.  I was doing some random web surfing… honestly, I don't really care that much about Britney.  But I was immediately impressed with the twisted and unusual phrasing of the question, which uses 'wreck' as both a noun and verb, in sequence.  I love things like that.

So.  I'm so glad people use language creatively, even when discussing Britney's latest crisis.  It gives me hope.  In a weird way.

Caveat: Someone’s Vacation

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

Not mine.  The students are on a month-long winter vacation from the public-school component of their educations.  The consequence is that the hagwon has extended hours – so, our "vacation schedule" entails more teaching hours than last month.  Well, it doesn't help that, now under new management as LinguaForum Academy, we're trying to take on more students without appropriately expanded staffing, either. 

Regardless of causes, I'm working more.  Yesterday, I had 7 45-minute classes in a row.  And Tuesdays and Thursdays will look like that for all of January.  In related news, because of the "vacation schedule," suddenly we are also working from 9am starting time, instead of a 4pm starting time.  I'm having some trouble adapting to the sudden change in working hours, though, as usual, I always find that something forcing me out of bed in the morning can weirdly affect my outlook – negatively in the short term, as it makes me grumpy… but, oddly, positively in the longer term, as somehow I always feel more "virtuous" at the close of the day, having risen early and done productive work well before dusk.

Ah well.

Caveat: Consumption Gap

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

An editorial / review in a recent Economist magazine ("Economics Focus:  The new (improved) Gilded Age") discusses something that I've been pondering for many years, but haven't been very good at articulating.  Despite the sharp – even alarming – rates of increase in "income inequality" throughout the world in recent decades, something else is going on that isn't being captured in standard economic statistics:  this is the somewhat weird but, I believe, oddly compelling observation that although incomes are diverging, lifestyles are converging.

I don't know if this is really true, but the anecdotal evidence offered in the article is interesting, such as the observation that a $300 refrigerator and a $10,000 one aren't that different in terms of the what they can do for you.  Likewise, the cheapo Hyundai sedan vs the Jaguar.  They both are typically driven by owners on the same crowded highways, despite a 1000 percent difference in price.

This ties in with an idea I like to think of as rooted in marxist analysis (though I'm not confident that that's its provenance):  as capitalism continues to evolve, it drives constantly toward manufacturing new "necessities" which, as a matter of course, are not true human necessities but strictly market-created artificial ones.  And the rich, with all that extra income that the income gap is giving them, go chasing after these artificial necessities, while the lot of the poor continues to improve, albeit slowly, with respect to the profoundly less artificial  necessities which they seek to satisfy.

So incomes are out of wack, and constantly more so.  And consumption, as measured by dollars outlaid, is also diverging.  But if you measure consumption by a more intangible concept such as "range of experience," you will find the experience of rich and poor converging in strange ways.  Fishermen in India, bankers in southwest Connecticut, and grandmonthers and schoolchildren in Korea all use cell phones in markedly similar ways to improve the quality of their very different lives, at almost universal levels of adoption.  And, in other extremes, obesity (a disease of affluence) strikes the poor more than the rich.

OK.  I don't know where I'm going with this.  I'm not trying to say it excuses governments' complicity in the capitalist plunder of the world's people and resources.  Capitalists, being capitalists, require ethical supervision, I suspect.  But I do think the apocalypto-alarmist rhetoric from the anti-globalization camps and the anarcho-left may be rooted in an inaccurate analysis of the current state of the world's economy, vis-a-vis real human needs (i.e. as opposed to manufactured needs).

Caveat: A lot of monkeys…

Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Quotable / Science & SciFi

… does not a masterpiece create.   At least not using typewriters.  As physicist Seth Lloyd explains:  "No matter how far into Hamlet a monkey may get, its next keystroke is likely to be a mistake."   But then he goes on to explain that if you assume the monkeys are typing on programmable computers, they very well might come up with Hamlet.  This is a counterintuitive distinction, but it gets at the heart of his thesis, which is that the universe's complexity is a consequence of its underlying programmaticity (I made that word up, not him).

Caveat: Then and Now

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I went on a little exploring adventure today.  I took the subway all the way to 동두천 (Dongducheon), which is probably about 25 km northeast of here, but because the trip has to go through downtown Seoul which is to the southeast, it was probably about  a 40 km journey.  It's not the longest possible journey on the subway by any means, but it is definitely from one end-of-the-line to another.

I didn't necessarily plan it, but it ended up being an appropriate thing to do on New Year's day – this is very close to being the exact 17th anniversary of my first arrival in Korea, and my first exposure to the country was at the U.S. Army's Camp Casey, located in Dongducheon. 

