Just a short note. Another weekend is almost here. I have been busy with some company. This weekend I have a few plans including, I hope, a trip to a local temple on Sunday. Wierd things are afoot for my soul methinks. I have also been encouraged several times from several places to read more of the Bible. I also had a visit this morning from some of the local clergy, who hadn't expected meeting a foreigner at the door so it didn't go far- still... coincidental?
Letsee. I want to say 'hi' to Tom, 김지명, who informed me that he was both visitor #500 and #600. That makes him my most dedicated reader, I guess :) And BTW- congratulations again to you and your class on all those 100%'s on your Public School English examinations this week. I am so proud! Now just remember to be quiet in class or else I'm going to... *grin*
Probably the funniest thing of the week, is the teacher at our school who has started biting students (under the guise of affection). The class that we share has started calling her 'Dracula' teacher and she's hamming up the part by wearing lots of black clothes and black make-up- this is starting to remind me of the Goth scene back home. Last I saw of her on Wednesday, the students had even given her a stick on tattoo of a spider for her shoulder. Spooky, man.
Last but not least, I'm racking up a tonne of coupons and bonus points. At Dunkin Donuts I have over 11000 Won in free stuff coming to me on my Happy Points Card; I finally have ten cards collected for ByeulHana Chicken which means a free dinner; and I also have two 20% off coupons and 15 points collected at Pizza Hut which gets me a free large pizza or I can save up until 20 points and get the Super Deluxe Family Size Super Supreme Cheeze Crust Pizza. I know I said 'super' twice but it's really good. Yeah... yeah... I know what you're saying: "Hasn't he learned to cook for himself yet?!"
Note from Yeji about Ian's cooking: 이안은 요리를 참 잘해요:) ㅋㅋㅋ
Friday, June 29, 2001
Tuesday, June 26, 2001
Currently in my CD Player: Papaya!
My new favourite band? No... I think I still like Chakra better... Yet I feel proud that I helped these five young, struggling artists make it to a current #10 on the Korean Pop Music charts (according to Annyoung.com)- by simply purchasing Violet, Papaya's second album. And yes, I know there's only three girls on the album cover but trust me- there's five altogether.
For an even better website on contemporary Korean Pop music, hop on over to...
Oh yes... and as a last, important, side note- some misdirected source quoted me as saying that Eun was my favourite Chakra girl. This is clearly impossible as the K-Pop Music profile lists her birthday as being Sept. 30, 1985. The official website profile gives her birthday as Sept. 30, 1984, still placing her well within the age of minority- even if you add the extra year or two as Koreans do when calculating age ( I'm 28 here, for example).
For the record, my favourite Chakra girl is Ryuwon, who age is lusted- er...listed as a healthy, and still youthful, 20 (or 21 in Korea?). And as a last clarification, I found out that indeed it was Inee (the eldest) who was the former Miss Korea finalist, in 1997, as I reported on May 20. Oh heck... let's see their picture again, shall we?
The girls from Chakra!
(L-R) Hwangbo, Eun, Ryuwon, and Inee
Monday, June 25, 2001
Another weekend is just about finished. This will just be a short posting as I have been busy most of the weekend, either going out or entertaining company. Friday night was the 4th Anniversary party for the International Pub here in Changwon. They passed out free tequila and even free T-shirts. Saturday night I went with some friends to a small Hof named Time (either after the cigarettes or the magazine- I don't know which) and followed it up by some late night 떡볶이 (Dduk Boki) under a tent in the pouring rain. The rain has continued to heavy cascades today- as has the wind during any periods that the rain stops falling. I made it out to rent some movies including Red Planet and Dr. Dolittle (which unfortunately is dubbed and not subtitled so I can't watch it). Time to go to sleep and listen to the sound of the falling ocean.
Thursday, June 21, 2001
백두산 (Baek Du Mountain) in North Korea
T'was one of my easier days at work. To change the pace a little bit, I brought in my guitar. Two of my classes were studying the Woody Guthrie folksong, 'This Land is Your Land' so I thought I'd give them an opportunity to sing for a change. We also have a new verse for Korea (one of the main points of the exercise). It goes a bit like this:
This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From Baek Du Mountain, to Cheju Island
From the Nakdong River, to Namsan Tower,
This land was made for you and me.
