SPEAK ENGLISH... Or Try

Malay Melee

2012-01-26T07:33:00.000-08:00

So before I start... A while ago I blogged about feeling trapped in Korea. Then I took a two-week vacation to Malaysia. Then I came home and started watching the classic British TV series "The Prisoner"...

The thing I've noticed after racing through the first eleven or so episodes of "The Prisoner" - not to spoil anything for anyone - is that Patrick McGoohan seems to have an immense talent for actually getting away from The Village and then ending up back there anyway. (Not like those "Lost" people who... oh wait, right, don't spoil anything for anyone. Sorry.) I mean he escapes in the second episode of the series. Imagine how that pitch meeting went: "So what happens in the second episode?" "He escapes." "Um, Patrick, you do realize we have seventeen episodes to do, right?" So I was going to blog about how the vacation to Malaysia offered me some subconscious proof that I'm not trapped here, but after watching approximately 2/3 of "The Prisoner" I'm getting this feeling like we may all be trapped in some sort of existential prison wrought upon us by society, or something like that. So how do I deal with that? Regardless, I don't think Patrick McGoohan would make a very good ESL teacher since he would be constantly running away and starting revolts and being hospitalized by anti-escape orbs and such. Oh well, his loss.

So, the vacation... It was awesome. Let me give you the blow-by-blow.

After a lengthy, sleepless red-eye flight from Incheon (if you want to sleep on a plane, I recommend against taking an aisle seat next to a bathroom) I arrived in Kuala Lumpur and headed for my hotel in Chinatown. Every tourist-friendly city in Malaysia (that wasn't bombed back to the Stone Age during World War II, like Kota Kinabalu) seems to have a historic Chinatown area where all the low-priced tourist hotels and backpackers' guest houses are. My hotel was right along Jalan Petaling, which is the epicenter of the Chinatown night market, a place where you can purchase just about any Chinese knockoff luxury item you could imagine. Arriving at Jalan Petaling first thing in the morning is a strange experience because the night market hawkers with their stalls don't start arriving until a little before lunch. When you roll up with your bags, Jalan Petaling is a mostly empty street with a handful of shops and hotels. By nightfall the entire street is filled from curb to curb with hawkers and stalls to the point where you have to navigate a short maze to find your way back to your hotel. It's an incredible transformation to witness on a daily basis.

I started my time in KL with a day trip to the Forestry Research Institute of Malaysia, or FRIM, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. The major attraction at FRIM is probably their canopy walk, which offers the opportunity to observe the jungle canopy from 30 meters above the ground courtesy a network of metal ladders, planks and safety netting strung together between treetops. The canopy was fun from a thrill-ride perspective but I was a little let down by the lack of wildlife in the area. It's possible that I was let down because I was expecting a little too much from the Malaysian jungle on my first day in the country. The other letdown was the complete lack of food on the FRIM campus, since the cantina was closed for some reason and the only other food vendors on the campus only sold snacks. Suffice it to say that after a day of hiking in tropical weather with almost no food and a sleepless night aboard an airplane, day one turned out to be a short day.

Day two was my appointed day to conquer Petronas Towers. My guidebook recommended showing up by 8:30 AM or shortly thereafter to get a place in line for one of the extremely limited number of tickets. I'm certainly glad that I followed that advice, because by the time I got in line at 8:30 sharp they had already set the cutoff point for the morning's tours at a point several individuals in front of me. Luckily as a lone traveler I was able to grab the last ticket for one of the final tours of the day instead of having to wait for a mid-day tour or get a ticket for a tour the next morning. So travelers, be warned: if you want to visit the observation decks at Petronas Towers, plan a time-flexible day.

Fortunately, by getting in on the last tour of the day, I was able to spend the bulk of the day doing other things, the most interesting being a trip to Batu Caves. Batu Caves, like FRIM, is another attraction on the edge of KL's mass transit system. The main attraction at Batu Caves is Temple Cave, a large, open cave with an expansive concrete floor leading to an open-air area in the back with a Hindu shrine. Somewhat more prominent than the cave are the giant golden statue of Muruga standing in front of it and the 200-plus steps leading up to its entrance.

The statue of Muruga and the steps at Batu Caves

The steps leading up to Temple Cave are rife with macaques, who are extremely happy to be photographed close up and also extremely happy to relieve your bags of any snatchable items while you're doing it. The little devils are smart, too - when they see you have a camera and something fun to snatch like a water bottle or a train schedule, they'll wait until you have your eye up to the viewfinder and then rob you blind. They're also largely immune to loud expressions of displeasure such as, "Hey!" or, "Fuck off, ya little bastard!" Don't try to retrieve your stuff from them, either, unless you feel like getting bit by a pissed-off thieving monkey.

Here's the one that snagged my water bottle...

A marvelous surprise for me was Dark Cave, the cave almost immediately next door to Temple Cave. Unlike Temple Cave, Dark Cave has been preserved by local environmentalists and naturalists in a mostly natural state as a home for wildlife, including some endangered species unique to the cave. A guided tour takes flashlight-carrying groups through Dark Cave's simple, unlit concrete paths to observe cave-dwellers like cockroaches and centipedes (and a few less natural residents, such as the stray feral dog we glimpsed at one point) in their natural environment. The sound of bats chirping and squeaking overhead (and the layer of bat guano on the floor below, to the sides of the path) was a constant reminder that we weren't in a typical tour-sanitized cave. I was really surprised to find a cave where the emphasis had been placed on maintaining the habitat for cave-dwelling animals instead of satisfying the needs of camera-toting tourists right next door to a heavily-developed cave full of shrines, concrete and gift shops hawking all manner of Hindu tchotchkes. (Isn't it funny how tchotchkes seems to be a vital part of so many world religions, yet only Yiddish has a proper word for it?)

Scheduling the Petronas Towers tour for early evening turned out to be a fortuitous move, since the light at that time of day was perfect for photography. My guidebook stated that the tour only goes up to the Skybridge between the two towers, but it actually goes to the Skybridge and an observation deck near the top of Tower 2. The view from the Skybridge was nice but the evening view from the Tower 2 observation deck was downright breathtaking. The layout of the observation deck offers close to a 360-degree view of the area around the towers, including some free-to-use viewing scopes that magnify things to a degree that's almost frightening. (Had I wanted to, I could have counted missing shingles on rooftops more than a kilometer away.)

By the way, here are those pics of Petronas Towers that I was fantasizing about taking in my last blog post:

Loving the sky. Remind me to use my polarizer more often.

...Unless it's early evening and the light is perfect the way it is, like this.

I spent my last morning in KL at the KL Bird Park, which is an expansive, netted-off aviary in Lake Gardens (Taman Tasik Perdana), a large park to the west of Chinatown. Probably the most interesting parts of KL Bird Park are the large, net-covered areas where tourists are free to mix with the birds close-up, without any cages separating humans and birds. The birds in these areas tend to be fairly run-of-the-mill petting zoo faire - peacocks, flamingoes, parrots and parakeets, some colorful roosters - with a few interesting species mixed in for good measure. The rarer birds (like hornbills), larger birds (like ostriches and emus) and birds of prey are kept separately in zoo-like enclosures. It wasn't nearly as much fun as spotting birds in the wild, but it was a good place to try out my new 70-210mm zoom before taking it out into the field.

I bought this lens. There's wildlife here. Therefore I am so gonna use this lens.

I also had every intention to go to the Islamic Arts Museum, which by all accounts is world-class, but unfortunately I had to skip it to get to Melaka, my next destination.

Originally I had intended to travel by train around the Malaysian peninsula, but my guidebook said that the Melaka Sentral bus station was much closer to the central tourist area in Melaka so I took the bus instead. As it turns out, I ended up traveling exclusively by bus in the peninsula. Long-distance buses in Malaysia are generally faster and more convenient than traveling by train, and most of them tend to be modern and extremely comfortable (although lacking a toilet, unlike Greyhound's buses in the US). The bus I took from KL to Melaka Sentral may genuinely be the nicest bus I've ever traveled on, and the shiny new Bersepadu Selatan bus terminal it departed from wasn't bad either. The bus from Melaka Sentral to the city's historic Town Square, on the other hand, looked like something out of a movie about a war for independence in sub-Saharan Africa. I have to say, though, that part of me didn't felt like I had really arrived in Malaysia until I got to Melaka Sentral and saw that bus. As nice as KL is, being in a modern urban capital sometimes feels like the sanitized version of a country. Riding the clean, modern rapid transit trains in KL doesn't give you the same feel for everyday life that jumping on a beat-up bus with no air conditioning and those same uncomfortable vinyl bench seats that were on every bus you ever rode to school does. It was a little shocking to realize, especially after living and working in Korea as a foreigner for so long, that I had been in Malaysia for several days and it was possible that I hadn't really spoken to any Malaysians who weren't selling something or working behind a service desk. In this case, at least, I knew that the locals and I were definitely all riding the same bus. I hope I'm not fetishizing poverty by saying that I didn't really feel like I had arrived in Malaysia before I got on a shitty bus instead of a nice one, but hey, if I learned anything from Marc Meron and all those hours of WTF Podcast that I listened to during the trip, it's that sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do in life is be honest.

I really enjoyed Melaka. For one, it was my first guest house stay of the trip. Another backpacker led me to the Sana-Sana Guest House in Melaka's Chinatown and I was in love at first sight. Old creaky hardwood floors, no A/C, a patched pink mosquito net hanging over the tiny single twin bed in my room, and a cat lounging lazily in the open courtyard overgrown with plants. It was as far from a corporate hotel as I could possibly get. I was also surprised in the morning, at 5:50 AM, when I was suddenly awoken by the sound or morning prayers coming through my window from the nearby mosque. (Do Muslims really get up that early every day? That sounds like a really intense commitment to make to a religion. Is there a waiver for hangovers?) I spent that evening and most of the next day walking, taking pictures, enjoying the cafes and soaking in the history of Malaysia's former Portuguese and Dutch port of call. Melaka's historic district has the feeling of a well-preserved New England town - not too big and not too small, with enough genuine history to maintain its unique character but enough cafes and bric-a-brac shops to keep the tourists happy. I thought the reconstructed Sultanate Palace and the museum at the Stadthuys were excellent educational compliments to preserved, unrestored shells of Melaka's past like St. Paul's Church and the one remaining gate of Porta de Santiago, the old Portuguese fort. (Or possibly the one remaining gate, Porta de Santiago, of the old Portuguese fort. I never did figure out if the gate or the fort was named Porta de Santiago.)

So hey - are you part of the thing, or are you the thing?

My time in Melaka was long enough to see everything, but not long enough to read all the tags in the museums - in other words, just long enough for me. I did linger just long enough to catch the first tour after lunch at the Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum, a house set up to showcase the lives of Melaka's half-Chinese, half-Malay families, who, if their houses are any indication, did quite well for themselves in the Straits. The best part was probably the droll commentary from our tour guide. In slightly stilted English and wearing traditional garb, she would describe something like a turn-of-the-century hand-cranked ice cream maker and then finish her spiel with an offhand comment like, "Today, we buy ice cream at the store. Much, much easier."

By the way, one great thing about Malaysia for English-speaking travelers - everyone speaks English. I was way out in the jungle before I found someone who spoke any worse than mediocre English. In Singapore, where the "official" language is English, I heard more Chinese than anything else, and got a waiter at one Indian restaurant who didn't seem to understand any English. (An Indian abroad who doesn't speak English... I guess there's a first time for everything. And to think how often the rumor floats around EPIK that they're going to replace all of us with cheaper, better-trained teachers from India and the Philippines...) In Malaysia, people spoke among themselves in Malaysian or Hokkien or whatever, but they all knew and were quite willing to speak in English. Everyone was super friendly and happy to talk to foreigners as well. I guess that's the legacy of a country that's always been a nexus for international trade (and a former British colony to boot). It's a fairly stark contrast with a country that's historically been know as the "Hermit Kingdom"... But I digress. Back to the vacation!

Singapore, although much more expensive than Malaysia, was an interesting diversion. Singapore has a reputation for being squeaky-clean and boring, but the neighborhood where my hotel was, Geylang, was actually a really cool, vibrant working-class neighborhood with an interesting mix of migrant laborers and young professionals in newer housing developments. There were also two brothels next to my hotel. Funny how Singapore has this sterile reputation, but few people mention that it's legal to run a licensed brothel there. Luckily my hotel was quite clean and above-board, and actually had a lot of families staying there. I guess the advantage of having legal brothels is that the sketchy stuff stays in the brothels instead of leaking out into the hotels. I don't think anything I did in Singapore was all that remarkable, but it was enjoyable. I hiked up Singapore's highest mountain at the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (a towering 163.63 meters - by comparison, my hometown in Korea's highest peak is 970 meters); I visited the Asian Civilizations Museum, which had a marvelous overview of cultures from all across Asia, especially those with close cultural ties to Singapore (not so much about Korea, Japan or Mongolia, though...); I took the cable car to Sentosa Island, enjoyed the beach, and regretted packing those sneakers after renting a shitty bike to traverse a pretty pedestrian bike path; I saw at least two buildings which I had only previously read about in architecture reviews (the Marina Bay Sands casino and the Daniel Liebskind-designed, half-constructed Reflections at Keppel Bay development); and I took pictures of both of Singapore's mascot Merlions - the real one at Merlion Park near the colonial district, and the pretender at Sentosa Island.

The REAL merlion

The DISNEY merlion

The only other notable thing I did in Singapore was go to Orchard Road, the Mecca of shopping malls in a city that's famous for its shopping malls. When travel guides and similar resources describe Orchard Road, they don't do justice to the experience that is walking the length of the monument to conspicuous consumption that is Orchard Road. For example, Times Square is famous as a center of commercialism and advertising as entertainment, and I've been to Times Square many times, but Times Square is only like two blocks. Orchard Road is more like the Vegas Strip of shopping districts. There are DOZENS of multi-story shopping malls, and each one seems to be trying to outdo the next in terms of glitz and opulence. It's like Vegas trying to build a Times Square casino, and a dozen other casino operators trying to build a even bigger, glitzier Times Square casino right next door. It's intense. I rode the escalators to the top floor of one mall and found an entire floor dedicated solely to really expensive shit for toddlers. No joke, like Baby Armani and shit. (Remembering how quickly I outgrew clothes as a kid and had to dig through shopping bags of hand-me-downs from cousins to find new clothes, I really, REALLY hope somebody is getting that Baby Armani shit as hand-me-downs.) Oh, and at the very end of Orchard Road is one shopping center that's - you guessed it - a giant center for illegal prostitution. Just like Times Square and the Vegas Strip, huh? I won't bother providing the name of the shopping center, but you can find it on Wikipedia under "Prostitution in Singapore" if you really need to know. (That's the only reason I knew what it was, by the way. I stumbled across the page while I was researching what I would be in for if I booked a hotel room in Geylang. Hey, I'm a cautious traveler, I need to know these things before I go to a city so I can stay away from them, obviously.) When I ducked inside (come on, you don't travel three thousand miles to not see the mall full of hookers on Orchard Road in Singapore) I discovered that the escalator was broken, and I had to deliver an NFL-quality shoulder block to keep from being knocked over by some drunk guy coming down the escalator, which was clearly only designed to service one row of riders before it was re-purposed as an impromptu two-way staircase. Mere moments later as I was leaving (much like the museums in Melaka, I did not need to read every tag on the displays to get the gist of the place) some other drunk guy - judging by the age, haircut and accent, probably a member of the US Armed Forces - was walking out with his friend indiscriminately yelling "Gay boy!" at every person and object in sight. (Issues? Definitely issues.) And like I said, all this was right next to the world's most ostentatious collection of multi-billion dollar shopping centers and departments stores selling Armani to toddlers. Only in Singapore.

Let's move on. It's time for Borneo.

Along with Melaka, Kuching was probably my favorite of all the places I visited. The city is actually fairly large - my taxi driver told me it has 600,000 residents - but the Chinatown tourist district is a compact, walkable area with that same New England-y feel as Melaka. The guest house were I stayed, The Singgahsana Lodge, was awesome. I met lots of fellow travelers - especially at the rooftop bar in the evening - the staff was incredibly friendly, and they had a decent tour desk. Did I mention the bar on the rooftop? My kind of place. I lost part of my first full day in Kuching due to a side trip the evening before with a German yoga instructor to a local Malay bar, where I sampled tuak, Borneo's homemade rice liquor. The bar gets extra points because the dude there in an Iron Maiden shirt was an actual Maiden fan and not just wearing the shirt to be cool. (His favorite Maiden album, by the way, was Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I quizzed him. Had to be sure.) When I arrived in Kuching I was worried that I might have to hook up with tour groups to get to all the nearby attractions, but as it turns out I was able to travel independently or cheaply to all of them without paying for expensive tours. Highlights included spotting my first proboscis monkey at Bako National Park and exploring Fairy Cave, a giant cavern with no guides or staff and an MC Escher-esque network of concrete staircases that were clearly poured by someone who didn't bother to use a level. There were tons of things I didn't have time to do in Kuching, too, like seeing the giant, stinking Rafflesia flower at Gunung Gading National Park (none were in bloom; it was the right season, but the Rafflesias are apparently late to bloom this year), visiting the Sarawak Cultural Village to see recreations of traditional indigenous Borneo culture, and the German yoga instructor. (Sorry, sorry, it was a joke I couldn't pass up. But admit it, you were curious.) Also, my compliments to the Turkish coffee at the Little Lebanon cafe, it's the best I've had since I left behind all those little Egyptian coffee houses on Steinway in Astoria.

Landing on the beach at Bako National Park

From Kuching I flew to Kota Kinabalu to finally put in some time at the beach. I went snorkeling in open water for the first time at Pulau Mamutik and Pulau Manukan, rediscovered my (literal) distaste for salt water, and sunburned the crap out of my back and shoulders, but would gladly do it again any day. I guess it was a good thing that I had a round trip flight to Sandakan booked for the next day, since that gave me a reason to get out of the sun. I wasn't sure what I would do in Sandakan, other than going to the famous orangutan rehabilitation center in nearby Sepilok, but the helpful manager of the Borneo 1945 Museum near my guest house suggested a two-day, one-night all-inclusive tour of the Sungai Kinabatangan (Kinabatangan River) that sounded like it was worth taking a chance on. So I paid an agent in KK for a tour in Sandakan, arranging to meet the operator, who had no way to contact me, at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center at noon. Guess how this story turns out...

Quite well, actually. First off, the orangutan center was amazing. Sepilok rescues orphaned orangutans and attempts to rear them to eventually return to the wild. Orangutans are fairly intelligent so they can learn a lot of important survival skills from observing wild orangutans, but the center needs to nurse them back to health and teach them some basic climbing and foraging skills before they can successfully transition back to the wild. So the orangutans that tourists see at the center are actually in a transitional stage where they've been released back into the wild but still come back to the center at feeding times for meals. According to the center, some released orangutans return to the center for a period of five to ten years to feed, and some immediately depart for the jungle and are never seen again. This means that the orangutans at the center aren't exactly wild orangutans, but it's a good opportunity for tourists to observe orangutans up close without seeing them locked in cages. And when I say up close, I mean up close. At the morning feeding I attended, one orangutan came crashing out of the jungle and walked right along the railing of the walkway, right between two groups of surprised tourists. The center's staff had to work fairly hard to get the crowd at hand to observe the recommended seven meter distance from this powerful ape, which I personally did without asking. Shortly thereafter, a crowd of three to five orangutans, including several mothers carrying young, came to the feeding platforms for a breakfast of fruit and greens. It was really incredible to get so close to wild (well, semi-wild) orangutans with no fences or cages. They're really amazing creatures. After the feeding, while I was waiting for my tour operator, an orangutan came out of the jungle and started climbing around the edges of the visitor's center! I couldn't believe how comfortable these free, jungle-dwelling orangutans were around humans. It's a sight to behold. (Don't try to run up and hug one, though - the rehabilitation center I went to near Kuching had lots of gory pictures of orangutan bites, and the adults are strong enough to rip a human in half, although I doubt they would do it without a pretty good reason.)

Orangutans chowing down at Sepilok

The driver for my tour operator showed up in a private car not too long after noon. I was kind of expecting a van, but I got in anyway. We hit the road for Bilit, which is about a two-hour drive from Sepilok. I dozed off and when I awoke we were traveling down a two-lane road through endless palm oil plantations - the Borneo equivalent of endless Iowa corn fields - with almost no civiliztion in sight. Around that time I begain to contemplate the fact that I had gotten into a stranger's car and he was driving me out to the middle of nowhere, and the theme from "Deliverance" popped into my head. But, once again, it was just city-slicker paranoia getting the best of me.

The camp at Bilit definitely wasn't a resort, but that's a good thing because I really didn't want to spend my night in the jungle at a resort. The group consisted of me, two Dutch travelers who were there on the tail end of a three-day, two-night package, the tour guide, our cook and a couple hangers-on. It was a fairly simple operation, like something a family would throw together for some extra money from vacationers, although the tour guide was a full-time guide and the camp seemed like a full-time, serious operation. The whole trip had a very homey feel to it, though, like camping in someone's backyard, which I really enjoyed. We ran into an amazing amount of wildlife on the evening boat cruise down the Sungai Kinabatangan, including a couple tribes of macaques and proboscis monkeys, hornbills, herons, hawks, and three wild orangutans. I think we were extremely lucky to see that many orangutans on one trip. It was also enjoyable to see the small villages of houses on stilts along the Sungai Kinabatangan and the tugboats pulling work barges down the river. The reminders that people live and work on the river along with all of Borneo's unique wildlife painted a vivid portrait of what life along the Sungai Kinabatangan is really all about. We had some hope that we might see an elephant on the trip - apparently one had come out of the jungle and damaged some oil palms on a nearby plantation - but we weren't fortunate enough to spot one.

My prize close-up of a proboscis monkey in the wild

After dinner our guide took us on a night hike through the jungle around the campsite. With a high-powered flashlight he was able to spot several birds sleeping in the trees around the camp, some of which we were able to walk within feet of without disturbing. (The Dutch gentleman with us managed to snap off three flash photos of a sleeping bird without disturbing it, but unfortunately none of them were any good because his camera couldn't focus in total darkness.) The biggest surprise for me was when we found an owl roosting not thirty yards outside our campsite. I never imagined that such a big predatory bird could be resting on a stump so close to where we were sleeping without any of us being aware of it!

I was looking forward to falling asleep to the sounds of the jungle that night, but one of the nearby resorts had a live band and the bass and drums carried their way into our camp. At one point in the evening I heard a loud explosion in the distance. I asked our guide about it. "Fireworks," he told us. "The plantation owners are trying to scare the elephant back into the jungle." Yet another reminder of the slippery intersection between nature preservation and human progress in Borneo.

On the morning boat trip we spotted some more birds and a large water monitor lizard, and then it was time to return to Sandakan and fly back to Kota Kinabalu. In KK I treated myself to dinner at an Indian restaurant followed by a fresh mango lassi. Back at my guest house, I suddenly sneezed violently and realized my eyes were itching, and remembered that I had past reasons to be suspicious that I might be allergic to mangoes. In my past experience, I had spent a night with uncomfortably itchy hands and feet and that was the extent of it. This time around, I stayed in my room for a few minutes contemplating whether I could ride out the storm again without medical help before I decided that I should walk to the local drug store and try to score some antihistamines. When I stepped out of my room and looked in the hallway mirror, I realized that my lower eyelids had swollen into big, puffy lumps. I walked downstairs and mentioned to the front desk staff that I thought I was having an allergic reaction, which I'm sure they could clearly observe from my swollen eyes, and they suggested that I should visit the local 24-hour health clinic. Another guest (at the time, I had thought that the guy worked at the guest house) helped me walk to the clinic, and by the time I got there I was coughing and could feel a lot of irritation in my throat. The clinic asked if I was having trouble breathing. I thought to myself, "If I say yes, they'll probably treat me faster, but they also might do something drastic like give me a tracheotomy. Maybe I should be a little noncommittal about the breathing thing." I don't think I was ever in danger of not being able to breathe, but the whole episode was a little disturbing nonetheless. They ended up giving me two IV bottles of a steroid solution to reduce the inflammation and sent me back to the guest house with some drugs to rest. So in the end, I learned two things from the allergy attack: 1) Kota Kinabalu has competent and helpful medical services for travelers (although I'm suspicious they overcharged me for the take-home prescription), and 2) I shouldn't eat any more fucking mangoes, ever. (I'm kind of pissed off about this. I really like mangoes. Then again, I also really like breathing normally.)

Some would think that a run-in with a killer lassi might put a damper on a vacation. To be honest, it didn't help. But the end of my trip was also scheduled as a bit of an afterthought - I had one night and half a day in Penang, and then I would head back to Kuala Lumpur to retrieve my winter coat from the hotel and head back to Incheon. After two weeks on the road, I was feeling a little like I could use a vacation from my vacation. So I sprang for a real hotel instead of a guest house in Penang and only spent half a day exploring the city. Penang has an interesting history, as the main British port before the capture of Melaka from the Dutch and the rise of Singapore, and I'm sure Pulau Penang has interesting places to explore beyond the city center, but I limited myself to a walking tour of Georgetown, the city's main historic district. The Pinang Peranakan Mansion offered another chance to view the past opulence of Malaysia's Baba-Nyonya population (this time with photos allowed!), the Khoo clanhouse was quite impressive with its carved stone pillars, and I gave a big R.O.C. salute to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's former Penang home, but by this point in the trip I was beginning to feel like I had seen most of Penang's offerings before in Melaka and elsewhere. I guess no vacation can last forever.

My last hurrah, in Kuala Lumpur, was a visit to the Imbi Market to breakfast, which turned out to be a worthwhile pursuit since I hadn't experienced the real hustle and bustle of a crowded public market at the hawker centers I had been frequenting for meals. Actually, no, I take that back - my last hurrah was the Chicken Prosperity burger I had at the McDonald's at the KL airport's Low Cost Carrier Terminal. It was the special meal being offered to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai, indeed. As it turns out, the weeks preceding the Chinese New Year were a great time to visit Malaysia because every Chinatown district I stayed in was decorated for the holiday, and I even stumbled across a large Chinese New Year festival in KK with dragons and jugglers and stiltwalkers and such. It was also cool to see the way that the different ethnicities and cultures in Malaysia can share in each other's celebrations. For example, I'm pretty sure a lot of the performers at the festival in KK were Malay rather than ethnically Chinese, even though they were doing Chinese acrobatics and traditional Chinese dragon performances. In every town I went to you could walk down the street and find a Taoist or Confucian temple on one corner, a Hindu or Sikh temple just down the street, a mosque not too far away and, almost as often, a historic or modern Christian church within walking distance. I know that Malaysia's history hasn't been entirely free from conflict between different ethnicities, religions and social classes, but it was really remarkable to see a place where all these religions and ideas that seem so completely incompatible with each other sometimes in other contexts could grow up together in the same place, among the same people, and coexist together as part of the fabric of the same country. I think the world could learn a lot from Malaysia in that respect.

So, all in all, it was an amazing, incredible, amazing, life-altering, amazing trip that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to repeat. Every once in a while I would run into Europeans or Australians who were in the midst of six month adventures through Southeast Asia and elsewhere and I would always wonder how in the heck they managed to have the time and money, not to mention the stamina, to travel for six months. At the other extreme, I know that Koreans are lucky if they can string together five days of vacation in a row without getting fired, and most of them wouldn't even dare consider it. My coworkers are all fairly envious of the luxurious eight days in summer and ten days in winter of vacation (plus two extra weeks if you're renewing) stipulated in the EPIK contract for guest English teachers. (They're also not too shy about voicing that envy, since the cultural taboo that landed envy on the list of seven deadly sins in the Christian West doesn't seem to extend to Korean culture.) On the other hand, I think a lot of Westerners would be turned off by the idea of traveling halfway around the world from their friends and family if they couldn't use the job as an opportunity to see the world in their time off. (I know a lot of teachers here are also frustrated that our vacation time is limited to time when school isn't in session and dictated to some extent by the whims of the schools, which means a lot of missed weddings back home.) Back home, when I was working freelance and working as a temp, there was no such thing as vacation time - only unpredictable periods of unpaid unemployment. I'm sure when I get home and try to re-establish some kind of career for myself that there probably won't be any luxury vacations offered in the first few years. On the other hand, I discovered some things while traveling that give me hope for future adventures. For one, all these years when I heard about "backpackers" and "hosteling" I always assumed it was something that only people in their twenties could get away with doing without looking like weirdos, but I discovered in Malaysia that plenty of families, retired couples and lone travelers in midlife still carry backpacks and do the guest house circuit as a way to save money over staying in big, bland hotels. So I guess some day I can get Social Security to forward my meager benefit checks to the Philippines and I can still hop from city to city and island to island in Southeast Asia looking for the perfect bowl of curried noodles. So I've got that to look forward to. Which is nice.

Another thing that made the trip seem like an unrepeatable experience was the fact that I was shooting all my photographs on film rather than digital. I think I shot almost twenty rolls of Fuji, Kodak and Agfa (manufactured by Fuji) film negative on the trip. For the most part I got local labs to develop the negative for me while I was traveling (mostly so that I could avoid carrying exposed negative through airport security X-ray machines too many times), and I took the developed film to my local photo lab for digital scans when I got back home. There were some disadvantages to the plan - the lab I used in Kuching left some scratches and water or chemical stains on one of my rolls of negative (all my best shots of Petronas Towers, too - gaah!) and I accidentally creased a couple negatives in my backpack while I was traveling (rookie mistake - next time I'll travel with something solid to keep my negatives in so that they're protected). Finding labs was actually fairly easy in Malaysia, where enough people must still be shooting on film to keep photo processors in business, but in Singapore I couldn't find a lab that could still develop negatives in-house in a short time period for a reasonable price. If I ever do a long trip like this again where I'll be shooting a lot of film, I might find a way to ship my negatives to a photo processor in the States or elsewhere instead of depending on local labs. Then again, it's hard to know exactly where the future of shooting on silver is going. I think I first got the news of Kodak's bankruptsy filing when I was in Kuching. I know that Kodak's bankruptsy won't be the end of analog photography as we know it - most of the film I see for sale in Asia is made by Fuji, anyway - but I wonder exactly what's going to survive and what's going to be done away with when the whole Kodak bankruptsy is sorted out. For example, my favorite lab in Daegu is Kodak-branded - I certainly hope the bankruptsy doesn't disrupt their ability, as a franchisee, to continue operating.

