End of Short-Term Whites

aah..

classes ended Tuesday, so I've been living the life a professional man of leisure. Wednesday was all about finishing grades and purchasing a new printer. I had to go out to Hongdae in the rain, to get the printer.. and lug it a couple of kilometers in a plastic bag. It started out a nice, light 30 pounds, but by the time I had walked it to the tube station, through the transfers, then out and up my hill, it seemed to weigh about 3 tons. Still good to have, since being able to print out things I am writing speeds my writing process up considerably.

Then it was a quick hack at grading - all done and sent off by 5 in the evening.

Today was light-housecleaning and laundry. Sat down with the two book reviews I'm supposed to finish and, by dint of having printing in the house, have finished one and am at 1,000 words on the other. Amazing what having a printer does for that process.

Now I'm avoiding doing what I really need to do to finish the second review; reread the book now that I have the outline and much of the text done... So I spent a lot of time watching clips of the Leno-Conan-Letterman-Kimmel kerfluffle they seem to be having in The Empire.

Funny stuff...

Now, I suppose, off to reading... ;-)

My infamy grows!

Way at the back of this picture? That little man standing up and addressing the crowd? That's me singing at the KBBA (Korean Something Bloggers Association) in order to win our table free chicken.

LOL.. this here storm makes the San Francisco Comical

Sure.. it's only their twitter link, but is is the front page!

Blogger Meetup!

~ Greetings ~

2S2 (2nd Saturday at 2pm) meeting for expats in Korea to get together and be jolly.

January Meet up Details:

• Saturday, January 9th 2010.
  
• 12pm: Meeting with the SeoulEats crowd at a dumpling Restaurant in Insadong. Confused on meet up area contact 2S2 Blog.
• 2PM: Both groups will move to the Twosome Cafe near Anguk station (walking).
  
• Book Exchange: Bring books you are finished with and trade them in for ones you would like to read. I am guessing you may not get the original book back...but you could arrange this.
• GoStop: play the game

Any questions or comments let us know. Thanks!

Brrrr...

Clear but icy cold..

A nice change from Sunday and Monday's snow. Sunday night the snow hit and all the roads turned to silly mush. Koreans don't seem to have tires that deal well with snow, so the main road outside my neighborhood (which is on a rather steep hill) as a skating rink of cars fruitlessly spinning their tires and drifting here and there on the road and in parking lots. After seeing Yvonne off to the tube-station I sat outside for about 20 minutes and watched the show.

Monday morning, there were few taxis available and non on my street which was still snowy and (yes) still steep. Korean don't know how to drive in the snow, and there doesn't seem to be a civic response to snow at all. I did see some trucks driving around dropping off bags of artificial salt, but that seems to be the extent of the official response. Kind of lame, considering snow isn't exactly a surprise. Homeowners and shop owners do clean 'their' sections of the sidewalk, and sometimes the road, but that is an iffy response. Taxi drivers are not about to get up in the early cold and wreck their livelihoods, so in general on days like this they take an extra couple of hours of sleep. I had to walk all the way to Noksapyeong station to grab a cab.

The other thing that happens is that the large amount of polished granite, marble, and other stones used on floors, stairs, sidewalks, and entry halls, becomes incredibly slick with freezing. This is the season all the TV channels are running alarmist adds with halmoni and halbogee falling over and breaking their hips, but those ads are based in observance. Everyone except the very young tiptoes carefully about - everyone except the violently smashed Ajusshi I saw last night. Remarkably, his lurches, stutters and stumbles seemed to be equally met by the treachery of the ground, and although he could barely stand up when in one place, his semi-epileptic mode of walking seemed adequate to the weather.

Oh well - another storm may be coming in tomorrow, so we are all girding our loins and other historical phrases..

Besides, his artistic passion were busted in other fields like movie.."

Dear Seoul Art Museum,

Holy spattered excreta on a steaming shingle! It is an Andy Warhol exhibit, a pretty big thing. You obviously spent piles of money on the staging, which was totally brilliant, and much more just to get the art over to Seoul.

Why is it, then, that you chose to do your translation into English though Babel Fish? This was the worst set of translations I have seen in my life (you may click on the graphics for bigification).
"In works, he focused on to express public emotion that shares star not on star itself."

WTF is that, some kind of splattered Zen koan?