*Except for Baek Du Mountain, each link is a double link allowing you to click on the words individually for different websites.
I spent the last few hours reading up on Cryptozoology links on the internet (mostly Bigfoot). There's a rumour of a monster swimming about in the caldera at the top of 백두산 (Baek Du Mountain ) that is half fish and half monkey. So far, all I have to go on are the vague reports of students. For now, I think I will fill the rest of the evening by snacking away on 김빕 (Kimbap) and then turning in to bed early. For a screensaver of Baek Du Mountain, one of the most sacred places in Korea, click here.
On a belated note, I finally got a chance to check out the Beatles club (yes, it's those Beatles) with some coworkers last night. All in all it's not a bad place. I don't know exactly why they market it as the 'Neo Intelligent' bar but it could have to do with the stark black and white interior, the attrocious quotations from 'Let it Be' that are stenciled on glass walls inside, or the guy playing the pan flute (I know it sounds hokey but it made for a heck of an atmosphere and is probably the single reason I'll go back).
... So much for going to bed early. All those links above took a lot longer to write in than the 5 minutes I was anticipating. Happy surfing- it's slumber time.
Tuesday, June 19, 2001
Wow... what a thunderstorm. Everything seems topsy turvy today. Rain is splashing 3 metres up to my window from the outside as it pours down relentlessly- and above, heat lightning is emblazoning itself across the thick, Korean sky. (Poetic, huh?). Even BBCWorld is spooking me out a bit as it has been ripping background music, all night, from Carmina Burana and A Clockwork Orange- for shows that are essentially mundane in subject matter. My plans are to sit at home with a cup of tea and watch my second, rented video, The Mod Squad.
There's a new policy at work. No more screaming at students. We are going to concentrate on positive reinforcement now. If they say something right- we encourage them. If they behave well in class- we encourage them. If they leap out of their chairs and begin brutally savaging one another- we encourage them. I did not resort to speaking a single word in anger today (for the record, when I say anger I mean 'pretend' anger directed for disciplinary means- 'cause everyone knows I love my students). I am a bit worried, however, that my icy sociopathic glaring (that has taken the place of screaming) may secretly be causing more psychological trauma to the students than a good, sharp, verbal reprimand. It's a catch 22. You want the students to have fun but if you let them have fun, they will get noisy and need to be quieted. If you want to keep them quiet without using your voice to settle them, the only solution is to not encourage them to have fun. The goal is to keep them busy with activities however, our textbooks are designed for classes half the size of the ones that we have now- so the activities there don't work. As for speaking exercises, going around a room of 15 students and getting them each to say a sentence at their present level of English, is for most classes I have, impossible to do in less than about 10 minutes each. No student really seems intrigued with how well their classmates across the room can speak English. Somebody has got to email me a suggestion here. John, I know you're reading this. What am I missing?
Anyway... Thunder is billowing, lightning is flashing, Korean middle school students from 웅남중학교 (Woongnam Joong Hakyo) are screaming in terror outside my window; so I guess it's tea time.
Monday, June 18, 2001
Well... it was a long weekend. I was on the go almost constantly. Friday night I was at the Atlanta again and then we moved to Jammers before finishing off at 4am. Saturday night was another 4am night when I stayed at the International Pub 'til close. Yesterday, it was off for Chinese food in 친해 (Chinhae) and then on to Jammers for the evening again- coming home in time to watch Deep Impact, which I rented. Was there any other news? No. It's raining. That's it.
Friday, June 15, 2001
It's Friday. I'm up early again this morning, waiting for my air conditioner to be hooked up. This happens. You end up expecting them every day for a week before they show up. On Wednesday the guy didn't come because the job was too small. On Thursday, he came but left because the job was too big. Today we're getting a new guy. The problem is that they have to cut the glass of the window to fit it in, so it's a lot of trouble for one unit.