I decided to invest in a manual film camera package instead of a digital one for several reasons: for one, I could buy a better camera package for half the money if I went analog instead of digital; I've done most of my photo and motion picture work over the years on film, so I've grown accustomed to working with it, not to mention developing a certain sense of nostalgia for it; I genuinely believe that film still offers significant techincal advantages in terms of exposure latitude and archivability; and my negative issues don't compare to issues like the ones experienced by the friend of mine who posted a desperate plea to Facebook for help retrieving 32 gigs of photos off of a malfunctioning SD card, or the friend who accidentally reformatted a hard drive with all his photos on it. I'd like to invest in a DSLR one of these days, but it probably won't be until I get back to the States and know where my next paycheck is coming from. I'm sure film will be available for artists, professionals and hobbyists for a long time, but I have to wonder for how long it will still be practical and affordable to shoot an entire vacation on film. I'd hate to be forced to leave my FM2 at home on a trip because I couldn't find anyone to process my negatives or I couldn't afford to do it. But then again, as a wise man once said (Chaucer, according to the internet), all good things must come to an end. Especially any good thing that competes with the iPhone. It's out of our hands...

Oh, one last thing - when I landed in Incheon, in winter, late at night after a long-ish flight, I was of course immediately annoyed by any and all things Korean. At immigration there were half as many windows open for foreign passport holders and the lines were twice as long. The ability to walk up to any stranger and expect to converse in English did not arrive with me on my flight from KL. Seoul Station had changed all of its ticketing machines and none of them were working. I was too late for the last train to my town and was technically expected to be at work the next morning. I bought a ticket for the 5:30 AM KTX and wandered over to the jjimjilbang near Seoul Station to rest for a few hours. I wedged my pack into a locker, stripped down naked and walked into the shower area, where I found a drunk businessman passed out asleep, completely naked, in the drying area. Later, as I was trying to relax on the hard, brick-shaped pillow and ignore the gurgles and moans of the drunks around me so that I could show up at work the next day just to save face, I realized something - Korea is a part of me now. I can't hate this place because, after two years here, I am a little Korean. It's rubbed off on me. There's no point trying to deny or despise what I am now. This place is a part of me and it always will be. When I come back here, it'll always be a homecoming of sorts.

Crap. It's after midnight and I have to be at school tomorrow to warm a desk. Koreans aren't allowed to take vacations, remember? See you later when I proofread this and edit out all the stuff about prostitutes in Singapore.

So This Is the New Year...

2011-12-31T05:50:00.000-08:00

Well. I guess this officially makes updating my blog a New Year's Eve tradition. I thought about going out, but then I thought about how much I wanted to avoid this song (warning: not a good song):

Instead I've got this blog, whatever's on TV tonight, the Criterion 3-disc version of "Brazil" and the second-cheapest spumonte available at HomePlus. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it up to the roof by dawn to see the sun rise, but since I did it last year and this year has been fairly good, I feel like if I don't do it this year I'm setting myself up for bad luck. I'm not really that superstitious but with certain charms and jinxes I feel like it's most pragmatic to defer to Pascal's Wager and just go with the flow. Or maybe I'm just intensely paranoid. Whatevs.

I'm not feeling quite as philosophical as last year tonight but I am feeling good about leaving for my vacation in roughly 48 hours. As you may know from following this blog religiously as if your life depended on it - as I'm sure you all do - I've been planning a vacation to Malaysia for roughly, oh, let's say, a year. Last year I was a little disappointed at vacation time because I realized that flying out of Korea without planning well ahead is expensive and vacationing in Korea is, well, not as cool as vacationing somewhere with beaches, monkeys and tropical weather. So I started saving my money and buying travel guides so that I could make my winter vacation this year worth it. So why Malaysia, you ask? Well, first, when I was in grade school, there was this:

Along with this annoying segment, 3-2-1 Contact showed a lot of interesting stuff about the unique animal, plant and traditional human life in Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo. That was probably the first time I became aware of Malaysia and the amazing biodiversity in Borneo, although I didn't really know anything about the economic development going on in the country, which would soon have us talking about Petronas Towers instead of proboscis monkeys when people mentioned Malaysia. I'd also heard a few things about Singapore over the years - a lot of stuff about shopping malls and chewing gum being illegal, admittedly, but it still seemed like an intriguing nexus point in the global marketplace worth exploring. Then, last year at the end of either the spring or fall semester I had some class periods to kill so I showed the kids some of the BBC's Planet Earth documentary, which featured more of Borneo. "Hey," I thought to myself, "I bet Borneo isn't that far from Korea," once again falling into my old habit of believing that everything in East and Southeast Asia and Oceania is right next door to Korea. (As it turns out, Kuala Lumpur is approximately the same distance from Korea as Los Angeles is from New York in the USA - in other words, not close. Discovering this was about as surprising as when I realized, as the crow flies, that I would be flying approximately the same distance to visit New Zealand from here as I would if I were going there from Los Angeles. That was pretty much the death knell of my quixotic dream of trekking the Milford Track on my way back home in 2013.) So anyway, in addition to agreeable weather and educational television, I heard good things about Malaysia and Malaysians from everyone I met who has traveled there (unlike a certain nearby island nation that will remain nameless, cough cough Indonesia). Beyond that, it just seems like an engrossing little juncture in the world, with the Malay, Chinese and Indian populations combining all their different influences in the culture, not to mention the historic influence from Islamic and European traders over the years. Also, when I called the hotel in Kuala Lumpur to ask about their luggage storage policy the first guy I talked to spoke excellent English, so that's a good sign. Plus, their flag looks just like the US flag but with a star and crescent. What's not to love?

I really want to find a t-shirt with this on it to piss off the unwitting Islamophobes back home.

The funny thing is, I've been looking forward to this vacation for so long that at this point the anticipation has almost burned itself out and now I'm more concerned with the little, day-to-day concerns, like what it's going to be like being in yet another foreign country (two, if you count Singapore separately) on my own for 17 days, whether this endeavor's going to be more expensive that I anticipated, whether I'm packing too many pairs of shoes (my plan was to wear boots and bring flip-flops for the evenings and beaches, but then I realized that I wanted to rent a bicycle in Singapore and biking in either boots or flip-flops is not a good idea) and how strictly AirAsia is going to enforce their 7kg carry-on luggage allowance. I suppose I've also been feeling a little less trapped here with my vacation time coming and with the school year shifting into Finals Mode weeks ago. (I haven't taught a real class since the first few days of December. I think my students have learned a few important things about Batman this month, though.) I'm sure all the little nagging worries will melt away as soon as I get off the plane and it's warm and I can go, "Hey, there's Petronas Towers," and take pictures of Petronas Towers and enjoy myself. Besides, I may never get the chance to take a vacation like this again. I've got hopes and vague plans to go to Japan and Thailand/Vietnam/Cambodia (and maybe Hong Kong on the way to Thailand) before I leave this job but God knows vacation time in the US is a rarity and I've got a lot of catching up to do on the corporate ladder before I can count on having the time or money to do extensive globetrotting again. Also I suppose there's a chance that I won't be interested in carrying all my luggage on my back and staying in hostels once I get too much further beyond 30. Well, personally I don't believe in dwelling on the things you can't do or might never do in life when you could be focusing on what's good in the present, so for now I'm just going to concentrate on getting some good photos, some street hawker food and some sand between my toes.

Oh, before I go - you're probably wondering how things are here with the Dear Leader of our crazy neighbors up north shuffling off this mortal coil and the funny fat kid taking charge. I guess I would describe the attitude here as equal parts anxiety and resignation. I don't think anybody thinks things are going to be imminently less crazy above the DMZ, but I don't think anybody's anticipating an immediate invasion or anything either. I mean, the Kim dynasty and the North Koreans have always been crazy, opaque and unpredictable - is it really going to be much different any time soon with a baby-faced 28-year-old in charge?

So, 2011? Not bad. The Bills won a few games. I bought a new camera. The job's good and the people are nice. And I'm going to Malaysia. I mean, there was also the Gulf oil spill and the tsunami and earthquake in Japan and the flooding in Pakistan and Thailand and the stupid stupid stupid US government and stuff, but all that stuff mostly happened to other people. So all in all, a pretty good year. Cheers, everyone. "Should auld aquaintance blah blah blah, dah dah dah Auld Lang Syne..."

What To Do, What To Do…

2011-12-11T06:47:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s finally happened. I’ve finally completed the accounting certificate program I started three years ago before I left the States. Add to that the fact that my classes for the year are finished (we’re doing nothing but self-study sessions prior to the final exams next week, and there’s no way I’m attempting anything other than showing a movie after exams are done) and, well, let me allow the Stone Roses – cough, er, ah, I mean the Soup Dragons to sum it up for you…

Despite the lack of a parade, bronze statue, banquet in my honor or other momentous event to celebrate my completion of the certificate program (I can’t even attend the graduation ceremony, since it’ll be next June in LA and I’ll be here then) it still feels like a pretty significant achievement. It seems strange now to think back to that moment in late 2008 when I was a copiously moustachioed (long story) temporary mailroom clerk at a music publisher in LA, watching the world economy fall down around me, and coming to the realization that, as an adult over 30 without a decent job still struggling to cover basic expenses in a highly competitive job market with over $50,000 in student loan debt and mounting credit card balances, maybe it was time for a fairly radical career change. I didn’t exactly picture myself right here, right now back then – I’m not sure what I was foreseeing back then exactly, other than a tiny light at the end of an otherwise rapidly dimming tunnel. The process wasn’t easy – at times before I left the States to do this job I was doing production work six days a week, thirteen hours a day and trying to complete all my coursework on my one day off. (Whenever conservative, “54 percenter” types get on their high horses and say things like, “Why don’t these lazy unemployed people get jobs?” or, “Why don’t these whiny liberal arts majors go back to school?” I really want to shake one of them by the shoulders and say, “Why don’t YOU try actually doing that some time, and find out how easy it is?!?”) Now here I am three years later, sitting at a desk in Korea reading “Anna Karenina” on my computer whilst managing self-study sessions for antsy, exhausted high school students. Crazy world.

As welcome as the change from intermittent freelance work to a full-time job has been, at times it’s felt like I’ve been working sixteen-hour days, five or six days a week for the past two years. The amount of study required for my certificate program has varied wildly from quarter to quarter as different courses had much different workloads. My first year here I was even trying to complete a TEFL certificate and take Korean classes one day a week while I was studying, working and trying to maintain a modest home. So this sudden realization (more in the accounting sense than the mental sense in this case) that I suddenly have very little to do at work and much less to do at home has been kind of a shock to the system for me, like taking a fish out of dirty pond water and suddenly putting it into a clean new fish tank. I honestly have no idea what to do with myself, to some extent. I’ve been growing pretty tired of playing the handful of video games that I own. A friend of mine has been trying to get me to join some online games with him, but I’m concerned that I don’t really have the motivation to become competent enough at a game to play it in a competitive environment. I’ve been too lazy to go back to the local video store since the “Haeundae” incident of earlier this year, and since watching DVDs on my TV involves moving my laptop to the floor and rerouting some cables I’m often too lazy to carry through with the effort. (I know, that doesn’t sound like a lot of toil and trouble, but think about it – when do you want to watch TV the most? Exactly – when you have absolutely no desire to put any sort of effort into entertaining yourself.) I’m genuinely trying to make an effort to read books, but, you know, they’re books. Snore. Plus books have to be bought or downloaded and I hate reading off the computer at my desk. (Please keep in mind while reading this that this is a recounting of my attempts to relax, and as such gross sloth is not only acceptable, but also a key element of the pursuit.) It’s getting too cold to go outside and hike. I’ve been exercising every day at my school’s fitness room, but that only kills an hour or so every night. I’ve been considering buying a guitar but I want to wait until I come back from vacation this winter to see what my finances are like before I invest in one. The stuff on TV is in Korean and the people outside are talking the same gibberish for some reason. So in the meantime I’m at somewhat of a loss for how to fill my waking hours in the evening. Mind you, I just completed my coursework yesterday, so this is still a rather new problem. I’m sure I’ll have it figured out in a few days or a week. Either that or I’ll finally figure out how it is that people can actually bring themselves to sleep for eight hours a night. (It seems like such a waste of time to get more than six or seven. I mean over a lifetime, that’s like… [fumbles with calculator] 57,816 excess hours lost to somnambulance? Unacceptable.)

Vacation planning has occupied some of my time at school. Now that I’m going back through the guidebook I bought for my trip to Malaysia, I’m starting to realize that I don’t have the time or money to do everything I originally wanted to do on the trip. Part of the reason is that the guidebook goes into lush detail describing exciting trekking and scuba diving adventures available in Borneo, which are wonderful to read about but generally too expensive, too time-consuming, too far-flung or too far out of my expertise in outdoor sports. So far I’ve only discovered one or two adventures that I really wanted to partake in and could reasonably pursue that I can’t squeeze in because of time and logistical constraints. Regardless, I’m really looking forward to the trip. It’s probably best that I don’t try to pack too much into my itinerary so that I can take an afternoon off to rest if I need it or squeeze in some sort of adventure that I hadn’t anticipated if I want to. There is such a thing as overplanning, despite what the more fastidious elements of society (and Word spell-checker) will tell you.

Christmas is coming. Christmas in Korea is weird because Korea has all the Christmas trappings with no actual Christmas. There are Christmas trees and Christmas decorations and Christmas music everywhere, but as Westerners understand the holiday, there’s no actual Christmas at the end of all of it. It’s kind of a big Christmas tease – all the Christmas foreplay with no Christmas release at the end. (You’re quite welcome to keep that mental picture, by the way.) In Korea, Christmas is mostly a time for young couples to get together and have dates. Yes, somehow

Korea

decided it needs a *third* Valentine’s Day instead of Christmas. This definitely does not jibe so well with my mental picture of what Christmas should be, which involves family and gifts and cookies and a fireplace and eggnog. (LOTS of eggnog.) Some of my friends here in town are planning a celebration for the night of Christmas Eve, but it still doesn’t seem the same (despite the fact that I have gone to great lengths to attempt to make eggnog from scratch for the party). Granted, I can’t exactly import my family (or a fireplace, for that matter) into the country just to celebrate Christmas, but Christmas looms large on that list of Western things you just can’t get here (along with really good pastrami, baguettes that aren’t rock-hard, dry red or white wine, and, unfortunately, store-bought eggnog).

Meh, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll probably touch base again some time after I arrive in Kuala Lumpur for vacation, or perhaps after I get back to Korea. OBLIGATORY CLOSING SONG!

(Postscript: I was going to include a link to the White Stripes video for "Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself," but that turned out to just be Kate Moss dancing in her underwear, and that seemed kind of sexist. So I'm including this video instead:)

(Other Postscript: Hey, Eastbound and Down, Season 2 is available on iTunes now! My problems are solved!)

Three Weddings and Two Festivals

2011-10-27T08:26:00.001-07:00

Hello again. Don’t tell anyone but I’m penning this at work. I also spent all morning working on some accounting homework I was too tired to do last night instead of working on lesson plans or school-related stuff. My 1st graders are in Jeju on a class trip this week so I had no classes yesterday and only one today, and I’ll have only one tomorrow and none on Friday due to some test. The nice thing about this job is that there almost always seems to be a day or week off when you really need it. It could be an unexpected holiday (the anniversary of the school founder’s death, for example), an unexpected test, the county’s sports day, a mid- or end-of-semester exam, the week before an exam when your co-teachers ask you to allow extra classes or student self-study during your class period, Korea’s national end-of-high-school exam… The list is endless. It’s almost enough to make a guy feel put upon when he actually needs to teach a full week of classes with no weird scheduling conflicts. Almost.

It was already several weeks ago, around the time of the midterm exams (which were absurdly early this semester… we only had about 4 1/2 weeks of my class before the mid-term break, in part because of Chuseok and that self-study week before the exam) that I started to reflect on just how quickly time flies here. It seems like only yesterday that I was coming back to school from the summer session and contemplating how much longer I should wear my short-sleeved shirts to work, and already today I had to wear a cardigan to work for the first time since last winter. (It was 3 degrees outside this morning and still the school has all the doors and windows in the stairwells open. I would like to put forward the motion to recognize that COLD AIR IS NOT FRESH AIR, PEOPLE.) Winter vacation in Malaysia, my brief jaunt home to the States and even the next contract are all looming near-future events now. It’s a strange thing to contemplate. Maybe I just don’t have enough to occupy my mind here other than the intricacies of the US tax code (it’s a course I’m taking this quarter) and the passage of time. Maybe I need a new hobby. Maybe I should get a pet. No, wait, I already abandoned one pet back home, I don’t need to put another living thing in limbo here. Maybe I should grow a plant instead. Meh. I should probably wait until next spring to do that. Oh well…

The news this time around is all pretty bland. I’ve been using my school’s fitness room daily and I’ve dropped some weight. I’m already down a pant size and I was using yet another new notch on my belt for a couple days before I brought that pizza home from Costco last night. I wonder if my friends will even recognize me when I come home to visit. (Not that I’m bragging or anything.) I went to the Jinju Latern Festival earlier this fall with some other foreign teachers from my town, but we didn’t want to spend the night so we had to run to the bus station just as they were launching the fireworks and lighting the lanterns on the river. I had a good time, though. I likewise made an underwhelming trek to the Liquor and Rice Cake Festival in Gyeongju. Originally I was planning to make a weekend out of it to explore the city – maybe even rent a bicycle and cruise the sights, which I’ve been meaning to do, if only as an excuse to ride a bike again. As it turns out one of my co-teachers got married that weekend (more on that in a moment) so I decided to do the festival as a day trip instead. I left early to make the trip up to the Seokguram stone grotto in Gyeongju (which was a little bit of a disappointment – the interior is behind glass and the exterior is covered by rocks and grass so it’s hard to get a really good look at the impressive stonework involved in building the thing) and was supposed to meet up with some friends from my town at the festival later in the day, but my friends cancelled at the last minute. It didn’t make sense to try to get in touch with people I know who live in Gyeongju at that point since it was obvious I wouldn’t stay too long, so I circled the festival, bought a ceramic shot glass on a string that resembles a bell (I can see where that might come in handy in the future at least), ran into the same English teachers I usually see at festivals that involve heavy drinking (they’re nice folks, don’t get me wrong, it’s just funny how it always seems to be the same people), dodged an angry Phillies fan who didn’t much like my Cardinals cap, sucked down all the free samples I could, bought a largely unremarkable bottle of makgeoli and headed back home. It’s good to acknowledge when you can’t force a trip to be a good time and know to cut your losses.

So yeah, one of my co-teachers got married. I found out about the wedding at the beginning of the week when it happened. Before that I had briefly met her boyfriend, but I had no idea they were even engaged until I got the electronic invitation. The invitation was pretty impressive, albeit delivered only a short time span before the impending nuptials. Apparently there’s a thing they do here for “modern” style weddings where the bride and groom get together before the wedding and do a photo shoot at a photography studio for the invitations. The bride and groom wear different dresses and tuxes (respectively, of course) and pose together in various rooms with various complementary tchotchkes. (There was kind of yester-tech-y feel to some of the stuff in my co-teacher’s pictures – old television monitors and stuff like that – which appealed to my inner geek. I would share the pictures but I’m not sure if the invitation is still online and I’m sure that would be an egregious violation of my co-teacher’s privacy.) They threw in the obligatory hanbok photo at the end of the set as well, to keep the traditionalists happy. My first reaction was, “Hey, the groom’s not supposed to see the bride in the dress before the wedding!” but that reaction was soon mitigated by the realization of how much made sense about the arrangement. The way I see it, there’s all this pressure on a bride to pick the right dress for the wedding, and then she wears it once and stuffs it in a closet either forever or until she feels like pulling it out and making herself feel bad about how much weight she’s gained. With this photo shoot thing, the bride gets to try out every dress that she could possibly want for the wedding, and gets a souvenir for the effort to boot. So the bride can try out the short and flirty dress without worrying about scandalizing the great aunts, or go for the dress with the ridiculously long train without worrying about practical issues of mobility, or whatever. Plus, if you’re going to only wear the thing once, why not buy one and rent five? Makes perfect sense to me.

The wedding itself took place in this purpose-built wedding hall that was a little like a giant wedding airport. There was another wedding scheduled for my co-teacher’s wedding terminal something like 50 minutes after our scheduled start time, which I knew because everything scheduled in the hall was listed on big LCD monitors all around the building. The employees at the wedding hall were already setting up flowers and photos for the next wedding as my co-teacher was completing hers. When I met my co-teacher just before the wedding, she was perched in an out-of-the-way annex in her dress (she went bold and got the one with the long, unwieldy train, by the way) on what I could only describe as a bridal throne. This was a slightly strange experience for me, since my reaction was, “I know you, I see you and work with you every day at work, but now you’re in a strange room on a throne. What am I supposed to do here?” Luckily it didn’t last long. All the staff from our school was invited, and everyone who came showed up without their spouses or families, the same way you wouldn’t consider bringing your spouse or your family to any other work function. The ceremony was mercifully brief, with a big showy light show and a song from the groom, and everyone who attended talked through the whole thing like it was no big deal to be talking through a wedding. After the ceremony we all filed down to the banquet hall for a buffet dinner, except for the bride and groom who were apparently spirited away to some other private family ceremony. I was in and out of the place and on my way home within an hour and thirty minutes. Honestly I have to admire the efficiency.

Some of you are probably reading this and thinking, “Oh, how awful, they’ve Westernized their marriages and it’s so terrible because it’s so us and white and not at all them and Asian.” As you may have guessed from my tone, I’m thinking that your thinking is full of shit. Lots of people in the modern world choose to have modern weddings instead of traditional weddings. I think most of the best weddings I’ve been to have dispensed with as many traditions as possible. One set of my friends, for example, had a non-traditional wedding that I thought got everything exactly right. When they got married, they put everyone up in a hotel for the weekend (not a super fancy place, but a very nice one), wore regular clothes to the ceremony, brought their dog, did the vows like it was no thing, and had dinner and everything else immediately after the ceremony, more or less in the same room. (My gift to them was to convince all of our mutual male friends to grow moustaches for the wedding. The wedding pictures are freakin’ amazing.) In my opinion, this is the way to do a wedding. No prince and princess shit necessary. Just let all of your friends and family get together in one place at one time, get everyone a little tipsy, get them to buy you some appliances and celebrate your relationship. Let’s be fair, whatever realization you had that you wanted to be together, and whatever promise you made that you would stay together, probably happened long before the wedding, and if making that promise legally binding really means that much to you then you’re probably not very good at keeping promises. So in short, and especially as someone with a Y-chromosome, I like the wedding-in-a-big-box concept. One-stop shopping. Find the best product at the best price and pay the guy. No muss, no fuss. Wedding traditions are all kind of ridiculous anyway. One of my other co-teachers told me that traditionally Korean couples had two weddings, one in the bride’s hometown and one in the groom’s. The ceremony took place and the spouse’s parents’ house and the whole village was invited. I’ve also been told that traditional Korean ceremonies involve a LOT of standing, bowing and more standing, like to the point of being kind of brutal to watch. Also, traditionally it was the first time the bride and groom had ever met. A wedding like that, while a nice tradition to preserve and cherish, doesn’t really work in the modern context. So there’s no reason not to have a modern “Western” wedding for your co-workers and extended family and do the traditional stuff somewhere else while your co-workers and family fill up on ham and raw salmon. Traditions are great and all but there also comes a time for them to step aside and let modernity take over. For example, when my cousin got married she had a non-denominational ceremony outdoors. Nothing unusual about that in this day and age, really. Up until the moment just after the toast, when one of the groom’s relatives yelled, “Mazel tov!” I had never thought about the fact that my cousin’s new husband was Jewish. (My cousin, like most of my family, is extremely blond and Lutheran.) I’m guessing the religious differences weren’t all that important to my cousin and cousin-in-law, or they had found a way to work them out, since they got married and all, but if they opted for a strictly traditional ceremony they would have had to argue about whether there’s going to be a priest or a rabbi and who has to convert and all that shit. There’s no reason to have to do all that personal stuff publicly. So anyway, the moral of this story is, if you insist on getting married for some dumb reason, please keep shit short and simple like they do in Korea. And please have an open bar, because cash bars are lame. Also please feel free to get totally gay-married because there’s no reason to make a fuss about that either because marriage is lame anyway. Meanwhile, I will be here, remaining single, and being not at all bitter about it.

Alright, that’s enough local color commentary for now. Nothing that exciting is looming in the immediate future. I’m currently in first place in my friend’s fantasy football league and looking forward to the fact that this situation could never possibly change and there’s absolutely no way that I will suffer any sort of comeuppance. (Not that I’m bragging or anything.) I’m bound for Busan this weekend to enjoy Halloween and a hopefully not-cancelled-due-to-rain fireworks festival. And one of the other teachers is asking me to go to the fitness room now so I’d better wrap this up. Mazel tov for now, suckers.

The Farther One Travels, The Less One Knows

2011-09-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

Hey all, Look at that, one month to the day! I am a consistent blogger once again!

We're now entering what is, if I'm not mistaken, the fourth week of the current semester. There's not too much that exciting going on. I bought some decent beers (Duvel! Kozel! Fuller's London Pride! Erdinger! Leffe Brune! Hooray!) and some packets of curry spices from HomePlus so my belly is happy. I bought a really expensive pair of flip-flops a few weeks ago, but I'm justifying it by the fact that I waited the whole summer to buy them. I quit one video game and bought a couple others. I joined a fantasy football league. During Chuseok, I actually watched football. Sunday NFL games are usually on from 2 AM Monday morning until about noon Monday afternoon here so there's no point trying to find a way to watch them. This year Chuseok fell on a Monday, however, so we had Monday and Tuesday off, giving me the perfect excuse to go nocturnal and watch the opening weekend of football (sans the Thursday opener, sadly). Getting up at 2 AM to watch football until 3 PM and then try to get some sleep might seem a little crazy, but it seemed worth it at the time. Could have been the football withdrawl, I don't know. Maybe it was the whole September 11th thing. Spending the tenth anniversary of September 11th in a foreign country was a little strange, especially since it kind of lasted for close to 36 hours with the time change. Personally I was kind of glad to be able to avoid it--I don't like to revisit that day. But remembering the date with a day of NFL football seemed appropriate somehow. And I've got my reservation to see the memorial when I visit New York in February. Anyway, I'm just glad the Bills won the only one of their games that I'll probably see all year, and handily. I take back most of the awful things I've said about Ryan Fitzpatrick. (I'm sure he understands.)

There hasn't been that much fascinating, interesting stuff to report. I did go to the Daegu International Bodypainting Festival, which was a fun event for a shutterbug like myself. There are so few creative arts festivals or museums outside of Seoul that it's surprising that something as daring as the Bodypainting Festival is going on in boring-ol' Daegu. Earlier this summer I went to the fine arts gallery in Gwangju, which is associated with the big Gwangju biennial, so I was expecting big things. Most of the art there was so boring (Ooh! It's the same damn waterfall that Asian artists have been drawing for centuries!) that I wanted to impale roadkill on rusted cars, light it on fire and photograph it. (YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO STEAL THAT IDEA.) The Bodypainting Festival isn't especially avant-garde--a lot of the work looks like it would be at home in a sci-fi/fantasy video game--but it was still cool to see the creativity at work. I also liked the fact that a lot of the work was done by local design students. And of course the whole nakedness thing is a little brash for Daegu. Some other people I know who had visited past festivals complained that they were a little creeped out by the number of older men at the festival ogling the models while they were preparing for the judging and performance, but I honestly didn't see anything too unseemly along those lines when I was there. Maybe the models were in a more completely prepared state when I was there--I can imagine that the preparation in outdoor tents must feel a little more revealing before the base coat goes on, no matter how hard the artists try to shield the models from the public eye. The promotional videos they showed at the event showed a few male models in the competition, but there was only one at the event this year. Not that I'm complaining. I think what shocked me the most wasn't the nudity aspect, but the fact that at the end of the show the models walked through a crowd of drunks and down a dark asphalt path to get back to their outdoor prep area. Trust is a beautiful thing. Trust, and a lack of lawyers looking for lawsuits.

The bodypainting and costuming was quite beautiful, too. Let's not forget that.

I guess the only other big news is that I officially intend to renew for a third year. I don't think anybody should be surprised by that decision. If anything I was more worried that something was going to happen to yank the rug out from under me before I could renew. There's been a lot of crazy rumors floating around among the foreigner population here lately. A lot of teachers are concerned about the fact that the province of Gyeonggi-do defunded GEPIK, after instituting a hiring freeze earlier in the year, and now all the teachers in the province seem to be in limbo. (I still don't know what the relationship is between GEPIK and EPIK in other provinces, but given the separate acronyms I've been led to believe that there's some sort of significant separation.) There also seems to be a general trend in the country towards viewing teachers in general as having special privileges and not working as hard as other Koreans. In a way it's kind of comforting to see that there's more than one country that can be driven by crisis to hate teachers, even one that worships education. And worships spending long hours at work. Korean sources like to blame Korea's low labor productivity rates on large concentrations of workers in service industry positions and the informal economy, but I'll bet it also has something to do with the number of hours Koreans are at work, which is the highest per worker in the OECD. Part of Korean business culture seems to be that no one goes home until the boss goes home, which isn't just a great way to depress your productivity by guaranteeing that your workers are spending a lot of idle hours browsing Naver, but also a great way to instill a crab-bucket mentality when it comes time for a recession.

On top of that, there seem to be a lot more stories and rumors kicking aroundabout Koreans just plain not liking foreigners. Personally I don't take a lot of stock in those stories. I think a lot of things that prompt Westerners to think that Koreans are "racist" are just cultural misunderstandings. I'll admit, Korea is a fairly closed society. It's difficult to forge close friendships with the locals (at least by Western standards) and Koreans don't really embrace foreign influence the way some more blended cultures with longer histories of foreign influence, colonization, international trade and immigration do. But I think foreign teachers also do things to reinforce some of the negative stereotypes that already exist here. I don't think there's a good reason for Koreans to believe that we're all child rapists with AIDS (and I've seen the evidence of what Korean men get up to in Southeast Asia--don't think we don't know what you're doing at those clubs in the Philippines, guys) but a lot of foreign teachers don't seem to have gotten the message that just because you can have an open container in public and find prostitutes at juicy bars doesn't mean that you should. And since we're foreigners, we're going to be held to a higher standard than drunk old farmers because we're a lot more visible. It may not be fair, but it's the rules of the game. The same way that foreign English teachers might panic when they hear a story about a vigilante spying on foreign teachers trying to catch them breaking the law is the same way that Koreans will overreact when they read about a foreign teacher assaulting an older couple on a bus in Seoul (warning: the linked video is not a happy video). It's important not to let rumors, innuendo and the worst elements of a group color your opinion of a whole culture or collection of people, especially when it seems like there's so little communication and exchange of ideas between the two groups sometimes.