Ahem…

The lovely fiancée and I went downtown to see the Warhol exhibit. It was great. The art was much better than I had expected, and the museum did an astounding job of laying out the rooms. Luckily, particularly for an opening weekend, the place was nearly deserted. I don’t think Warhol is the kind of artist that causes parents to grab their kids and head to a museum. Consequently there were almost no kids in attendance, and the normal push-pull-squeeze was not in effect. There was, however, one totally cute little 5-year old wandering solemnly from piece to piece, writing something down in a little notebook.



There were no signs (that I saw, anyway) saying no photography, so I took some snapshots of the absolutely terrible translations. About 2/3 of the way through the exhibit I saw the docents stopping Koreans from taking pictures of each other, so I’m assuming it actually WAS a no photo zone. Maybe the docents just didn’t want to try to explain that to the weird foreigner who wasn’t even taking pictures of the art, just the explanations postered on the walls.

This exhibit is absolutely worth checking out – it makes the Renoir exhibit that came through a few months ago look absolutely lame. At only 8-chun and with unimpeded views and paths? Get down there!

And laugh at the English translations..

Snowing in Seoul

With the semester coming to its usual tangled end, the snow is falling in Seoul. It looks nice and engenders the typical Seoul "oh mi Gawd!" responses to snow - freak out, get out the brooms(!), toss down some cardboard, halmoni and halbogee (and broken-footed me) walking at even more glacial paces, and cars with bald tires spinning out even on the little snow we have on the mild hills surrounding my house.

This must be shitty for the motorcycle delivery men, for more than one reason.

As to me, I'm still grinding out these writing things... 1200 words on Gyeongju is now off to 10 Magazine Asia and I turn to my photo essay for Education About Asia, which is due Friday. Last night was spent cranking out the last of 14 model essays for some high-school around here. Still, relaxed enough to come into work today for some coffee and strawberries.

Then time to think about re-writing next semester's classes...

Assuming I have the same classes this Spring that I had last Spring, I should be good to go. During the break I'm teaching one of my troublesome classes - "Discussion and Presentation English." The Presentation part is pretty easy - some peformance, some short speeches, and how to do Powerpoint properly.

Like a retard I was thrashing around on what the "Discussion" thing meant?

Last night a thought occured.

"Ok, maybe," decides I, "Discussion is like Converation.. only with... discussion?"

And Bingo.. now the class is writing itself in my head 8 weeks of discussion and 8 weeks of Presentation. Weird, almost like the name of the class!

LOL.. I'm stooopid

Waaaaaaaaaah!

The family left today and the house seems big and empty... :-(

Oh well, I'll see them all in February and have plenty of work to do...

We made it down to Gyeongju, which was grand, and scooted all over Korea in the cold (but not too cold).

A grand time was had by all and Jen made sure that the house is completely ready for the next overseas visitor .... ya'll come by now, ya hear?

In Which the Alien Fiancee gets a Job!

BPU2 has hired the lovely Fiancee --

a cabbie and her bad Korean almost nixed the deal - in trying to pronounce the name of BPU2, she actually pronounced the name of some other University entirely and was thus, with 20 minutes left before her interview, "Lost in Seoul!"

But another cabbie got here here in time, and now she has a non-hagwon job!

Coming Soon: Straight Outta Gyeongju...

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...

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..

One Down, Two to Go...

I just signed my letter of understanding for my second year here at BPU2. Without even looking at a potential contract. ;-)

Now that has to be a job I like!

Now, tomorrow, I go in an try to nail a job down for Yvonne here at BPU2.

If that works out, we are beyond golden.. except for my age, hairline, waistline, still cracked rib..

well, ok.. our jobs will be golden...

Noted with minimal comment

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

My Chuseoked yours in the face...

It was just the Korean holiday for family re-union and ancestor worship, which meant four glorious days off for both Yvonne and I. Yvonne hopped the Mugungwha up to Daejeon. Chuseok is also the Korean National Holiday of Everyone Going Everywhere At Once, so highways and public transportation are wildly impacted..

Anyway, she got up here on Wednesday night. Thursday was spent in that most Yvonne of things, bookshopping. Out at Gwangwhamun, on the way back, we stopped at the exhibition of Haechis (I should note that the human/mascot Haechi is hideous) and took a look.



We had some quick bulgogi and Yvonne was allowed to operate the tongs.



Then it was off to meet Margaret at my office and pass along a fistful of power-prong adapters and some literature. Finally, a trip with Margaret for a few beers in Itaewon, and home for some sleep. For the next day we had mountains to climb.

