LATENIGHT - KOREA

Saturday, September 29, 2001

Dead ducks! - Fowl feasts are never fowl feasts!

So where do all those peppers go? Into Korean food of course. Today I had a great lunch cooked for me which included 된장찌개 (Denjon ChiGae or Soy Bean soup) and 햄야채볶음 ( Ham Yachae Bokum or Ham and Vegetable Stir Fry). Of course, there was 김치 (Kimchee) but there was also a special treat of 오리고기 (Origogi, which is Duck meat)! You should not confuse the English 'duck' (Korean- Ori 오리) with 닭 (Dalk or 'chicken' in English) nor should you confuse it with 떡 (Dduck) which are a form of Korean rice cakes. In turn, you should not confuse 떡 with 유과 (Yugwa) which are another type of rice cookie, served especially this time of year-- as we now are entering 추석 (Chusok, or Korean Thanksgiving). Chusok officially begins on Monday, which is actually August the 15th on the Lunar Calendar by which holidays like this are measured. It means a relaxing 5-day weekend for me!

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Not much to add tonight as the Blogspot server is moving slow and so am I. I went over to John's tonight to trade some software for some printoffs and picture scans. Here's one of them from a while back. This is a shot from when the 사파동 (Sapadong) market was in full swing. It was pretty much a flea market that set up shop for many of the city blocks surrounding my home, on any date that ended with a 4 or a 9 (so basically every 5 days). In recent months, because 창원 (Changwon) is a planned city and abhors chaos, the sellers have been mostly pushed out and into enclosed buildings (where the city, coincidently, charges rent). This shot shows several garbage bag sized heaps of red hot 고추 (Gochu or just simply peppers in English) with a canister of freshly peeled garlic thrown in for good measure.

Monday, September 24, 2001

New to my K-Pop Collection - Yang Pa, Vol. 4 [perfume]

Not a bad CD. I decided I hadn't bought enough local music lately (since I got the new computer I have been downloading tunes for free on Morpheus). This release is quite well polished (maybe too much so)-- she has a great voice. A lot of the songs sound quite Western though, save for the language difference. According to profile information, she is 162cm tall, 48kg, and was born on St. Patrick's Day, 1979. I am still open to hearing a singer or group who could replace Chakra as my number one Korean darlings... but Yang Pa isn't quite it. Her name, by the way, is Korean for 'onion'. As far as I know, there's no double meaning insinuated but after looking at some of her gallery photos, I think she over-utilizes the wide-eyed, glamour style shot that Korean girls seem to love, and while I was tempted to say she looked like a heroin addict- I guess you could say she looks like a vegetable too. Yang Pa, if you're reading this... I don't hate you... but PLEASE get a new photographer!

Click the pics to visit Yang Pa's Official Website
or go to the sidebar to view additional K-Pop links.

Sunday, September 23, 2001

Praise be to Corpre. I had a miracle today. Something that has troubled me for sometime turned out to be a non-existant problem. When my old laptop had its unforunate run in with the floor, I was rather distraught with the knowledge that all the songs and modifications to songs that I had written since coming to Korea- were irrevocably out of my reach and presumably gone. Today I tried to patch my monitor into my laptop which would have worked had the laptop still been able to boot up. (I did get to see a Compaq logo but the poor thing could struggle no further into any manageable OS.) Resolved that the songs were mostly gone, save for the scraps of parchment that a few were written on, I went back to my new computer to begin transcribing new copies of what I could retrieve. I had copied over some of my Halifax songs onto a disk when I left Halifax and those songs were already moved into my new desktop, but when I opened the file, ALL of my songs were there. I have NO recollection of making a backup in Korea-- but there they were there in black and white, and in 1's and 0's. Furthermore, they have been there for the last several weeks and I didn't even know it.

I'm going to go hammer away on my guitar for a little while. I'm in a pleasant state of shock.

Saturday, September 22, 2001

CLICK for Mashimaro!

I'm on the Top of the World, Looking Down on Creation
So I installed a secondary counter yesterday, after my old one decided to switch to a partially paid service. My new free counter has showed me something amazing. People typing combinations of 'Mashimaro' into Yahoo! are getting MY web page close to the top! In fact I am #27 in order and one of the few entirely English pages that show up that early. This has led me to type in things such as 'changwon + weather' and 'kyungnam + journal' and various other combinations. All of a sudden I find myself showing up in single digits or at the top. Someone was looking for 'changwon + hotel' and they got my page too... interesting. I still haven't done as well as my friend, Donna, who shows up at #4 if you simply type her name... and she has a pretty common last name too! Unfortunately the web is overrun with people sharing my name.

Something else I noticed too... I have a posting on another Korean website now. The Pusanweb Konglish Corner has published one of my earlier anecdotes. Check it out; I am at the top of the page right now, there too.

SECURITY UPDATE: I received some information due to my earlier concerns about Microsoft Messenger after randomly trying combinations of email addresses. Microsoft seems to not want bug reports from their website-- so I had to take a few stabs in the dark. The guessed address: 'secure@microsoft.com' finally worked, and provided my response. I'm going to quote directly.

These calls are processed and serviced by a partner company we work
with, Net2Phone. Net2Phone provides connectivity between the internet
and the phone systems, with gateways stationed throughout the world.