But, long story slightly shorter, it appears that I've been invited to stay another year. I'll admit that there were a few days there where I was contemplating asking to be moved to a different school in a bigger city. I love my school to death, but my town is a little isolated and it would be nice to have a few more Westerners to mix with. But in the end the rational decision won out. I know my last blog posting was a little glum, but with the world economy being what it is it makes more sense to stay and keep the stable job for another year, and it made more sense to stay at my school than to roll the dice and possibly end up at a crappy school. I'm trying to make more of a concerted effort to get out and meet people, so I'm sure this current social lull will pass in time.

Speaking of which, lately I've been thinking about what I should do with my spare time when I'm here next year. My accounting courses will be finished by December, which will give me a helluva lot more free time evenings and weekends, and I'll have enough lesson plans prepared for school that I shouldn't have to do more than some minor tweaks to them when I'm at work during the week. I know some other teachers have tried stuff like taekwondo school and belly dancing classes but I'm not sure if either one of those is my speed. I know there's a kendo school next to my school, but I think most of the participants are elementary kids and my own female students, so I don't think I want to get involved with beating (or more likely, getting beaten by) little kids and a bunch of Korean schoolgirls with a bamboo rod. I may give Korean lessons another try if I can find a language exchange partner to help with some additional practice outside of class. I've been thinking about buying a new acoustic guitar and finally learning how to play, especially since I saw some of the acoustics here that are available for under $150. (Unfortunately I don't know the quality of any of the brands available in Korea. I'm familiar with Samick and Cort, but a lot of the cheaper acoustics are made in China and I don't recognize any of the trade names used here. I do know Samick and Cort manufacture guitars for a lot of good American brands--I have Korean-made Schecter and Danelectro electric guitars back home and they both rule--but I'm also a little wary since my first guitar was a Samick acoustic and it's a piece of shit. Admittedly it was a really shitty Samick, and $50 less than a similar low-end guitar from Yamaha. But I've gotta say, I've seen a lot of good-looking guitars at dirt-cheap prices here, and unless there's hidden manufacturing defects you can usually hear or feel if there's something you don't like about an acoustic guitar.) At some point I'll have to review for the CPA exam, but I don't think that takes an entire year. I've thought about working on a screenplay (why abandon entertainment when you can keep pulling at the scabs?) but I have the age-old problem that I don't feel like I have an idea that's solid enough for a feature screenplay. (And I don't have enough access to American TV to write a TV spec. Maybe I should invest in some more NBC comedies from iTunes...) I suppose I could spend more time watching football (cough cough I mean soccer, sorry) but Arsenal is off to such a bad start that I would consider switching allegiances to Barca if Korean TV ever showed La Liga. There's also the age-old issue of money. Next year I should have more cash saved up for vacations and such, although I'd prefer to take it home with me and invest it or spend it after I've paid all the moving costs from coming home. (At some point I realized that it's the same price--and distance, as the crow flies--to fly from Seoul to New Zealand as it is to fly from LA to New Zealand. That kind of put a damper on my dreams of trekking the Milford Track as a goodbye trip.) But next year I'll also have to pay Korean taxes, start paying back some loans and pay some moving expenses when I return home. Anyway, I guess not knowing what to do with your free time is a good problem to have. Especially in the country with the longest work hours in the OECD. Better not let the locals see me enjoying myself...

(I just cracked the Leffe Brune. OH MY GOD WHAT A GREAT BEER. Belgians rule at beer.)

Alright, I'm tapped. I'll be back in a while with more crazy stories. In the meantime, here's the obligatory parting song...

No Joy in Mudville?

2011-08-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

Hey there. So, it's summer. Summer vacation, to be exact. Initially I didn't want to use my vacation this summer. My original intent was to save it so I could use it all this winter, which technically isn't allowed in the contract but a lot of school allow teachers to do it. After crunching some numbers and talking things over with my school, however, I realized that I probably can't afford to take a vacation long enough to use all of my summer and winter days off, and since there would probably be time over the summer when school would be closed or I would be sitting at my desk in an empty office with nothing to do, it made more sense to just use the vacation days instead of causing administrative problems or moral dilemmas for the school. What can I say, I am both a schmuck and a team player. I count those among my better qualities.

My first three days of vacation were put to good use. First I headed to Daecheon Beach to check out the infamous Boryeong Mud Festival. The town started the festival to promote their supposedly cosmetically beneficial mud, but eventually people (including a large number of foreigners) discovered that the festival is a marvelous excuse to roll in the mud and get really, really drunk. I stayed at a hotel with a gang of four strangers from Gyeongju (who turned out to be fantastically nice people) and despite my best intentions I don't think I spent more than thirty minutes without a beer in my hand. Luckily I had a good time and nothing stupid happened, although Facebook now has pictures of me shirtless, which is something I usually try to avoid. (I've lost a pant size since I came here--which is good because a size 34 is "extra large" in some stores in Korea--but according to the National Health Service I need to lose another nine kilos to stop being considered obese. Well, fuck.) I've also come to realize that I may be the only American between the ages of 18 and 38 who has no tattoos. What can I say, I've never had the money to waste on tattoos, or a decent body to display them on. (I did recently joke that when I finally pay off all my credit cards I'm going to get a tattoo on the hand that I reach into my wallet with that says, "Think again.")

The next day I got up early and said goodbye to the roommates, whom I never saw again. (That's a lie. I saw them again a few weeks later at the Pohang Fireworks Festival. They might be reading this right now on Facebook, actually. Like I said, nice people.) Since I was already in Chungcheongnam-do I figured I would do some traveling and see some of the famous Baekje sites around the province. You know, because the best thing to do with a monster hangover is to strap on a backpack and walk around in the sun in mid-July in Korea. I followed that up with a trip down to Mokpo, mostly just to say I've been to Jeollanam-do and check off Dadohae National Park from the list of sites in the front of the Korea Lonely Planet. The problem with my plan was that I tried to pack way too much travel into too few days. Buyeo was nice (if you look up "bucolic" in the dictionary there might be a picture of Buyeo) but by the time I got to Gongju the famous Baekje tombs were already closed. I spent the night in Daejeon but I mistakenly stayed near the wrong KTX station, and even though I got to the station by about 7:30 AM I had just missed the KTX to Mokpo and had to wait 2 1/2 hours for the next one. Since I got to Mokpo late I had to skip the boat tour to Hong-do and the rest of Dadohae National Park and decided to hike up the local mountain instead. Because, like I said, the smartest thing to do in Korea in the summer in the middle of the day is hike up a goddamn mountain. I went to Gwangju the next morning but by the time I got there I had pretty much had my fill of hiking, museums, temples, tombs and other assorted Korean vacation options. Honestly I was glad to be home in air conditioning. I silently vowed to never undertake a solo backpacking vacation in Korea again.

The main problem with that was, I still had five days of vacation coming. Shit fuck.

Korea has school year-round but for foreign English teachers the summer schedule can be kind of a joke. (For the kids, apparently, it's miserable. In my conversation classes I would ask my students if they were looking forward to the summer and the answer was almost always a unanimous "no.") Unless you're a part of an organized week of "English camp" you usually get stuck trying to plan new lessons every day on your own for a group of kids that have been press-ganged into taking your class because letting the English teacher shirk the whole summer would just be too un-Korean. Don't get me wrong, my school and my co-teachers did their best to schedule a decent summer program for me, and I had a lot of fun in most of my classes. Unfortunately my last class of the day had some sort of conflict with an "important" class, so sometimes with no warning I would go from having six kids showing up to only one. This was especially wonderful when I, for example, had planned the final class for a week-long project and brought video equipment and bought GODDAMN SNACKS and had one student show, after six students had clearly and unequivocally stated that they would be in class. I don't want to complain too much--it's the Korean government's dime so they call the dance--but it's also hard not to get angry when the native English teacher gets treated like an expensive piece of furniture, or when your class gets bumped for something "more important" like math or studying for some exam or a goddamn assembly to check the length of the girls' skirts. Not to mention that time I got locked inside the teachers' office and had to climb out a window to get out. Guess I better learn the Korean phrase for, "Is anybody in here?" one of these days. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut, though, since I keep hearing rumors about how Koreans are unhappy with how expensive and foreign and drunk native English teachers are, and how they keep trying to find ways to replace us with robots.

(The linked article and video, by the way, have to be my favorite of the Korean English-Teaching Robot stories I've seen online. See what they did there? They used a robot to stick a white face on a Filipino teacher! That's sheer genius. I mean, I would be perfectly happy if they replaced us with robots that work, or better qualified teachers from India or the Philippines. The problems are that most of the robots I've seen online suck, and Koreans want to learn English from a "perfect" native speaker, which usually implies a Westerner--preferably a white American. I'm not going to bust out the "R" word here, because that sort of accusation is usually only good for starting fights. But it's funny to see how whiteness has become a commodity in the age of globalization. For example, you can rent one of us in China. Who says we don't make anything in America anymore? We make and export whiteness!)

So after three weeks of playing the Dancing English Bear on a reduced class schedule (yet another reason I really shouldn't complain, but still do) I had my last five days of vacation coming. The problem here is that unless you plan well in advance it costs a minimum of $500 to get a flight out of Korea and my ass is broke. At this juncture I have a confession to make--the main reason I took this job is because I'm up to my ears in debt. I've never had a steady job because I've always been working freelance in entertainment or temping while I was out looking for better opportunities. Like many people, I was stupid, and carrying too many credit cards, in my twenties. (Worse yet, I was stupid and carrying credit cards in New York City.) A lot of expenses from film school (hell, from applying to film school) that weren't covered by student loans got put on those same credit cards. So by the time the economy went tits up in '09 I had no good job, enough student loans from film school in forbearance to finance half a mortgage in the Rust Belt, and a mountain of credit card debt. So I packed up and moved to Korea in the hopes that I could pay off the credit cards before I finished the coursework I'm doing online and had to start paying the student loans. It was the only way to survive, other than moving in with my parents in Buffalo. (I don't want to be disrespectful to my parents or the city of Buffalo, but honestly there's days when I feel like I'd rather filter buckshot through my grey matter than resort to that option.) So far I'm on schedule to pay off those cards, post a year's worth of student loan payments and still bring a chunk of change back to the US with me when I go back in 2013. (Better check with my school and make sure they're going to let me renew before I get too engrossed in that plan, I suppose. Usually renewing is a formality, but hey, I'm intensely paranoid.) Anyway, paying down those bills involves staying on a pretty strict budget. After last summer I started budgeting for vacations, but when I started crunching numbers for the trip to Malaysia I'm planning to take this winter (and of course the trip home to see friends and family) I quickly realized that, while most of the other English teachers here are jetting away to take a holiday in Cambodia or China or Thailand this summer, I was going to have to stay in Korea. And--sorry, I have to be brutally honest here--Korea is pretty fucking boring. After being here for a year and a half I feel like I've seen pretty much everything interesting in the country. Add to that the miserable heat and humidity in the summers and it does not add up for a good vacationing environment.

So, I stayed home. "Staycation," as we said back during the recession. (Yes, I am using the phrase "back during the recession" with a maximum of bitter sarcasm.) Started re-watching The Wire. Bought Portal and played through it. Thought about finishing the final level of Starcraft 2 but then I realized I didn't care. Climbed one of the local mountain peaks. Might climb another before the weekend is through. Became nocturnal. Ate a lot of mac and cheese from Costco. Did homework. Cleaned the sixteen square meters I live in. Good times.

I don't want to be too melodramatic about this, but lately living here and doing this job has felt a little like a self-imposed prison term. Debtor's prison, I suppose. Maybe it's because I've been spending too much time this week sitting in a four-meter-by-four-meter square concrete cube with only one window. (Or maybe it's because I've been spending too much of that time re-watching The Wire and playing Portal. Honestly, my concrete cube is a helluva lot nicer than the first place I lived in Brooklyn. Not being located over a chop shop in a rat-infested corner of East Williamsburg already put the current place ahead in that race. Jesus, I bet that shithole is a six- or seven-figure condo now, considering how that neighborhood has changed. Maybe I should go check it out this February and laugh.) Maybe it's because I can't see my friends and family except during visitation hours. Maybe it's because the inmates are always changing but the bosses are always the same. Maybe it's because there's this world outside that I know I can't be a part of. Maybe it's because, not unlike Alcatraz, I know I'm surrounded on four sides by water and fences and I can't leave until I've done my time. Maybe it's because Bill Fitchner is always chasing me while popping painkillers out of his pen. Maybe it's because I made a lot of choices that didn't work out in the past and now, no matter how right those decisions seemed at the time (all part of the game, right?) and no matter what I'd rather be doing now, I have to stay here and pay my debt to society (or at least society's banks) and hope I learned something from the experience.

I'll admit, if teaching English in Korea is like a prison, then it's the world's most pleasant prison. The kids are great, the people I work with are fantastic, I've got mountains to climb in my backyard, and the food's gotta be better that prison chow. I can drop my soap in the shower to my heart's content. Nobody's going to get pissed off and stick me with a shiv (unless they find that blog piece I wrote about Dokdo a couple months ago, heh...). And when it comes down to it, I could leave at any time with thirty day's notice for nothing less than the price of a plane ticket and the loss of a guaranteed income. And I don't want to leave. At least not until I've paid my debts (and I find out if the United States still has a sane president).

I think mostly I'm just afraid that I'm going to spend the next year and a half in this fantastic job experiencing things that I'll never forget--and probably never be able to come back to and enjoy again--counting the days until I can go home and start my life over again. You never realize you're going to miss a place until after you've left.

A friend of mine told me years ago that some cognitive scientist types figured out that college alumni donations go up dramatically when alumni reach a certain age, because they forget all the bad things that happened and only remember the good things. I guess there's something to be said for living in the here and now and not dwelling too much on the past or the future. Maybe I'll find something in the near future to help me get back into that space. I sure hope so.

Anyway, thank Christ this vacation ends on Monday and I can go back to teaching...

(And now, a song about that time you accidentally moved to New York.)

Territorial Pissings

2011-06-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

Hmm, so my last blog post was about 10 weeks ago? Sorry, I've been busy. Strangely, 10 weeks is also the length of the quarters in the online classes I've been taking. Coincidence? It's funny the things that make you notice the passage of time. For me, it's my t-shirt collection. Usually I keep two collections of t-shirts on hand: the Good T-shirts, which are reserved for situations in which people might see me and expect me to be wearing a clean and reasonably well-maintained shirt, and the Knockin' Around T-shirts, which are reserved for exercise, manual labor, sleeping and other occasions that are somewhat likely to ruin a Good T-shirt. When a Good T-shirt becomes too obviously worn, stretched or stained to stay in the Good T-shirt pile, it moves to the lower strata with the Knockin' Around T-shirts. I've noticed lately that several of my shirts from grad school have been relegated to the Knockin' Around pile, which has reminded me that it's been five years since I finished grad school. The thing about t-shirts is, since they tend to be distinctive and a lot of mine can be traced to specific institutions (schools, freebies from old jobs, souvenirs, favorite barbecue restaurants) they're fairly easy to date. Unfortunately, they're also a constant reminder of what's in the past and what's slowly coming unraveled by time. Kind of like having an archaeological record of a lost civilization in your closet. Sigh...

So what have I been up to? Work, mostly. Paying bills. Trying to plan my winter vacation (which currently involves browsing some guidebooks for Malaysia and Thailand and trying to figure out how many days of travel and how many plane tickets my expected savings will allow). Cursing myself for having frequent flyer miles on three different airlines, all in amounts that I can't use. Saving money, spending money, paying down ten years of debts and occasionally figuring out how to survive for two weeks on 50,000 won. (It's doable if you don't leave the house and have a fair amount of food from Costco packed away in the freezer. Getting paid only once a month can be a real bitch sometimes.) The good news is, I'm solvent, my balance sheet looks better every month and I'm enjoying myself. On to the specifics...

First, let me introduce you to my new baby...

28-85mm macro zoom, not a one or a zero in sight

I picked her up in the Chungmuro district in Seoul during the weekend of the Lotus Lantern Festival celebrating Buddha's Birthday. I had brought an old Yashica manual camera with me to Korea, and at some point last year when it was malfunctioning I checked out an FM2 body at one of the camera shops in Daegu and instantly decided I had to have one. Why buy an upgraded used 35mm camera in this digital age, you ask? Well, first and foremost it was about half the price of a comparable Nikon D5100 kit and the pictures are just as good, or better. Second, after two or three years of photo classes in undergrad and an MFA concentrating in cinematography, I'm used to shooting on film. No use letting all that education go to waste. On top of that I enjoy shooting a roll of color slide film or black and white negative now and again, and no matter what you say about the "Hipstamatic" program on your iPhone, there's no substitute for the real thing when it comes to certain film stocks. Above and beyond that, it's all nostalgia on my part. But you can pick up manual focus lenses for pretty cheap and Nikon isn't making any more FM2 bodies, so I figured it was worth investing in one now before they get any rarer. If I can save up enough money I might invest in something like a D5100 as a going away (or would that be coming back?) present when I finish this job, but that's still a ways off in the future.

In addition to the trip to Seoul for the Lotus Lantern Festival (which was tons of fun, by the way... Buddhists really know how to party!) I went on a trip sponsored by EPIK to the Korean islands of Ulleungdo and Dokdo. What is Dokdo, you ask? (What follows is a shorter version of a long rant that was only posted for about a day, so if it seems like stuff is missing, don't panic, it's intentional.) Dokdo is a group of two disputed islands in the Sea of Japan (whoops, I mean "East Sea") roughly halfway between Korea and Japan. Korea says the islands are part of Korea, Japan says they're part of Japan. You can look it on Wikipedia under "Liancourt Rocks", or read this article from the International Herald-Tribune, if you want some more background information. Honestly, I find the whole dispute really silly. But despite the fact that these rocks are essentially meaningless in any practical sense, they have a cult-like following in Korea as a symbol of national pride. There's a picture of Dokdo in the administrative office in my school. There are models of Dokdo in train stations and booths dedicated to Dokdo at festivals around the country. In 2005, when the prefecture in Japan that claims Dokdo as part of its administrative territory declared a 100th anniversary celebration for their claim on the rocks, Koreans reacted with appropriate, rational, level-headed restraint: protesters beheaded pheasants (the Japanese national bird) in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, one man set himself on fire and a mother and son cut off their own fingers. In fact, I'm not sure if I should even be talking about this issue for fear of offending my co-workers or the higher-ups at EPIK. (Ha ha ha, good thing this blog is anonymous. Sure, I re-post it to my Facebook page, so my co-workers who are my Facebook friends can read it there with my name emblazoned on it, but still... blessed anonymity, hooray!)

Koreans seem to think that if they bring foreign teachers to this island and spend a few days presenting lectures and distributing Dokdo propaganda it will inspire the teachers to spread the word on how Dokdo is clearly--I mean you can barely see the islands from Ulleungdo on an unusually clear day, what more evidence do you need?--part of Korea. I wanted the free trip to Ulleungdo, and getting paid to skip school seemed like a stupid thing to turn down, so I signed up for the trip to see what I might learn. What I learned, in a nutshell, is that the Dokdo issue is pointless at best and needlessly destructive at worst. First and foremost, the islands are uninhabited (bordering on uninhabitable) and have been for most of their history, except when people have been occupying them to try to claim them for Korea or Japan. The status of Dokdo could change the territorial boundary between Japan and Korea in the East Sea, but right now there are no actual disputes of substance regarding fishing or mineral rights in that area. Second, the only people in Japan that care about Dokdo are a few old conservative coots that haven't figured out Japan lost World War II yet, and in my experience I've found that types like that are best ignored. Japan probably wouldn't care about Dokdo at all if they didn't have ongoing disputes with Russia and China over islands that are much more important to them. Koreans take a lot of pride in how these islands are "our land" and the easternmost boundary of Korea, but to me that all seems like a lot of insubstantial nationalist posturing. A country should take pride in its history, culture and accomplishments, and by those measures Korea has plenty to be proud of without concerning itself with rocks in the ocean.

To me, it seems like the most substantial element of the Dokdo conflict is Korea's continuing grudge against Japan, and I don't see grudges as something that should be a point of national pride. Yes, Japan did a lot of bad things in Korea (and China, and Malaysia, and numerous other places) during the colonial period prior to World War II, and yes, there have been other military conflicts with the Japanese going back to antiquity. Yes, the United States has probably had a more sympathetic ear to Japan over the years, including when the peace agreement that ended World War II and left the status of the island in dispute was drawn up. But guys, that was 65 years ago. The Japanese government that colonized Korea doesn't exist today, and the government that does exist is a peaceful, democratic one. Whatever dissonance exists in the Korean mind over their inability to shake off Japan themselves and punish them for colonizing Korea isn't a thing to be celebrated. Revenge is an ultimately empty and pointless pursuit. (And you know where I learned that from? Korean movies.)

As a modern, democratic state, I think Korea has a responsibility not to perpetuate old grudges with other peaceful, democratic nations. However the Korean people feel about Dokdo or the Japanese, the Korean government could be politely and diplomatically silent about the issue. Instead they've built a museum and an observatory on Ulleungdo and pay every year to bring foreign teachers to the island to beg for understanding. It's pathetic to see a country so enslaved by the darkest parts of its history. I've occasionally heard my students or other Koreans say rude things about Japan and I mostly laughed them off. I've probably even slipped up and said a few joking things about the Japanese that I wouldn't attempt to defend out of context. One of our orientation speakers, who was definitely too young to remember World War II, was nice enough to explain exactly why he hates Japan, even though he has Japanese friends. Most of the time I've been here I've compared it to the attitude of Red Sox fans towards Yankees fans and vice-versa. Sure, they hate each other, quite fiercely and vocally even, but I don't know a Sox fan that wouldn't save a Yankees fan if he were drowning. And I don't think Korean people really hate the Japanese--they watch Japanese cartoons, sent aid to Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, and are generally nice to any foreign visitors who come to Korea, no matter where they're from. I think they've just repeated it to themselves so many times that they've convinced themselves that they hate Japan, and worse, that it's an acceptable part of being a proud Korean. Which is why it's so vexing to me to see Koreans get so worked up over this Dokdo non-issue. Today, whenever I see Dokdo in a poster or a train station, I don't see the friendly, compassionate side of Koreans, who are so generous and kind that they would give you the shirt off their back if you needed one, that I see every day. Instead I see this unjustifiable, irrational, persistent grudge they have against another peaceful, generous and friendly group of people. I used to think Dokdo was just one of those Korean idiosyncrasies--like opening windows in the middle of winter for fresh air--that I would never really sympathize with but could learn to tolerate. Now that I understand more about Dokdo, it just makes me sad to see people embracing such a pointless grudge as a point of national pride.

I'm sure the United States probably has some elements of our foreign worldview as ridiculous as the Dokdo issue. I mean, we still have out ridiculous grudge against Cuba, even though they haven't done anything to anyone (other than Cuban citizens) for years. If Cuba suddenly annexed Puerto Rico one day I'm sure there would be a war, but then again there are people in Puerto Rico who might have some things to say about the development, unlike Dokdo. We've got this wholly ridiculous, xenophobic anti-Muslim thing going on right now back home that I'm extremely ashamed of, but it's not like the US government is building a "Muslims Did It" museum at Ground Zero. Admittedly if Afghanistan tried and convicted Terry Jones in absentia for burning a Koran and forcibly extradited him to Kabul for execution, I'm sure we might do something about it even if we were a little bit sympathetic. (That's probably the most apt comparison I was able to come up with, since that's another issue dominated by extremists and media hysteria that's based on an entirely inconsequential act.) But then again, Terry Jones is a US citizen so we have some responsibility to protect the idiot from himself. And sure, we're bombing Libya on pretty thin pretexts (I'm gonna blame that one on Britain and France, though) and we're supporting a regime in Bahrain that's killing its own people. But I don't think we're necessarily proud of all of that stuff. Well, I'm not, at any rate.

Anyway, a great man once said, "Never discuss politics or religion with your friends," so I've probably said too much already. Like I said, my goal with this post isn't to offend my Korean friends or co-workers, and I am grateful for the trip and the days off from school that I got from EPIK. But EPIK clearly thought they had a responsibility to show Dokdo to foreigners, so I feel I have a responsibility to share my reactions with other people, even though the trip didn't quite have the intended effect on my opinion. I'll shut up now.

Right, the trip. Ulleungdo was wonderful, even though the high-speed ferry on the way there should be rechristened "The Vomit Comet." It's a beautiful, peaceful little island, just large enough not to feel claustrophobic but not so big as to not feel like an exotic getaway. We ate a lot of excellent food and did a lot of hiking on some beautiful walking paths, including an especially dramatic section that follows the lower edge of cliffs along the ocean on the southeast edge of the island. The trip to Dokdo, on the other hand... We took a ferry there, we disembarked onto a concrete boat launch platform (never actually set foot on any natural surface of Dokdo), we wandered around for 10 or 20 minutes and took some pictures, we saw some seagulls and rocks, we got some free postcards and then we got back on the boat. It wasn't exactly how they described the pilgrimage to Mecca on the travel brochure. If you're a foreigner, under no circumstances should you ever pay to go there. (Ulleungdo, on the other hand, is worth every penny.) If you're a Korean, and you're convinced that seeing a Korean rock in the middle of an uncaring ocean will give you some sort of important swelling of national pride, well, I guess it's your money.

Our Rock

By the time we arrived at the Dokdo Museum and Observatory at Ulleungdo on the final day, I was so disenchanted with the whole non-issue of Dokdo that I just wanted to leave and never come anywhere near Dokdo again. It's sad that an island as beautiful as Ulleungdo has to be saddled with this spiteful, pointless political issue that has nothing to do with anything but a line on the map and some unresolved history. Forgiveness is a beautiful, natural thing. Grudges are ugly. Ulleungdo would be a much nicer place if Dokdo sank into the East Sea. But then again I suppose the people who aren't ready to accept history and move on would find some other line in the water to draw if they didn't have a rock to plant a flag on.

The absolute worst thing about the trip was trying to put a good face on it when I got back to school the next day. I still felt pretty genuinely sick and angry about the absurdity of the whole thing, but I didn't want to offend any of my co-workers by saying that right off the bat. Mostly I just repeated, "Ulleungdo was wonderful," when asked about it, and pertinently left it at that. A couple teachers told me how they had tried to go to Dokdo on trips to Ulleungdo and weren't able to land because of the weather, and how lucky I was to actually land there. I didn't feel lucky. I felt like a schmuck that had been suckered into joining a fight he didn't understand and was getting congratulated for knocking some other poor schmuck's teeth out. It didn't feel good.

Ugh. Enough about Dokdo. Remind me to never go anywhere disputed again. Except maybe Taiwan. Taiwan was nice and they seem to be dealing pretty well with the whole not-being-officially-recognized-as-a-state thing. I would go back to Taiwan. Good food, too. Hooray for Taiwan.

In positive travel news, over the Korean version of Memorial Day I took a much nicer trip up to some places in Gangwondo, namely Samcheok and Donghae. I guess car-owning Seoulites are more widely knowledgeable of the beaches and good times to be had on Korea's upper east coast, but it's a six- to eight hour train trip from my province (whereas Seoul is about two and a half hours from my province via KTX) so people where I live don't travel up there very often. (People where I live all flock to Haeundae Beach in Busan. Even though there are multiple beaches in Busan, everybody goes to Haeundae. Dynamic Korea.) Somewhat ironically, I had also gone to Haeundae before leaving for Gangwondo because I wanted to see the sand festival there. I spend a few good hours taking pictures and visiting the Busan aquarium, which is awesome, so I have no regrets. In Gangwondo I visited several beautiful sandy, uncrowded beaches, hiked through the most amazingly vast cave system I've ever seen (Hwaseongul caves, outside Samcheok) and ate some really good scallops and shellfish with friends at a restaurant along the beach in Donghae. It's kind of funny to me that eastern Korea has such amazing beaches and yet you can go to them on Memorial Day weekend and they're still half-empty. Oh well, more beach for me. Don't come! It's awful and it takes to long to get there! (Heh heh.)

So that's my life. Summer quarter starts next week, so I guess I'll regale you again around August 31st with takes of seducing Russian track stars from the Daegu IAAF Track & Field World Championships. Na zdorovie!

When I was an alien... Cultures weren't opinions...

Back By Popular Demand

2011-04-09T07:32:00.000-07:00

Ah, spring. Spring is a lovely time in Korea. The festival season begins, the many long, tubular greenhouses in the countryside let loose their harvest of ripe, delicious strawberries, and the cherry blossoms burst forth from their winter slumber. The other day one of my co-teachers commented on the March calendar image on another teacher's desk, which showed a spring field of bright yellow yuchae flowers in full bloom near Seongsan Ilchulbong on Jeju. He told me how young engaged couples have their pictures taken in front of the peak and the fields of yellow yuchae to celebrate their love. He didn't know the English word for the yuchae flower, however, so I opened Google Translate on my computer and typed it in. Here's what came up:

Yes, "yuchae" is "rape." Why do we have the same word in English for a plant and a sexual assault? I'll never know.

Way to ruin the moment, English language. What do you do for an encore?

Nothing much has been happening this semester so far other than the usual detritus of working, staying alive and other typical human behaviors. But people have been asking why I haven't updated the blog lately, so I figured I ought to scrape together whatever came to mind and make it into something cogent and somewhat entertaining. For a few weeks the most exciting thing going on (besides, you know, the deadly tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, but I'd prefer not to dwell on that) was that I was waiting for a calculator to show up in the mail. Mind you, this was no ordinary calculator. This calculator has a USB cable that plugs into your computer, so that you can do 10-key data entry on a computer that doesn't have a 10-key keypad. Plus it has a trackball so you don't have to save space on your desk for a mouse or use the stupid touch pad mouse. (If this does not excite you intensely, perhaps even sexually, then you have clearly never used Excel on a laptop on a cramped desk.) The calculator was pretty much all I had ever dreamed of in my most feverish, intense, spreadsheet-manipulating dreams (it even has a scroll wheel that wasn't described in the online listing!) but after it finally showed up about a week after I expected it to I discovered that I no longer had anything to look forward to every day. So the moral of this story is that I really, really need to start dating again.

The scroll wheel totally upgrades this puppy from boss to ultra-boss.

