Straight outta Daejeon

I hear a thousand drums
A million miles away…
… I get so excited
call me a fan that’s just what I am…

It is my last night as a resident of Daejon and I don’t feel a bit of regret at leaving. Not that it hasn’t been splendid, in fact it has.

There is some kind of saying that is, I think, associated with the quitters at AA. It speaks to the typical futility of the geographical move as an effort to make a change. It features rotating cities, but it goes something like, “If an asshole gets on a plane in Tucson, an asshole gets off in Beijing” (I internationalize it only because most of the AA folks I know are pretty solidly regionally oriented).

Of course I was an asshole when I got on the plane in SFO. I was an asshole when I landed in Incheon. I would be the last to argue that I’m not an asshole as I sit here typing this in the Pirate Bar.

Now though I am a slightly different (I hope improved) asshole. I still despair of humanity, hate that life is without meaning, and love the only kind of football that God cares for (That would be US football you pathetic third-world losers – I’m talking to you, Canada and the UK!). But I’ve had some fun, accomplished a few things, even got healthier (which will make my syncopial/infracted exit even more ironic). And, somehow, it had to do with, if not the move to Korea, the decision to get the heck out of Dodge.

So I’ll take that.

And Daejeon, with it’s quiet (somnolent) lifestyle and easily walkable distances had a lot to do with that. BPU was perfect as well – a non-challenging place filled with waegukin. As a newbie instructor, this was a perfect place to develop some instructional chops. It was also a good landing place for the OAF (despite her various traumas) and that was a bonus. Culture shock was fairly minor.

But now I don’t think there is much new for me to do in Daejeon or at BPU, and so it was time to move on. That I was lucky enough to know Koreans important enough to get me an entrée to BPU2 was a bonus that I attribute to

1) Lucking out and meeting BKF
2) My (so-far) robust liver (thanks Ma!)
3) The greasy-pole climbing nature of my monkeyness

Anyway, with several days of travel on KTX with a big-ass suitcase over, I’ve got pretty much all my stuff up in Seoul. I’ve also been beavering away on my classes, the creation of which has been a total blast. I have to remember that this is really the first time I’ve had a chance to put together three brand new classes that will work entirely to my own specifications. If I don’t remember that my thrill might have to do with the new experience, I’ll just settle back into my default position on faculty in the United States – that they are mad whiners who don’t understand what special jobs (in the prosaic sense of ease, pay and vacation) they have, or the special opportunity (in creative and educational senses) they have.

I suppose my PR gig was the envy of many people, and the pay was grand. Meat, meet poison, I guess.

But who cares about other people? They merely interfere with my plans for world domination. ;-)

Next step.. Seoul, brotha!