In Blog News, we are approaching our 500th hit. If I told you how far away our visitors come from, you'd never believe me. We're talking at least 4 continents, not including Europe (at least not yet that I know about). With all these visitors, I'd hope that more of you would sign the guestbook. *grin*
Wednesday, June 13, 2001
Satellite image of East Asia, from today's Yahoo! Weather
Hopefully, this will be a permanent, automatically-updated feature of the sidebar- and the closest I get to a personal web cam for a while yet.
Well I wore jeans today for the first time in a long while. It's not exactly frigid outside, that's for sure, but I was met today with a lovely, refreshing, rainy day. Actually, I was wearing shorts, but then heard the crash of a sudden overhead shower outside my window, which lasted about 20 minutes. The rest of the day has been filled with slow, relaxed rainfall. Koreans hate rain, and some seem scared to death of it (citing pollution)- so most of my students were in a foul mood.
The rain may have been caused naturally, but I also heard some stories of late that they were going to begin seeding clouds soon. Currently, Korea is undergoing one of the worst droughts in the last century. All available army personell are busy irrigating fields, pumps are being shipped out to the rural areas, and farmers are reaching desperation (there is no significant social safety net here, although the goverment has recently announced some tax relief).
Most of the day, I am inside so I am escaping the heat, but it is there. My home air conditioner has yet to be hooked up but as I am only home in the evenings and my house is somewhat secluded, it's not too hot in here. Tomorrow they say the air conditioner will be hooked up. It's been a busy time and my house is only a small job, so I have to take a back seat for a while. All our classrooms have air conditioners though.
For additional weather information, click the above photo or here to check out the Yahoo! Weather page or click here for USA Today.
To learn more about the current drought situation and the limited effect of today's rainfall, here is a story from today's Korea Herald.
Sunday, June 10, 2001
It's Sunday night and another weekend has passed. Certainly the most eventful things, other than going out to the most uneventful places, have been the videos from Canada. They included a lot of season finales I missed including the X-Files, the Lone Gunmen, and Star Trek: Voyager. Oh yes, and Rick Mercer's special, Talking to Americans, which caused quite a stir when it first aired. I managed to find new webspace at Webjump to host my images but overnight, Fortune City has miraculously reappeared. Normally I would have chalked this up to downtime but it's just that they had another company's web page where their's used to be (so it looked like they were bought out or something). At any rate, the pictures are back.
Now for the obligatory Korean content. I forgot where I was for a moment. Again today, my main Korean experience is of food. Oh yeah, and car crashes (I say, as I hear one while typing away.) About every two or three hours, I swear, I hear VROOM - *crash* - and then VROOM again. Korea is #1 in the world for traffic accidents.
Oh yeah, the food. Today's menu was prepackaged, make in a single pan, 떡볶이 (Dduk Bokki) which is also microwavable if I had a microwave. It's a delicious and spicy dish that you can buy from carts on most street corners when you're out about town, consisting of tube shaped rice cakes in a sauce of red pepper and garlic, etc. Tonight it's chicken take-out from BHC Chicken (no web site that I can find yet). BHC stands for Byulhana Chicken which, roughly translated means 'One Star'. My guess is that they want to say 'Lone Star' and pretend to be Texan. They also advertise it as Fusion chicken which means either that it's a little bit Korean and a little bit Western- or that it's a little bit chicken and a little bit vegetable (in this case). Fusion has that double meaning here, whether you are talking about a bar, or food, or whatever- and Koreans LOVE to use that word. Okay... time to eat.
Saturday, June 09, 2001
What happened to FortuneCity?. Not only has my account disappeared... the whole site is gone! If you have an idea of a good place to keep photos and files for me to remote load... let me know, please. I'm tired of changing all my photo links every two weeks.
With that said. Today is hot. The market is out in Sapadong. We had lunch at my bosses' house and that's about it of note. A parcel arrived from Canada today with some videos of TV shows I missed, and now I am spending the evening catching up.