When I've been traveling lately--solo, for the most part, coincidentally--I've often started composing narratives in my head for the blog as events unfold, recounting to myself exactly how I'll detail arriving at the boardwalk in Danshui and discovering that it's now cold, dark and packed with far too many people to enjoy any of the area's offerings, or how a cabbie in Jinhae refused to let me out of the cab until he reached the exact dot on his navigation system listed as "Dream Park," and then declined to accept the full fare out of embarrassment when I finally convinced him to let me out so I could explore the park on foot. But invariably by the time I've had a night's rest to consider the day's events I realize that no one really wants to read every minute detail of my personal mental narrative of trekking around a foreign locale, eating congealed duck's blood and developing blisters the size of a $50 TWD coin, no matter how cleverly worded it is. (The congealed duck's blood and tofu I sampled in Kaohsiung, by the way, was actually quite delicious, although I would recommend to anyone trying it not to accompany the dish with plum tea if you want to avoid severe bowel discomfort the next morning.) So I'll give you the condensed version, and if you want additional details (and if you know who I am, mwah hah hah) then I recommend that you check out my Picasa and YouTube pages for the photos and videos. There should be links on my Facebook page somewhere, which is probably where you're reading this if you know me.

I took a trip to Taiwan at the end of February. I have an ex-roommate whom I hadn't seen in years that lives in Kaohsiung, so I wanted to say hello while I'm in the right hemisphere and see everything Kaohsiung and Taipei had to offer. My overall impression of Taiwan is that it's a very cosmopolitan country, more so than Korea. The Taiwanese seem more individual in their tastes and more welcoming to foreign influence. And the first cafe I went to was playing Blonde Redhead so that was some straight indie cred right there. Also, it's totally cool to put a neon sign of a giant penis or a dog fucking a pig on your bar or cafe, as shown in these photos. I love the Taiwanese sense of humor, it's much more subversive than what I've seen of Korean humor.

Billy Lawless, eat your heart out.

Nothing a dog and pig can do together cannot be art.

It was a little bit of a shock coming to another foreign country and speaking even less of the language, something that I had also noticed when I was briefly in Shanghai on my way to and from the States. I don't speak very much Korean, despite living here for a year, but I've picked up enough to barely survive, and I can read the alphabet, which helps immensely for all the "Kanglish" words that are transliterations of English words. Before I landed in Taipei I managed to get down "xie xie" (thank you) and "ni hao" (hello) and learn how to count to four, but that was about it, and Chinese characters are still a complete mystery to me. I'm sure once you get used to reading them they're a lot easier to read, but for me, trying to remember "okay, this jumble of lines means 'beer' and the jumble of lines that looks like a lantern and a little sign post is 'station,' and box plus spikey tree thing means 'exit'" was a little beyond my comprehension. (Luckily just about everything in Taiwan is listed in English and Chinese characters. Places other than the United States are considerate like that.) I'd love to learn Chinese some day--it's a wonderfully musical language once you learn to appreciate the tones, I could seriously listen to airport announcements in Mandarin all day just to hear all the different sounds and inflections--but considering how little Korean I know I should probably stick to one new language at a time. Anyway, Taiwan gets a big thumbs-up from me. Go for the duck's blood, stay for the hot springs and electronics shopping.

The new school year has been relatively free of surprises. My former partner-in-crime Mo departed for the United States to be with his bride so I've been spending a little more time by myself while readjusting my social life to include new people. All the new folks in town are very nice and friendly--especially the TaLK teachers after a few beverages--but they've all arrived with intact social and/or family relationships in the area, so it's not quite as easy to form friendships based purely on proximity and desperation to speak English. Clearly the lesson here is that I should have made more than one close friend my age in the last year, but that's not so easy when you're a foreigner living in a small town and not the type who readily establishes close friendships. (And to be fair, I did make at least one Korean friend who moved away to Seoul.) As many of my dearest friends back home have pointed out, good friends are hard to come by. However I'd prefer not to dwell on that point since all the aforementioned individuals can read this blog and I don't want this to turn into a whiny spooky-kid Livejournal post. (Ha ha ha BURN Livejournal.) I've been thinking about trying to get hooked up with one of these "language exchange" opportunities I've heard about from other EPIK teachers, where you meet a Korean who's interested in learning English and that person helps you learn Korean, and this is probably a good opportunity to make an effort to get to know the people in my town better and reconnect with some of the folks I know in other areas. I believe some folks are coming to town for the bullfighting festival next weekend so that should be a good opportunity to get reacquainted with people. (The bullfighting festival, by the way, was supposed to happen in March but was rescheduled and shortened due to a national outbreak of foot and mouth disease. A lot of non-cow related festivals were also cancelled outright in March to try to discourage people from traveling and possibly spreading the foot and mouth virus, so it's kind of funny that the one directly cow-related festival in the country is still happening. Mess with the bulls, you get the horns, baby.)

Oh, by the way, the coda to the mug story... No one ever came forward and gave it back to me, but one day I found it on a window sill in my school on the way to the English classroom. So I got my mug back, and no hard feelings. It's a happy ending!

One of the distinctions between the Korean school year and the American school year is that the Korean school year runs February to December instead of September to May (although it's impossible to keep the kids out of the school during breaks, so it's really a year-round schedule) so that means as teachers we get a classroom full of teenagers in rut that are impossible to teach at the beginning of the year instead of the end of the year. Personally I think that makes a lot more sense because it means that they'll be mellowed out and hunkering down for winter when they have to prepare for all the big exams at the end of the year, but it doesn't make the teaching this time of year any easier. Hell, I would rather be outside too, but we don't have a big six foot touch screen for my PowerPoint presentations outside. The time passes quickly, though--we'll be into midterm examinations in another three weeks or so, even though it seems like the year just started. As they say here, time flies like an arrow...

I guess the only other thing I'll talk about in this post is how I've been thinking about the future, although I'm reluctant to say too much about my thoughts since my co-workers can read this blog. When I came here I was planning to only stay for a year, maybe two, but once I started crunching numbers I realized that I might have to stick around for three years in order to pay off all the bills I came here to pay off and put together enough savings to come back and resettle in the States comfortably. (I'm sure this proposed extension was an especially pleasant surprise to the friend of mine who agreed to take care of my pet fish for a period of one to two years.) Plus I landed at a good school and I had a very enjoyable year, especially compared to the previous year in LA. For a while I was thinking that maybe I should consider looking for work in another country after two years here, but at this point I'm feeling like the expense and hassle of moving again would outweigh the benefits, especially since it would be difficult or impossible to find a job that pays as much with my qualifications. So for now my choices seem to be staying here at my current school for another year, moving to a school in a larger city in Korea at the end of my current contract (probably one in the same province so I don't lose all my retention bonuses) or heading home at the end of this year with less money and more bills than I would like. I've been feeling a little homesick lately but the idea of returning to the States is also really daunting. I've pretty much given up on my former line of work so I'll be returning as a 34- or 35-year-old with little experience related to the job training I'm currently doing, two or three years of unrelated experience teaching in a foreign country, and a resume that represents a lot of hard work and sacrifice but will probably look like a vagabond's CV to anyone who's never worked in entertainment. Disappearing into Thailand, Rambo-style, sometimes seems like an attractive, if irresponsible, option. Well, at this point at least I can say I love the school I'm at, I've got straight A's in my courses and the balance of my debts is decreasing at a satisfactory rate. So I should probably count my blessings and worry about my future when the time comes. And besides, it's spring, and the strawberries here are too damn good. Also it's 1:30 AM and I need to finish more work for my accounting classes tomorrow, and I wasted half of today going to Daegu to see "Sucker Punch" which was so awful I left halfway through. (There are very few other movies I've ever seen where I've been struck by the thought, "This would be much better if it were a Russ Meyers film.") But at least I have a new hat. I'm rambling. Good night.

Scenery and Fish

2011-02-17T04:09:00.000-08:00

First things first: Hey, New York Mets – whatever happens this season, I want you to promise me it will happen without Oliver Perez in the starting rotation. Let’s face it, the guy’s a bum. Deal? Deal.

Second thing: you know what I love about Korea? Customer service. People really go the extra mile. Yesterday I left my Dunkin' Donuts coffee mug sitting on top of the cash machine at the bank. This morning I went back to see if they had it. A clerk asks me which one of the two side-by-side terminals I left it on. I wonder why it matters, but I tell him. He goes into the back. I sit and wait. Minutes go by. I wonder how long it takes to check the lost and found for a coffee mug. He comes back out. "I check CCTV," he says. (His English wasn't very good but I applaud him for giving it a go.) "Person take mug." These guys actually checked the security tape of the ATM, just to see what happened to my mug. I don't think anyone would bother making that sort of effort to find a lost item in the US unless somebody issued them a court order, and even then it would probably take a month to get it done. So the guy takes my number and says he'll call if he finds anything out. I find it strange that somebody here would pick up something that doesn't belong to them and walk off with it, but hey... Dunkin' Donuts, good brand. This evening I get a call from the bank. Turns out one of my students saw it and picked it up for me, and he's going to bring it to me tomorrow. I love this place! Can I stay forever?

I’ve been back in

Korea

for close to three weeks now, and as of today I’ve officially been here teaching for a year. Today one of my Korean co-teachers asked me if it’s stressful living and working in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. I guess it’s hard for her to imagine being comfortable in a situation like this. Honestly it’s not that bad. I’m not very chatty at work since most people don’t understand what I’m saying, but I can talk to my friends via instant message and Facebook and I get the chance to talk to someone in English whenever I get together with the other foreign teachers. I’ve pretty much learned how to avoid most situations that can’t be communicated non-verbally or with my very limited Korean skills at this point. (Except for wrong numbers and spam callers. I really need to learn the Korean phrase for “Wrong number.”) The trip from the US and back again to Korea wasn’t even that shocking, although I kind of assumed it would be. But to properly illustrate that point, first I need to tell you about a fish.

Back around 2002 or so when I was living in New York I bought some fish. It was the first time I had ever owned any sort of pet. My parents always refused to let my sister and I have pets because they didn’t want them messing up the house and they didn’t want to take care of them. Secretly I’ve always wanted a cat, but I’ve never really been in a stable enough living situation to be able to properly and responsibly take care of a cat. So instead I shelled out for a 5 1/2 gallon fish tank and a few tropical freshwater fish at a local pet store. Now fish ownership and fish tank management is much different from the ownership of other types of pets. First and foremost, fish die. This is a fact of life when you own fish. If you have a dog or a cat or a rabbit or guinea pig or whatever, you expect it to live and thrive whatever the conditions might be. If your pet gets sick, you take it to the vet and pay the vet a shit-ton of money and then hopefully your pet gets better until the next time you have to take it to the vet and pay the vet a shit-ton of money to treat your pet. Fish are pretty much either healthy and they live, or they get sick and they die, and then you flush them down the toilet Cosby Show style. (Before I flush one of mine I like to say, “His name is Robert Paulsen.”) You can buy drugs for things like ick and mold but, unless you’re raising some sort of rare Deuce Bigalow fish, you’re never going to take a pet fish to the vet when it starts swimming a little bit sideways. The other difference between fish and most pets is that most pets live in roughly the same environment you do. Sure, most of the small ones have cages or terrariums or hutches or Habitrails or something, but they can generally survive outside of those things and, for example, breathe the same air that you do. Not so fish. For fish, you have to buy and maintain a tank. To a fish, the tank is their world. The pleasures of raising fish mostly come from choosing your fish, decorating your tank, and then maintaining your fish’s tiny biosphere. It's more like raising a plant than owning a pet in a lot of ways. Properly establishing and maintaining a balanced fish tank requires a fair amount of patience, especially for beginners. In my case, it didn’t help that I had selected a 5 1/2 gallon tank. 5 1/2 gallons is not an ideal size for more than one or two fish – one gallon of water will support roughly one inch of fish, so once you get two or three fish into a 5 1/2 gallon tank and they start to grow the tank gets overcrowded very quickly. I overloaded my talk almost immediately. I got a few small fish, I got excited, I got too many fish, the fish I got grew, and then fish started to get sick and die. Fish get stressed and die very easily if they don’t have enough space and shelter. The second trick of maintaining a fish tank is to get the right balance of creatures, plants and tank accouterments. You also need to be careful when mixing breeds of fish and other aquatic sea life because some breeds are passive and some breeds are more aggressive. The more aggressive fish are often more interesting because they’re more active, but they also shouldn’t be mixed with passive breeds for obvious reasons. When I first put together my tank I got a snail to eat the algae. The first snail I got was fine for a few weeks, but then it mysteriously disappeared from its shell. So, I got another snail. The second snail I didn’t like so much because it ate my plants. But, one day I came by to check the tank and that snail was gone without a trace as well. So I go on the internet and did some research. Turns out one of my fish at the time, a yo-yo loach (great fish, by the way, I highly recommend them), was of a type known for eating snails. This is kind of funny since I’m pretty sure Petco sold me the snail and the loach on the same goddamn day. (A word of advice: never trust Petco. Wait, is that trademark libel? I take it back. Always trust Petco.)

The point is, when you start raising fish, you really have to focus on creating and maintaining a balanced environment that will keep your fish happy and healthy. When you buy a new fish, for example, you have to float the fish’s plastic bag in your tank for at least 15 minutes before opening it and letting the fish out, in order to let the water temperatures even out, because otherwise the temperature shock can kill the fish. Likewise, when you change out your water to clean your tank, you can only change out about half or a third of your water in one cleaning, or the fresh water can actually kill your fish. The fish need the chemical balance and the various bacteria that live in the tank water to survive. Just about any kind of shock, like introducing a new fish to the tank, can kill fish from the stress.

Over the years my fish and my fish tank have been through a hell of a lot of crazy shit. When I moved from New York to Florida for graduate school I brought the tank with me in my van. I kept it half-full and ran the air pump off an inverter plugged into my car cigarette lighter. Likewise, when I moved to LA after grad school I had to take the fish on a three day journey across the continent. Well, it was supposed to be a three day journey – on my way from Phoenix to Las Vegas my van’s transmission blew out in the mountains in Arizona. I had to take a cab to get the four or five blocks from the garage to my hotel because I didn’t want to carry a fish tank for five blocks. When I got to LA, the first time I tried to add a new fish to the tank every fish in the tank died. The guy at the pet store guessed it must have been some sort of bacteria that got into the tank that the fish weren’t used to. (Either that or my roommates did something to the fish – the fish all died while I was out of town on a job.) After all the fish died I cleaned out all the old water and started re-conditioning the tank, but then I managed to knock one of my roommate’s room-dividing screens into the tank while I was cleaning, which broke the tank and spilled most of the water into the living room carpet. (Don’t tell my old landlord that story.) It’s been a rough ride, altogether.

As of today, the tank has one fish, Mr. Blue. He’s a blue cichlid. Cichlids are known as fairly aggressive fish, but they’re colorful and a lot more interesting than a lot of other breeds. With such a small tank, I thought maybe two cichlids and a bottom-feeder might be a good mix. (A lot of fish don’t thrive in groups of less than three fish of the same species, which is another difficulty in maintaining such a small fish tank.) Unfortunately, no other fish has ever lasted more than a month or two in the tank with Mr. Blue. Plus, after the other fish dies and Mr. Blue invariably cannibalizes part of the corpse before I find it and fish it out, Mr. Blue always seems to be a little larger and more aggressive. He’s pretty much the Hannibal Lecter of fish at this point. My friends in LA who are taking care of Mr. Blue have cats. The cats like to sit on the fish tank and watch Mr. Blue. At first Mr. Blue stayed away from them but now he’s allegedly completely fearless. As far as we know the cats have never tried to get into the tank. I think the cats know better than to fuck with Mr. Blue.

"Come in here and I'll eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

So what’s been the point of this long fish story? (Sorry about the pun, couldn’t resist.) Well, I think people are a lot like fish. They need to manage their environments. Some people are like goldfish or bettas; they thrive anywhere. Other people need to be with a specific group of people, or need a particular amount of space, or just need a rock to hide under now and again to survive and thrive. As humans I think we like to think of ourselves as an extremely adaptable species, and I think we’re definitely a lot heartier than fish. But still, there aren’t a lot of people out there who can survive getting ripped out of their tank on a regular basis. I guess at this point I would put myself more into the betta or goldfish category of people, as opposed to the gourami or tin foil barb category. Being back in the United States was a lot like getting dumped back into the ocean (or maybe a large public aquarium) for a few weeks. Now that I’m back in Korea, I’m swimming in the 5 1/2 gallon tank again. But, I’ve had the time to dig around in the rocks and make myself comfortable here, and I like the other fish who are here with me in the tank, so things are pretty okay. I just hope that when they throw a new fish in the tank in a couple weeks (Mo left for the US today – more on that in a later post) it’ll be a fish I get along with. I don’t think people would be too happy with me if I ate the new guy.

(I'm imagining the new teacher happening upon this blog post and getting to that paragraph now. Reminds me of a story about me and my roommate from orientation. I’ll tell you about it some other time.)

One last story about my fish – for one of the courses I’m taking online this year, my professor decided to spice up the “introduce yourself on the message board” part of the first week by asking us to describe ourselves from the perspective of our pet. Which meant I had to think and write about what my one pet fish, who’s half a world away and living alone in a bathroom with two cats, would think of me. I kind of had a Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood moment or two thinking about it – “I’ve abandoned my fish!” But I’m getting over it now. He’s a tough fish. He’ll survive.

Not too much else going on these days, besides welcoming new teachers and saying “so long for now” to some others. There’s a couple new Talk teachers in town, they seem like they’ll fit in with our group. Well, I’m off to prepare for another year of school, look for international spices, rent some Korean DVDs now that I can finally hook my netbook up to the TV, and work ahead on my courses in anticipation of visiting Taiwan at the end of next week. Should be a fun trip, I’m really looking forward to this one.

Hmm. Maybe I should get a new fish when I get back. A betta, maybe. Is that a good idea?

I am a passenger

2011-01-29T01:50:00.000-08:00

Man. Fourteen hours sure is a long commute.

As I write this I’m sitting in the Tom Bradley terminal of LAX waiting for my flight back to Korea via Shanghai. Some Chinese dude sitting behind me is listening to pop songs on his phone extremely loudly without headphones. He is unaware that, if he continues, he will soon be getting an earful of Carcass. (Always carry death metal with you in case of an emergency.)

Part of me feels like I should be a lot more concerned about leaving again and going back to Korea for another year, but I’m not. Right now it doesn’t feel much different from going back to work after an eventful long weekend. When my friends talk about the distance it seems so much more severe. I guess to them I’m very far away and inaccessible, and to me it’s nothing more than a very expensive airline ticket and a violated contract. (Not that I would do that.) I don’t know why the idea of going back to Korea doesn’t feel more scary and alien and isolating. I know I’m coming back some day and I’m pretty accustomed to living there so to me it’s really no big deal. I wonder if experienced astronauts feel this way about going to space. Ground control to Major Tom …

Experiencing a city as a visitor is always more pleasant than living there, even if you’ve lived there before. For one thing, you don’t have to go to work, which is nice. (I wonder if someday we working people will describe the concept of a vacation to our children wistfully while we mine gas on Saturn’s moons for the GE/HSBC/Samsung Mineral Conglomerate.) As a visitor you get to avoid all the bullshit and stress of holding down a job and maintaining a home in a place but you still get to go to the mall and eat all your favorite foods. (I never did get that meatball sub I was craving on this trip. I meant to get one at John & Mary’s when I was in Buffalo but I got a Special Royal – Italian sausage and cappicola, toasted, with mayo – instead. No regrets, no remorse.) On top of that when you’re visiting everyone’s always happy to see you and they go out of their way to go out with you and have fun. There’s no boring weekends and there’s no “maybe next week when I get my paycheck” nights. That said, this trip wasn’t exactly a wild debauch. Most people aren’t quite as excited about vomiting and hangovers once they round 30, myself included. But I do think I managed to squeeze in some face time with most of my favorite friends. (Note to friends I may not have seen: don’t worry, you’re still among my favorites, but there are a lot of you and you live in a lot of different places these days.) I also managed to sample many of my favorite regional cuisines, buy clothing in my size and pick up most of the stuff that I was supposed to bring back for people. (There was some lotion that I was supposed to get from Bath & Body Works for a friend of mine in Seoul but she never gave me the full name and I don’t think I was ever in a mall with a B&BW. Hope she’s not too disappointed.)

The trip began in LA, where I realized that it’s not possible to rent a car if you’re carrying an expired driver’s license and the unexpired one is at your parents’ home in Buffalo. Luckily I managed to get to a friend’s place in Burbank and couch-surf my way around Burbank, Hollywood and Santa Monica for the rest of that leg of the trip. It was a pretty laid-back extended weekend – I watched a lot of football, met a bunch of folks at a bar one night and closed my account at a certain bank that suddenly wants $10 a month for me to keep an account open. (I guess “Free Checking For Life” means the life of the bank, not the life of the account holder.)

On Tuesday I boarded a plane for Buffalo to see my family. I used to hate visiting Buffalo because I thought it was boring and depressing. There’s also a certain sense of arrested development that kicks in when you’re sleeping in your childhood bedroom and you have to borrow your parents’ car to go anywhere. This time around it really wasn’t so bad. I got wined and dined, we had a late Christmas celebration and another small party so I could see some of the extended family, and I spent a lot of time driving over to my sister’s place so I could use her high speed internet. (My parents are still on dial-up. Sometimes staying at their house is a little like living with a wood stove and an outhouse.) A friend of mine from high school also happened to be in town for the weekend for a family event so we spent some time bar-crawling Buffalo and drinking craft beer. My friend’s brother works for one of the local papers and we chatted a little about the ins and outs of living in Buffalo instead of a major center of commerce and media. When I was in my 20s I couldn’t wait to leave the place, but looking at it now Buffalo has a lot of good things going for it right now. Rent is dirt cheap. There was no housing market collapse because housing prices never rose. You can get a place to live and work for $300 a month, and if you’re not choosy about things like electricity you can get a mansion for free. There are museums and a major university, there’s a fairly lively theater scene, there’s even an NFL franchise (for as long as Ralph Wilson is alive, at least). Los Angeles may have sun and bottle service, but when you can get a house for $100K in Buffalo and a place within an hour of LA could run you close to $1 million, are those things really worth $900 large?

After about a week and a half in Buffalo I came back to LA (with a rental car this time) and headed up to San Francisco to see one of my college friends who moved there shortly before I left last year. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that in my four or so years in LA I never really travelled anywhere in California north of San Bernadino – when you’re working freelance as a grip and a juicer you’re always perpetually working, exhausted or broke. So finally getting up to San Francisco was a really great experience. We visited Muir Woods (which are no mere woods – ha ha, that joke never gets old), Fisherman’s Wharf, the “Step By Step” houses (or was it the “Full House” houses?) and did some bar crawling and sightseeing around Haight-Ashbury and the Mission district. Again, every city is much nicer when you’re a visitor but I have to say I liked San Francisco a lot more than Los Angeles. You can walk. There are businesses there other than entertainment and real estate. They have great beer everywhere. There’s great coffee. It’s extremely queer-friendly and metal-friendly. There’s public art. Every bar has at least one Melvins album in the jukebox. I’ve heard it’s expensive as hell to live there and the public transportation’s crowded, but it’s not like Los Angeles is ever going to win any contests based on its cost of living and its piddling rail system (and while we’re on the subject of public transportation I’d like to reiterate a big “fuck you” to the city of Beverly Hills). A lot of my friends still insist they love LA, but the more time I spend in other places the more I realize that LA is not my type of town. I hate the sun. I don’t care whose name is on my clothing. I hate driving. I don’t mind the cold so much. I cut my own hair. Really, other than the entertainment business, Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and most of my closest friends, what is there for me in LA?

(As an aside, someone just arrived at our gate with a giant hopper full of duty-free goods in individual plastic bags. From the look of things cigarettes and cognac must be pretty expensive in the People’s Republic.)

Despite the fact that I love almost nothing about LA, I feel compelled to give it one more try whenever I come back. I don’t want to believe that I’m letting that MFA in film production completely go to waste, for one thing. And like I said, most of my closest friends are in LA. A lot of them have moved there from other places in recent years, and some of them are really enjoying it there. (Then again, some of them are talking about joining me in the accounting or foreign language teaching professions.) Maybe I’ll like LA a little better if I can come back and actually get a steady job and a stable place to live. But it’s all conjecture at this point. I’ll be in Korea for at least one more year and, unless the economy is booming or I’m really tired of living overseas, I’ll probably do the TEFL thing for at least two more years so I can pay down some bills and save up a little more resettlement money before I come back. And if Sarah Palin gets elected President I may move to Communist China for four years. (I’m not a traitor, I’m a patriot. Every popular resistance movement needs contacts on the outside.)

Regardless, I’m about to board a plane for Shanghai, so it’ll probably be at least a year before I come back, barring some major catastrophe. (Attention, Kim dynasty: don’t get any fucking bright ideas.) Teaching English isn’t really such a bad gig. I would consider sticking with it for a lot longer if I didn’t miss my homeland. (I recently learned a fancy French word for that feeling but I’ve forgotten it so I’ll have to look it up later.) The expat life can be kind of lonely. It takes a certain type of personality to really embrace it, in my opinion, especially if you’re single. (It’s the type of personality that embraces anonymous barstools and related anonymous pleasures, from what I’ve seen.) My friends back in LA did mention that I seem a lot happier since I left, though. I’m not surprised – I definitely left LA at a personal nadir. I guess right now I should probably be worrying less about the future and thinking more about English lessons and spending another year in Korea. Plus I’ll be in Shanghai for fifteen hours starting in about fifteen hours. No reason to get all introspective about shit when I’ve got something like that to look forward to. Anyone care to recommend a restaurant near the Bund?

[Post script: two days later…

There’s something vaguely absurd about being back in Korea after spending three weeks in the United States. Maybe it’s just jet lag. Maybe it’s the sense of peace and isolation from not being a guest in someone else’s living space for the first time in three weeks. Maybe it’s the fact that I just spent some time contemplating how to get food that’s not kimbap or noodle soup without cooking it and without walking too far for it. Could be anything, really.

Shanghai was kind of a bust. My plane landed a little late, it was cold and raining and when I got to my hotel it was getting late and the Bund was a 45-minute cab ride away, so I did the sane thing and stayed in the area of the hotel. I met an American gentleman in the business of importing bamboo products in the hotel shuttle so we found a local place for steamed dumplings and had a couple beers. Since I’ve learned some very basic survival Korean I had kind of forgotten how difficult it is to function in a place when you speak none of the language. Guess I’ll have to experience China first-hand some other time.

Oh, and that French word I was talking about… dépaysement. Bust it out the next time you want to look smart and French-speaking.]

It was the blankest year...

2010-12-31T23:36:00.000-08:00

And it's over before it was done
There's nothing to fear
Filled with courage
They cannot conceive of wasting another year

- Knapsack, "Steeper Than We Thought"

Normally I hate New Year's. New Year's Eve, specifically. First off, it's a couple's holiday, and I hate holidays that try to make you feel excluded for being single. Second, no matter how good a time I have, I always feel like I should be having a better time. It's nearly impossible to go out because every place is packed and the covers are always extravagant. On a good New Year's Eve I can swing an invite to a friend's party, which is usually OK but sometimes kind of a mess because I end up packed into a room with a billion other people trying to find conversation topics with a bunch of strangers and drunk, distracted friends. And some years I just end up at home with whatever roommate or roommates I have at the time, Dick Clark and the ball on TV, and a bottle of Miller High Life (the champagne of beers). Honestly some of the New Year's Eves at home have been among the best. It's relaxed, I'm among friends and I don't have to find a place to crash or drive anywhere at the end of the night.

I think New Year's Eve 2000 is probably the classic example of why I hate New Year's. It was the year after I had finished college and I was briefly living with my parents in Western New York. I think I only had about one close friend still living in the area at the time (most people with other options don't choose to stay in Buffalo, no offense to Buffalo - leaving home is just a Rust Belt reality for most people) but he went to Chicago for New Year's. I can't remember why I didn't try to join him. Might have been Y2K bug paranoia for all I remember. Probably had more to do with being young and broke. Anyway, this great punk band Libertine (not to be confused with that other UK band The Libertines that ended up getting a lot more famous) was playing at Mr. Goodbar in Buffalo so I drove into the city for the show. Apparently nobody else in Buffalo thought that seeing a band upstairs at Mr. Goodbar on the commonly accepted last night of the millennium was a good idea because the only people at the show were me, Libertine, the opening band and maybe one other paying customer. The great part was Libertine didn't blow off the show, they played their asses off for two paying customers. Still, it seemed a little ridiculous for the night of the most over-hyped New Year's Eve ever.

The other thing I don't like about New Year's Eve is that it has this inherent, overwhelming sense of loss. I know it's supposed to be a time to look forward and ring in the New Year and all, but I can't help but feel every year that we're throwing a big Irish wake for the previous year. We laud its accomplishments and pay tribute to all that will be missed, and in the morning we bury it and get on with our lives. Good or bad, the previous year is gone and it's never coming back.

2009 was a notably shitty year. The only really good thing that happened all year was the inauguration of the first US president in my memory that I've really respected. The 2008 financial collapse started 2009 on a bad note. I was already short on work when the stock market tanked in fall of 2008 (back in LA I used to work in entertainment, mostly temp or freelance), so I decided to start taking accounting courses online starting in January 2009. Because I figured I wouldn't be able to do 13-hour days on freelance gigs and still do my coursework I told all my work contacts that I couldn't do long-term gigs any more and I started looking for a full-time job as an accounting clerk or assistant. I even had a retirement party of sorts to celebrate my failure as a freelancer. No accounting gigs ever came, other than a couple days every month at one of the smaller studios. I actually ended up doing more freelance work in 2009 than I did in 2008, which still wasn't really enough to pay the bills. Around March I found about EPIK and teaching English here in Korea, so I decided to apply through an agency in LA that will remain nameless. It took forever to get my paperwork together - partly because getting anything done in broke-ass, Arnold-fucked California took forever and a day and three follow-up requests - and by the time I had it all together it was past the application deadline but the rep at the agency assured me that I was likely to be accepted regardless. (Apparently after the EPIK deadline he tried to submit my application to ETIS, the Seoul program, without telling me what he was doing.) By the time I got the final message that my EPIK application hadn't been accepted I had lost my roommates, thought I might be losing my apartment, and because of the timing I ended up getting fired at lunch on day one of a temp-to-perm accounting gig and in the process burning one of the world's biggest temp agencies because they didn't want anyone with any future conflicts. (To anyone who's ever looked at a dude living on the street and said "why doesn't that bum get a job," I will tell you from experience - it's not that easy to just "get a job.") Luckily I got some friends to move into my place with me, and I re-applied to EPIK in October directly through EPIK (and subsequently learned that all th expensive paperwork I had submitted was missing and half of it was wrong). Christmas Eve 2009 (the first day of the blog), when I learned I had finally been accepted, was probably the best day of the year for me. So a year ago, New Year's Eve 2009, I drank this toast to the evening: "Fuck 2009."

