Peppered..

I should just note that slightly over a week after quitting the Ramen, my BP has dropped 15/10 and is now back to my normal 'pre-hypertensive' state.

Also, here in the land of the morning calm, it is pepper season... so as I might have said before, the tarps (and roofs) are out...

Kim Jong-Il and My Best Friends.... ;-)

Some interesting commentary on what might happen post Kim Jong-Il over at Marmots.

On the totally bonus side MAF has moved up to MBF by sending me a lovely care-package of powdered diet beverage (the only diet drinks in Korea seem to be water, often advertised as "no calorie," and Coke Zero, which is good, but gets a bit old). I couldn't be happier about this. ;-) This also proves (as if it needed proving) that the school address is a good one.

Related, BKF has sent me a couple of recipes for healthy dinners that can be made from local ingredients. One is a kind of pizza - unlike most Korean pizza it seems to contain no corn, but it is based on rice and kimch! I LOLed.

A lovely Friday here in the Land of the Morning Calm, and I'm off to get me some coffee - black!

Kim Jong Illin? It's a Good Time to be in Daejeon

Hmmmm (from the Korea Times)...

South Korea’s top intelligence officer told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il has undergone surgery for a stroke, but is not dead nor in a critical condition.

well, he's hit the first step in the trifecta, which is probably not good. There has been some speculation on the intarwebs about what will happen when Kim dies (here and here - the comments are also good to read) but I will say that if it happens soon I will be glad to be outside of Seoul. The phrase "lake of fire" pops unbidden to mind, and should something that bad happen it will be good to be in the countryside (and headed to Busan!) when it does.

Interesting times..

Random Musical Thing -

59 TIMES THE PAIN

There are very few (perhaps 4) cases in which I can absolutely remember the time I heard my first song from a band that came to mean anything to me. One of these bands was Husker Du.

Husker Du was the only US punk (if that is the word) band that mattered. I would have loved them if for no other reason than, upon hearing them MSM asked me if I was playing the record (yep, vinyl) at the right speed.

That kind of generational misunderstanding is priceless to a young man, and it made me love Husker Du even more than their trebly fury already had.

Sometime in my college years (as it took me over 20 years to get my B.S., this is an inexact measure) and somewhere in Berkeley, I was listening to KALX, the best college radio station in the world. It was pretty late and, as is my style, I was under the influence of something. I’m a fan of sleep, but it has never been a fan of me and I was sensibly medicating this… then this song came on… crazy rollicking rhythm track (wildly busy drummer), snarly-assed guitars that loped in crippled fashion, and (sometimes incomprehensible) angry lyrics.

Then, there was that funny chorus “59 times the pain.” This must have been written with college students in mind: All the angst one needs in a handy overdose of pain and a peculiarly specific number attached to it. This was made for young-angst.

I had never heard anything like it.

KALX had many advantages and one was that they played monstrously long sets. Another was that they back-announced everything they played. These two advantages kept me up that night. I struggledto stay awake as the set went on with songs from various unknown bands.

Finally, finally, the DJ back announced the song and I wrote the name down and then went to a lovely drug-induced sleep.

Next day it was off to Amoeba records to buy “New Day Rising” which proved to be packed with nifty slices of anger and despair.

Over the next couple of months I purchased their back-catalog (by the time I came upon them they had already released the seminal “Zen Arcade”) and each and every tape/recording was a winner. As I look at my current IPod collection I note that Husker Du is #2 in terms of number of songs. Losing that title to Elvis Costello is no shame (I’m a bit embarrassed by how well Elton John and Hanoi Rocks do!).

I suppose this kind of happy revelation is unlikely in the land of K-Pop.

Still, my little stop in Korea has allowed me the time to remember the songs I loved in previous days, and the bandwidth to “capture” (‘steal’ is such a loaded word) them.

Next up for download.. alla Nirvana and alla Iggy…

Ordinal Rankings, New Classes...

I went in and got my ordinal ranking this morning. I was the 7th-highest rated professor out of 58 here at BPU. That kind of sucks.. just outside being able to say I was in the top 10%. :-(

The new classes have begun and the familiar (well, ok, it is only my second semester) groove is settling back in. I have the Japanese Study kids, who I love, and some Chinese students who have really good English, the other class is BPU administrators, and it hasn't met yet. Rumour is that I might have to take some more of the Chinese hours.... Only downside to those classes is I have to wear a tie, which I kind of hate.

This week I'm teaching 19.5 hours, but it is pretty spread out... one nice thing about the next Uni is that it only has a 12 hour work-week. A lazy man could get used to that!

I always forget how fun the students are when you are really rocking a class. I subbed this morning for a great chemistry class and other than the fact that my fat self was drenched in sweat from the trip up the hill, it went perfectly.. high English levels in that class as well as students who didn't mind being there. Even the stupidity of the textbook didn't break the vibe, which is when things are really working.

That scamp House!

He did it again! Another cure, another disreputable performance as a human, and more droll wit.

