(in)Famous at Last!

Well,

Sort of. Korea.net ("The Official Website of the Republic of Korea") is featuring my blog on their front page. As that will be transient, I've taken a screen shot..

Down in Silla Town

Last Friday the family bundled up and off to Gyeongju. We took the train down and on the way I was amused to see the sister campus to where I work looming off on the horizon.



when we got to the yeogwan, Baxter assumed his customary position:


Outside in Gyeongju the evening was frightening:


But it was still autumn when the sun came up:



Squirels were standing on their heads



And the lovely Seokguram Grotto loomed ahead:


As did tumuli
And the harsh streets of Gyeongju (Picture courtesy of Danny):


We wandered through the "open air museum" that is Gyeongju, and ate alarming amounts of sam gyap sal...

You could say it was a good day...

LOL...

Two names my charmingly stumbly Graduate Education student call me..

1) Mona Angry
Which should amuse anyone in the family.

and

2) Mr. Mongo Marry
Which I feel is even better!

Who Wrote the Book of...

Two More Steps Outta Hell....

1) Got a crudload of papers graded.... Academic Writing? Great to teach, a pain to mark.

2) Finished my 250 page textbook edit. Semi-hysterical work and semi-hysterical me. I had to vet, above and beyond the language, if the pages with definitions were correct, and if the fill-in and essay questions were appropriate. Let's just say there was some "thesaurus-using" by whoever created the testing component.

But I R dun....

Prepped for tomorrow's classes and ready to sleeeeeep!

Work Updates.. from hell... where work comes from.. ;-)

Finally.. finally finished the review of The Red Room I've been working on...

It is

available here

for my one reader who wants to read 2000 words about Korean Pain-Porn-Lit (and that's me!) .

Got about 1K words done on "Who Ate Up All The Shinga." This is one of the two reviews I'm doing for the online Korean Review...

But Shinga is a killer book that is fun to read if you like mother/daughter fiction or to read about the development of an author as a child... actually, it's just a pretty good book!

Tomorrow is pain... three sets of essays to grade and about 200 pages to edit...

If I should die tonight, grieve if you want, but my spirit will be light. ;-)

Building Expat Community in Seoul

NOTE: This is cross-posted at MorningCalm

Saturday was the first 2S2 (Second Saturday, 2:00PM) meetup near Anguk Station. For those who don't know, this is an attempt to build to build some community and camaraderie between expats and, we hope, to create a stronger support system for incoming English teachers and professors. For more information you can contact Rob at his blog, Roboseyo. Here's what it looked like at one point:

left to right: Shannon Heit, Roboseyo, Chris Backe, Jo, Joy Iris-Wilbanks, Hayley who came in from Jeollanamdo, Yvonne from Daejon (Not pictured: Joe McPherson, Dan Gray)

This is also associated with a website, the Chatjip expat site which I urge all expats to check out and join. This site has information about 2S2 and is working to create the best online events calendar in Korea for English speakers. It also aggregates headlines and blog posts.

We were extremely lucky to have Shannon Heit, from the Seoul Global Center, attend the meeting and talk to us about what the Global Center offers expats and what she hopes to do in the future. In the past, the Center has focused on business initiatives, but now it is branching out in an effort to support all expatriates. In addition, Shannon hopes to expand the Center's support impact on the web. Shannon can be reached by email at shannon.sgc@gmail.com.

Everyone had a great time, and we will do it all again in a month.

Stay tuned...

Last Weekend

Since it is already this weekend, I suppose I should post about last weekend?


Which was off the Morning Calm Gardens in Cheongpyeong, which is kind of north-east of Seoul. We had gone on this train line before, but discovered that if you took the train from Oksu you ended up in the Cheongyeongri train station and we were able to catch a train, standing room only, within about 15 minutes. We were in the front car with about 10 college students who were heading up to Gapyeong or Chuncheon. They quickly pulled out the beer, then quickly spilled some of the beer, but everyone was in good spirits.



Once we got to the train station it was a short walk to the bus station, where we discovered we had just missed the bus.


So it was a quick taxi ride to the Morning Calm 아짐 고요 Garden. Alas, we had arrived just about at week to late and most of the beautiful leaves were on the ground, though they were made up for, in volume, by gnats. This will certainly be a cool place to visit in Spring. You can see how beautiful it was BEFORE our visit by checking Roboseyo’s site out. By the time we got there, most leaves were on the ground.