New Year's Eve 2010 was a lot better. I didn't even realize that it was the 31st until I got up in the morning and started making plans to go to Daegu to see Tron. Neither Mo nor I had the energy or the wherewithal to spend the whole night partying in Daegu so we made it a quick day trip. We talked about going to Busan instead - there's this Korean tradition that it's good luck to see the sunrise on New Year's morning, so we talked about catching the first morning train to Busan, but the earliest train arrived one minute after sunrise. So instead we stayed home, split a bottle of French sparkling wine and watched some K-Pop thing and the ringing of some big temple bell in Daegu on MBC at midnight. In the morning we went up to the roof with our cameras and a bottle of cognac and watched the sun rise. So hopefully that means 2011 will be a luckier year than the last few.

All and all 2010 was a good year. There were mistakes and shortcomings, and there was stress, but I've been working, saving money and paying down bills; I've traveled; I've met some new people and I've seen a new part of the world. It's not always easy living in a strange culture in a place where you don't speak the language and there aren't many people that understand what you're trying to say, and it's unfortunate that some of the peculiarities of Korean culture seem to make it hard to make close friends with too many of the locals. (Korean friendships tend to be restricted to people of your age and social class, and Koreans tend to have tightly-knit social groups based on pre-existing relationships like school classes. So even above and beyond the language barrier it's really difficult to get into someone's social sphere here. But once you're in you've made a loyal friend for life.) I've been missing my friends and family in the States a lot, and I'll be happy to sink my toes into some California sand when I land for a visit in less than a week. But all things considered I'm very grateful to be here.

Goodbye, 2010, I'll be missing you. If any of you happen to be in America and you're reading this while waiting for the ball to drop, please enjoy yourselves, and drive carefully if you have to drive. I'll see you again soon. In the meantime... Aw, fuck it. We're gonna have a party.

Edited For Christmas

2010-12-17T01:11:00.000-08:00

So, before I get started, I’d just like you to observe this trailer and consider the following:

- Somebody made a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie.

- It’s not even called “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.”

- That “somebody” is, in part, Steven Spielberg.

There are times when I have some misgivings about my decision to leave Los Angeles. There are times when I feel like maybe I was impatient and I should have stuck around to see if I could make better opportunities for myself. Then I see someone throw Steven Spielberg, Hugh Jackman and several tens of millions of dollars at a kitschy childhood toy, and I have absolutely no regrets at all.

The school year is winding down here. Right now it’s finals week so today I’m in the teacher’s office all day with nothing to do. I already planned a lesson for next week, half-constructed another lesson and reviewed this year’s completed lessons so I can improve on them next year, so there’s not a lot left to achieve at work right now. My non-work commitments are also wrapping up for the year. I dropped out of Korean language class this week. It had gotten to the point where not only did I not understand the current lessons, but some weeks I couldn’t even remember what topic we had studied the week before. Plus there were only two classes to go and I kept picturing myself coming to the final class date and getting the certificate for completing the course – with perfect attendance, to boot – when I hadn’t actually learned anything, and the thought of it was just humiliating. My accounting courses are over for the quarter as well, thank Christ. Unfortunately I missed the deadline to submit course evaluations to my school, but that might be a good thing since it would have been hard to resist the urge to verbally tear my statistics professor a new asshole. So right now my only obligations are relaxing, planning my trip home, resisting the urge to buy another TV series from iTunes and checking out the latest World of Warcraft expansion. So far I can’t tell you if I’m impressed with Cataclysm or not. Honestly I’m kind of bored with WoW altogether but there’s not that much else to do here that doesn’t involve a train trip to Daegu and spending money. Some of my real life friends in the US have been sucked back in by the expansion so I do get the chance to get together with them in the occasional Friday night/Saturday morning or Saturday night/Sunday morning joint session. Mostly I’m sticking with the habit because I’m too lazy to try to find another equally engrossing PC game that will run on my netbook. (What’s the deal with Civ 5, people? Should I wait until the first expansion comes out? Would picking up Civ 4 instead be a waste of money?)

I’m definitely looking forward to coming home for a visit in January, although I’m not as pleased about having to float the money for the trip on credit cards until I get my re-signing bonus in March. The little trend line on the Excel plot of all my debt is way above the target line now. I know it’ll come back down once that signing bonus comes in, but now that I can see the big picture of all my debts it makes me nervous to spend any money before I have it in hand. Plus it’s going to be difficult not to engage in a glut of shopping and fast food buying as soon as I hit American shores. I’ve actually been browsing the websites of certain fast food chains to see what their current promotional items are. As much as I’ve been missing greasy American fast food, I don’t want to get back into the gastronomical habits I got into when I was in LA. Before I left I was perpetually either unemployed or freelancing on set. When I was freelancing, I was probably burning 3,000 calories some days, but meals on set were generally all-you-can-eat and on days off I didn’t have time to cook healthy meals or buy groceries. When I was unemployed I was generally sitting around the apartment not feeling good about being unemployed and looking for any excuse to leave and do something enjoyable. In short, I ate a lot of junk in large quantities. Unfortunately my crappy, rusty scale was broken so I didn’t realize exactly what I was doing to myself until I started seeing Facebook photos of myself with a giant bloated whale gut hanging out from under my t-shirt. So, as much as I dream of being able to gorge myself with American fast food again, I’m also wary of re-inflating my waistline beyond the confines of Korean clothing size 110 (which, by Western standards, is not very large). The other day I learned online that one of my habitual fast food guilty pleasures from life in LA is over 2,100 calories. People, that’s just not a good idea. Having lived here for a year and seen the way Koreans eat, it’s easy for me to see why the United States has a collective weight problem: people eat way too much, and way too much of it is junk calories from carbohydrates, cheese, grease and sugar. I wouldn’t describe myself as svelte by any means after living here for a year, but at least it’s been easier to shed some of the awful eating habits I had when I was in LA. Then again, I can’t credit Korean cuisine for all of the weight loss – a lot of it has to do with having the time to prepare my own healthy meals instead of relying on fast food all the time. But I gotta tell you, I’m counting the days until I can saunter up to the window at Tommy’s and order a double chili cheeseburger and those chili fries with so much processed cheese that they’re almost impossible to finish. And a giant bucket of Cherry Pepsi. And I noticed Papa John’s has a six cheese double bacon pizza now, too. Maybe I’ll just cut calories by skipping breakfast…

When I got here, I wasn’t only surprised by the smaller portions but also the fact that most of my co-workers end up throwing away some portion of their lunch. I was raised in a good Protestant house where we were taught to never waste food, and I assumed since Korea went through a period of intense poverty after the Korean War that Koreans would similarly object to wasting food, but every day in the cafeteria some portion of my co-workers’ lunch ends up in the big “organics” bin for food waste. I voiced my surprise to one of my co-workers once and he explained that, in the old days, food waste went to the farm animals so people didn’t see throwing away food as wasting it. I’m assuming these days they do something else with the organic waste. At least I hope so, since most of what I toss out at home is eggshells and coffee grinds. Also I remember that feeding animal byproducts to animals was one of the things that was supposed to have led to the spread of mad cow disease, so considering the stink that was raised here over the supposed dangers of US beef I sure how they’re not still feeding garbage to their livestock here. But it’s interesting to observe the different attitude towards food. Of course now that Koreans have money and KFC and Dunkin’ Donuts everyone is worried about their weight, and apparently Koreans, who are generally very image-conscious, are now some of the world’s most fervent consumers of diet pills. Hmm. I guess development is a two-edged sword. Then again, obesity is probably a better problem for a society to have than malnutrition.

I’ve been contemplating some sort of trip to celebrate my sudden glut of free time. I was talking to Mo about visiting Seoul but he hasn’t been feeling well recently so I don’t know if we’ll be out tearing up Hongdae before the new year. I may finally go to Haeinsa Temple this weekend to see the Tripitaka Koreana. I had been wondering what to do about Christmas, since we have school up until the 29^th, which prevented me from heading home before the holidays. Happily one of my co-teachers invited me today to spend Christmas Eve with his family. I’m not exactly sure how the celebration of Christmas works here. Oh sure, there are tons of Christmas decorations everywhere, but I’ve heard conflicting stories about to what extent non-Christians celebrate the holiday. For young people, it seems like a night to go out on dates or go out and party. I was actually contemplating going to church on Christmas morning just to do something to celebrate the holiday, since I can’t be with my family. I know, to many of you that’s about the least unusual thing I could do on Christmas. I was raised in a very Christian household, so if I’m home with the family it’s definitely a part of the holiday regimen, but I'll admit it's been a little liberating to sleep in on Easter or go out for Persian food on Christmas night when I've been away for the holidays. I had prepared a page-long diatribe about how organized religion is full of shit to justify my position, but I don't feel like offending my family or religious friends this close to the holidays, so I'll summarize it thusly: I believe in God, but I have no faith in man's religion. There's a lot of wisdom in the scriptures of many religions, but as organized entities I find that all of them have erected shaky edifices from their solid bases. So, that said, why am I still tempted to go to church on Christmas? Well, in Korean culture, and what I’ve seen of a lot of Eastern cultures, a big part of religion is respect for ancestors. Several times a year Korean families get together and wander off into the woods to tend to the burial mounds of their parents and ancestors. The younger generation is a little tired of it, in fact, from what I hear. But there’s a very strong connection to family and roots here, and I think it’s been rubbing off on me. Maybe it’s that whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing, I don’t know. Honestly my family is kind of irritating. They’re very idiosyncratic. For most of my life I’ve been pretty happy to get away from them. This year, now that I’m almost exactly halfway around the world from them, I’m missing them a little bit. Almost enough to go to church, even though I think church is weak sauce. So there, if that’s not a touching Christmas message then I don’t know what is. Merry Christmas, one and all.

I had more to say, but if “Seinfeld” taught me anything, it’s to go out on a high note. Happy Holidays, everyone, in case I don’t get a chance to post anything else before the 25^th. Call Mom and tell her you love her. And tip your waitresses. Unless they’re Korean, then you’ll just confuse them.

I am confusing...

2010-11-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

So I get to school this morning. A little late, but it's not nine o'clock yet and I don't have any classes until third period so whatever. Yesterday I snuck out a little early. We usually have an English class for other teachers on Wednesdays at about 2PM at another high school in town, but I had heard from the teacher at that school that class was cancelled because the national exam is today, and apparently due to the exam no one was being let into that school after yesterday afternoon, because it's a testing site for the exam. So instead of sticking around our school Mo and I left at about 2:30 and went to Daegu to catch a movie. I probably should have asked permission before I left since we weren't actually going to the teachers' class but all the other Korean teachers who speak English were asleep in the office when I snuck out. As it turns out my school closed at 3PM yesterday as well, so we were only leaving 30 minutes early. Whatever.

So I get to school this morning, say "annyeonghaseyo" to the ajumma who sweeps the foyer, and head upstairs. As I reach the door of the 2nd floor teachers' office I realize there are no students on this floor. I try the office door. It's locked.

I head back downstairs to the 1st floor teachers' office to ask why the 2nd floor office is closed. The door's unlocked. I walk in. There's no one there. The kerosene stove is on and there's a kettle boiling on top of it, but no people. My zombie survival instincts kick in. I look for a cricket bat. There is not one to be found. Drat.

After a few questions in halting Korean with a bystander outside ("School... there is not... today?") and a brief interview with a few passing students I learn that there is no school today because of the national exam. Funny how no one mentioned that too me.

Oh well, no hard feelings. I've been meaning to catch up on my sleep and World of Warcraft playing anyway.

I thought you were dead!

2010-11-15T01:55:00.000-08:00

So, today was an interesting day at work. Let me tell you about it.

There's an instant messaging program we use at my school that also serves as an internal email system for memos and such. The memos are almost always in Korean but I usually make an attempt to decode them with Google Translate. Mind you, Google Translate is not very good at translating Korean (not that any other software I've seen is) but it usually helps me get the gist of what's going on.

So I get to school, fire up my computer, and there's a memo. I translate it and all I can really make sense of is the word for "teacher," the date and time for a funeral, and a name in Korean. I don't immediately recognize the name, in part because in Korean it's considered rude to address someone by name so I've never really learned the names of too many of my co-workers. The ones I work with regularly I usually know on a last-name basis: Mr. Park, Mr. Lee, Ms. Kim, what have you. I only know the first names of a handful of my teachers. It's even worse with my students. I don't really know any of their names. Every once in a while they figure that out. Hopefully they're not too offended when they do. Hey, you try to learn three hundred Korean names that you never hear or see and see you well you do.

So anyway, my first thought is, hey, maybe some retired teacher died, that's sad. I move on.

I step out of the 2nd floor office to get some hot water and make a cup of coffee. Everything is instant here. Nothing to be done about it. The hot water from the water cooler on the 2nd floor isn't working, so I go downstairs to the 1st floor teacher's office. When I step in I realize it's time for the weekly teachers' meeting and I'm interrupting. Whoops. I try to slink over to the water cooler with my least distracting slink. Eventually a teacher kindly points out an empty desk (my old desk, strangely enough) and I sit down.

At this point I start thinking about the memo, and it hits me - hold on, what if one of the current teachers died? I start thinking about the initials of the name I saw and realize they match the initials of one of my co-teachers. I look over to his desk. It's empty. I look around the room. Everyone looks kind of sad, but then again it's Monday and four days before the National Exam of Doom so that's not too surprising. Now I am confused and concerned. Is one of my co-teachers dead?

So by the time I get back up to the second floor office I'm not completely sure why no one's told me that one of my co-teachers is dead but things like this tend to slip my other, living co-teachers' minds sometimes. Not that I blame them, exactly. They're all extremely busy and sometimes I don't think they think about the fact that something that was announced to them in Korean - perhaps even with me in the room - is something they need to explain to me in English. (Sometimes I think they subconsciously believe that we foreigners really do understand Korean and we're just acting like we don't. Or something.) I'm not really bold enough to ask them about it because I can't think of any way to phrase the question that isn't going to sound like The Stupidest Question In The World. ("So... I hear Mr. P is dead? Is that right?") I'm kind of irritated that no one's explained to me what's going on, though. Especially since I have a class scheduled with Mr. P as co-teacher. Today. Immediately after lunch.

I go to my first class, teach it (it's a success, I suppose, although it involved a little tooth-pulling to get the kids to speak), then corner my co-teacher Miss K before she leaves. "So," I say, choosing my words carefully, "I saw something about a funeral tomorrow?" "Yes," she replies. Not the information I was looking for. I regroup. "Who died?" I ask boldly. "Mr. P's father." "Ohhhhhhh," I reply, like someone who has just come up with the answer to a trivia question we had all been discussing but none of us could answer, "I thought Mr. P was dead." "No," she replies. "That's a relief," I say.

So that, combined with the Bills beating the Lions early this morning, has made this a decent 33rd birthday for me, all things considered.

Nothing to Write Home About

2010-11-03T07:36:00.001-07:00

(This blog post was written on multiple dates, so don’t expect the time sequence to make sense. Deal with it.)

So, before I get to the post, two items of business:

1) I’m taking this statistics course this semester and I fucking hate it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I have anything against statistics. Far me it from me to hate on an entire discipline of mathematical analysis. What I can’t stand is the course and, by extension, the instructor. Instead of having a normal course with normal homework assignments, normal quizzes and a normal exam at the end, this course has “practice” homework assignments that are ungraded, an extra set of “quiz preparation” questions, and then a weekly quiz, with the weekly quizzes comprising 65% of the total grade. So basically I have to perform a raft of complicated statistics problems which counts for nothing but generally needs to be completed to understand the quiz, followed by another raft of complicated statistics problems which absolutely must be completed to understand the quiz, followed by a timed quiz that’s mostly trick questions or questions that aren’t really directly related to the “practice” homework or quiz preparation problems. The other 35% of the grade is this special long-term mystery project which, as we near the halfway point of the course, we’ve only received one segment of to work on. This course is ruining my life. I can’t leave town on the weekends (although I still do) and I can only just barely complete the work for my other much more important course during the week once I complete the work for this fucking statistics course, and it’s not like I can even blow off a week’s homework and hand in half-completed work because the homework isn’t graded. Since my name isn’t on this blog (granted, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who’s writing it) I’m really tempted to end this paragraph with a statement like “Professor Realname, who teaches a Business Statistics course for UCLA Extension, drips rusty razor blades from her perforated asshole,” so that when anyone Googles Professor Realname’s name they might be forewarned what a lousy experience her garbage shitstain class is. But that would be immature, so I won’t.

2) I am consistently amazed what a guy can do to a Korean cop and get away with. More than once I have seen some guy, usually shitfaced, arguing with a Korean cop and getting physically violent (not throwing punches but definitely pushing and shoving and resisting direct orders) and not getting the shit beat out of him with batons, walkie-talkies, Tasers or flashlights, which, as an American, astounds me. Case in point: tonight when I came down to the train platform to wait for my train I saw a police officer wrestling with a drunk, yelling guy with a backpack. Fifteen minutes later – and after the platform had become much more crowded - I see the same guy, still inebriated and apparently unincarcerated, knock over a trash can, pull off the giant metal ring at the top and start throwing it, ring-toss style, at an overhead lighting fixture, repeatedly. As my train was leaving some guy in a suit was scolding him and asking him to sit down. That’s it. I guess part of the chummy, monocultural thing they’ve got going on here means everyone is supposed to have each others’ backs and let the small stuff slide, but regardless, I’m amazed how people really have absolutely no respect for the police here, and the police have absolutely no compulsion to throw down and bust heads. Maybe it’s the whole Confucian hierarchy thing – peace officers must be further down the chain from drunk yahoos. You don’t have to do much to a cop in the US to wind up face down on the ground in handcuffs and in a shitload of trouble. I don’t blame the police for that – their job is basically to deal with assholes all day; I don’t envy it. But stuff that would get you twenty cops, a weekend in jail and a couple broken ribs back home gets a scolding here. To each his own, I guess.

I think the job has officially reached that point where it’s become routine. The exoticism has worn off. Now it’s just another gig with an apartment to take care of and weekends to try to fill and a check at the end of the month to throw after a pile of bills. Not that I mind. After years of underemployment it’s relieving just to have a steady job where I might actually make a difference in someone’s day. (I’ve probably said that before, but fuck it, I’m not going to start re-reading my own blog to keep from repeating myself.) In a way this job is kind of like that part of the Joseph Campbell monomyth where the hero finds a quiet place to settle down and forgets about his overarching raison d’être for a while. I don’t know if I’m really on some quest to do something else. Has anyone ever written a story like that, where a dude sets out to do something great or kill something really big, and halfway through he discovers it’s not worth it and settles down to raise goats and he’s never the worse for it? Somebody should write that book. I guess it would be a little boring, but who said life had to be exciting, really?

So what was the last thing I blogged about? Jeju? I probably said I was going on some trip after that, right? Probably didn’t happen. I think I had planned to do something for the long Chuseok (a.k.a. Korean Thanksgiving) holiday in the middle of September, but I think I ended up spending most of the week in my apartment playing video games instead. Money was tight and I was kind of exhausted. I went to Seoul at some point to meet up with an old college friend of mine and his girlfriend. We went to some club. Secretly I hate clubs because I hate dance music (for real, Mister Deejay, am I supposed to get excited when you play the same goddamn beat for four hours and every once in a while you throw in some Casio fill and flash the par cans over the stage?) but I didn’t want to be impolite by suggesting we go somewhere else and you know how it is with those places, you always end up going now and again in the hope that you’ll actually discover something to enjoy about it or actually get laid or something. (Where did my peaceful farm with my goats go?) But it was good to see them. I went to Andong for the annual Maskdance festival the next week. (I think it was the next week, I don’t remember.) It was all right. There were masks. There was dancing. There were plenty of mildly grotesque things to take pictures of. There were Korean children in Swiss outfits yodeling and playing cowbells. I was supposed to meet up with one of the new foreign teachers and his friends but they went to the traditional village in Andong for a fireworks display that never happened (it was raining) and I missed the last bus. I ran into some other foreign teachers I know from orientation but they were in a state in which they probably wouldn’t have remembered that I joined them, and I wasn’t really in the mood for that sort of scene. I also accidentally ordered and ate half of a roughly $17 dinner of fried squid. (When you ask for a price and a Korean holds up two fingers and says something, pay close attention to whether he or she says “ee man” (twenty thousand) or “ee chun” (two thousand).) I had planned to spend the night but I ended up catching a late bus home. Best to cut your losses in that sort of situation. This weekend I ended up back in the Andong area with one of my co-teachers and his family to check out a nearby apple festival. It was actually really nice. I needed the break from my coursework (despite the fact that I’m going to have to complete it tonight when I get home because of the trip) and I’m starting to get to that age where spending time with someone else’s family is actually kind of nice instead of being kind of a drag.

There’s some new co-teachers in town. We’ve got another guy from South Africa, a couple girls from Michigan, a dude from Vancouver and a girl from Toronto. We’ve gotten together a couple times for drinks and conversation. They’re all fine people.

I’m back in Korean class. Apparently the equivalent class this summer to the class I took this spring covered more of the textbook than we covered in spring, so I had a little catching up to do. Still haven’t really caught up. The last class was mostly very basic grammar and vocabulary, and this class is using a little more vocabulary than the last one (I’m expected to know a few more verbs than “to be,” “there is,” “to do” and “to go” this time around) so I’m having a little trouble keeping up on it. I don’t really have enough time to get serious about studying Korean, and I’m not 100% sure I would if I had it. Once you figure out how many situations you can deal with using “Hello,” “thank you” and gestures, the impetus to learn a language greatly decreases. I just plain don’t understand this language. In many ways it’s completely upside down and backwards from English. I’ve gotten to the point where, when I hear people speaking, I recognize sounds and my brain says “hey, those noises are a language, they mean something” and sometimes some of the sounds seem like words I’ve heard before and ought to know, but other than numbers I don’t really understand any of it. Some days Korean class is like trying to read James Joyce while someone kicks you in the balls. I guess now I can appreciate what my students are going through a little more keenly.

By the way (speaking of Joyce) if I ever write another blog post more rambling and disconnected than this one please send someone to test me for drugs. Sorry, I ain’t slept much.

Several key boredom indexes have definitely hit high water marks. A lot more of my dishes in that Café World game on Facebook are on gold plates. I also finally hit level 79 in World of Warcraft. I’ve been trying to finally get a character up to 80 (the top level) before the next expansion comes out in December but with my current course schedule I’m not sure that’s going to happen. I’m feeling some trepidation about hitting top level. Part of it might have to do with the fact that I feel like a fucking loser even admitting I play. (It’s a great game if you don’t take it too seriously. Really, it is.) Leveling up in WoW is pretty easy – jump through the hoops and enjoy the false sense of achievement and the fancy graphics. (People who have been playing the game for years and ground their way up through levels as fast as possible might not remember the sensation they got the first time they walked into Darnassas or Thousand Needles, or flew into Icecrown. It’s a really stunning, immense game in terms of design and graphics.) Once you hit 80 there seems to be this expectation that you take the game seriously and you should actually possess some sort of skill at it. There’s also a lot of emphasis on collecting better gear at the top levels, which typically involves a lot of time-consuming group quests and daily quests. Me, I play when I have nothing better to do. Originally a couple New York friends of mine who are into role-playing games and things got me to try out a free trial and got me hooked. (Never trust a product where the first taste is free.) Unfortunately they were about 15-26 levels in at the time and therefore I couldn’t play with them until I leveled up. Which I what I did. I think I even started another character to be a better match with their group. So I reached their level and then found out they had both quit because they didn’t feel like paying the monthly fee and/or they had better things to care about (like careers and families). But I liked the game so I kept playing. Sometimes one of my friends who got me into the game would get a free trial offer and come back for a month or two, but in the meantime I messed around with other character classes and explored the game. At some point (maybe already in the beginning) I found out that my roommate at the time, miraculously, played on the same server I did, except all my characters were low level and Alliance and he had a top-level Horde ‘toon. So I started leveling up a Horde character. Of course my roommate also quit before I got anywhere near his level – something about not wanting spend 2-3 hours a night or more on the game anymore, I think. Later I found out that some other friends of mine in New York played on a different server. Same story – started a couple new ‘toons, people lost interest or quit, I moved on. So all told, three years after starting the game, I have about twelve characters spread across two servers and none of them are at top level. I suppose maybe that shows a lack of focus or conviction or something. I talked to my old roommate about signing back up when the next expansion comes out, but he said something along the lines of “I’m not sure I want to do that with my life again,” like if you invited a recovering alcoholic to a wild party or a recovering coke addict to do a couple rails with you for old time’s sake. Honestly I don’t blame him. Would you? Regardless, I’m not sure this whole top level thing agrees with me. It’s like when you run into someone who plays fantasy baseball and they know stats on everyone in the league and you’re sitting there like “I’m a baseball fan but I just like to watch it when it’s on, does that make me less of a fan?” But it’s a fun game and I’m in a small town in Korea so it’s not like I have a whole bunch of other stuff to do with my free time. When I had free time, that is.

Speaking of the World Series, I'd like to congratulate the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies for not going to the Series and ruining another year of my life. Keep it up, boys.

So the US congressional elections were tonight. Looks like the Democrats are so inept they can’t do anything with a super-majority, and the Republicans are so inept they can’t manage to ride their self-created “wave of populist anger” into a victory in both houses. So, two more years of gridlock, then? Is that the master plan? I guess that’s okay because “government can’t do anything right,” right, conservatives? (World War II would have been so much nicer as a private enterprise…) The ship is sinking, why bail water when we could just resort to cannibalism…

Some other stuff probably happened in the last two months but I can’t remember which stuff was the good stuff right now and I want to get this blog post finished before I decide to do some other stupid thing instead, like sleep. I’ll throw it into the next post, which at this rate will probably come in mid to late December. I guess the only other momentous things are that I bought the second half of my plane ticket to visit home in January, and today I signed my official notice to renew. So it looks like I’ll be here for at least another year. Fuck the kraken, I just want to spend a little more time with my goats. They still haven’t learned the difference between “tired” and “tiring”…

Smile! You're Traveling. (part 3)

2010-09-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

Hello hello. I was planning a long, extensive blow-by-blow recounting of my trip to Jeju this summer, but now I've been home for two weeks and I'm sick of these blog posts taking hours to write. So I'm going to give you the short version. Okay, shorter version. And there may be some extra "o"s because the Hangul sticker I stuck on the "o" key on my keyboard cover is coming off and I'm too lazy to buy a new set of stickers off eBay. So if you don't like it, deal.

Jeju is a resort island not too far off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula. Many Koreans like to refer to it as "the Hawaii of Korea" while many foreigners prefer to refer to it as "not nearly as exciting as Hawaii." Having never been to Hawaii I have no basis for comparison. There are two ways to get to Jeju from Korea: plane or ferry. The plane trip only takes about an hour but it's a little more expensive and if you're traveling during peak season you have to book well in advance. I didn't start planning my trip until I figured out that I couldn't afford my planned trip to Taiwan so I took the ferry, which travels overnight from Busan. If you have the time and don't want to spend extra money, I highly recommend the ferry, there's a great party atmosphere on board so it's a lot of fun. On the way to Jeju I shared a three-person cabin with a stranger with a large backpack and another stranger that wandered in drunk late at night and never left. He was still asleep when I disembarked in the morning. But that's why I called the top bunk.

The best thing about Jeju is probably all the natural volcanic formations on the island. On day one I headed straight for the Manjanggul lava tubes, visited the hedge maze on the way back to the bus stop and ended the day at Seongsan Ilchulbong (a.k.a. Sunrise Peak) at the eastern tip of the island. It was a great day but by the time I got to Seongsan Ilchulbong I was so ludicrously drenched in sweat that I spent about an hour on the floor of my hotel room lying in a pool of the stuff trying to get my energy back. Korea is hot and humid as fuck in the summer, and Jeju is no exception. On the plus side, the floor of my hotel room was linoleum so my back made fun fart-like sounds whenever I moved. At night I ran into a Canadian couple sharing some beers and eating chicken with a few younger Koreans. One of my newfound Korean friends, trying to make conversation, came up with this chestnut about yours truly: "You. Bruce Willis. Face, yes. Body, no." I can't say it was totally unfair. (To my credit I've lost weight since I've been here. I'm not sure how much since it turns out my scale in LA was broken and weighing light, but I'm definitely on different belt loops now.)

On day two I headed southwest and ended up in Seogwipo and the resort town of Jungmun. Saw some waterfalls, found a minbak in Jungmun (boarding house), and decided that I was ready to murder just about anyone in the word if it meant that I would never perspire again. (Koreans don't sweat. They don't use deodorant either, apparently for that reason. I don't know how they do it.) For dinner I ended up at a Western-style bar and restaurant called Gecko's where I drank a few too many pints of Guinness with some Irish gentlemen and played darts with an American chap with an extensive beard. I think one of the best things about being an English-speaking ex-pat abroad is that you run into all sorts of oddball misfits, drifters, scalawags and other assorted characters that you end up swapping stories with exclusively because of your shared mother tongue. The Irish gentlemen were extremely friendly once they understood that I knew how to get my balls busted, and they were proud to see that I was drinking Guinness, although one of them soured a little after he commented that I must be Irish and I told him my whole family is German. There were no ill feelings, though. Guinness is a wonderful, magical thing.

When I had procured my room at the minbak, the manager had asked for 25,000 won, I had communicated that I wanted to stay for two nights and needed a shower, and she had responded by asking for 30,000 won. At the time I assumed that, despite my nonexistent command of Korean (luckily the Korean word for shower is "sya-weoh") and her poor command of English, I had successfully communicated my plans and gotten a great deal for two nights. Not too long afterward I realized that the conversation may not have been as effective as I had thought and the manager might not have realized that I planned to occupy the room for two nights. Since I was planning to hike Mount Hallasan and leave most of my possessions in the room the next day, I figured the managers would probably realize what was up the next morning when they peeked inside and saw a lot of dirty T-shirts and other assorted flotsam around the room, but I was a little worried nonetheless. Eventually I decided to scrawl my best approximation of "Afternoon I return" (오후 저는 돝아가세여, if I remember correctly) on the back of a receipt and left for Hallasan the next morning hoping for the best.

