Working for the Weekend

Today was all about shopping and walking..

Headed towards .. well.. I wasn’t sure.. took the same bad route I took last Saturday (without the intestinal complications), but cut to the left and followed signs to the Daejeon train station. There I found all the photo-shops that, I had been assured, would not have a battery charger for a Canon camera.

These assurances were 100% correct.

So I got some more hangers, some diet coke, some of the red bean paste, and headed home. On the way back I ate a slice of…

Of…

Well, pizza I suppose.

Very much like it but also not like it. It was something like the kind of “pizza” you’d get charged extra for in the Bay Area – under the cheese lay corn, peas, all kinds of things that are normal in Korea but not so much in pizza. As I walked along the dead river I pretended I was eating at some snooty restaurant in Berkeley and enjoyed it tremendously. Mostly because it would have cost me 5 bucks in the gourmet ghetto on 6th st Bezerekely.

An old man came up to me as I waited for a green light and gave me the kind of up and down that you’d get in a gay bathhouse. I mean.. you know.. I imagine you’d get that in a gay bathhouse.

Anyway, he pointed at my wrist and gibbered in that language they gibber around here. Something like Japanese.

I pulled my hand out of my pocket and showed him I had no watch. He nodded sadly. A few seconds passed until I realized I had the time on my ipod. I pulled it out and showed him that it was 11:34. He nodded ecstatically. For one brief second I thought I had created a moment of intercultural amity. Until he rolled out the only word of English he probably knew.

“Money?”

Ah.. the iPod had only convinced him I was some rich easy-mark from the Occident.

Fortunately, on my first Korean trip the BKF’s first Korean lesson to me was on the subway when a beggar hit me: “obseyo” – “don’t have”

I popped that out on the old dude and watched his toothless mouth cave in a bit more.

I had assumed the White Man’s Burden!

Later, I purchased some sliced octopus.

Well, it was octopus until I got it home and cooked it up when it turned into… well .. similar to the “pizza” it was very much like octopus but also not like it. I have included a picture of it here in case BKF can identify it for me. It has an octopus-like taste, but it cooks up like some kind of bread item.

I dunno, if it doesn’t turn out to be something like pattied octopus crap I’ll buy it again as it cooks up well with other foods despite the fact the I fried it and the pictures on the back pretty well indicate that I was supposed to have boiled it.

Who am I lying to? Even if it is octopus crap formed into patties I’ll buy the.. er.. “shit” … since I can identify it in the store (there are many boxes and bags of ferocious looking stuff that I can’t identify) and it hasn’t killed me yet.

This is the life of the expatriate.

Not So Very Jet Setting

create your own visited countries map

Two Week Summary(?)

Can there be a 2 week summary?

If so, here’s mine. I really like Korea although parts of it are messy and silly. It is impossible, at this moment, to disentangle how much I might like Korea from how much I am relieved to be out of the Bay Area and out of the soul-sucking marketing job. I suppose that relationship will be far clearer in long retrospect. And, of course, even having been in Korea twice before I am in the honeymoon period.

But BPU is agreeably disorganized and I am well suited for that. The students are, at worst, inattentive and the good ones are nearly fawning. Also, Korean students at college age are still much more like high-schoolers. They, almost unanimously, live at home with the exception being the older men, some of whom have done their military service. I haven’t paid much attention to this distinction, but I think I will in the future. Just to see what the service seems to do to personalities. There is no shortage of horror stories about military service here and that should play out in how they act in class. God knows, the women are still in cocoons. That's spooky. But the mix of high-school and college is quite amusing.

The housing is adequate, except for the thumper who lives above me (and I should say he has been peepless for two consecutive nights). It did not surprise me that, at the last 901 club he sat down and immediately knocked his bottle of beer onto the table. Nor did it surprise me that the waitress was over with a rag before he even moved. I think he is one of those characters who just doesn’t see effects, or can’t empathize (in the non weepy sense) with others.

The view from the housing is great. Smoggy neon and hills rendered artificially distant by haze. I don’t mind this at all and if I make up my mind to stay here for another year I will quickly purchase an air-purifier and start loading the place up with plants. O2 is my friend.

The neighborhood is noisy (part of which I defeated with my window treatments), but it is noisy in the way that a city on the hustle is noisy. Shit is being knocked down willy-nilly and new shit succeeds it. It is the classic human delusion that progress can be made and it is fun to live in a city laboring under that delusion.

The time alone, to think, is the grandest thing of all. I have a phone on my table. I went to the trouble of picking it up and, lo and behold, it has a dial tone. Blessedly, it does not ring. I have no idea what the phone number is, so I can’t give it out. It is in all ways the “parfit” phone.
I haven’t even begun to learn the language or head up to Seoul (or even to the local temples) and that should add a whole new level of fun to the game. It looks like the OAF will be here sooner than planned and I imagine this will come at the perfect time since I am starting to feel vestigial twitches of “where my peeps at?”

In two weeks, I imagine, I will wish all the Korean brutes exterminated and be drinking weepy beers with other disaffected expatriates. For the moment, however, Korea is what I expected and perhaps a bit better.