We did get to see one of the world's smallest churches (Photo on right has tiny Injun for scale):


Then it was a walk back through town and a samgyapsal lunch/dinner at a fairly backwoods place – it was where the bus drivers went to eat and we were quite the center of attention with the ajumma hovering and cooking our meat for us. Any random little bit of Korean I could pull out was appreciated and we left, full and happy.

On the mugungwha, again standing tickets, and back to Seoul, drinking a coke and a beer on the floor and sitting with slightly fewer students.

This and or that...

With week 10 of classes done the finish line is starting to come clear.. which is a darn good thing as they continue to pile the editing on.. not a bad thing, just a bunch of work at just the time I'm trying to get three book reviews, two newspaper articles, and a paper out of the way so that I can concentrate on the photo-essay that is due in early December. ;-o

Oh yeah, I still have to grade the big essay my Academic Writing students gave me as well as the midterm for the Graduate English Teachers Convo Class.

Consequently, after work today, I bailed on anything productive and instead headed over to Gyeongbokgung Palace to take pictures with my boy Adam from Daejeon. At Gyeongbokgung Station I stopped to take a snapshot of this arch. The arch isn't anything particularly grand, but right next to the arch is the punchline - the metal 'stone' with the inscription:

This gate was made of monolith in imitation of PULLOMUN in CH'ANGDOKKUNG.
It has a legend that once one passes through the gate, he would not be old forever.

That always cracks me up, since I'm pretty sure the Grim Reaper is also out there to make sure I don't stay old forever.

Anyway, Adam and I and a guy from Australia cruised around, took pictures and drank coffee. Later Adam and I headed into Itaewon to eat some kind of Middle Eastern food and Adam sucked on a Shisha like a half a dozen hookers looking for a big paycheck.

After we ate at this restaurant we headed around the corner from Noksapyeong Station where Adam stopped at Instanbul and had "Second Dinner" (I think he might be a Hobbit?).

Now home, waiting for Yvonne to get here. No celebration yet, but her hiring at BPU2 moved one step closer yesterday. BPU2 may find a better English teacher than me, but I think they're decided they are unlikely to find a better editor. Part of the deal is that I will stay at least one more year after the next one and they will lobby for a year after that if our grant goes through.

I've left the possibility open, but we'll see about that. At least if Yvonne gets hired we will have shared winter and summer vacations and will be able to come home a lot more.

For the few of you who do not know, we'll also be getting married (anyone know a good pre-nup lawyer??????!!!) when we get back to the States in February. As you know, the Korean tradition is to put money in envelopes and give it to the couple.

WE NOW DUB YOU ALL "HONORARY KOREANS!"

;-)

Oh yeah, that last picture is of the smaller pagoda in the smaller lake at Gyeongbokgung. It's a pretty place and I hadn't been there since my first trip to Korea with the BKF.

Had to scope it out in prep for the fambly landing later this month...

Tomorrow it's off the the prettiest garden in Korea..... more pics..

Noted with minimal comment

If Kimchi "prevent" swine-flu, why all the panic around here?

More RETARDED overseas marketing.. this time Korean food

Ok..

sounds good (link here)..

various events have also been organized to raise awareness of and popularize Korean cuisine among L.A. residents. Locals will have the opportunity to enjoy food-tasting events, such as with "gimbap," or seaweed-covered rice rolls, and fried squid and other seafood.

But they are doing it at Hannam Farking Market IN KOREATOWN! Because God knows, Koreans know nothing.. NOTHING I tell you! about Korean food.... This "gimbap" as you call it? How will Koreans react to its strangeness?

Jesus... take this money and roll it into some kind promotion with the Kogi Truck which has, in less than a year, converted more whitey's to the advantages of Korean food than 20 years of M*A*S*H, Sandra Oh in movies, or multiple translations of books about the pain and woe of Korean history..

Crap.. what is wrong with these people?

The Web is My Friend!

After the computer (and ribs) trauma of the last weekend, I'm back up and running. The MacBook Pro is a cool machine and I've 'found' the latest Office and Dreamweaver online. A few more translation softwares to find and all I will need is Photoshop and a couple of other "big" apps that can't really be 'borrowed.'

In the meantime, I've been contacted by my author's (Kim Yong-ik) son! He saw some comments I made about his father online and he still lives in the family house, with papers and manuscripts intact. He also gave me contact info on several people who knew Kim, so that book I wanted to write might be back on.