Mount Hallasan, Korea's highest peak, was a great hike. ("Mount Hallasan" may be redundant since I think "san" means "mountain.") On the advice of my guidebook (Lonely Planet's Korea (Country Guide) - pick up a copy at Amazon.com and make me a buck) I took the Eorimok trail up and the Yeongsil trail back down. This western approach doesn't lead all the way to the rim of the volcano's crater, but my research had indicated that the trip to the rim was for more advanced climbers. I never even saw a trail to the rim on my trek, but the terrain certainly looked steep. The Eorimok trail started with a fairly steep but even climb through deciduous woods and leveled out into a grassy plane above the tree line. I took the trail up to the Witseoreum shelter, then took another trail which was open but under construction part way around the crater until I turned back to return to the Yeongsil trail. The Yeongsil trail didn't seem too exciting until I got to the section that hugs the edge of the mountain and gives a spectacular view of all the peaks and valleys around Hallasan. I'm glad I took the other trail up, though, because the Yeongsil trail was more or less an endless trek down a slipshod staircase of boulders. These Koreans with the friggin' rocks, I don't understand it. Do they want to break their ankles? I was also glad that I picked up one of those collapsible walking sticks before I got on the ferry in Busan. At the base of the Yeongsil trail there was a building that I thought was a temple at first but turned out to be a general store, which was better than a temple since it had ice cream. On a hot day, given a choice between enlightenment and ice cream, I will happily take the ice cream.

When I got back to the minbak the manager was attempting to communicate something I didn't quite understand. Eventually her husband managed "money" and I gave them another 30,000 won. All was well. And they gave me a roast sweet potato. You gotta love Korean hospitality.

Jungmun has a lot of tourist attractions, but the less expensive minbaks are up the hill from the more expensive "pension" hotels, resorts and attractions. (There were a few pensions up the hill where I was, including a Smurf-themed one that I wished I had noticed before I selected my lodgings.) I was pretty exhausted from the
trip up Hallasan but I managed to stroll down the hill towards the beach and at least take a look around, in the hope of finding a place to eat. I swung by the outside of the Teddy Bear Museum, Museum of Sound and Chocolate Museum (only the most high-minded entertainment in Jeju), went past the Pacific Land dolphin and monkey show facilities and ended up at Jungmun Beach. I think I only got my feet wet twice on the whole trip despite the fact that I was on a tropical island. Honestly going to a crowded beach isn't so fun when you're a chubby, pale, hirsute lone foreigner who's often carrying all his possessions on his back. (That was probably the thing I liked best about the island beaches in Tongyeong - no crowds!) I checked out a much-touted seafood buffet near the beach but it was packed and cost more than I was willing to spend. Down the street from my minbak there was a row of Korean-style restaurants but when I checked them out most of them had nothing available to eat for one person. Some of them even flat out sent me away and told me to go further down the street. This is probably my one major complaint about Korean culture: there is absolutely no place in Korean society for an individual on his or her own. Especially when it comes to food. The dishes at most of the larger restaurants are cooked at the table and only served in large portions designed to be shared with a group. Typically they don't even have anything for a lone diner. Also, if you're out to eat in Korea and don't want to have what your friends are having you're shit out of luck. If the group is going for samgyeopsal, you're eating samgyeopsal or nothing. (Well, nothing but side dishes.) If I had walked the other way I would have walked into town instead of the tourist district and I might have found a hamburger stand or kimbap shop, but I really wanted to try some local Jeju specialties like their famous black pig. As it turned out I eventually found a place that had haemulpajeon (seafood scallion pancake) on the menu, which is technically a side dish but I wasn't in the mood to get technical about a thing like that at the time. Never did get to try the black pig. Clearly I need to do more to subjugate my individuality.

My last day on the island I went to Jeju City so I would never be close to the ferry terminal for my departure. I think it's good to schedule at least one day in a vacation that's more or less a blow-off day - it cuts down on the stress from feeling like you have to be doing something amazing every moment of your vacation. I caught a movie, got some passable Mexican and excellent Indian food, and saw the Samseonghyeol Shrine, where the three brothers who founded Jeju are traditionally believed to have sprung from three holes in the ground. ("Well, well, well," I uttered, stumbling upon the three holes.) I think the best part of that trip was the animated story of the three brothers with its hilariously just-off English translation. I'm not sure why but I kept thinking that if you gave the whole thing a death metal soundtrack it would make for an unusual but passable episode of Metalocalypse. Lines of narration like "The brother ate meat and wore leather clothes" definitely added to that impression.

The trip back was not a highlight as I had voluntarily bought a third class ticket instead of booking a cabin. I knew third class involved sharing a room with many other passengers and sleeping on the floor, but I hadn't realized that I would be on a rough carpet with no pads or blankets save a brick-sized vinyl-covered foam block. I don't exactly remember the conversation between me and my co-teacher when I booked the return ticket but I definitely should have asked more specific questions about the accommodations. Plus the dude next to me slept at an angle so his legs were all up in my shit all night. What the fuck, dude, sleep perpendicular to the wall like a normal person. Jeez.

So that was the Jeju trip. Now I'm back at school for another semester of English educationalizing. Next week's lesson is all about Chuck Norris. I'm trying to keep it fun this semester.

Chuseok, a.k.a. Korean Thanksgiving, is coming up in a week or two, and I have the whole week off but no travel plans as of yet. I talked to Mo about traveling to Andong but he wants to see if he passes his driving test first. So I don't know if you'll be seeing a part four installment in a couple weeks or not. For now I'm just preparing to enjoy my break between quarters for my accounting classes, and trying to meet all of the new Western teachers. One of them is in my building - another South Africa gentleman. Seems like a nice guy.

That's it for this installment. Tune in... later. And buy some shit off Amazon. How about the Jim Jarmusch classic Dead Man or Judas Priest's Screaming For Vengeance?

Death on the Installment Plan

2010-08-11T06:34:00.000-07:00

Hey there. Not much to report. I'm in my last week of summer classes. We've been doing world travel this week, with class themes loosely based on English-speaking countries around the world. I'm thinking about wrapping it up with a Glastonbury Festival-themed UK lesson on Friday, but I'm not sure if I want to make my kids spend the class analyzing Radiohead lyrics. ("Teacher! Thom Yorke not happy!")

As far as I know all the other Western teachers in my town are away on vacation right now, so for the next week and a half I've pretty much got the place to myself as far as the English language is concerned. I plan to squander the peace and quiet on coursework, Starcraft II and the third season of Mad Men. I just finished the TEFL certificate I've been working on back on Monday, so that's one less course to deal with. Earning it doesn't really affect my pay since I have a Master's degree unrelated to English or teaching, but I thought it would help my teaching this year. But since we all know that, according to neoliberal thinking, money is the only thing in life that's worth anything, I guess I'll just toss it on the pile of useless degrees and certificates I've been building since undergrad. (Better save some space at the top for the accounting certificate...) Kind of amusing that right now the least expensive degree is the one that's most relevant to my career...

Speaking of money, finances have been on my mind this week since I've been budgeting for my trip to Jeju-do and figuring out how to have enough left over to pay the bills. I opened a new bank account here and I'm working on opening a new on in the States that together should save me at least $35 a pop on wire transfers. I also ended up making a spreadsheet of all my credit card balances since I landed here so I can track my progress towards paying them off. Happily the slope of the line on the graph is headed towards, zero, barely. (Guess those accounting classes are good for something...) Right now I'm just a little more that one payment behind schedule. I suppose that's not too bad with moving expenses and all that, but with compound interest the bigger the dent you can make in the beginning, the more it pays off in the long run. After Jeju-do I should be able to chill out on the spending and get back to making some serious progress on paying my bills, and I've started budgeting for vacations (and the eventual move back home) so I'm not caught by surprise again like I was in July. It's just so tough to be responsible when there's a new shiny thing around every corner. Like that bicycle I've been wanting. And there was that ₩100,000 desk chair that I saw at Costco, that sure would beat the kitchen table chair I'm sitting in right now... (I hate to buy furniture here that I know I'm only going to use for two or three years and then get rid of, but considering how much time I spend at the kitchen table at my computer, a nice comfy chair would really be worth it.)

So I know I talk a lot of misery and gloom and doom in this blog, but that's mostly my gallows sense of humor coming though. I can't remember if I've said this before, but I really am having a good time here. It would be nice if it were easier to meet people and spend time with them here, and I definitely miss all my friends back home, but I'm in a stable job, I'm doing satisfying work that I enjoy, my stress level is down, I'm paying my bills, I've lost weight (still a few hundred grams away from getting back down below 200 pounds, grr...) and I'm seeing a lot of new and interesting places and experiencing a lot of new and different things. There's stuff I miss about LA (and there's stuff I absolutely don't miss in LA), but overall this has been a really rewarding experience so far. It's just kind of a shame in this modern age that a guy has to go halfway around the world to find a good job with decent pay and an affordable cost of living. That's globalization for ya, I guess.

Better wrap this up. Those Zerg aren't gonna splatter themselves...

Smile! You're Traveling. (part 2)

2010-08-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

So! My adventures in the deep south of South Korea... I wanted to kill off all my coursework and find a suitable backpack for day trips before I left town, so I didn't end up heading for Tongyeong until the Tuesday of my vacation week. In Masan I had to take two cabs to the express bus station because apparently there are two types of express bus stations in Korea (inter-province and intercity, or something along those lines) and I only knew the word for the wrong type. Some day I would really like to gain a functional use of this language, although I'm still constantly amazed by how many social functions a guy can manage to get through using only "Hello" and "Thank you." (It's kind of like being Chauncey Gardner in Being There.)

With some help from a tourist map and the Lonely Planet Korea Country Guide I started exploring Tongyeong from the Gangguan Port. I wandered up to the nearby sculpture park, then hiked over to the ferry terminal to check out island excursions and the possibility of grabbing a ferry instead of a bus to Geoje-do. After that I wandered over to the lauded Undersea Tunnel, which turned out to be about as exciting as walking through a concrete tunnel. (The picture on the tourist map made it look like it had windows or aquariums or something, but those turned out to be backlit signs.) From there I caught a bus over to the Hallyeosudo View Cable Car. I should note at this point that it was somewhere in the mid-thirties with high humidity (that's Celsius for all you Yanks - look up the conversion yourselves) while I was doing all this walking and since I was almost constantly carrying all my luggage on my back I was pretty much drenched in sweat all day every day. Now I understand why Korean hikers always where those polyester day-glo jerseys everywhere - cotton never dries. Anyway, for some reason, despite the fact that I was a damp sponge with a daypack at this point, I decided to hike down from Hallyeosudo instead of taking the cable car back. I would also like to mention at this point that the Korean approach to hiking trails is somewhat different from standard American practices. For example, most Americans forging a trail up or down a mountain would make a longer, less steep trail with a series of switchbacks. The standard Korean practice is, shall we say, a little more straightforward. In short, I found myself on a narrow, muddy trail (there must have been a stream or spring that infiltrated it at some point) mostly made of a series of loose boulders that had been tossed together to make a sort of uneven staircase. Hard on the thighs on the way up, tough on the knees on the way down - not to mention dicey when you're wearing a daypack, walking on wet rocks without a walking stick or pole and you're a little bit dehydrated. Strangely, when I emerged from the trail and hit a gravel road at the bottom I was greeted by a roadside collection of middle-aged Koreans on exercise equipment who were nice enough to point me towards Yonghwasa Temple. There's a surprise around every corner. Dynamic Korea.

I hopped a bus towards the excursion boats terminal because I thought that was where the ferries to nearby islands left from, but on the way there I ran into a local teacher from Canada who explained that they actually leave from the terminal back on the other side of the inlet that I had visited earlier in the day. I ran into her again at the nearby Tongyeong public beach, which turned out to be kind of a bust because I couldn't find any lockers for my pack and I didn't want to leave it anywhere to go into the water. (From my guidebook I had thought I could find a hotel nearby to leave it at, but again I had fallen victim to confusing the two ferry terminals.) Of course I didn't make any friendly effort to suggest to the teacher that we could meet up again or that I should get her contact info, but let's face it, that would be out of character. Instead I ended up catching a bus back to the other ferry terminal, found a yeogwan (backpacker's hotel), showered, looked for food, wussed out and got a burger at Lotteria, went back to the hotel and turned in early so I could catch an early ferry. I could have gone out but I was exhausted from all the walking I had done and my groin was regretting that I didn't pack any Gold Bond so I wasn't in the mood to paint the town red. Most of what was around the ferry terminal looked like love motels and seedy noraebang anyway. (More on Korean nightlife for the solo traveler in the Gohyeon segment.)

The guidebook said Yeonhwa-do was the must-see island in Tongyeong but my local acquaintance had mentioned that Bijin-do had the best beach. I felt a lot more like floating in the ocean that doing any more hiking so I hopped the early morning ferry to Bijin-do on the morning of day two. Almost didn't get off in time because I didn't quite understand the urgency of the disembarkation announcement. Once I arrived on Bijin-do I pretty quickly decided that I had made the right choice. The island is actually two islands connected by a sand bar and a strip of rocks, and if you were ever looking for a place to get away from it all and lie on the beach, Bijin-do is the place to do it. I only wish that I had know that there are a scant handful of hotels there or I would have tried to make reservations to stay the night. First order of business was to find breakfast. As I alluded to earlier, traveling in Korea is a little strange for a solo backpacker and one of the reasons is the food. Koreans like to go out to eat in big groups so a lot of restaurants don't have an extensive a la carte menu. Also the dish of choice by the ocean tends to be raw fish - big piles of all types of raw sea life served with kochujang, a type of soy paste and hot pepper sauce - and a $20 plate of raw fish really didn't appeal to me as a good way to start the day. Besides, I had enjoyed piles of the stuff in Namhae and I wasn't sure it was a good idea to jump back into it (especially without some soju to kill any possible bacteria). I ended up ordering a $8 set menu of broiled fish, soup and enough side dishes for a group of four. But getting a chance to float in the ocean and sit on the beach reading on a tiny island more than made up for any misgivings about breakfast. (By the way, if you're a working class stiff looking for a way to get ahead in a strange foreign country and you're looking for some good beach reading from a complete misanthrope who travels the world looking for a way to get ahead, you can't go wrong with Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night.)

Back in Tongyeong I grabbed some chungmu kimbap for lunch, which was not nearly as can't-miss as the guidebook had suggested. (Squid, pressed fish paste and daikon radish kimchi? Who cares if it's a well-known local dish, honestly?) I then started hopping buses to get to Goeje-do, a large island not too far east of Tongyeong. I wasn't too sure what I was going to do when I got there, but by the time I got to the bus station in Gohyeon it was nightfall and threatening rain - plus I was drenched in perspiration again - so I found a motel and checked in, figuring I would sample the local nightlife. Now, a funny thing about traveling in Korea is that a majority of the affordable lodging, which tends to be clustered around bus and train stations and ferry terminals, is what the locals call "love motels." These motels are infamous in Korea as places where couples - some married, some fooling around, some involved in an exchange of currency for services - come to, shall we say, fuck. The locals are somewhat embarrassed by how widespread the phenomenon is - and since everything is so packed together here there's no way to shove them all into some poorly-traveled back-alley - but it's become such a part of the social fabric that they're generally grudgingly accepted. (I ran into a teacher at a private language academy who had a class discussion about the necessity of love motels, and one of the "pro" arguments from his Korean adult students was along the lines of "we need a place to go where the kids can't hear us screwing." Korean families tend to live in fairly compact apartments.) The hotels tend to be clean, comfortable, fairly well-maintained and inexpensive, so they've become dual-purposed by travelers as well as tryst-ers, as long as said travelers don't require a family-friendly environment free from niceties like condoms and business cards from prostitutes. The one I stayed at in Gohyeon was fairly low-key other than the mood lighting and the free pornography on TV. Let me take this opportunity to tell you all about Korean pornographic videos. Now I've seen some fairly unusual pornography in my day (by accident, of course) but Korean porn is something else. They don't seem to be able to show genitalia, penetration, or all that other good stuff that's in run-of-the-mill hardcore pornography, but they still seem to have a taste for the type of rape fantasies and inappropriate sexual advances that you sometimes see in Japanese movies and porn (that I've seen by accident). So imagine naked couples going though all sorts of contortions to simulate sex in positions that don't visually serve up any wiener or taco, but also scenes of a guy molesting a sleeping girl on a bus and similar fare. Well, I guess if anyone wanted to argue that morality is a social construct, there's your evidence in full, poorly-lit color.

(I started using this Amazon Associates monetizing gimmick in this post for no good reason... I wonder if Amazon sells any Korean pornography I could link to?)

After a quick shower I decided to hit the town in Gohyeon and see what was up. Most of what was around the bus station was once again bars, love motels, PC bangs (internet cafes) and noraejujeom. Once I asked an acquaintance of mine back in my town, who I've been helping on and off with her English (no, that's not a euphemism for anything), to explain the difference between a noraebang (karaoke room) and a noraejujeom while we were walking past one in town. She started by saying, "Well, it's a singing bar... Usually they have... hostess girls..." That was the point where I changed the subject since I realized I might be asking a female acquaintance to explain something unseemly to me. The funny thing about smut and vice in Korea is that it all seems to be out in the open yet behind closed doors. I guess it's all part of that whole public "face" thing - out of sight, out of mind. Being here you hear all sorts of rumors about goings-on in coffee shops and barbershops with two poles, and trips with co-workers that start at a noraebang and end at a brothel. (Luckily my co-teachers and dedicated family men so I've never had to deal with the embarrassment of that scenario, thank Christ.) As a foreigner, though, when you pass a nightclub or a noraejujeom with silhouettes of female bodies or a light-up inflatable column ad with a scantily-dressed young girl on it, you don't know whether it's actually some sort of cat house or burlesque, or if they're just selling karaoke or nightclubbing with sex. Generally, to be safe, I always assume the formal and keep my distance. Besides, everything in Korea is a group activity, including brothels from what I hear, and if a lone foreigner or small group of waegooks wander into a brothel here they supposedly immediately get the crossed-hands "X" sign from the old lady behind the counter and get sent away. (At least that's what I've heard about the red light strip in Daegu, but I don't even know where it is.) As a side note, the light-up balloon signs outside the noraejujeom in Goheyon all had pictures of the same young girl in a bikini, and on a lot of them people had burned cigarette holes in the girl's eyes and delicate areas. C'mon, guys, that sort of thing just ain't right.

(I hope that if my co-workers ever find this blog and figure out who I am, it's not a worse offense to talk about the goings-on of the sex industry than to indulge in it...)

I had passed a bar in Gohyeon that advertised itself as a "Western Beer Bar" so I decided to check it out. They wouldn't let me sit at the empty bar so they put me at a table for eight by myself. The beer was all either overpriced or piss, or both (they were out of Sam Adams and the only Canadian beer was Moosehead... and who the fuck imports Genesee beer to Asia, fer chrissakes??!?!) so I polished off two as the rest of the bar filled up with groups of Koreans together in their tight-knit groups. As I said, traveling solo in Korea is not easy. When it came time to pay the check I couldn't even get the staff's attention - I was close to just leaving the cash on the bar without receiving the bill and walking out. After that I decided to give up, go to a PC bang and play World of Warcraft to kill the evening (yes, I am a nerd, get over it) but I couldn't get my American account to load up on a Korean computer. So I turned in early again and decided to get a jump start on the morning.

I was too sunburned to go back to the beach and didn't feel too much like hiking so I got on a bus and found my way to Geoje Haegeumgang, a rock outcropping off the coast of the southeast corner of the island. Geoje Haegeumgang is apparently Korean National Scenic Site #2, which makes me wonder even more how this whole Korean compulsion to rank order historic sites and treasures really works. When I was at the National Museum in Seoul there were several displays of pottery and other historical artifacts that were presented right next to each other, like, "This vase from the Three Kingdoms period is National Treasure #119. That means it's better than whatever #120 is but not quite as nice as whatever #118 is. This nearly identical vase next to it... well, it's just OK." I guess it's possible that the one vase belonged to some king and the other one belonged to some schmuck, but still, how do they decide on the exact order? Regardless, when I arrived at Geoje Haegeumgang I was impressed with just how unimpressive a rock outcropping it was and how little of it I could see due to the morning mist. Undaunted, I jumped on a ferry boat to get a closer look.

There were some crabs on it. That was kind of cool.

When the boat landed at the wharf someone handed me a note that said "1:35". I didn't understand what I would possibly have to do at 1:35, and when I tried to ask someone about it in broken Korean, apparently what I said was understood as "It's 1:35?" rather than "What's at 1:35?" since the only answer I got was "Yes." When I got off the boat, I realized that we were not back at shore like I had thought - we were at Oe-do, and 1:35 was the time to come back to the boat. Well, how about that. Oe-do is a small island of manicured flower gardens and Greek revival columns. I was going to skip it, as a certain guidebook I copiously pimped earlier had described it as boring, but as it turns out it was the best part of my trip to Geoje-do. The walk around the island was an enjoyable constitutional (despite the daypack, 30-plus degree heat, humidity and copious perspiration I mentioned earlier) and the gardens were truly something to see, especially if you're packing any sort of camera. There were also some sculptures that could only be described as "naked babies wrestling." (I'd post photos but I dropped six rolls of film off at the photo shop last week and they're still not done. Oh, Dynamic Korea, how I love you and your cute little quirks sometimes.) I also saw a lot of nice beaches in Geoje-do from the bus on my way back to the express bus terminal in Jangseungpo, but I didn't have the time or energy to stop. Maybe next time.

So all in all it was a good trip, and it was nice to get out of my tiny town, get some sand between my toes and take in some more Korea. I never made it to the Pohang fireworks festival because I ended up having to catch up on my coursework and somehow I got an intense stomachache right before the last train I could catch to get to Pohang in time. Summer lessons have actually been a lot of fun - even though it's a new lesson plan every day, the classes are smaller and shorter and I have more leeway to make them fun and informal. This week all the lessons are about movies and I'm hoping to do a short video with the kids by the end of the week. After summer school at my school and one week of English camp at a nearby elementary school I get another three days off, and I should be heading to Jeju-do to see what all the hype is about.

OK, it's 1:40 in the morning and the only good reason to be up this late is if I'm playing Starcraft II with my old college buddies in America, which is not what I'm doing right now. I'm going to bed. Blogging takes too fucking long.

Smile! You're Traveling. (part 1)

2010-07-19T05:22:00.000-07:00

Holy cats, it's been a whole month since the last time I posted? Ouch. Time flies, I guess. Especially when so much of your energy is focused on planning future vacations and trying to balance your checkbook well enough to have enough money for your vacation. Sadly my vacations this month and next come days before I get my monthly paycheck, so it's been a balancing act all month to conserve enough cash to be able to get out of town for a few days. But you know how it is. Imagine it's a month from now, suddenly it is. (Hmm... how many more Bluetip references can I slip into this blog? We'll see...)

The first half of the school year is over, and I'm currently finishing off day one of my four days of vacation. The vacation plan has mutated several times since I started working on it. First I was considering Ulleung-do, but then I found out the ferry tickets are too expensive and generally travel to Ulleung-do in peak season requires reservations. Strike one. I was planning on going to Pohang for the fireworks festival, but then I found out the fireworks festival is next weekend, not this weekend. Strike two. I thought about going to the infamous mud festival in Boryeong just to check it out. For the uninitiated, the town of Boryeong in Chungcheongnam-do has a beach side spa that's renowned for its healthful mud. Several years ago they started a summer festival to promote it, which was eventually discovered by the waegook community and has apparently has become more of a miry bacchanal with every subsequent year. Now, I see nothing wrong with getting drunk and being foreign in large numbers, and I can see the attraction of doing this in a giant mud pit, but personally I'm not much for the whole rolling around in mud thing. Put succinctly, I am not a hippie. (Also I'm a fairly portly gentleman who does not relish opportunities to appear shirtless in public. As "Wet Hot American Summer" defined it, I'm one of the indoor kids.) Regardless, I was thinking about going for the day and scoping out the scene until I found out that getting to Chungcheongnam-do from my part of the world is a royal pain in the ass, as is returning from Boryeong to the nearest city. Since lodging for the mud festival is apparently impossible to obtain without advance reservations and most bacchanals tend to stay mellow until after dark - and who wants to try to navigate their way home across a foreign country drunk? - I decided that the mud fest would probably not be a good day trip. Maybe next year. In short, foul tip, count stays 0-2.

By the way, my favorite thing about the Boryeong mud festival is that nearly all domestic (and by that I mean Korean) advertisements for the festival depict a group of mud-covered young foreigners, mostly women in bikinis, yet most of the Western promotional material I've seen for the festival, such as the pic in the Lonely Planet guide, shows groups of soiled Korean youths, again with a few prominently placed good-looking females. Exoticism, or blaming the other? You decide! (Personally, I'm happy to put politics aside and celebrate it all in the name of having a good time. Everyone loves beer, mud and hot bods; no reason to get all serious about it.)

My current plan is to hop a train for Masan tomorrow morning and proceed from there via express bus to Tongyeong in Gyeongsangnam-do (the province immediately south of mine), and hopefully head from there after a day or so to Goeje, Korea's second largest island. It's close, it's cheap, it's an excuse to leave my apartment and there'll be water, sights to see, trails to trek and hopefully some sun. (It's the rainy season right now, so there's no guarantee of sun wherever I go. I'm a little bummed that it's going to be Tuesday before I can actually hit the road and technically I've been on vacation since Saturday, but I had a lot of coursework to get out of the way and after my recent trip to Seoul (more on that in a moment) I figured I'd better spend a day or two looking for a decent backpack. Traveling in Korea on a budget often involves carrying your stuff around with you rather than immediately checking into a hotel or stowing it in your car, so it's important to pack light and have something comfortable to tote your stuff around in.

Since Wednesday was the last day of school, Thursday the teachers were kind enough to invite me on their two-day getaway to celebrate the end of the semester. The plan: head by chartered bus (package tours seem to be one of the most popular forms of vacation here) to Namhae, another island in Gyeongsangnam-do, do some hiking, hit the beach, eat a lot of raw fish, drink a lot of soju, sing a lot of karaoke (the preferred term here is "noraebang," which means "singing room," indicating the private room where the singing usually happens) and visit a spa on the way back. The trip didn't exactly go down without a hitch - by the time we got back to the hotel at night it was pouring rain, and it continued to rain for all of the next day, so there was no beach time. Also I of course managed to get completely smashed and make an ass of myself at the hotel after dinner, but apparently that's the point of drinking in Korea. (By the way, if someone here asks you how many drinks you have in a week, never tell them more than one. Koreans don't really understand the concept of wine with dinner or a beer after work; to them "having a drink" means getting fall-down drunk and nothing else.) It's also fortunate for me that few of my co-teachers speak much English. At least I hope they don't. The next morning I discovered why the slogan of Korea's most popular brand of soju is "Good Morning," - a few of the teachers were still sipping it at breakfast. I, however, was in one of those hungover states where a little hair of the dog is not going to help - you're either going to have to get piss-ass rolling drunk all day and be twice as sick the next day, or just deal with it. I opted for the latter. Luckily I spent most of the day sleeping on the bus due to the weather, so by the afternoon I was actually feeling halfway human. We had lunch at Bugok Hawaii, a hot spring and water park rolled into one in Gyeongsangnam-do. After lunch came my first Korean spa experience, which was horizon-expanding if anything. The basic idea of the Korean spa or bathhouse is that you all get bare-ass, Full Monty naked and hang out with a bunch of other naked dudes in pools of water. Surprisingly -in stark contrast to the Western concept of a bathhouse - this involves no crystal meth or overt homosexuality. Personally I was extremely glad to be nearsighted once I got inside since it saved me from having to observe too much man-ass and wang in full resolution. Being a tubby, hairy, blonde, circumcised Caucasian individual I felt a little bit body-conscious throughout the experience, and honestly I don't see how the whole thing would have been dulled by the inclusion of swim trunks, but hey, when in Rome. Apparently it's tradition for close friends or fathers and sons to wash each other's backs at bathhouses, but to my infinite gratitude no offered to do mine. One thought did strike me as I was sitting in green tea-infused hot water trying to keep my face away from other dudes' junk as they entered and exited the water: that somewhere, perhaps on the other side of a thin wall, was a room full of naked women were also showering under artificial waterfalls and lounging in pools of spring water in a state of absolute nature. I wanted to be in that room. I would still have wanted a towel to cover my shame, but I would have appreciated the sense of inclusion.

A couple weeks before the Namhae trip I finally made it to Seoul for a weekend. Didn't get to do nearly as much as I wanted to there but I got the chance to snap some pics of some temples and palaces, eat some good Mexican food in Seoul's foreigner enclave, Itaewon, watch Aussie-rules football with a large group of Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans, and check out a couple of jazz bars with some of Mo's acquaintances. I also spent the night in a jjimjilbang, which is probably best translated as a "naked hotel." Okay, strictly speaking the jjimjilbang is another type of bathhouse with gender-separated sleeping rooms, but that doesn't describe the experience nearly as well as "naked hotel." Oh, sure, they give you a pair of shorts and a T-shirt when you com in, strip, and abandon all your worldly possessions in a locker, and the genders are allowed to mingle in the floors with the snack bar and the arcade, but I still missed my underwear. The jjimjilbang near the train station in Seoul is actually pretty nice, I highly recommend it if you need a place to sleep and take a shower for about 12,000 won if I recall the price correctly. This particular jjimjilbang had bunks instead of just letting you sleep on the floor and the facilities were very nice. At the same time... maybe I'm just a prude, but I personally believe that breakfast and the male genitalia of strangers should be kept separate, and such was not the case in the lobby/locker room in the morning. What's with the nudity, Korea? You have pants. I've seen them. Why not use them?

Gaar. It's past 11PM and I want to jump on an early train to Masan tomorrow. This is why I haven't been blogging - there's not enough hours in the day. Especially with accounting courses stacked on top of the husbandly duties I owe myself and my living space, and the occasional attempt to see a little of the countryside. Okay, what else was on my mind... Korea didn't win the World Cup, so that's unfortunate. I went to Daegu for what were to be Korea and the USA's last matches, and saw the Korea/Uruguay game in the rain in Daegu's municipal stadium with a fairly healthy crowd of Koreans and a few Pakistanis. I've decided that I'm probably not going to Taiwan next month - can't afford it after the Philippines trip. Maybe in September if I'm a good steward of my resources. I'll probably go to Jeju-do instead when I get my vacation at the end of August. Been watching a lot of The Wire courtesy of iTunes, my iPod and a TV adapter, which so far has been the easiest way for me to get Western TV and movies. This summer's movie selection in theaters kind of sucks and some of the good stuff like Toy Story 3 isn't coming out until after school lets out. Inception is out Wednesday so I've been ducking spoilers on social media outlets all week. Korean classes in Daegu are done for the quarter, I still can't speak much Korean and I'm waiting until fall to start up again because of trips and such this summer, but I did get a perfect attendance certificate for my efforts. Remind me to look up the Korean word for "express bus terminal" before I leave tomorrow morning. Hmm, suppose I should pack before then too, huh?