My arrival:  I was exhausted from a never-ending MAC flight from Los Angeles, via Anchorage and Tokyo.  We arrived at around sunset, I recall, at Gimpo airport (now a domestic-only airport – but Incheon didn't exist yet) and were herded onto buses bound for Casey, which was at that time (and still is?) headquarters for the 2nd Infantry Division.

I vividly remember standing in formation in the bitter, bitter cold, until well after midnight, waiting for my name to be called with my unit assignment.  I was in my dress uniform, with no long underwear and no overcoat, and the transition from California's climate to Korea's was stunning.  Finally around 3 am we were settled into overheated, overcrowded barracks, and over the next several days we did lots of "hurry up and wait" until Sergeant Wise came and collected me and took me to what would be my posting here, at Camp Edwards.

But over the next year I made frequent visits to Camp Casey and "TDC" as we called it (TDC=Tongduchon, an obsolete romanization of the same name) – fetching supplies, coming to training sessions, handling bureaucratic things.  It was Division HQ for our isolated support battalion 30 km to the west.  So it was a familiar place, and probably the only "off-post" part of Korea that became truly familiar to me during my time here.

And so on this anniversary, I strolled around TDC in the bitter cold.  The town was vacant because of the holiday, the sun was setting over the rugged silhouettes of the mountains, and the U.S. base was eerily utterly familiar and yet completely unrecognizable in any specifics, at least from the outside.  I lost my interest in the difficult memory quickly, and got back on the subway into Seoul.  There had been no subway from Dongducheon to Seoul when I'd been here in 91.

I'm watching the news in Korean.  It seemed very cold today – the high was around 15 F (-10 C), which is still not even that unusual by Minnesota standards, I admit – but I didn't bring all the layers (sweaters, etc) I would properly use to face a Minnesota winter, either – so I was underdressed.  The bits of ice in the fields and on the streets was beautiful, but there is no snow on the ground (though I did see some on the rice paddies as the train went through Uijeongbu, which is sort of a valley through the high ridge of mountains between Seoul and Dongducheon). 

Part of why I'm here is to "overwrite" those old, unpleasant Army memories, I think.  But one thing seems to repeating itself, at least so far: I'm experiencing a lot of loneliness.  So far I've failed to forge any friendships here – a combination of bad luck in my selection coworkers (in that they are all basically born-agains and it's difficult for me to find commonalities with them, though they are entirely decent people) and my own failure to get out and find alternate social activities.  This needs to change.

Caveat: Drinking Vinegar

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea

Well, oops.  I missed a few days, there.  I've been supremely lazy the last several days, enjoying the temporary respite from work because of new year's to try to rest up and finally get over this flu thing.

I was strolling the aisles of the Homever (홈에버 "hom-e-beo") store where I shop, contemplating the many products I could buy.  I noticed a whole section devoted to what I thought were varieties of soy sauce and the like.  But on closer inspection of a label, I read a small fragment in English that said "drinking vinegar."  Hmm… I've never heard of that.  Not sure if it's a poor translation for a concept such as "cooking vinegar" or if they really drink vinegar here.  It comes in different flavors and brands.   I bought some, out of sheer curiosity.  At the least, I can make some cole slaw or something.

Caveat: 2007

Banalities & Journaling / Year-In-Six-Sentences

The computer gig had some interesting projects, but the career was losing its lustre. I decided to return to teaching, because I had overcome my prior financial difficulties. Jeffrey (my stepson) started college, and the trust fund I’d created for him would cover costs, so I was free, financially. I applied to some overseas jobs, including Costa Rica, Tunisia, and South Korea. South Korea ended up being the most appealing, for various personal reasons: my interest in the Korean Language; my adopted Korean nephews. So I started teaching at “Tomorrow School” in Ilsan, Gyeonggi, South Korea, in September.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2007 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: End of Tomorrow

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Not My Poetry / Quotable / The Wonders of Work

Today was kind of the last official day for School of Tomorrow (language hagwon); as of next week, we become part of LinguaForum officially. We had a long staff meeting that wasn’t entirely pleasant, as we confronted the changes that we face – more classes to teach, completely changed curricula, etc.

Meanwhile, it was hard to get motivated to teach out of the “old” books for one last day – so I had the kids reading a simple little poem by Wallace Stevens, called “The Snow Man.”