So tomorrow? A drunken Ajeoshi (is that redundant?) should attack me on the street.

Garbage In?

Garbage is handled differently in Korea, if by differently you mean "a way that makes a Westerner say WTF?" There is no overarching municipal garbage company so each 'area' is taken care of by a different garbage outfit. Garbage is generally just bagged up and tossed out onto the sidewalk. This is supposed to be in city-sponsored green bags (the collection of these green bags is apparently how payment is calculated for the garbage companies) but in poorer neighborhoods, like mine, it is just tossed out in whatever you have.

Also, there really aren't city dumps, so everything is tossed out onto the sidewalk and left for pickup. Which includes that lovely bookcase you see there to the left. I noticed it yesterday morning and swore that if it remained there by nightfall, it would be mine. Oh yes, IT WOULD BE MINE! And so, when I left the 901 club I hefted this badboy onto my shoulders, named it George, and took it home. On the way into work this morning I also nicked a lovely Asian picture of some sort, and that should go home with me tonight.

Windoze

It is the story of a man versus a machine. I am that man, and the machine is Korea’s clanking, whistling, thumping, hawking and spitting, hollering, honking, loudspeaker vending, crap-dragging, ajumma recycling, random construction noise-making machine.

This story is of is how I, if not defeating the monster, tamed it a little. And I did it using the following household tools (first three as seen in the illustrative graphic):

1) USB cord (for measuring purposes)
2) Costco Envelope (marked for measuring purposes)
3) Knife (for cutting and dreaming.. oh yes.. dreaming….)
4) Half-full bottle of grape juice
5) About the same amount of Soju

Korea being Korea, all the parts needed were found within a five-block radius. Korea is the homeland of distributed marketing and all I had to do was take a short walk before I found a little garage that sold all manner of construction materials. All materials involved in this triumph of the will came to me at a cost slightly below $7.50 (American, for whatever that’s worth? In some other post I’ll complain about the Won being the only currency in the universe that is actually slipping against the dollar). It took a bit of measuring, about the same amount of cutting, and then a bit of shaving (and I tell yah it’s true, I can feel every draft in the room ) and the thing was done.

I have one window left to do (either with the scraps I have left, or for aesthetic reasons with another $3 worth of foam) and then I will top both windows off with a tasteful bit of fabric, to bring out the wallpaper and particularly the fact that the wallpaper features the skull of Bucky Katt (“Get Fuzzy”) in it’s pattern. But that is a post for another day.

Flushed with victory and Soju, I give you “Triumph of the Ill,” the web video. It does not include the “final” look of victory, because that has only been applied to the small window. But as soon as the other window is done, I will send a picture along, perhaps featuring a video of me painting my ass blue and dancing naked in celebration (As the result of my beloved Sister’s last comment I’m not sure if I’m Roman, Scottish, British, or just some Scandinavian cur. All I know for sure is that my name is Hadrian. I will work on this and figure out an appropriate celebration.)

Today was good. Had the whole morning off but opted to go in to watch on of the semi-directors teach. Just to see if I was in the ballpark. As it turns out, I very much am and that was reassuring indeed.

Then, as I was chatting with office-mates and getting some copying together (in some ways the most difficult part of this job is the endless copying) the word came in that my Alien Registration Card had landed and I was off to the bank to get set up there. It wasn’t the bank I wanted, but it will do. I may go back later and change banks. Came back to finish the copying and put some stuff together for my evening class, Academic Writing.

Man, is that the best class ever. I had heard all kinds of scary things about different levels and expectations. When I got there were only four women sitting there, which means no matter how different their skills were, it would be no problem to teach. launched into a lecture about the writing process and all the bullshit came back. I could talk about how to write for weeks. Unfortunately I had to wedge in some time for them to actually write. ;-)

I was a bit worried about one older woman – she had a mask and gloves on and wouldn’t answer much – I had her pegged for an evil ajumma (because, you know, after two weeks here I know everything). But as I gave them some pair work to do she became increasingly animated and when I had them do a writing sample she started writing happily away. I collected the writing samples and they were better writers than most of our ESL students were at Swamp Valley College. I was happy to see that not one of them went off on the “I kept my baby” track (Which I noted/named at my old college when I noticed that if I used abortion as a paper topic at least three single-mothers would completely ignore the actual question and go on some rant about how they had kept their baby and therefore women who get abortions should be killed)

And with only four students I’m going to be able to really work with them. On the spot I decided this was a case for a portfolio, and I sent them away with a short homework assignment.

think I’ll do a bit of work from the workbook (because it has silly tests and crosswords), and give at least one test on that (Koreans love tests) but most of the work will be in assignment and then rewrite. I have no idea why BPU gave me this awesome class, but I am properly thankful. ;-)

I’ve just graded my four (4!!!) papers and the “ajumma” is a wildly fluid writer. Long, loping sentences, when she makes a mistake she self-identifies and fixes them. My heart, it swells mightily; just the way the oversized heart of a fat man would right before it exploded.