Stay sexy, world. I'll try to post another update once I get back from my travels this week and next weekend.

Day... Han-Min-Guk! (Tup-tup, tup-tup, tup.)

2010-06-21T02:28:00.000-07:00

(I'd like to thank fate, Apple and Jimmy Eat World for queuing up "A Praise Chorus" before I started this post to put me in a positive mood.)

So it's World Cup time here in Korea, and boy do these folks ever love the Red Devils, the Korean national soccer team. For the last two weeks there's been nothing but Red Devils paraphernalia on sale and Red Devils-themed advertising on TV. It's even more intense than all the Yuna Kim madness during the Olympics (and she had a much better chance of coming home a champion). I have to wonder what the Christian fundamentalists here think about all the happy smiling families running around right now with light-up devil horns on their heads. (I'm guessing they put aside their misgivings in the name of national pride.) The funny thing is, from what I've heard, most Koreans don't care all that much about soccer aside from following the national team. Sure, I've seen some Arsenal and Inter Milan jackets around school (and of course bloody Manchester United, because Jisung Park plays for friggin' fraggin' Man U) but apparently club soccer here takes a back seat to baseball and other sports, and clearly there aren't nearly as many people here concerned about whether Spain might meet Brazil in the second round as there are concerned about whether Korea will top Nigeria next week. I guess I can't blame them for expressing their national pride. Especially coming from America, where people usually watch Team USA as long as they last in the World Cup, maybe get curious and check out an MLS game or two at some point afterward and then immediately forget that soccer exists anywhere other than at their kids' school. But the national fervor for the Red Devils is a little bit overwhelming. What can I say, it's a trend-driven society and the Reds are clearly the new black.

The World Cup also means I've been a bit short on sleep. The games here are on at 8:30 PM, 11:00 PM and 3:30 AM, so while it's been rare that I've stayed up for a 3:30 AM match, I have been sucked into my fair share of 11 PM matches, with difficulty calming down enough afterward to get to sleep quickly. Opening night I ended up going out with my South African co-teacher Mo and some other friends to see the South Africa-Mexico match at a bar in Daegu, and because the trains back from Daegu don't start up again until 6 AM I ended up staying out all night. It was kind of crazy, here I am in this very monocultural country (spell check is telling me "monocultural" isn't a word, but I'm saying that it should be) and I end up at a bar full of South Africans and Mexican-Americans, along with a bunch of Koreans, Americans, Korean-Americans, a handful of douchebags from the US Army (please note that I am not suggesting that all enlisted men in the US Army are douchebags, just most of them when they're in bars), some Senegalese dudes, a Brazilian and a Russian. Small world, eh?

Speaking of trouble sleeping, how about that USA vs. Slovenia game? I actually thought the ref was doing a decent job up until the blown goal call, personally, but that last call wiped out a lot of goodwill on my part. It looks like we won't need the win to progress to the second round, especially since England has been doing such a wonderful job of underperforming, but hey, three points is three points. What's up, ref?

Otherwise things haven't been too eventful since I got back from the Philippines. I was looking forward to coasting into the summer break until I found out I still have to teach during the summer break. In fact, I have to teach the same kids every day over summer "break," meaning I have to do five times as much lesson planning work as normal. Or I would if I was planning to deliver the same caliber of lessons as the regular school year. I have a feeling there might be more than one "let's review restaurant ordering" or "let's watch The Big Lebowski" lesson this summer. I volunteered to help out an English camp at one of the local grade schools in an effort to get out of my high school gig for a week (and make some extra money) but the English camp is in the morning and my high school classes are in the afternoon so I'm not 100% certain I won't end up having to do both. Then again, I do get eight days of vacation, which is eight more paid days off than I ever got as a temp, so I can't complain too bitterly.

My school is asking me to split my vacation between the beginning of summer break and the end of summer break, and I'm trying not to spend a ton of money on travel since I just went to the Philippines, so I'll probably just hit up some spots around Korea in July and maybe take a short trip somewhere else in August. I was talking to a friend in Taiwan about visiting her in August. Figured Taiwan might be a good trip. After all:

- There are monkeys. (Always research whether a country has monkeys before planning any vacation.

- CHEAP ELECTRONICS. (Pretty much everything here is Samsung or LG. There's not a lot of impetus to compete on price without foreign competition.)

- Need to see it before China blows it up.

- Good opportunity to see all those art treasures the Nationalists stole from the mainland.

However, my friend in Taiwan hates it there, so she doesn't want to guarantee that she'll still be there in August, which means I can't really plan ahead to go there. Also apparently Taiwan is hot as balls in August. Not sure what the back-up plan is, it's going to be hot and wet anywhere in East or Southeast Asia in August and I can't afford to travel too far out of the region. (You wouldn't believe what it costs to travel to Bora Bora this time of year. Believe me, I've checked.) I guess I could always check out Jeju Island or something, but I get the impression that the people who say Jeju is Korea's Hawaii would also argue that Branson, Missouri is the Mid-South's Las Vegas.

It's too bad I'm not in quite the same financial situation as some of the younger teachers here who don't have student loans from an expensive graduate degree and ten years of other miscellaneous debts to pay off. This job hasn't completely let me forget that I need to keep a positive balance in my checkbook every month. (Actually I have to keep a positive balance in two bank accounts now, which is slightly trickier.) When I first got here I calculated that, with a strong dose of financial prudence, I might be able to have all my credit cards paid off in two years and not have to borrow any extra money to finish the courses I'm taking. Of course when I made those calculations I hadn't been here long enough to see my real expenses, the won was at its peak against the dollar and I had left out some important expenses like textbooks, trips to the Philippines and late nights in Daegu sending off co-workers returning to America or watching South Africa play Mexico in the World Cup.

Basically, the yin and yang of my current financial thinking is this:

Yin: It would be stupid to travel all the way to East Asia for work and not explore Korea and the rest of the region, meet people, make friends and enjoy myself.

Yang: It would be stupid to travel halfway around the world for a job and not come home in a much better position to get work and pay my film school loans.

So far it looks like it won't be too hard to strike a balance as long as I don't make too many crazy purchases or trips to Bora Bora, and maybe consider staying for a third year. It's just a little annoying that I have to start re-balancing my budget when I realize I need a summer wardrobe to survive the lack of central air. Plus Mo just borrowed a bicycle from someone and I'm still pissed off that I haven't been able to replace my Trek that got stolen out of my fucking garage in LA. (All bicycle thieves should die.) Why, God, why can't I have a decent bike??!?! All the bikes here are crappy or expensive as shit! (Although I hear Giant bikes are cheaper in Taiwan...)

Ever since I got back to Korea from soaking in hotel pools in the Philippines I keep thinking about where this job is heading and what I'm gonna do when it's time to move on. Teaching is all right but it's hard to imagine making a career out of it here. (Or most other places, for that matter... What language do they speak in Bora Bora?) I'm studying for an accounting certificate I can use when I get back, but accounting isn't exactly the most exciting career in the world and I keep running across articles about how tough it is to get a job in the States these days, even with a CPA cert. I dunno. I'm trying to keep in mind all the things I've picked up from reading about Taoism and Buddhist teachings over the years. You know, wu wei, action without action, craving leads to suffering, all that good stuff. I should probably stop worrying about the future so much and concentrate on going to work every day, giving the kids a good English lesson, passing my accounting courses and enjoying the opportunities I've got. The bills will get paid, the job will still be here tomorrow and the world will still be there the next time I get vacations days. It's just hard to be at peace when there's so many shiny new bicycles around.

Speaking of Buddhism, one of my Korean co-teachers took me on a trip with his family to the Gatbawi stone Buddha outside of Daegu this last weekend. It was a heck of a hike up to the thing... it didn't look like a long trek, but it was steep enough that it took it out of you. I think I've figured out why Buddhist love to put shrines up on mountains: there's no way to hike up a mountain without spending some time thinking, "Now wait a second, why the fuck am I hiking up here again?" and then forgetting about it while you continue climbing. When we started the climb, the path entered a forest canopy and I started to hear drums and chanting coming from far away. When we got to the top, I found out that the chanting and drums were a recording. (I love Buddhists, they're so practical.) I also saw that they had a helicopter landing pad nearby for VIP visitors. I guess the path to enlightenment is shorter if you own a helicopter. The Gatbawi statue is apparently the most popular shrine in Korea for parents to visit to pray for their children to pass exams, including the big national exam that comes at the end of high school. I'm really tempted to come back just before November 17th, the date of the exam, with some Western friends, a case of Charm soju and a couple pitchers of Cass and tell the parents coming up the path, "Don't do it! Give up! They'll just end up fat, rich, ignorant and lazy, like us!!!" But that would be antisocial.

Goddammit blogging takes too long. I need to eat something and finish my TEFL homework while I have a break between quarters for my accounting classes. Back later.

Oh wait, one more thing... If anyone here in Korea can find a video link to that crazy Hite beer ad with the guy in the car with the mariachi band, can you send it to me? I found this YouTube video with a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot, but nothing with the actual commercial. (You should see it. It's crazy. There's a mariachi band.)

It’s Election Time

2010-06-03T04:40:00.001-07:00

Howdy. The last two weeks have been the run-up to provincial elections here. What does that mean? Sound trucks. They're everywhere, every day, and they're merciless. Each candidate gets his (or her) own sound truck and their volunteers roll around town with it blaring songs that extol their candidacy. "Iwo Jima! Kim Dae-Su!" (I'm not sure what that first part actually is, but it sounds like "Iwo Jima" to me.) The trucks are usually accompanied by a group of people (usually older women) all doing hand motions in time with each other. Occasionally someone blows a whistle and they all simultaneously bow. If the candidate is there, he or she usually wears a blue ribbon with his or her name, as if he or she were a Miss America contestant. Sometimes they also employ these MCs who are animated enough to make Howard Dean's speech after the Iowa caucus look dignified. In the morning when I walk to work a bunch of them congregate at the major intersection where my school's gate is, all blaring music at once at full volume, and I have to run the gauntlet between half a dozen competing songs. This is not a pleasant experience, especially first thing in the morning.

This has been going on for two weeks. Thank Christ the election is tomorrow. Seriously, I don't care if they elect Kim Jong-Il as long as the sound trucks go the hell away.

I thought about making a big "Korean Election Mega-Mix" on my iPod and seeing if I could drown it all out with my noise-cancelling headphones. Figured I would throw in all the classics – Slayer, Melvins, maybe some Carcass, Converge, Sabbath, Mastodon, pre-"Black Album" Metallica, Sick Of It All, might even throw some Iron Maiden or Ministry in there for old times' sake. But, I never got around to it, and the election is over tomorrow, so in the words of Thomas Paine, fuck it.

Speaking of Kim Jong-Il, what's up with that fucktard sinking our boat? What a jerk. The rumor around town was originally that the boat might have hit a mine left over from the Korean War and the government was dragging out the investigation to help the conservatives in the elections, but now that the investigation is over almost everyone, including myself, seems to be buying this torpedo story. Why do jerks thrive? And how do they keep becoming heads of state? I know the situation is pretty diplomatically fraught (in part because no one really wants to deal with a country full of starving North Koreans if the current regime falls) but part of me really wishes this was one of those political problems that are easily solved by a few Predator drones or a Cruise missile or two.

I did get one very welcome respite last week when I went to the Philippines to visit a friend of mine. He's studying medical tourism in Manila and since both my high school classes were out of school on their spring excursions last week I begged my way in to three days of vacation time. It was a great trip, very relaxing. It was also my first time out of Korea since I got here in February. This job is great and I'm definitely enjoying it here, but it was certainly a relief to go somewhere a bit more Western, even if it was Southeast Asia. I think the first time I handed money to someone and realized I didn't have to do it with both hands was the point I realized that I wasn't in Korea any more. Koreans are incredibly friendly but the culture is pretty alien when it comes to certain traditions and social protocols, and it was nice to be in a place as freewheeling as the Philippines instead for a couple days. It's funny, I never even thought about how much I might miss Western culture before last weekend, but it's amazing what comes back to you when you can suddenly get real (and by that I mean Americanized) Chinese food and Jim Beam again.

I met a lot of Australians and some older Americans on the trip – a lot of them retire to the Philippines because the cost of living is so low, among many benefits. I have to admit, the idea of buying a house in the tropics and taking a Filipina as an unofficial second wife doesn't seem like such a bad life. I guess it's too bad I'm 32 and don't have a dime saved up for retirement. (At the rate I'm going it's fairly likely I'll still be paying back my film school loans by the time I reach 55.)

Well, that'll have to wait, now that I'm back to the land of English lessons and surreptitious prostitution. I shouldn't complain, I have a job and for once it might actually be beneficial to someone. I guess that's worth the trouble of remembering to bow to your elders and hold your cup out for a drink with your other hand back by your elbow. Right? Right?

Fuck You Bill Gates

2010-05-18T08:15:00.001-07:00

God DAMMIT. Last week I started a blog post in the Dongdaegu station while I was waiting for a train back to town. Stupidly, I tried to write it as a "blog post" in Word instead of a regular Word doc, and apparently because I wasn't connected to the internet and I hadn't previously saved my blog's info in Word when I tried to save Word just decided to delete what I was writing. So, I guess I get to start over now. Like I said… FUCK YOU BILL GATES.

There's a news doc on right now in the station about May 18^th. My knowledge of Korean history is spotty at best but apparently today is the anniversary of the beginning of some violence and street protests that eventually led to democratic elections in South Korea in the '80s. Being here now, it's hard to imagine that only thirty years ago Koreans were fighting each other in the street for the right to have a representative democracy. Sometimes I forget how much I take for granted coming from the United States, where we've had a peaceful (well, at least domestically, mostly) democracy for over 150 years.

Where do I begin, since I can't remember much of what I wrote a week ago? Well. May has been, and will be, an interesting month, to say the least. The first week of the month was midterm exams at my school, the second week there was a two-day co-teaching conference in Gyeongju, this week we have Friday off for Buddha's Birthday, and next week the first years are off Tuesday to Friday for their class excursion and the second years will be at Jeju Island from Wednesday to Friday. What that all adds up to is, I won't see my Friday kids all month. I guess it's a good thing Friday is mostly my weakest students, so they probably wouldn't have learned that much anyway. (I'm kidding of course. Well, half-kidding.)

May 1^st I went to Pohang for a birthday party. Those Pohang kids really know how to party. HARD.

Children's Day was May 5^th, so I went with Mo to Busan. I like teaching in a rural area (it keeps me out of trouble and minimizes distractions from the online courses I'm taking right now) but It was nice to spend some time in a fairly big city where there were actually things to do. We went to the Busan Auto Show (note: for those of you who think you can't customize a Hyundai, you're wrong and I have photographic evidence) and later we met up with my roommate from orientation and went for a boat ride, followed by samgyeopsal and some quick drinks at one of the local waeguk watering holes. Good times.

The co-teaching conference in Gyeongju was both rewarding and fun. After the program ended on Thursday night most of the foreign teachers (a.k.a. the Westerners) walked across the street from the conference center to the nearest Family Mart and spent most of the night drinking by a nearby river. It was kind of hilarious, like we had managed to transport a Nebraska high school beer blast to Korea (minus the high school kids, pickup trucks and meth). Had a good time, although I would have had a better time if I had met some more single ladies. Am I being negative? Maybe I'm being negative.

Korean class has been going well, although my level of speaking and understanding Korean is still pretty elementary. We've reached the point where I should be able to say what time it is, if I could remember the Korean-Korean number system. (I've got the Chinese-Korean system that the locals use for math and big numbers down pretty well, but the Korean-Korean numbers that they use for counting numbers under twenty still elude me. I got "Hana, dul, set" down pretty quickly from posing for pictures, but there's only so much you can do when you can only count to three.) I am finally getting to know some of the other folks in the class, who are from Daegu. Two weeks ago when I showed up I was the only guy, with eight women. "Score," I think. After class we all went out and the girls decided to go shoe shopping. What I thought at that point was… well, it was clearly not "score," to say the least. In fact I would say that the English language needs a saying or phrase that's the exact opposite of "score" to cover such occasions. Actually, I think "shoe shopping" might be exactly the right phrase to fill that need. ("So, Barry, what did you do last weekend?" "Well, Tad, I went to the club but it was all dudes. It was total shoe shopping.") Afterward we met a bunch of other foreign teachers drinking beers outside the local 7-Eleven. (Sound familiar? I'm starting to feel a little bit like Lloyd Dobler only there are girls around and we're still all at the Gas-N-Sip for some reason. By choice.)

Hmm, there's a lot of cursing and unchaste talk about partying and female relationships in this post. Do my parents and family still read this blog? Hi, aunts and uncles!

Last week, other than the Gyeongju trip, pretty much sucked. At the beginning of the week I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. They don't seem to like window treatments too much here. The windows are all frosted in my apartment, but head of the bed is in a direct line with the only windows so now that it's getting light earlier here the light is right in my face in the morning. One of these days I really need to get a metric tape measure, size up the windows and head to HomePlus or E-Mart for some curtains and an expandable rod. I did recently figure out that if I leave the wardrobe door open it blocks some of the sun, so I've been sleeping a little better this week. I was also working on a midterm exam for most of the week, which really sucks when you haven't slept much and you're going to be out of town for two days. I did end up getting it done and I got an 85% on it, so I guess all's well that ends well.

This weekend promises to be interesting. I've got some work to catch up on but one of the other foreign teachers, Julie, is going back to the States so I'm sure there will be some get-togethers to attend before she leaves. Next week while my kids are off on their excursions I'll be visiting my friend Gareth in Manila. Not sure what all there is to do in the Philippines besides lay on the beach and drink San Miguels, other than stuff that's immoral and/or illegal in Korea, but I'm sure we'll figure out something. Gareth is a big pussy (and I say with the utmost respect and affection for the man) so I'm sure we won't get into too much trouble.

I know the blog posts have been infrequent lately but I've been a little unfocused as of late, so I'm hoping I'll make the time to post updates more often from now on. Maybe next time I'll regale you with more cooking adventures. I'll also try to update my Flickr account again soon. Those of you who have been asking for more photos of Korean trade show models will probably enjoy the set from the Busan International Auto Show.

Oh, and I finally bought a scale. I'm down at least one belt size but once I did the metric conversion I figured out I'm still over 206. How fucking fat was I when I left the States? Did I top 220? Fucking chili cheeseburgers. Why are they so good?

Hi Mom and Dad!

저게 창문이에요!

2010-04-28T05:19:00.000-07:00

Hello, hello. I’m writing this from the train station in Daegu. I’m taking Korean classes at the YMCA here on Tuesday nights and, because the only trains back to town on weeknights are at 9:00 and 10:30 and my class ends at 8:50, I usually end up with about an hour and a half to kill at the train station on Tuesday nights. Usually I bring my TOEFL certificate homework with me but I was a little behind schedule handing it in last week so I haven’t received the new units yet. I was going to use the free internet at Starbucks to work on my online accounting homework but I couldn’t get it to work. (I don’t know if the problem is Korea or my HP netbook, but the two really don’t seem to like each other when it comes to WiFi hot spots.) I could pay for internet access here, but there’s only about 40 minutes until my train so I don’t think it’s worth it today. So, lucky you, you get a blog update and I get to do my homework later in the week.

Korean classes are going well, albeit slowly. Right now we’re on the same sort of lessons we did in 3rd grade French. (“What is that?” “It’s a pencil.” “What is that?” “It’s a window.” To this day “It’s a window” is one of the only phrases I know in French, although I can’t spell it or pronounce it correctly.) It’s a fun group, although most of them are EPIK teachers from Daegu who all know each other already so it hasn’t been as easy to people as I was hoping it would be. One of these days I’ll get brave enough to elbow my way into one of their conversations, give me some time…

By the way, for those of you who think the American government is fucked up (What the fuck is up with Arizona? “Let’s get rid of the immigrants by forcing our police to resort to fascist harassment tactics or else we’ll sue our own communities.” Good job, Arizona. Where’s Chuck D when we need him?) I heard a great story tonight about the government here. One of the members of our class is a guy from the Netherlands. Tonight in class we were talking about our jobs. When we asked him what he’s doing in Korea, he told us that he came to visit a year or so ago and the Korean government suddenly decided that he had to serve in the Army. Apparently he had never carried a Korean passport or anything – he doesn’t even speak Korean, which is why he’s in our class – but somehow Korea decided he’s a citizen and therefore he has to do his compulsory service. In the process he lost his job back home, among other things. (He didn’t go into detail about what happened to his stuff – all he said was, “You can imagine what happened.”)

Work has been going better. After the lesson I attempted two weeks ago that blew up in my face I got a little smarter about gearing my lessons to my students’ abilities, so things have been going smoother. Next week is some sort of big test for three days (that’s right, three straight days of testing) and Wednesday is Children’s Day so I don’t really have to even complete a lesson this week. That’s probably a good thing since Friday we have open classes and I’ve been using my time to prepare for those. “Open classes” mean that parents get to drop in and observe a class. I appreciate the transparency and everything but as you can imagine the pressure is on to make the lesson look good so that none of my co-teachers end up looking bad. Again, I shouldn’t say too much about the details because I don’t want to embarrass anyone or share too much. I guess it’s nice that the parents care enough that they want to see where their educational dollars are going, but you know how it is, nobody likes having to work with people peering over their shoulders.

Whoa - I think I just saw one of the folks I met in orientation in this train station. This deserves investigating. Back later.

Mmm 밥

2010-04-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

Hello again. I guess it's been a couple weeks since the last post, eh? Nothing that amazing has been going on the last few weeks - at least nothing as amazing as bullfighting. I'm also taking a lot of classes right now and my course schedule for spring just got rolling so I haven't had a lot of time to blog. To catch you up, I started taking accounting courses online a little over a year ago when the economy went down the shitter - before I got accepted to this job - and I'm gamely trying to complete them now so that there's a possibility that I might be able to actually earn a living wage in the United States some day. My course load for the accounting stuff is half of what I had been doing in the States, but I'm also currently working on a TOEFL certificate (I don't need it for the job but the folks at the EPIK office said the experience might be helpful, which it has been) and I just started Korean lessons at the YMCA in Daegu. It's nothing I can't handle and still do my job but I have to stay focus or I'm going to fall hopelessly behind. So far I'm one week in to the full class schedule and I'm already a day behind. And now I'm blogging. But hey, you gotta get your priorities straight, right?

Although the job has really been a pleasant surprise so far I'm coming off one of my toughest and most frustrating weeks at work. I don't want to say too much specific about the job because social "face" is extremely important to Koreans, so if my extremely dedicated and capable co-workers thought I was talking shit behind their backs it would not be looked upon kindly. Plus I really don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, all of my co-teachers have been really excellent so far and Lord knows I would be lost without them. But to make a long story short, I massively overestimated my kids' abilities last week and rolled out a lesson that was long, boring, tedious and only made them bored and/or frustrated. (So much for my plan to use the Mighty Mighty Bosstones to teach English. The follow-up Slayer lesson has been completely scrapped.) Unfortunately I didn't have a fallback lesson and I did feel like the lesson I had prepared was somewhat effective, plus it was more complex than usual so I had put a lot of work into it. In short, it's very hard to gauge the ability of some of the students here. Some of them are really good and some of them just plain don't care, but that's no surprise. On the other hand, there are some quirks to English education in Korea that can be kind of unexpected. English is a very difficult language for learners here - by my understanding there's no such thing as verb tenses, articles or even singular and plural here, so there's a lot of difficult grammatical rules for learners here to pick up that speakers of Romance or Germanic languages already know innately. I get the feeling, though, that some parts of the language teaching here have been tilted towards the strengths of the learners, to the benefit of the students' grade point averages and confidence but to the detriment of anyone who actually wants to learn how to speak English or understand spoken English. Again, I don't want to make it sound like I think the home-grown English teachers are doing a poor job, because that's not what I'm trying to say at all, but sometimes the expectations just don't seem to jive with actual success in using the language here.

Probably the best example I can come up with is an experience from last Friday. I was in the teacher's office finishing up my lesson plan for this week and being relieved that I could finally get away from the awful lesson I concocted for last week when a third-year student came in and introduced herself. I didn't recognize her because my classes don't include the third-year students - the third years are typically cloistered away somewhere preparing for the test at the end of the third year that determines, basically, the rest of their lives. Anyway, this particular student asked me for some help with a list of words. I wasn't sure where the list came from, but it was a list of mostly four syllable English words - SAT analogy type stuff - and she wanted help pronouncing the words and defining a few of them. It wasn't easy since there were a couple of homonyms in the list that could be pronounced two different ways depending on what meaning you were trying to express. ("Conglomerate" as a noun and "Conglomerate" as a verb would be something similar to what I was dealing with.) But I did the best job that I could and when the next period started she left. At the end of that period she came back with another list of words, which I helped her out with again. (I should note that her pronunciation was acutaully spot-on for just about everything, I was very impressed.) The next period began and she left again, but promised to return. When she came back the third time, she asked me (as best as she could), "Teacher... how do I... make... sentence?" As if I could explain it as easily as I could explain how to pronounce "Conglomerate." And this was a third-year student who was clearly very interested in studying English and had been working very hard at it, and had clearly memorized at least two lists of English SAT-level vocabulary words.

In the very brief Korean lessons I had in orientation one of the locals had introduced me to the phrase "OTL" (pronounced "oh-tee-ehl"). This isn't so much a phrase as a vocalization of an emoticon. Think of the "O" as a head, the "T" as a body and an arm, and the "L" as the legs. What is signifies is banging your head on the floor in frustration. Or, if you want a real-life example, imagine a student, after a very frustrating week, asking you to explain everything about how to make a sentence in English in ten minutes. OTL.

But I don't want to talk about work... I want to talk about food!

I've probably mentioned before that I've been constantly amazed by what Western foods exist here and which don't. There's pizza, but the locals really don't seem to have much interest in the standard tomato sauce so they usually make it with something like a sweet teriyaki-style sauce or a cream sauce or a thin layer of sweet potato. (By the way, if you've never gotten a pizza with pickles and hot sauce on the side in your lifetime, you haven't truly lived.) There are some hamburgers joints around too, and of course there some American chains like McDonalds, Subway, Dunkin' Donuts and KFC. (I don't believe the Double Down has crossed the ocean yet, though.) But if you're going to thr grocery store and looking for some inexpensive staples of Western cuisine, you may be in trouble. (In short, there are no Kraft individually wrapped slices of American cheese, which makes 80% of Western food not worth eating.) I anticipated this (and also thought that maybe cutting some of the cheese, white bread and greasy meat out of my diet might help me shed a few pounds) so I had brought Korean and Chinese cookbooks with me. Korea is right next to China, right? So they should have Chinese ingredients, right? Hmm, maybe not. That assumption turned out to be pretty baseless and a little ignorant - something like assuming you can find New Mexico chili powder or Anaheim peppers in the local grocery store in rural Ohio, or a decent pierogie in southern California. Also, America is a big, rich, multicultural country, so there's a pretty wide variety of foods around everywhere. Koreans, on the other hand, mostly eat Korean food, so getting non-Korean ingredients in a smaller town like mine is not so easy. As for the Korean cookbook, I had failed to notice that one of the co-authors of mine is Japanese, and the book had used a lot of Japanese ingredients, or Japanese names for things instead of Korean names, which led to some translation difficulties.

Which brings me to the language barrier. Identifying ingredients by sight is not as easy as one might think it would be. For example, things like wine and beer usually don't say "wine" or "beer" on the label unless you're living in the movie "Repo Man." (Yes, of course I mean the Alex Cox film, not the Hollywood knockoff of "Repo: The Genetic Opera.") Beer and wine usually say something like "Budweiser" or "chardonnay" or "Sonoma Valley" or something on the label. This made finding a Korean equivalent for sake or Chinese cooking wine a trial. (I've never even had Chinese cooking wine, and the Chinese cookbook I have kept suggesting things like cooking sherry instead, which I'm pretty sure I'm not going to find and probably isn't anything like Chinese cooking wine.) I had read that there's a Korean rice wine called "Cheongju" that's pretty close to sake but I still haven't found it. I ended up finding a Korean rice wine called "Cheongha" that's passable. It's also potable in the event of an emergency beer shortage, which is something you can't say about cooking sherry or salted Chinese cooking wine. I also had a devil of a time find an equivalent for mirin, which is sweetened cooking sake. I ended up finding something called "mihyang" instead, that's described on the bottle as "(cooking wine style)" in English. I don't know enough about mirin to know the difference, and I'm still alive, so I'll call it a success.

Success with the Chinese recipes has been more of a mixed bag. Exotic stuff like five spice or Chinese pickled rape is nowhere to be found (and trust me, you do not want to ever search for "pickled rape" on Google to try to look for an equivalent). Even some stuff that I've heard is grown in Korea, like water chestnuts, isn't available in my town. Luckily some helpful chap on the Internet suggested that lotus root could be substituted for water chestnut, and the one time I tried it it was a pretty satisfactory replacement. Some things, like Szechuan pepper powder, oyster sauce or Lee Kum Kee chili paste are reasily available. But cashews? Forget it, use peanuts. Bamboo shoots? If we have them here then they're either out of season or I don't know what they look like. Canned baby corn? You're kidding right? Corn is a New World food, I'm sure that's something La Choy invented. There is corn starch, however. Why or how, I don't know, but I'm happy to use it when I need a thickener.

The other problem with cooking here is the same problem any bachelor has with cooking - fresh food is not packaged for the individual who's cooking for one. If you have to buy celery you're going to end up buying a whole bunch, and either eating nothing but celery for a week or using one stalk in a potato salad and throwing out the rest of it when it goes bad. The supermarkets in my town are even worse for this kind of thing because so much of the produce comes pre-packaged in bags or trays instead of being able to pick through it in bulk. You can't buy one pepper, or two large green onions - it's got to be a tray or a bag with more than one. I mean, I like the fact that I don't have to peel the garlic that comes pre-peeled in a bag of about fifty cloves, but it would take me at least a week and a half to eat that much garlic. (What can I say, I like garlic, but who likes garlic that much?)