My hero.

For some reason, “Story on O” channel is showing a House marathon and I'm down for the ride.

Well, when not freaking out about noise. This morning, as the OAF and I lay abed, the AC started cranking out some weird clicking noise and, of course, this made me super-paranoid all day. So, when the weird clicking noise went away, but the new “knocking walls” noise began, I even climbed up on the roof to see what it was.

Something in the vent system and it came on just as the clicking in the AC ended. Happily, after I climbed up on the roof and climbed back down, it went away.

Nonetheless, I will live in fear of a return of the noise for at least a week.

I’m neurasthenic enough about this that you could move me to the silent center of a massive glacier and I would eventually start to hear the ice melt on the outside of the thing. Something like Poe’s heart, but without any of the reason or drama.

I’m a remarkable sissy.

On another tack entirely, it turns out that the soup I had purchased for my new (healthier) breakfast was the wrong one. The OAF took me to show me the correct one, and it numbered out even better. So that’s a win.

I made the soup tonight and poured the rice in and it made a rather horrible and gelatinous mixture that shared all of the unfortunate aspects of maggots and rotted pancreases. Thus, I believe, I have created a new Korean food! ;-)

I was also amused to see, over at Marmot’s.. a picture of the horrible ammoniated-fish dish that was served at BKF and JAE’s wedding dinner. It was the Korean dish that has brought me closest to puking. Like all things, enough gochujang sauce covered it up and I survived.

I think that’s what my delicious new glop might need on the next go-round…..

Two pics from the Ginseng Festival..

We all drank Makeoli from a big plastic bin...

The OAF prepared to kill, and kill again...

Oops!

So, working on that pesky goals thing, I went to the gym today. This was a necessary step. I lost 27 pounds since I got here, which I credit to the lovely Korean diet*. And I’m certainly a bit more muscular since I’ve been walking around like a madman (props to OAF for dragging my ass out on weekends). But when I took the Blood Pressure test.

Oh my!

I won’t discuss specific numbers, since it would cause MSM to have some kind of syncopial moment about my impending syncopial moment. ;-)

But it has jumped up considerably since I arrived here, which I credit to the lovely Korean diet*.

It gives and it takes.

So I decided it was time to change the old diet and the first thing I looked at was breakfast. I normally start breakfast with a delicious bowl of Ramen and so I started there…

Whoa….

Each delicious packet of Ramen has just one serving. That comes with… well.. a death sentence, apparently.

99% of my daily 나트륨 (sodium) and is 500 calories of relative emptiness.

The OAF had introduced me to a lovely soup which I realized you can drop some rice into and have a lovely meal. So I ran the numbers…

One serving of the soup is 28% of my daily 나트륨 (still too much, but a massive improvement) and is only 105 calories

to this I add some pre-cooked rice.

1% of my sodium and, if I read it properly, 150 calories for half a bowl… So now breakfast is under 300 calories and not lethally salted…

so there’s breakfast..

I fear that lunch might have to include such sucky items as fruit and vegetables.. alas…

And, of course, the gym will help as I’ve done just about nothing to keep my cardiovascularity cut, flexible and powerful.

So there’s a step towards a plan…

---------------------------------------------
*By which I mean my idiotic implementation of it..

Some of that schedule love came crashing down this morning when I got to work and had a new schedule in my box. It gave me a class on 9 am on Wednesday morning. A class that was only on my schedule and not on the master schedule for the college, business school, university, or institute. Also, no building or room number, no book, no syllabus, no class description.

I went to the Uni and they said it wasn’t their class, I went to the college and it wasn’t their class, I went to the institute and it wasn’t their class. Eventually I tracked it down and it is a business class of Chinese students who were allowed to enter the business program without Korean or English levels that will allow them to learn anything. So, ultra-quick, these ‘retard’ English classes were tossed together.

They say the book will come in sometime next week. Nice.

And the class is three hours, not two, as my schedule gives me credit for.

So I tossed a few things together (the art of English instruction at BPUis often an improvisational one) and went downstairs and…. Well, of course.. since it is the second day of instruction.. the copy center is closed.. BPU is not world renowned for it’s organizat …. Oh, let’s just say it isn’t world-renowned or organized…

Which was also demonstrated when I checked and discovered my Uni class wasn’t on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as the schedule said, but Tuesdays and Fridays….

Oh.. and I work til 9 on Friday night…

Also, the new class ends at 12 and then I have a 5 hour wait until my next course back at the Institute. Oh well, this will turn into workout time, I imagine…

Working out my anger pounding Soju!

Anyway.. at the zoo we saw two slight mis-spellings… unless there actually is a person who is old, handicapped, and feedle… I fit two of these criteria.. ;-)

Oddly, in the direction that sign pointed we saw what must be the “feedle person” monkey..

Who could rather zip around…

As if Mad Cow Disease were not already Killing Millions!

The side of a delivery truck asks that we watch out for ----


CHICKEN SYNDROME!!!

What's next, Tuegi Terror?