Friday, June 08, 2001
Woo Hoo! If you hurry on over to The Existential Dishwasher, there is a very brief window of opportunity that you can become visitor #400 for Donna's blog... and maybe win a prize or something- I don't know. I was just visitor #399 but apparently she has done the same thing as I have and selected the 'unique visitors only' function so no matter how many times I hit the refresh button I can't be #400. In a peculiar twist of synchronicity however, looking at my counter, it's reading #402! We are at a virtual neck and neck tie (with me winning by 3 hits). Donna, by the way has been operating her blog for... like... forever so nyah! In fact, it was her blog that gave me the idea for this blog and introduced me to Blogger in the first place. Looking at my stats, I think you're number #400 for me, Kim (homepage n/a). Keep up the good work (?). Let's make it a clear race to that big benchmark of 500 or as Julius Caesar once said- "D!".
Thursday, June 07, 2001
No news is good news? I guess. Today was an irritable day and apparently I screamed so loud that I started scaring people (oops!). It still wasn't loud enough though, since the kids still misbehaved. Speaking of misbehaving... I wanted to add a semi-permanent link to that irrascible rabbit, Mashimaro- the Yupki Toki. You can now just click on the image that you find on the bar to your left and it will take you directly to the website. Once there, avoid the hangol just click on the word 'episode'.
Wednesday, June 06, 2001
Today is Memorial Day in Korea, in commemoration of soldiers lost during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. As such, it is a national holiday and I am at home. The following are some links of interest.
War Memorial and Museum in Seoul
Kimsoft web resources and links
Discovery School's Korean War page
Korean War.net
Mostly it's a quiet day around home. I ordered some Chinese take-out and am watching movies on OCN. I still haven't been able to debunk the myth of Chinese food. Everybody in Canada has always said, "Oh real Chinese people don't eat sweet and sour pork!" Well, I just finished some 탕수육 (Tang-su-yook) which is the Korean word for, you guessed it, Chinese Sweet and Sour pork- although Koreans often say Sour and Sweet pork. Maybe it isn't authentic Chinese food but it's effectively the same as you would find in Canada except that it came with 만두 (Mandu, which are little dumplings boiled or fried and in this case fried), and 짜장 (Jajang which is a type of salty brown bean paste which is really tasty and I have on excellent authority is authentic Chinese. Specifically I asked for 짜장면 (Jajangmyun) which is the noodle version. Most people in Canada are probably familiar with 면 -myun or -mien, which means noodles, since it appears in words seen in Canada such as 라면 (R/Lamien) or in other words Ramien Noodles.
For anyone interested in learning about recipes for Korean food... why not go and pay a visit to Julia's Cook Korean site!
Sunday, June 03, 2001
It's a sweltering afternoon in 창원 (Changwon). I am at home now but this afternoon I went out to Yongi Park to meet and play guitar for some students taught by a friend of a friend. I really don't know a lot of easy songs to teach kids who are in middle school. They are too old for the usual simple English songs but their English isn't strong enough for anything too advanced. Also, I only know folk songs so my repertoire was limited. I ended up teaching them 'Where Have All The Flowers Gone?' which may not have been the best choice. All boys, upon finishing school in Korea, are automatically drafted into the army for two years, and I suspected I could have been arrested for playing a Anti-Military Protest song. That was just me though; I'm sure I'm just paranoid. Still, it would have been cool for the first couple hours in jail. The kids had a bit of trouble pronouncing the word 'graveyard'. Afterwards I scored free pizza with their teacher and one of her friends who teaches at a computer academy. They are the type who are absolutely chronic for speaking about you, right in front of your face, in Korean. Still... I picked up a few tidbits of their talk and now I know that I have ...눈 귀엽다..." which means 'cute eyes' .
Saturday, June 02, 2001
Korea sure looks different in the morning. I had a busy night which included dinner (a T-bone steak drowned in sauces) and 10-pin bowling. It was the first time I went bowling in 13 years and it wasn't the candlestick bowling I was used to from Canada. It was regular Fred Flintstone big ball bowling. I did horribly but did manage one strike. Afterwards it was down to the International Pub and I still can't figure out how, in a bar I'm supposed to dislike, I ended up closing again. When they closed, went with a friend from L.A. and some military folks from Chinhae for mandu as a sort of breakfast. The guy at the restaurant criminally overcharged us (7500 Won a bowl!) Now it's 7am and I think it's bedtime. See you later.