It's well-known that eavesdropping on phone lines is possible, and
although not common, it can happen either by a user trying to snoop
intentionally (think wiretapping) or accidentally (think a crossed phone
line, where you hear someone else's conversation, frequently termed a
"bad connection")

Friday, September 21, 2001

Just saw one of the latest commercials for Thai Airways International with their catchy campaign, "Smooth as Silk". I don't care where they take me... I just want to take a flight. Keep hitting reload on their website and you will see multiple images of their high quality and very professional stewardesses.

Joshua's Stone at Shechem

I had Bible study again last night. This time it was a topic of my choosing and I chose the Book of Joshua- not knowing it's degree of bloodiness or the extent to which Joshua and the Hebrews committed copious acts of genocide as they pursued their five year conquest of the Holy Land. (For an alternate translation of Joshua, see here). The director of our school attended also. As a gracious guest, she brought fruit (though I, as an ungracious host, didn't eat any). They are using polyploidy on the grapes here to make them the size of golf balls and then they coat them in pesticides. Even Koreans don't eat the skins, choosing to peel them instead. I swear to God (Jehovah?) the first time I saw them I was convinced they were plums-- especially after I saw the skin removed to reveal a yellowy interior. Next week, our Semitic slayfest continues as we delve into the Indiana Jonesesque adventure of "Elijah: and the Prophets of Ba'al!" ( I Kings, Chapter 18).

Elijah and the Prophets of Ba'al
Image from woodcut by German artist Julius Schnorr
(published 1860)

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

System update! My IME is back up and running! 짱 (ZZang!). Windows ME apparently offers a function that I was as yet unaware of- System Restore! I just rolled back my computer to Sept. 10th and we're back in business. Now it's just a matter of reinstalling my software from Canada which I will have to do much later.

So what do I write about? The World Trade Centre / Pentagon bombings are miles away for the moment and mostly outside the scope of this weblog. My deepest sympathies to our southern cousins.

In my life, I visited Seoul on the weekend and had a great but short trip. I've been preparing students for drama contests but have no idea yet how they placed. My Korean Microsoft IME is not working so I can no longer add Korean text to my blog. It provides an error when I try to uninstall it and I can't reinstall it... so it looks like I am going to have to wipe my system. I need to kill Windows ME until it is dead, dead, dead. It looks like I will try and install Windows 98, 2nd Ed.

The weather getting cooler. The fall climate is great here. Students are busy preparing for school tests... and the world is going to war. We have units that provide readings and material about many, many countries in our books- but yesterday it just sort of stood out to me how many of these countries, from Japan to Puerto Rico, to Panama- have been occupied by U.S. troops. In one of my classes, we were 'listening for comprehension' to audiotapes of phone conversations. I couldn't help feeling like I was in the C.I.A.

Just a note: For users of MSN Messenger, I had a security problem last night in which I think a conversation I was having was being listened to. A third party (unknown) verbally interupted the conversation. Anyone else feel they are being eavesdropped on?

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

"I play, you play, he she and it playS! Conjugate dammit!"

I am going to do my best to change my polls from now on. That should give people a chance for more dynamic feedback. Vote early, before I change it again.

Why does my imood say 'aggressive' today? I've been getting into spats with people who have been bothering me lately. Only when I am completely in the right of course-- as in today's example when I was fighting to score more review classes for a group of my students who are having some problems with simple verbs, but have been shuffled ahead into more and more advanced books by over-zealous teachers. It felt good to get it out of my system, and apparently some people were happy to see my target get taken down a notch. Hold me back.

There's a weird movie on about the Bermuda Triangle so I am going to watch that. It's called 'The Sender' and it stars the drill sergeant from 'Full Metal Jacket'. Funny, but there are a lot more FMJ fan pages on the internet than there are for the movie I am watching now. You can also check out this one or if you want something that better suits T.E.F.L. classroom environments, go to this one.

Monday, September 10, 2001

Sunday night. The weekend has passed alright. Who ever said Windows ME was full of bugs is probably right... either that or the stuff I am downloading is chronically corrupt. Letsee, the week passed languishingly. Friday night I went out with some coworkers and then ran into a Korean friend at another bar. I was going to have a drink with him and he was drinking, as he told me, Remi Cognac (V.S.O.P.). The problem is that this is one of those bars where you buy the bottle and not the glass so we had several glasses of cognac before the bar closed and we graciously left.

Saturday was spent at home except for a brief foray to find drain cleaner. With hand signals, I managed to do a good job.
"싱크 (sink-uh, accompanied by gestured of turning on and off water faucets)"
"물 (Mool/water) goes up... (hand moving up) ...but not down (shaking head, keeping hand where it is, and making a sad face)."
It worked and now I have clean drains.

Today... I went to church again in Pusan.

Tuesday, September 04, 2001

Ugh... Sleepy. I had to get up early as I remembered we have a foreign teachers' meeting today. I worked until 10:15 last night and then came home and sat at the computer until 5:30am. Yes, I know... I sat there for, oh my God, 7 hours and didn't update my blog. Actually I was playing Colonization.

The computer is working well. It actually has two hard drives which is where the extra space is coming from. Sitting at it is going to kill my back since I don't have a proper computer chair yet and hardly any space between the bed and desk where I have it wedged into.

Last but not least, I went to a Korean wedding on Sunday. One of our teachers, 조아영 (Jo Ah Young) got hitched and is moving to Pusan. Good Luck! It wasn't as bad as I was led to believe a Korean wedding would be. There were no disco balls or karaoke at all. It was just a nice ceremony in an elaborately recreated chapel with lots of gold embossing. Afterwards we went to a Bulgogi restaurant.