I think I also mentioned here that Acta Koreana contacted me about a review, so I have three in the hopper. Add to that the paper I'm working on with Kim Soonyoung, and I'm a busy lad.

Still, it was an added bonus that I was also contacted by the son of Lee In-soo (about who, more later) who is interested in meeting. I think I need to email him soon.. now that I am fully technologized again!

Stupid is as stupid does..

Had a great weekend. Some confusion on Friday night about an editing job that never came in, but on Saturday I went to my new Korean language class at the ungodly hour of 10 am. Yvonne got up and headed up Namsan to chill, sort of, in the sun. Later in the day, James showed up and Yvonne went off, again, to Namsan, but this time with our friend Margaret. James and I bachelored about until.. oh... 8:45 or so and then returned home old and defeated!

So sad. There was a day when I could drink until nearly 10!

Sunday was all about bookshopping, and I picked up a Pak Wan-seo short novel that it will be convenient to read as it will give me background on her style for the review I'm doing for Korean Journal on her autobiography/novel. James had to head back down to Busan, so Yvonne and I had lunch and then headed back onto the town.

Finally, time to return, and at Geongdeok station, transferring to line 6, the train pulled into the station as we came around the corner.

Preparing myself for the sprint to the train, I carefully placed my left foot upon the instep of my right shoe and ... and... began to tumble to the ground.

Three good sprinter's steps and my struggle to stay aloft was over.

I went in headfirst, but kind of on top of my backpack, which was loose on my right shoulder.

I got up with some pain.. mainly in my left chest (no doubt a heart-attack).. but mainly embarassed and, got the train!

Get home to check out the damage to my gear (laptop and camera and lenses were in the backpack) and fire up the computer, which works... but the screen looks like some kind of bad modernist painting.

OOOPs!

camera and the rest of the gear is OK, but I will be buying that new laptop a couple of months before I thought I would. There goes my fantasy that some mysterious benefactor would buy me some top o the line shite for my b-day!

Thank god BKF brought an old laptop to Korea on his last visit... at least I have something to type on!

I will send this in the morning, if my broken rib does not puncture my heart....
.

In the past four days I have had a couple of experiences that reminded me why I am so fond of Korea, and one of the things that moving to Korea has meant to me personally.

Last weekend, as my fiancee and I sat in Yongsan Family Park (By the Korean National Museum, Ichon Station, lines 1 and 4) I was amused to watch a young Korean girl in the middle of the playground. She ignored her surroundings and concentrated on waggling her left arm in the air. She found this intensely interesting, and so did I although I don’t think I would have been interested in doing it myself! In fact, as I watched her work her way around the playground, I noted that she found everything extremely interesting.

This started me watching all the kids in the park, and I noticed they all had remarkable ability to find things new and interesting. The boy who watched a bug intently for 10 minutes, then sprang up to chase a dog, could go back to the very same bug with the very same intensity as he had the first time he observed it (ok, the first time he poked it with a stick, he was a young boy after all).

I forgot about this until yesterday, when two things happened. First, as I was running through my daily blog list, I came across a blog that quoted the movie, Knocked Up (which I have never seen) in which two characters watch children playing in a park.

PETE
What's so great about bubbles?
BEN
They float. You can pop them. I mean, I get it. I get it.
PETE
I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles.
BEN
That's sad.
PETE
It's totally sad. Their smiling faces just point out your inability to enjoy anything.

Second, as I walked home and enjoyed the coolish autumn air and the spectacular foliage in and around Namsan Park, I settled in behind an older man, probably in his 60s. He walked along, but it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere, at least not in a hurry. He kicked at pebbles, he “high-fived” low hanging leaves, every once in a while he stopped to examine some small thing on the ground. When the sidewalk leveled off, before ascending to the Hyatt Hotel, he pulled a very thin, dead branch out of the bushes, yanked off the smaller end so that the switch was approximately cane-lengthened, and then swept up the hill like D’artagnan, poking and prodding at things in the bushes, waving the switch in front of himself, and pushing things (very small things) around on the sidewalk. I thought to myself, “what a great day, and what a great model for enjoying it.”

These three happenings, and the excellent mood I was in, crystallized something I like about children, about Korean society, and about what moving to Korea has done for me. Almost all children and much of Korea, is able to find pleasure in the smallest things, and they are able to find that pleasure again and again. I’m not sure I’ve met a jaded Korean.