Yep, it was time to test the old kneebone, and Yvonne had found the steepest, rockiest place in Korea to do so. We hopped on the 6 line (got a happy surprise in a call from the BKF as we were underway) and got off to find the signage in Korean, but quite clear (well, not so much to Yvonne, but that's ok). A nice Korean family adopted Yvonne on the way up. They were clearly afraid that Yvonne's purple face and sheets of sweat were about to turn syncopial and any time Yvonne stopped or slowed, the Ajumma solicitously hovered about her.

The last dozens of meters were up a semi-difficult friction climb, which was difficult for Yvonne, partly because her shoes were shite. But we made it to the top and the nice family shared some apricot and chestnuts with us. Some guys also came over to me and let me toast our "peak" experience with a cup of Makkeoli. I swear... the people who blog about how mean and nasty Koreans are must alway climb up a different route than Yvonne and I do, cause we always meet the cool ones. ;-)



On the way down we discovered we had taken an unecessarily difficult route up the thing. We also discovered (as the climb had hinted) that Yvonne needed new shoes. Her shitty white-rubber soled items wouldn't hold on anything that wasn't bare granite and she spent some time on the way down skiing like a drunk epileptic along perfectly flat dirt patches.



But we made it, and then it was off to get some delicious foodstuffs.

The 500 dollar "Fuck Me" post will be tomorrow..

tonight..

Don't be so wise, I was born to fly
Not without a place in the wind
Walked off a cliff, then I closed my eyes
Ooh, I'm not a spaceman, no, no

Don't need no feathers, I don't need no twine,
I'm all together in my body and my mind,
Not supernatural, just a human combine,
Ooh, I'm not a spaceman, no, no

Adequately mis-explains what it is like to walk in Seoul on a warm night, Seoul Tower on the near horizon, and various bits of literature, scraps of theory, and notions to write about floating in my head.

LOL, I need to persuade Yvonne we never go back. ;-)

Sunday, Groovy Sunday...

Sitting in Leo's Bagel shop listening to the jangly but mellow vocal stylings of Morrissey, sipping a cup of coffee and eating the "Turk-Mex".

It could be any day in the late 80s.

The knee continues to get better, though it is still quite inflexible. Today Yvonne and I are off to the first meeting of a proposed community of expat bloggers in Korea. Some of the biggish-shots on the scene will be there, and it will be interesting to see what they are like in person.

For now though, just digging the sammich and the coffee.

The Grind Down to the Grind (and some good news)

Been a long time since I posted here as I have been working on projects, small and large.

I've been editing like a madman on various pieces that just keep flying in on the mojo-wire.

Still getting my classes for Fall together. I refuse to go through the kind of chaos that last semester was. While my evaluations rose steadily, I'm still an egotistic little shit who wants to be at the top of the list, and I wasn't. It hurt my little ego.

Finally I've been working on the whole lit-deal, such as it is, over at Morningcalm.

The good news being that a semi-big article I wrote about translated Korean lit is just now published on the Sat-Sun Korea Herald (you can see it here - I am also the skilled photographer who didn't notice his own fat shadow on the pavement!).

I saw an article on Korean Lit in the Herald last Sunday and was kind of surprised, since the Herald is an English newspaper, that it only talked about works in Korean. On reflection this was not too surprising, since I bet many English-savvy Koreans pick up the English-newspapers to keep in practice. Still, on Monday I sat me down and slapped out about 1K words on good Korean Lit in translation. Gave it a once-over on Tuesday morning and it went skidding back out over the mojo-wire.

Wednesday I got a response that they wanted to publish on Saturday, but needed something graphic. The scan I sent of some of my body-parts was deemed too graphic in one sense, and not impressive enough in another. So I grabbed all the books and scanned the covers (which is what had been the graphic interest in the piece I first saw to start all this). But in the text of the article I named a couple of bookstores and in my email I said pictures were available.

Which is how I ended up out in the rain on Thursday afternoon, taking pictures and eventually meeting a lovely Canadian couple who I went out with for beers..

LOL.. all good... I got another publication for not much work and it's on the lit-tip...

And today was drop-dead gorgeous in Seoul - not so humid, a bit windy, even a hint of cool. Graduation day between terms so happy kids and parents running around between the colored parasols of flower-sellers; determined ajummas twisting roses and wrappings into photographs.

Nice-uh!

The Verb, to Bee!

Why have I been such a bad blogger? Because I’ve been on Staycation here in Seoul. Been sleeping in late, studying Korean, and wandering about the City, with a strong emphasis on Namsan.

Sleeping in is, of course, an unalloyed good, which requires no explanation. It is odd, therefore, that I have the punched-looking eye-sockets of a boxer and a permananent case of the old pee-gon hayo.