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 
picture

Caveat: Confusion can be good

Banalities & Journaling / The Wonders of Work

Since the xmas party on Tuesday, I've been telling my students a little story of it – how I was the only foreigner there, and how my very limited Korean language skills meant I remained very confused most of the time.  But then I share with them the fact that I actually picked up quite a bit, just from understanding 5% (or less!) of the vocabulary flying around.  And that I learned a lot.  And I coined a little aphorism:  "If you understand everything, you're learning nothing."  They seem to appreciate this – even the less-motivated students nod sagely after it sinks in and they've parsed its syntax.

I bought 꼬치 (chicken skewers) for the O2 students after they got a pretty high average on a vocabulary quiz.  A way to ring out the old year, I guess.  They seemed pleased with this.

It was drizzling as I walked home.  Where did winter go?  It's been warmer the last few days.  Hmm… typical Korean pattern, actually.  A bit of Siberia, a bit of southern Japan – the air mass boundary moves back and forth.   And when it's warmer, it's wetter.  So the best chance for snow is when the line's moving north… which is always followed by warmer weather.  Which is why Korean winters rarely have much snow on the ground.

Caveat: Santa Cruz?

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

Yesterday we had an obligatory xmas party, in association with the local campuses of the "Blue" Academy which is another branch of the hagwon corporation that has acquired my place of work (our school becomes part of a new branch of this corporation, and will be called LinguaForum <- they have a website).

Actually, it wasn't completely obligatory – Danny and Diana and Grace all managed to get out of it, pleading previous obligations elsewhere.  But Ryan and I went, along with the new manager guy, Kurt, and the new incoming teacher Pete (everyone goes by English names around the academy, and I'll stick to naming them that way in part to allow them – and myself – anonymity, vis-a-vis google et al.).

Kurt picked me up around 4, and I met his wife and daughter and we drove to Hwajeong, where the party was.  There were about 500 people there, in a big rented hall, including important boss types, regional VP types, lots of teachers and staff and families.  And I swear, I was the only foreigner there.

You see, this LinguaForum thing is a new venture – at least for the Ilsan / Goyang region where we are.  Most of the Pureun schools are math/science prep places, and thus much less likely to have foreign staff.  The company is trying to grow their "English hagwon" biz rapidly, and thus are going around acquiring small independent schools such as ours was, and converting them over.

This is the first large social event I've attended in Korea.  Unlike my colleagues, I hardly resented it – I actually thought it was nice to have something to do for xmas day – even if it was nothing more than schmooze with people in a language I barely understand.

Some things I had been led to expect, however, based on reading, conversations, and just some degree of understanding of the nature of Korean society.  There were interminable awards ceremonies.  There was much silly raising and lowering of hands, clapping, and waving about, in unison.  There were karaoke contests, including some major company bigwig belting out some charming almost bluegrassy Korean ballad.  There were prizes for children, and an endless buffet with a nearly infinite variety of almost entirely unidentifiable foods.  There was soju and beer on every table, but much less drinking than I'd expected.

I had a few humorous misunderstandings:  at one point, I couldn't figure out why everyone was talking about Santa Cruz (as in the city in California, or maybe a Spanish religious concept).  It should have been obvious:  they were talking about Santa Claus, but the "L" changes to "R" and the vowel was definitely off, and the consequence was that it didn't even occur to me until had to ask someone, despite what day it was.

Finally I got a ride home with Pete and his wife and daughter, and I told them some of my tales about travels around Latin America.  I tried to go to sleep early.

This morning I had to wake up early and go to work by 9 am (considering I normally get off at 10 pm, this is indeed quite early).   We had to drive into Seoul and go to a training for the new RingGuAPoReom curriculum.  Which ended up being not terribly enlightening.  The first session was OK, but I had been hoping something like a mock lesson or something dynamic, but it was really just a little lecture about the contents of the books, which was really fairly self-evident to us, having had the chance to look through them on our own.  The second session was about the same, with the added factor of being in Korean, which meant I understood my standard 3-5%, which is hardly enough to get me to any kind of appreciation of what's being said.

And then we drove back to Ilsan.  Ryan and Pete and I had lunch at the hole-in-wall place in the basement of the next-door building, and they were very sociable with me for a change (well, not for a change, as Pete's completely new… so, I mean Ryan, I guess).  They started teaching me some "restaurant survival Korean" and then made me make all the requests to the serving staff:  more rice, check please, etc.

I was thinking to myself, "damn, I've learned more Korean in the last two days than in the last two months!"  So… maybe working for a big company will be good for me, here.  Now, if I can only shake this goddawful flu virus.