Coming to Korea has restored this semi-childlike wonder in me. I had spent the last few years in the US weaving together banded bits of thread into something that throttled my ability to have spontaneous fun; there was always some important thing to do, or some way I had to act, and, at least where I was, there was no culture of spontaneous fun. In Korea, I was able to turn much of this around.

Part of it, of course, is that all of Korea was new to me when I arrived. So it was easy to be enthralled by the differences. This is one reason that people travel, you are a passport and a ticket away from a quick and easy return to a state of wonder. But another part of it is the spontaneous (a word expats often don’t associate with Korea) public culture that breeds the opportunities to have fun and new experiences. I think back to my hike up Bukhansan and the family that shared food with us (and others) and the climber who insisted I toast my summitting with Makkeoli. This kind of experience may happen disproportionately to foreigners, because we are so obvious, but I see it everywhere I go. Finally, there is also what I interpret to be (although it might be something else entirely) the Korea solipsism (I mean that in the good sense of the word) that allows Koreans in public, to ignore others and do their own things.

All of this has combined, for me, into an opportunity to reconnect with the little kid inside of me. Who knew he had emigrated to Korea?

At the Chuseok-hop

So… Chuseok, of course, was not over after 1.8 days. Instead Yvonne and I repaired to the couch to watch movies. The first lovely photo is Yvonne setting up the jury-rigged system we have to show movies on the walls. It actually works wonderfully, and we had noodles and beer and watched Iron Man. I had been given the movie some long time ago by Yvonne’s brother, but had put it in the bookcase where it languished, as a book, until Yvonne found it last week.


Good movie!

The next day, which was actual Chuseok, it was off to Yongsan family park to loll about. Koreans are very public, and Yvonne loves that hang out in public thing, so I bought a pad and we pack up some water-crackers, tuna, and various beverages and go into the park and hang out. Yvonne reads, I read and take notes (somewhere around here is a picture of my “park office” which is similar to my “Train office” which picture I now cannot find on the blog?), and at various times we wander around, watch Korean kids play, watch the dogs run free, or as in one of these pictures, watch the super-solipsistic Korean women find a way to hang mirrors outdoors and make sure their makeup is just so!



And, you know, take pictures of bugs




We stayed out until the sun started hiding from us, and then it was back home to sit around (more reading!) until it was dinner and movie time.



Next day was similar…. A late start and then off for a walk on Mt. Namsan, from where most of these pictures come. When the sun came down that day we went to “Dear Friends” a cute little café up the street and had lemon tea and gin and tonics (I think most people can guess who had what). Then it was time for Yvonne to take off for the train.

It’s a drag – she doesn’t have to start teaching til late on Monday, but the Hagwon insists she be there in case of emergency.

Lo and behold, when I caught her on FB on Monday morning, the imaginary emergency had finally come: Her Canadian (they are largely swine and every last one untrustworthy) co-teacher had pulled a runner, leaving only a filthy apartment and filthier memories.

Heh.. this will be the example the director will use to defend his Monday morning policy for the rest of his life.

Chuseok Comes Early!

As Thursday is the traditional "early getaway" day for Koreans leaving for their hometowns, to celebrate Chuseok, we are allowed to cancel our Thursday classes. Which I did with a speed that would considered indecent in rabbit sex.

So tonight is Friday night, and so is tomorrow night, and the night after that.

Sweet!

Not so sweet - last night I decided to walk home and thought I might take a stroll through Namsan tunnel. This is just about a mile through Namsan Mountain. The tunnel was hot, polluted, and the walkway a bit uneven. Worse, what I didn't think about was that everything in the tunnel would be, of course, coated in auto exhaust. This meant that when I grabbed hold of the railing, I got a fistful of soot. Also, when I brushed the wall, or touched anything. You'd be suprised at how much af a tar-baby you can make of yourself in such circumstances.


Sweet, though, a student gave me two bottles of wine for Chuseok, so at least I had something to look forward to when I got home.

Now I'm sitting in Gecko's, with a beer and a quesadilla down, preparing to take the shortish walk home.

Just Another Friday.. er.. Graphic Monday..

Random graphics inserted...

Yeah.. two classes .. then started to walk home, but ended up watching some Korean Little League..