Studying Korean, on the other hand, is supposed to keep my mind young, or flexible, or creative, or something, but its main take-home lesson so far has been that I am either too old, rigid, entrenched, or too stupid to learn a new language.

Wandering about has been more successful and, as I sit here waiting for some big-ass editing job to come over the mojo-wire, I am sorting some pictures from Mt. Namsan. I’ve been up it three times this week.

Yesterday I walked from my Korean lessons in Gwangwhamun, over the top, and then down into Itaewon-dong. On the way up I snapped a quick picture of a tour company that might want to change their name? I stopped at the top for a delicious bowl of bibimbap, which gave me the strength to continue.

On the way down I snapped the picture of what I know believe to be an actual cicada (or certainly some other kind of insect). If it’s eyes look weird, that is because it has obviously been the victim of some kind of hideous vampire-bugs who ate its brain out.

Yep, you’re looking through the empty eyeholes to the foliage beyond. Cool or gross, I can’t decide?

Monsoon season is allegedly winding down, but as it continues to rain, it continues to be green and insect-y. Today I spent some time snapping pics of honey-bees. These bees are working the Mugungwha blossoms that have just begun to appear and man do they go at it. The bees get completely coated in pollen, then head off.

After a couple snaps of that, I concentrated on getting, with mixed results, some snaps of bees landing.

Several Kinds of Insects

Korean Lesson today. My third one in a long line and I think this teacher is mean enough to make me learn. She talks almost exclusively in Korean and when she thinks I am being a retard she slowly turns the left side of her head to me, taps her ear, and says, "listen!"

On the way home I was the subject of a slow motion mugging. I walked from Gwangwhamun to Noksapyeong, a sweaty and blurry walk in the current heat and humidity. At a stop light someone grabbed my left arm with reasonable strength and sort of stupid intent.

I wheeled around, and it's a sunburnt, totally wasted beggar who really, really, wants to keep hold of me and poke at me.

His brilliant plan is somewhat limited by the fact that his pants are unbuttoned and he has no belt.

So, after about 15 seconds of poking me, his pants slide to his ankles and he has to try to gather them up again.

Repeat as is (thoroughly) unnecessary.

I practiced some of my Korean (I may have pissed him off by accidentally calling him "grandmother", but then again he was drunk, and my Korean sucks, so it could have been a non-communication moment) and tossed him away once, where he banged into another white dude in a three-piece suit who hollered in agony that contact had been made.

The light changed, and I moved along.

I met other insects along the way.. the Cicada thing is just beginning (more about that later).. and I think this is what the critters, slightly out of focus, look like:







Wait til you hear the racket!

The day after the 3rd of July

means nothing in Korea.

so we headed out to art. There was a Renoir exhibit at the downtown museum and we headed to it.

Not before grabbing a Korean take on the donut. It looks western, but the dough (I think I've said this here before) is much more breadlike and if you wipe the granulated sugar off the outside it is unhealthy, but probably not lethal.

Here is Yvonne enjoying it.



Then it was to the museum.

The short version is that a little bit of Renoir goes a very long way. Pastelish visions of piano players, nudes, matrons, and couples, mostly suspended in a a middle-ish nowhere by Renoir's habit of painting indistinct backgrounds, grew thin very quickly.

Note - Yvonne is such a dwarf she could barely get up into the cutout

Fortunately there were two other exhibits. One was Dissonant Visions which was pretty cool. A fellow blogger was bold enough to ignore the "no photo" zone and a quick look here will show what it looked like.

The coolest thing by far were the monsters made out of tires. I wrote the artist's name down on a bit of paper, but proving once again that I am better looking than smart (and I'm ugly as hell), I have lost the bit of paper.

Which means I also don't have the name of the Korean artist who had a totally cool exhibit she had painted (by "had" I'm assuming she's dead, as she was born in 1924) in various places around the world. She had really picked up some of the local style in a very non-Korean way.

Certainly the two "surprise" exhibits were way more satisfying than the Renoir.

Still, all three exhibits were for what would add up to 7 bucks in the US.

In New York you wouldn't have got bad coffee and some key marks on your car for that kind of scratch.

After, we went to a Galbi-Tang joint. It was a little expensive, but holy cow ("cow!") did it include large ribs o beef. Then a walk through Namdaemun market, some bookshopping and the evening ended with a rooftop celebration of the 4th of July and a bit of of retroactive Canada Day.



Just another splendid day.

My suicide is postponed until next week. Earliest!