Caveat: The Best Gift

Banalities & Journaling / Teaching & Methodology

I honestly had no intention of writing some sappy Christmas-spirit entry to this blog.  It's not really in my character, and I've been feeling totally crappy, with a major relapse of flu symptoms combined with a lot of frustration and uncertainty about work.  But…

I have this student who goes by the English name of … well, let's call her Ashley (something makes me shy about telling her real name, English or Korean).  She's in my T2 class, which, if you've been reading this blog, you will already know means she's not a superstar when it comes to the "Jared's favorite class" category.  But she's been the lead player in the rebellion… at least, it's always seemed that way to me.

More than once, if I'd been hard-pressed to name a student that I was certain hated me, I would have named Ashley.   Perhaps the only one in that category… though, in my more rational, adult moments, I recognize it's unlikely she's ever hated me, simply that I was in some way a barrier to the most fulfilling expression of her teenage angst and anger.  Or a target. 

She's not stupid – in fact, in a recent English level-test, she was the highest scorer in her age-group in our little school.   Several other teachers expressed dumbfounded amazement at this, but I'm not so naive as to assume that bad attitude is the same thing as low intelligence or lack of skill – in fact, I might be more inclined to believe the opposite.   And when she reads out loud, her accent is almost eerily flawless, at least in comparison to her peers – so she doesn't lack innate language talent, either.

We've had more than one disciplinary confrontation.  My least-proud moment, this fall, was when I tore up a crib sheet she was writing (for another class), in an unsuccessful effort to confiscate it from her (although throwing Steve's cellphone across the classroom was a close runner-up – and I did that just recently!).   Often an entire week would go by when she would answer not a single question of mine, nor open her book, nor show any interest in the class, while wearing a permanent scowl on her face – and I would know it was directed at me, as I would, an hour later, look in to see her giggling with a friend in another class.

I'm certain I've managed to earn some of her anger:  I am not always great with remembering names, but for whatever strange reason she was the target of the "wrong name" syndrome, during my first months at the school, more than most.   And I know I misread a sort of inward-looking shyness on her part as a more malevolent hostility, early on.   But based on conversations with other teachers, she's not entirely innocent, either.  Ryan described her as spoiled, rude and permanently angry.

I have tried not to take it personally.  Most of the time, I didn't.  But I couldn't help but be aware of her glowering resentment. 

Well, today, Ashley gave me a Christmas present – and one of the most wonderful and memorable I've ever received:  she participated;  she was pleasant and civil with me and her peers;  she smiled.

I'm not even certain that it was meant to be a Christmas present.  Perhaps she was just in a good mood, for whatever reason.  Doesn't matter.  It made a difference.  Without her serving in her standard role, those T2's shined… and were my favorite class of the day.  Of course, we weren't doing much work… just a word game, nothing strenuous, academically speaking – it's Christmas Eve, after all.

Something very Christmassy about that little glimmer of niceness.  Of joy.  So, everyone… Merry Christmas – from a soulless man in Seoul. 

Caveat: qubits

Banalities & Journaling / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Science & SciFi

I'm reading a book I bought by someone named Seth Lloyd, a physicist, about quantum computing.  I'm trying to figure it out, but I can't, for the life of me.  It's profoundly counter-intuitive.  I'll let you know if I make sense of it.

I'm not very happy about xmas.  I generally don't care much about it… but I'm feeling rather isolated, I confess.  Well, I'm not here to moan about it.  But it's been a kind of gloomy day.

Caveat: Talmudic Citation

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Korea / The Wonders of Work

When a Korean teenager quotes the Talmud in his writing assignment, I suspect this indicates nothing more than a strong set of internet-search skills.  However, the fact that he used the quote meaningfully and in an appropriate context shows some talent with language, too, I would say.  Always little stunning things like this, to keep me motivated.

Ever since my crisis last month with my T2's, I've been getting happier and happier with my students.  But, balancing that is an increasing discomfort with my coworkers.  Part of that is, undoubtedly, the transfer-of-power taking place as the independently owned-and-operated School of Tomorrow becomes transformed into a small branch campus of LinguaForum Academy, Inc.  But I also feel that my way of coping with my teenagers' recalcitrance (i.e. backing way off, ending arguments about whether homework gets done, etc.) probably isn't in accord with the do-more-sooner and work-harder philosophy of the other teachers.

My feeling is that I'll get more accomplished exposing them to English in a relaxed, informal and pleasant atmosphere than cowing them into compliant tasks of mindless memorization.   But it's hard to quantify results, which is what parents want.  So I'm not sure how this will go… of course, with a new curriculum coming soon, it's all moot.