More Whiskey Tango Foxtrottery

On my way to one of my classes I walked up with a teacher working another section of the same class. He’s a fine old Scottish reprobate who liked me well enough to try to find some kind of Scottish blood in the surname Montgomery. As we walked up the 103 stairs (Yes I counted, and I’m dreading this when the monsoon/hot season comes) he complained about the steps but, looking up to the skirted coeds who were easily escaping us, said, “but you can’t complain when you’re following such fine young lassies.”

We also compared syllabi and were interested to find that my syllabus and his, for the exact same class, were, well, quite dissimilar. Mine had quizzes, his didn’t. Mine was curved, his wasn’t (oh.. sorry.. that was later in the men’s room).

Today I caught up with the uber-director and asked him what was up. He told me to go ask Clerical Employee #1 for the “real” syllabus. I thought this odd, since she deals with the College courses and these were University courses (Tech Voc versus Evergreen Courses, essentially). I went and she told me to go to the University as she had nothing to do with it.

While I was talking to her about the syllabus problem another instructor came in and said, “wait, the syllabus is wrong?” Turns out her mentee (and some day I must write down how charming and feckless MY mentor was) was teaching the same class. The correct syllabus was pulled and it was not the one that either of us had.

Another trip to the uber-director. He did the look over my shoulder to the long-distance and sigh thing. “Ah, Clerical Employee #1 is normally so good with this.” Just at that moment the other instructor came in. He looked over her shoulder and sighed, “Clerical Employee #1 is normally so good with this.” The other instructor looked at him and said, “Clerical Employee #1?” He sighed again. “Clerical Employee #1.” She said, “Clerical Employee #1 has nothing to do with this, it’s a University course.” This occasioned a particularly pained sigh.

The other instructor said, “I noticed something else, on the schedule this is a 1.5 hour course, but on the folder you give to the instructors it is a 2 hour class.” The uber-director must have been, just over our shoulders, trying to see Japan by now. “Oh, well, you should always go by the folder, the schedule doesn’t really mean anything.”

At that moment I realized that CC type colleges are alike the world over. For the entire time I worked at SVC we could never turn out an accurate schedule. Just before I left we turned out one with extra holidays, three different academic schedules, and three different websites for registration. If Genius the world over holds hands a feels a spark of recognition, at this moment of shared clumsiness I felt, at least, a shared desire to find a bar, cliff, or rope.

The uber-director, in closing, thanked me for discovering this and chasing it down, but as he looked over my shoulder and sighed, I knew he wished that he was very far away and that I was very fucking dead.

Another day brilliant day at BPU.

PS.. the weather was good.

One Step Closer to Snapping like a Rotted Twig in a Drought!

Well, baffled at any rate...

Came in this morning to my desk to discover that over the weekend my computer had disappeared. How very odd. So the first minutes of the day were spent lugging a computer from the "bad" desk to the "good" desk. Then it was jibber-jabber with some other instructors and a half-hearted attempt to look at the material I was presenting today.

I will say this - working from a canned curriculum is very easy. I even managed to, barely, get the 7 sections in that I wanted to do. But the pair work was nearly impossible to judge, since the room is small and the noise is vast.

Oh well..

Tomorrow I have to gather various body parts of the written language and pray for enough lightening to power them up into some sort of syllabus for my Academic Writing class. Shouldn't be onerous, but new ground so who knows..

The Noisy Sounds of Silence

I don’t want you to try to save me

No I don’t want you at all
If we’re through
then you don’t blame me
Cause that won’t do at all

If you talk too much my head will explode…

You’ve no time to reconcile me
There’s no time left to call
I’ll take my shit and then I’ll vanish
I don’t want my shit at all..

If you talk too much my head will explode…

I don’t want you to try and save me
No I don’t want you at all

If you talk too much my head will explode…

As I lay on the mattress on the floor, reading another John Irving novel that could easily be used as ballast for a sea-faring vessel (Heft, not content – it’s a darned fine book), my iPod plays “If You Talk To Much My Head Will Explode.”

It occurs (reoccurs?) to me that I love being alone. I don’t like contact with other people. I don’t think I like people. The MAF, with whom I talk about his most often, is openly hostile to the notion that I’m not some kind of super-clown who lives off of peanuts tossed to me by circus goers. My semi-loathing metaphor for this is the clown-car. It pulls up and I roll out, like 23 dwarfs in frills and makeup.

Of course, it is my own fault. If I pull the clown-car to the curb and roll out with balloons and confetti, then who would believe I prefer to be back at the clown-car garage?

This short time in Daejeon, however, has reinstated in me the understanding I had in my 20’s. Being alone, reading, writing and thinking, is the most funnest thing ever. When I did this in my 20’s I was snorting quite a bit of cocaine, drinking madly, and suckling off the SSI teat.

That made it even better.

I’m too old for that shit now, but man… the vistas of “no fucking people” here in Korea are vast. They’re all Korean. They don’t speak English and I’m completely socially irrelevant to them. Brilliant.

I wonder if any of my compatriots are here for similar reasons?

I’m not saying I don’t get bored (hey, no TV and no intarwebs), but I am saying (with week 2 hubris) that I’m loving the lack of requirement to communicate.

Silenceology.. the science of shutting the fuck up.

More people should study it.

The Fortress of Solitude

My Bohemian Love Pad