For some reason it seemed classically Korean to me.. Each inning the defensive team worked themselves into enormous trouble (two innings with the bases loaded before there was an out!) and then in a fit of "coaching" and pitcher changes (and probably the bottom of the lineup!) they worked themselves out without much damage.

As far as I could tell (I eventually buggered off to catch a taxi) the game must have ended in a 3-3 tie. The story of Korean history, perhaps...

then back home to a flurry, nay, a hurricane of edits. There is some kind of conference this weekend, and the papers are due by 9am tomorrow. This makes me a popular dude...

other than that... Fall in Korea... and Al Green rocking "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" on the Digitizer..

Cain't beat that shit!

Tardy Updates, Lynyrd Skynrd style - "Gimme Back my Bullets"

Many things have happened and I have been an uncertain poster her. So I resort to bullets

• BPU2 is considering upgrading my position to include work as a liason between the school and English-speaking Unis. More pay, of course. My teaching would be reduced to official load (9 hours) and I would be working on some cool projects. Not to get any hearts in a flutter, but this might include some work in Texas - "might."
  
  
• We are also working on a totally cool project to create a rubric by which to pre-screen fiction that is being considered for translation into English. More about this will pop up on MorningCalm very soon, but for now it's a fun project
  
  
• I still need (even more if my load is reduced) to find BPU2 a second English instructor. Someone has to know someone with an MA in English Lit or ESL who wants to come over and have some fun in Korea?
  
  
• The BKF tells me that KLTI will be moving us onto their lists as a translator/editor team. That is, as we vernaculate, splendiddest. And has promise of more money attached to it.
  
  
• Gecko's is the place to be in Itaewon on Sunday - Queen on the stereo, Yvonne mopping up the bits of calimari that she mysteriously spat onto the table, bookshopping complete, and the wireless working flawlessly and fast.
  
  
• Next week? Two days of instruction!!! Deal with that biaaaaaatches!
  
  

Korea Imposes its Ferocious Will

I meet with the Chair last week to demonstrate that my knee is relatively healed up and that she can stop bugging me about going to the hospital.

I get into her office and she's giving off a nervous vibe..

She says.. "You know, until last Friday you DID NOT have health insurance. Someone forgot to enroll you in it."

I say, "well, boy howdy, but it's good news that I have it now, eh?"?


She says, "well, that is good news, but there is bad news also."

"What is that?" I inquire in that cat contemplating a hot stove-lid way that I have.

"Well," she responds, "you owe six months worth of paycheck deductions for your health insurance."

That would be the health insurance I have just been told I DIDN't have.

I ponder. I am being charged for a service I didn't have. And yet, since it is Korea, there is nothing to be done about it.

Lo and Behold(en), I am docked nearly 600,000 won on my next paycheck...

Bastids!

A Few Nice Words About Korea

Every so often you hear someone complain that Koreans are a bunch of rude, neo-Confucians who would just assume run a foreigner over as look at one.

I think that is only the motorcycle delivery guys. And I don't think it has any relationship to race or country of origin. ;-)

When my knee was all asploded, walking caused me considerable pain and it must have been obvious even on my stoic and craggy features (Did I say "handsome?"). Everywhere I went, Koreans stopped to help me. The helped me get down stairs, they helped me flag down cabs, they helped me walk up and down hills, they asked if I was all right. Cabbies rushed out of their cabs to help me get out without further crippling myself. By the time I could walk half-normally I had worn out all the kamsamneeda ("thank you") and kwenchanayo ("I'm OK") muscles in my face.

On Friday I went up to the District Office to see if there was anyone there to help me at the hospital, but all the English speakers were out to a late lunch. So I grabbed a cab home and rested the thing all Saturday. This worked out well enough that on Sunday I was able to go out with the Chatjip folks and stump all around Seoul.

The outpouring of spontaneous assistance culminated in the student who came to my class Monday morning and handed me an industrial-strength knee brace.

Nice-uh!

I'm reasonably certain no student in the US would ever have even thought of such a thing.

Now the knee is better to the extent that even though I banged it, last night, into a wooden planter outside the Buy Right (or whatever) I can walk on any surface and rotate the thing torsionally (for a while there, putting on socks was about a 20 minute exercise in pain and sweat - a lot like sex, now that I think about it).

And now, finally, I DO have health insurance (as it turns out I did NOT have it prior to going to the office and complaining that I thought I didn't have it), but that came with a kind of a joker...

which is a post for tomorrow, I suppose..