Meanwhile, one thing certain to happen with the new owners / managers is that I will probably end up working more hours, at least at first.  It's already started to happen – I had to come to work early yesterday and today for these long, tedious presentations to parents about the changes in the school (tedious for me, anyway, since they're conducted in Korean, and I can do little but be a nice American-looking spokesmodel standing around).

So I'm exhausted, and feeling like the flu is trying to make a comeback.  And I'll be working Christmas day… well, not exactly working, but interacting with coworkers at an obligatory Christmas party.  I don't really resent this at all – I look forward to it, as I might get to know some of the new people associated with the new corporate parent of our little hagwon.

Walking home, I had an ecstatic moment when I understand not one, but two words in a row in an overheard fragment of conversation between two people walking the opposite direction.  You have to understand, this is a milestone, as such overheard conversations of passing pedestrians are quite challenging for a language-learner.   I understood, exactly:  "blah blah blah … my younger sister… blah blah blah"  I have no idea as to context, etc.  But it was cool to hear it and know for certain what it meant.   We take our victories, however small, right?

Caveat: Casino Problem

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

Nothing can be more enlightening than having a political discussion with a pair of 13 year old boys.  Obviously, what they say is, likely, a reflection of the views of their parents – but they tend to be more frank and up front – especially if they have limited language skills in the language in which the discussion is taking place.

On the subject of South Korea's just-this-instant elected president, 이명박, Tom explained to me that he was "crazy man," and when I asked him to elaborate, he said he was "a robber" and that he had a "casino problem."  I'm going to guess that Tom's parents voted for one of the other guys. 

It is true that the presumed president-elect will be facing a criminal probe by the national legislature, before even being sworn in next month, for his association with a corporate fraud case.  Ah well, politics is politics, everywhere, right?

I had a good day at school today.  All the students were relatively pleasant and at least moderately motivated.  Several, including normally silent Mona in my T2 class, are stunning me with unforeseeable founts of interest and actual work.

Cindy, in the brilliant T1 class, has the flu, and she and I were chatting before class about how everyone has the flu, these days, including me, just now beginning to recover (knock on wood).  Then she said something very funny:  "Your voice is much nicer when you're sick."  I guess she was referring to that raspy, slightly lower sound it has.  But… I didn't know what to say.  Should I have said, "Oh.  I'll try to stay sick, then"?  But I think she was joking.  Sometimes I can't tell.

Caveat: Vote?

Banalities & Journaling / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

Tomorrow is election day.  South Koreans will vote for president.  이명박 (reformed romanization I-Myeong-Bak / conventional romanization Lee Myung Park) is the far-ahead leader in all polls, member of the conservative Grand National Party, which would then replace the slightly less conservative current ruling coalition.  Most people here are voting their pocketbooks, as there has been a lot of inflation of e.g. land prices.  Most of the leading candidates seem to have similar views of such controversial issues as the North Korean rapprochement (i.e. they favor it), as best I have been able to determine (though I haven't researched extensively).

So tomorrow night, we'll know who will be president for the next 5 year term.  Like Mexico, presidents may only serve one term. 

Caveat: Incentives and U.S. Healthcare

Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I heard a part of a speech by Mike Huckabee, with whom I was certain I would find very little in common, and was stunned to hear a compelling and cogent argument about the core problem with healthcare in the U.S.

It comes down to an MBA-style incentives analysis:  why do insurance companies prefer paying for major healthcare interventions when prevention would be cheaper, in the long run?  Because, from a strictly actuarial standpoint, they have almost zero interest in the long run, since the average person is covered by a single given healthcare provider only for a short or medium run (i.e. a person keeps a given job at a given company for, say, 5 years, when prevention-oriented healthcare requires much wider windows of 8 or 10 years, at the least).  Thus, to pay for prevention-oriented healthcare for covered workers is only to subsidize a competitor, who would be the next insurance provider down the line in a given worker's career track.

One can question the accuracy of the individual bits of fact or statistic in the above analysis, and I didn't get a chance to hear what he thought the solution might be, but I was nevertheless pleased by the argument's underlying clarity and logic – it had an almost marxist-dialectic appeal.

No doubt, someone's been writing Huckabee's policies and speeches, but that he would sign on to such an assumption-challenging exposition speaks well of his intellectual integrity.  I'm not saying I would vote for him – he is, after all, the current favorite of a fundamentally intolerant Christian right – the all-American Jihad, made-in-Arkansas.  But, he's been condemned more than once as a new example of something that might be called an "evangelical liberal," and this example may provide some support to that categorization.

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