The final issue with Korean bachelor living is that Korean cuisine is really not designed for eating alone. Traditionally, Koreans tend to live with their families until they move out and start their own families. Korean food tends to be served as a large number of small dishes that everyone at the table shares. Personally I love it - it means that when you order a 5,000 won entree at a restaurant it usually comes accompanied by as many as five side dishes that you never ordered or asked for. Bonanza! But there's no fucking way I'm making three kinds of kimchee, soup, noodles, dried fish and a small main dish if I'm eating at home. So finding a Korean recipe that stands up on its own as a meal isn't that easy.

So far the two Korean recipes I've had some success with are a pork and kimchee stir-fry called "kimchee pokkum" by my cookbook and japchae, which is a well-known traditional beef, vegetable and glass noodle dish. (By the way, if you're ever in Korea and a recipe calls for "dashi-no-moto" or some Japanese bullshit name for dry soup stock, it's called "dashida" (다시다) in Korean. It comes in large foil packs or smaller single-serving foil sticks. The beef-flavored stuff has pictures of beef on it and the sardine-flavored stuff has fish on the package. A little dash'll do ya.) The japchae wasn't all that good until I figured out that the mushrooms I bought that I thought were wood ears were actually some medicinal mushroom that's not even really supposed to be eaten. (That's not a surprise since eating them is like eating wet wood. Interesting flavor, though.) I've also managed to find a couple of Chinese stir-fry recipes that I can do here with a few strategic substitutions, as long as I don't need picked rape or Taiwanese sweet bean paste or ketchup.

I guess the last thing that's worth mentioning is that meat is mega expensive here, and it's not typically butchered in the ways they do it in the US. Boneless chicken breasts? Not in my town. Luckily Costco has them, or else I would have to spend an hour boning chicken parts every time I want to eat chicken. Korea does have plenty of chopped, compressed, prepackaged meat products, though - hot dogs, imitation crab meat, oddball random chunks of ham, and these rings of compressed fish stuff that are actually really tasty in soup. The first time I saw kielbasa here I was tempted to try to do a Korean version of my family's Bavarian sauerkraut recipe - fry up some scallions with bacon, toss in some kimchee with toasted sesame seeds, let it stew with some sugar, beef stock and beer and toss in some kielbasa and dumplings to steam while it cooks. I haven't quite gotten the confidence to try anything that crazy yet, though. What do you think - could it work? There's gotta be some way to find a happy marriage between two cultures that love pickled cabbage, pork and beer...

I'd also like to mention, on a socio-political note, that economists and environmentalists occasionally like to opine on subjects like how fast the world's resources would be extinguished if China had a middle class that consumed resources like the United States, or how fast the cow farts would kill us if Asians started eating as much beef as Americans. Now that I've seen how people live here that seems like a pretty facile argument. Fact is, nobody here would ever live like an American. Nobody's that rich and stupid and there isn't enough space to raise that much beef without it costing a fortune. Another example - nobody has hot-air dryers here, as I've mentioned. I'm sure someone would be selling them by now if people wanted them, but nobody has the space for one, the apartments don't have vents for them and I'm sure no one would want to pay to use that much energy to dry clothes. It takes generations to get as fat, slovenly and wasteful as Americans are, and in this day and age it would be too expensive for China or Korea to ever turn into us. We, on the other hand, are going to be in trouble in another twenty years because we are going to have to learn to live without some of the luxuries that people in parts of the world like Korea and China and India have always lived without in order to stay competitive, and everyone knows that it hurts a lot more to be without something once you've gotten used to having it. So, in short, if you're looking for a way for America to survive the century, you better get used to eating more vegetables.

Probably the tastiest thing I've managed to whip up here was my take on a Korean "omelet" dish, cheon. In orientation they served us these really tasty ham slices for breakfast that I eventually figured out were chopped ham served up cheon style. So I took the plunge, bought some Spam and decided to give it a try. (It was actually "Luncheonmeat" brand Spam and not Spam brand luncheon meat, but I digress.) It was super easy - all I had to do was mix three egg yolks and two egg whites with some garlic and salt, dust the Spam slices in glutinous rice flour, dunk them in the egg, fry it all in a thin layer of hot oil, and presto. I also did some young pumpkin slices at the same time (young pumpkin is something like a cross between a Western pumpkin and a zucchini) and the pumpkin was super tasty. The salt and fat from the Spam combined with the frying oil probably didn't do anything for my cardiovascular health, but hey, I've got government health insurance now.

My other two fallback dishes are old standbys from home - spaghetti and ramen noodles. The ramen here is way better than in the States - the package usually contains a packet of dried vegetables or seaweed along with the soup mix, so if you add a hard-boiled egg it's a full fledged meal. Some stuff I bought recently came with packets of this sauce instead of soup -something like hoisin but a little more sweet and spicy. And of course spaghetti is spaghetti. They've got some decent salad dressings here - I'm currently addicted to the green kiwi stuff - and there's no lack of fresh salad greens. Just don't expect to find a decent bottle of wine to go with it. I'm not a wine snob or anything -back home I usually picked up a magnum of Gallo and wondered why they sell all that stuff in California that costs twice as much and comes in those silly half-sized bottles. Wine here, on the other hand, is legitimately terrible, and a bottle of straight rot gut will run you about $20. Aussie table wine like Yellow Tail will run you upwards of $30 a bottle. Soju, on the other hand, which Koreans like to describe as "rice whiskey" even though it's only the strength of fortified wine, comes in bottles the size of beer and costs less than $3. Why waste money on quality when you're out to get fall-down drunk, I guess...

The one glaring exception I've found to the "impossible to get decent hooch at a decent price" rule is the persimmon wine that they make in Cheongdo. I had heard about it and always assumed it was something really heavy and sweet, like plum wine or manischewitz. We took a school field trip to the old Japanese train tunnel where they age ths stuff (it's a major tourist destination), I got a sample, and I was very pleasantly surprised. There's some extremely strong fruit notes in the regular variety but it has a nice balance to it - it's dry enough to balance out the fruit and come up with a mix of flavors that's fairly sophisticated. Not quite a red, not quite a white, and nothing like a wimpy blush either. The dryer variety was also very unlike a standard white but still had a very interesting balance and mix of flavors. But as I said, I'm no connoisseur - let's not forget that I was just singing the praises of Gallo merlot. (I'm telling you, for shitty wine Gallo is extremely unoffensive.)

Somewhat ironically I've been putting off dinner to write this so I guess I better wrap it up. I promise to post some pics of my town and the Cheongdo bullfighting on the blog some time soon, though. If you know me and know my email address you shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out my Flickr username, and there's some pics of the bullfights up there. I've got some more but I've been too lazy to upload them.

Bon apetit, y'all.

ULTIMATE COW SUPREMACY!

2010-03-29T05:25:00.000-07:00

(Note: this blog post was started almost a week ago. Please disregard any time continuity issues.)

“Some days you eat the b’ar, and some days the b’ar eats you.”

“Is that some sort of Eastern thing?”

“Far from it.”

-The Big Lebowski

I probably shouldn’t be blogging at work but the internet is down and most weeks the bulk of my time at school has been finding photos on Google Image Search for my PowerPoint presentations. Some guy here in the gyomusil (teacher’s office) is trying to sell socks. I have a pair of sport socks sitting on my desk. (“Big size!” the salesman says.) I’m not sure if they’re a free sample or if I’m supposed to just be looking at them. If I keep them, am I obligated to buy more socks? What exactly is up with these socks, anyway?

The job has been good so far—spectacular, in a lot of ways. The work’s not too difficult, the expectations aren’t too daunting (from the school, at least—my expectations for my personal performance are pretty high), everyone seems to be happy with the job I’m doing so far, and if I were Korean and didn’t have piles of debt to take care of back home I could probably feed a family of eight on my salary. Anything you see here that looks like complaining—it’s not. A little kvetching never hurt anyone, though.

The one thing that’s a little frustrating is that, since I’ve never taught high school kids before, in a lot of ways I’m flying by the seat of my pants every day. All of my lesson plans are basically completely untested material, so sometimes they’re going great and sometimes… not so well. There are some pretty good internet resources out there for borrowing ESL lesson plans from other teachers, but so far I’ve felt compelled to try to develop all my own plans from scratch. After all, it is part of what they’re paying me for, plus I figure it will be best to save the “run to the internet” option for an actual emergency.

The main goals of the native English teaching program are to get the kids using the language and to get them used to hearing it from an actual native speaker. For the most part, as long as I can keep the kids listening, speaking and writing, I’m doing a good job. On the other hand, sometimes it’s tough to know what the kids will understand and when I’m going to get a bunch of blank looks after I’ve discussed an activity. Also, since my course isn’t graded sometimes it’s hard to keep the kids motivated and on task. (I could probably get the school to do it if I asked them to and if I could come up with a grading rubric, but I’m not confident enough in my skills yet to do that.)

I’m definitely starting to learn a few things about my students, though, above and beyond what common mistakes they make using English. (We’re definitely doing a lesson on articles and singular, plural and uncountable nouns at some point soon.) The girls are usually very interested in talking (sometimes too much, to each other, and not about English) but it’s a lot harder to get the boys to do anything. I’ve been told that they tend to be better at writing, but when it comes to getting them be imaginative or creative they seem to be a little resistant. I think they just become resistant to doing anything they don’t want to do at some age. Kind of makes me wish I could just take them out, get them full of soju and introduce them to the wonders of Johnny Cash. (Just to make things perfectly clear—THAT LAST SENTENCE WAS A JOKE. I am not going to ply my students with alcohol.)

This week I’m teaching a lesson about vacations. I figured since I’m teaching a foreign language, maybe it would be good to get some ideas about traveling and the excitement of visiting foreign places into their heads. One of my co-teachers gave me the very excellent suggestion to do a project about vacation islands, since Jeju Island in Korea is a very popular vacation destination here. The in-class project is to create a travel brochure for a destination of the student’s choosing. The place can be real or imaginary, and it can be somewhere they’ve been or some place far away, like space. Some students pick foreign countries or tropical islands, some students pick a country they don’t know and then get stuck because they don’t know anything about it, and some students pick a place that’s close to home, like the town we’re in or the beach in Busan, which is less than an hour away by train. (Every student that's picked the moon says they want to go there to play with the rabbit. Who even knew there was a rabbit up there? Also, one student chose Antarctica and the cover of his brochure was a penguin with another penguin in its pouch, and both penguins had knives. It was AWESOME.) Some students pick their family homes, which can be a little heartbreaking since these kids live at school. I mean that literally—Korean high school students live at school. The school has dorms and the students live in the dorms. Most of them pretty much do nothing but study from sun up to sun down and only get to go home every other weekend (there’s school every alternating Saturday here). In the evenings when the grade school and middle school kids aren’t at school a lot of them are studying at private hagwons, if their families can find a way to afford it. In the summer they go to school camps. In a way, part of me admires the dedication—after all, when I was in film school or working on a film in LA I was working from the moment I woke up to the time I got my precious five hours of sleep. Some kids in the US have similar schedules with after-school activities and other resume builders. Still, it’s a little tough seeing a high school kid whose dream vacation is going home, sleeping and spending time with his or her family.

On to happier things! Last weekend was the long-awaited bullfighting festival in nearby Cheongdo. (The locals who aren’t familiar with the term “bull” sometimes talk about the bullfighting as “cow fights,” which I think makes the event sound even more awesome.) For those of you not familiar with the Korean tradition of bullfighting, let me explain. Korean bullfighting is very different from Spanish or Mexican bullfights, where some guy stands in a ring and slowly tortures a bull to death even though the bull never really did anything to him and never really had a chance. In Korean bullfights, the bulls fight each other. Apparently the inspiration came from the yearly fights between bulls for the best grazing ground for their herds, and some genius came up with the idea of putting a ring around it and making it a spectator sport, These days there’s an entire arena dedicated to it in Cheongdo. The bullfights are the pride of the town—kind of what country music is to Nashville or the Indy 500 is to Indianapolis. There's a bullfighting statue in the park, there's billboards and banners all over town, and there's even cute cartoon bulls on the manhole covers. (One of these days I will have to get into the Korean habit of representing everything with cute cartoon characters, but again that feels like the sort of thing that's been discussed by numerous other commentators over the years.)

I suppose I better address that thorny issue of animal cruelty up front. “Bull Wrestling” or “Bull Sumo” would probably be a better name for the sport than “bullfighting,” since the latter brings to mind all sorts of nasty associations with animal blood sports like dog fighting or cock fighting. The bulls aren’t out to hurt each other, although some of them do end up visibly bloodied after a particularly hard-fought bout. The bulls basically butt heads until one of them gives up and runs away. Apparently there’s also a scoring system for successful pushes and attacks, similar to boxing or taekwondo, but I’m not sure how it works. Sometimes a bout will result in over thirty minutes of the bulls locking horns and pushing each other to the point of exhaustion, and sometimes one bull turns tail and runs before the referee has a chance to blow the whistle. Sometimes the bulls don’t really want to fight all that much and the trainers have to try to lead their heads together with the ropes looped into their nose rings. I'm pretty sure I saw one match called a draw because the bulls just plain didn't want to fight. I found something oddly satisfying about that; it wasn’t nearly as exciting as a good bull-on-bull battle royale but I think it did something to affirm the nobility of the species. So is it cruel to take something that bulls do naturally, put an arena around it and give them some gentle coaxing to do it for our entertainment? Yes and no, I suppose. I wouldn’t consider it that much crueler than horse racing except that the bulls do get a little scraped up from all the friction between their skulls. But is there a moral difference between a test of strength through combat and a test of speed through racing that goes much further than semantics? I’m not so sure. Is it in the same category as dog fights or Spanish bullfighting? Absolutely not. What about rodeo? Well, I was going to write that Korean bullfighting is probably less cruel since heard that they tied ropes around the testicles of rodeo bulls to make them buck, but according to the internet that's just an urban legend propagated by "certain 'animal rights' activists". So I guess I would put Korean bullfighting somewhere on the morality scale between rodeo and hardcore professional wrestling. (I'm not going to explain which end of that scale is which, I'll leave it up to you to decide.)

Speaking of animal rights, I have noticed that the Eastern perspective on domestic animals seems to draw heavily on the Confucian idea of hierarchies, with animals in a lower echelon than humans. The butcher's shops around here tend to have cute, non-ironic cartoons of smiling farm animals, as if the livestock were thinking, "It is my duty in life to provide you with pleasing meat! Thank you for enjoying my flesh!" I’m not a huge fan of the Confucian tendency to classify everything in rigid hierarchies, but I have to admit that the Western animal rights ideal that animals should be treated like humans goes a little too far at times. For example, before I left LA I noticed that there was a digital billboard popping up around town in off hours with some smiling doofus sitting next to a dog and the text, “Animals are children too!” I had two major semantic problems with this. First, grown animals are not children, they're adults. Second, ANIMALS AREN’T HUMAN! No matter how much you love your dog it is not your child. You didn’t give birth to it, it can’t name any state capitals, you’re not going to send it to college and it’s not going to come home mumbling for a month because it doesn’t want you to see that it got its tongue pierced. Yes, animals deserve to be treated humanely and we should make an effort to see that they don’t suffer, but in the end they’re not sentient and they’ll always be one rung lower on the food chain in the natural order of things. I like cows, but I also like to eat cows because that’s what cows are for. If we all stopped eating meat then all the cows would die because they’ve been domestic animals for thousands of years and they wouldn’t be able to fend for themselves in the wild, and I don’t want to see that happen because I like cows. I also don’t mind seeing them fight, because cow fighting is a bold display of raw cow awesomeness and the sheer mind-blowing audacity of cow power. Is that so wrong??!?!

I kept picturing what would happen if PETA showed up and plastered photos of naked Western women in cow horns all over town. The picture was a lot of Koreans shaking their heads and saying, “Yep, we were right all along.”

The bullfighting festival did have plenty to do for the bullfight-squeamish—inside and outside of the bullfighting facility were food, shopping, traditional and non-traditional entertainment and libations. If you like corn dogs, you’ll love crab stick wrapped in some sort of fish patty on a stick. (With ketchup!) I didn’t get brave enough to try the silk worm pupa, but maybe next year. My favorite thing at Korean festivals is definitely the clowns. I’m sure they’re actually called something else here, but in Western terms they’re clearly clowns. Korean clowning is somewhere between circus clowning, improv comedy, street theater and a drag act. What usually happens is that a small group of performers with traditional instruments will paint their faces, put on ragged, sometimes gender-bending costumes based on traditional clothing, and mime a performance of traditional music and older Korean pop songs. Often they lure some blind-drunk older people from the audience to join them in dancing and singing along. In the clown act that was happening at the bull festival some guy who was half in and half out of a ragged dress was dry-humping a drum and pretending to shit in a pot in front of children and everyone was having a great time. What's really amazing to me is that Koreans have these very strict social standards for not shaming each other--for examaple, you're never going to get an honest assessment of your performance at work because nobody wants to risk making you "lose face"--but at a festival or a bar or a noraebang (a.k.a. a karaoke room) it's perfectly OK for everyone to get falling down drunk and dance with a filthy clown in drag because it's a socially accepted tradition. Personally I love the irony. I mean, I would put up with a little ball-busting now and then if it meant I could get honest answers out of people at work, but imagine what would happen in the States if you put on a dirty Pilgrim dress, sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Car Wash" back to back and flashed your panties in public where there was a remote chance of a child being there. I know, right?

Also apparently the concept of "gay" isn't even on the cultural radar here. I'm not sure how that one works. Been trying to figure it out for curiosity's sake but I haven't had the chance to talk about it with anyone with first-hand information.

So what you’re probably wondering now is, where are the photos and the video? The photos (shot on crisp, clean, still-superior-to-digital 35mm film) are still at the developer. (It took me a while to find the Korean word for “digital scan”.) I may post some videos once I figure out how to pull them off my old Mini-DV video camera and onto my netbook, but I have to admit it’s not a high priority.

OK, time to log off and get back to that ESL certificate I've been working on...

My God... It's full of stars!

2010-03-13T20:57:00.000-08:00

The good news this week is that I finally got my passport back and got my Alien Resident ID, which means that I now have a cell phone and I should have a land line by Monday. Those of you who know who I am can check my Facebook page for the numbers, or just send me an email and I'll send them to you. I wanted to get my iPhone activated here, but apparently even if your phone has been (cough, cough) liberated from AT&T you can't get a foreign iPhone activated in Korea. They have some extra security protocols on the Korean phone networks or something. Either that or they're just using that as an excuse to profligate the current Samsung/LG cell phone oligarchy. Since smart phones cost a small fortune here (something like $450 for a Google Android phone or an iPhone 3Gs, plus if you're a oegugin like me they require a deposit of about $200) and there's no such thing as a QWERTY phone for fairly obvious reasons, the one I ended up with is a fairly standard flip phone. It's got email and some sort of mobile web access (I think there's some sort of mobile TV, too), but those menus are still in Korean even when the phone is set to English so I'm not 100% sure how all of that works. I may eventually have to beg one of my co-teachers or students to show me how to use my phone. So far I've mostly been using it to receive text messages that are probably spam, but I can't really tell since they're all in Korean. Also, apparently, there's no such thing as voicemail here, or at least nobody typically has it, so when someone calls and you don't answer all you get is the callback number. This is especially fun because there's apparently some scam where someone calls you from a foreign number and tries to charge calls to your phone, so if any of you try to call me from a foreign number that I don't recognize, you might want to send a text instead. I think the best thing about the phone, though, is that the front is mirrored and displays a cascade of stars whenever you use it. Oh, and the "Sky" logo on the front and the keypad are in pink, of course. It's probably a girl's phone or something but I don't really care as long as the damn thing works. As I've mentioned before, Koreans don't seem to have the same types of gender squeamishness that we have in the West anyway. It's kind of refreshing, really.

It also didn't come with a charging cable, although it did come with a spare battery and a charging station for that battery. Thankfully charging cables seem to be universal here and Mo had an extra one to loan to me.

The first week of classes went pretty well. Class periods were short this week because it was "home visit week" and the Korean teachers were expected to visit the parents of students at their homes. (Right now I'm imagining my dad, who's a retired high school teacher, reading that and cringing.) There were also no classes on Wednesday because there was some sort of all-day national skills test being administered that day. My lesson this week was basically a PowerPoint presentation about myself and a short quiz. Topics included "What sport does Jim Kelly play?" and "What is the weather like in Los Angeles?" Nobody laughed at the photo montage except when they saw the giant hamburger. I have to wonder if anyone got that it was supposed to be funny.

What it means to be an American, in photos.

Between the two grade levels and all the different classes I'm teaching there's a lot of different skill levels to work with. The classes are theoretically organized by ability level so within each class there's some consistency, but the abilities range from very good to barely able to string together a sentence. I'm not too worried about making my lessons scalable--the idea of bringing in native teachers is to get the kids hearing and using English, so as long as they're not afraid to use what they know it's OK with me if they're starting from different places.

I ended up finding an international ATM at Korea Exchange Bank in Daegu, and I cashed the rest of my travelers checks at KEB on Friday, so my money woes have been alleviated. I also broke down and bought a mini-blender so that I could finally grind some of the 3 lb. bag of coffee I had bought at Costco. (A trip to Costco here is like walking into a three-floor version of America magnified by ten times. I imagine it must be the same feeling Swedes get when they walk into an Ikea in Tokyo.) My only other major purchase has been a composite video cable for my iPod. The netbook I just bought is kind of inconsistent when it comes to video--YouTube works like a charm, but video from iTunes suffers from some stuttering and sound dropout issues. (Sound dropouts are not a good thing when you're watching, say, Lost.) You'll be happy to know that Apple accessories are also horrendously overpriced over here, just like they are in the United States. At least now I have a USB charger with US, Korean and Australian plugs for my iPod and my iPhone with no sim card that only works on WiFi.

As far as entertainment goes, I haven't hunted down any of the folks I met in EPIK orientation yet, but now that I have a little money and a cell phone I'm hoping it will be easier. I'm also hoping I can lure a few of them here for the bullfighting festival this week. (More on that as it happens.) I have met up with some of the other foreign teachers working here in my town. (By the way, I hope that my use of "foreign teachers" to refer to English teachers from the West doesn't confuse anyone, since technically we're called "native teachers" here.) Right now there's a couple from America and another American woman working here, and apparently there's also a Canadian guy who I haven't met yet here somewhere. Last Saturday after Costco I attended a very lovely dinner party at the home of Steve and Sandy, the American couple, with Mo and Julie, the other American teacher. I've also been back and forth to the city of Daegu a few times with Mo and Julie. I haven't had the change to explore too much beyond the downtown shopping district. There's a bar near there called the Holy Grill that's run by a pair of Canadians that acts as a de facto hub for Westerners in the area. I had the "Holy Cow" cheeseburger there last night--it was pretty darn tasty. I also finally saw a movie in one of the local theaters here--"From Paris With Love." (It'll probably be a while before I sample any of the local fare, as I don't speak Korean and the only theaters that show Korean movies with English subtitles are apparently all in Seoul.) Much like the cheeseburger at The Holy Grill, it was very satisfying. How is it that Europeans like Luc Besson and Sergio Leone can make American movies better than Americans?

My other big cross-cultural discovery for this week: some of my Korean co-teachers were trying to show me how to use the "magic pen" device in the English classroom, that allows you to write on the projection of the computer screen the way you would write on a whiteboard. I drew a big silly face and one of my co-teachers called me "Bob Ross." Apparently Bob Ross's old PBS painting show was on cable here for a while and it became a big pop culture hit. There's even an ad for Korea Telecom where ol' Bob, God rest his soul, is hawking internet phones:

Dong Chim

2010-03-03T02:59:00.000-08:00

Day 2 of teaching has passed and so far things have been pretty uneventful. I don't actually have to get up in front of a class until next week, so most of what I've been doing is researching ideas for lesson plans and preparing a PowerPoint presentation to use as a personal introduction for next week's class. I think my favorite part so far is the photo montage about what it means to be an American. So far it has: a GTO with a blower doing a wheelie, a monster truck painted like the American flag, a guy riding a bull, a guy eating a giant hamburger, a skinny guy in a wife beater eating barbecue, Richard Nixon bowling and Nixon shaking hands with Elvis. I'm pretty dang proud of it.

I also went to the bank for the first tine today. I brought some Korean currency and mostly travelers checks with me from America, thinking that travelers checks (which I could only get from my bank in USD) would be the easiest and safest thing to carry. I was running a little low on cash and my co-teacher was too busy to accompany me today, so I went to the bank with the phrases for "deposit," "bank account," "cheque" and "convert into cash" in Korean written in a notebook. Things actually went pretty well, all things considered. The only snag was, after the teller worked for about an hour to figure out how to use American travelers checks to buy Korean currency and deposit it into a Korean bank account, he told me that it would take about a month for the money to clear. Fine, I think, I've still got half my travelers checks and I can probably scrape by for a while on what I've got in cash as long as I don't go roaming the countryside looking for bars or something. Of course that's I realized that I might not be able to cash the travelers checks I have for a couple weeks because I had to hand my passport over to the Immigration office in order to apply for an Alien Resident ID. (Yes, I know that sounds a little sketchy, but these things happen over here.) So basically what I'm left with is about $50 worth of won and the ability to take money out of my American bank account via ATM should I need it. I get my first month's pay and the reimbursement for my flight on the 23rd so I'll be fine by then, but it looks like I might have to put off buying that blender/coffee grinder for a little while...

밥어디 있어요?

2010-03-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a week. I've been meaning to do an extensive catch-up blog post for a while but I've been way too busy and my internet access has been intermittent at best. I was going to post an update from a Starbucks in Daegu but when I tried to utilize their free internet I found out I couldn't log on without an alien resident ID number, and I don't have my card yet. (Internet security is kind of a big thing here, thanks in no small part to North Korea and an alleged other Asian country which will remain nameless.) The internet at my apartment isn't actually getting hooked up until tomorrow (today was a holiday--Independence Movement Day, I believe) but luckily one of my neighbors has an open wireless connection. (Hopefully my neighbor is not a DPRK spy.) Irregardless, since it's been so long I'll try to keep the post focused and not include too many asides that could be categorized as random bitching or asinine observations about the differences between Korea and the US. (I make no guarantees that some substantial portions of this post will be devoted to those two topics.)

So, where to start... Orientation at Jeonju University ("The Place For Superstars!") was a wonderful experience, although hectic. Our Korean hosts and all the guest lecturers worked incredibly hard to make us aware of what's likely to be in store for us and how we can do the best job possible. I met a lot of fantastic guest teachers from all over the world, had a good time discovering the myserious powers of beer and soju (the Korean national hard liquor), I figured out how to order a proper cup of coffee (happily "Americano" means the same thing in English and Korean) and I had a really fantastically greasy toast sandwich on top of it all. And then of course I ruined everything on the last day by doing a comedy routine at the talent show at the closing ceremony. Well, in actuality the routine went pretty well, considering that the people in the back apparently couldn't hear it because I had the mike too far away from my big mouth. There was one joke I cracked at the expense of one of the Western nationalities represented at the orientation that I wasn't sure was completely fair, though, and for the rest of the night I was paranoid that I had possibly offended a lot of people who probably didn't deserve it. (By the way, if you've stumbled across the blog and you were offended, then I apologize. Unless, of course, what I said was actually on point, and in that case you need to lighten up.) Such are the dangers of the comedian's life, I suppose. Nobody said anything to me, other than "Hey I thought you were funny" or "That took a lot of balls to get up in front of that many people" but usually if you've offended people they don't say anything about it to your face. (That's what the internet is for!) I also failed to get anyone else's direct contact information, which was probably kind of stupid. I've made a few connections on Facebook (hello, whoever's reading this!) and I'll probably make more, but now I'm kind of wishing I had been a little more diligent about it. (Especially now that I'm realizing that I forgot the names of some of the people I should be looking for on Facebook. Whoops.)

We didn't find out exactly where we had been assigned to until the end of the orientation, but I think I lucked out--I'm now in a small farming town south of the city of Daegu. I'm on the main train line from Seoul to Busan, so it should be fairly easy to get around the country and get to international airports. (That said, I'm not sure I'll have any time to travel before the summer break, although there's a couple trips I would like to make before then. Guess I'll have to be extra nice to the administration and my co-teachers.) I met my main co-teacher, whom I'll refer to as Mr. D for the sakes of privacy and brevity, at a parking lot in Gumi on Friday afternoon. Apparently he had Googled me before I showed up (gulp) and found a picture of me from the Coney Island Mermaid Parade from several years ago where I was dressed as a pirate. I'm not sure but I think he may have genuinely been worried that I only had one eye before we met.

My town is a small rural town that's mostly famous for persimmons, peaches and bullfighting. Korean bullfighting, by the way, isn't like Spanish bullfighting, where some dude with swords kills some poor bull with no access to swords and the whole thing just seems kind of like a foregone conclusion. In Korean bullfights, apparently two bulls butt heads until one gives up and walks away, and there's a point system similar to a taekwondo match. I suppose it's cruel to make animals fight each other, but it's probably not that much worse than greyhound racing as I see it. Besides, it's BULL-ON-BULL COMBAT. How cool is that? I think only non-lethal bear-on-bear combat could possibly be more awesome.

I'm teaching at one of the two local high schools (whose name I keep forgetting) and the English lab I'm teaching in makes my old high school look like a cave in Afghanistan. I've met two of my co-teachers, Mr. D and Mr. S--both of whom have been extremely generous and helpful--and I'm sharing the apartment building I'm living in (which is called Happy House, of all things) with one of the other foreign teachers, an extremely nice South African gentleman whom I will call Mo. I'm unbelievably grateful that I'm in the same building as another Westerner because both of the Korean co-teachers I've met live outside of town. It's hard for me to imagine what the last few days might have been like without another native speaker of English around.

So, now that the status update portion of the post is over, it's time for more Interesting Observations About The Differences Between America and Korea:

The Locals: Koreans are 100% totally cool people. Maybe I'm just saying that because I've only been here a couple weeks and I still haven't discovered the cultural differences that might make things a little difficult at times, but I've already observed a lot of things that make me really glad I'm teaching in Korea. For example, all the Koreans I've meet so far are very friendly and open to foreigners, especially compared to what I've heard about Certain Other Asian Countries Which Will Remain Nameless. The Korean attitude towards cultural differences seems to be, "What you're doing isn't the Korean way, but you're a foreigner so it's OK for you." I've definitely seen more than my share of embarrassed looks when I've accidentally walked into my apartment with my shoes on, or made a toast or passed an item using the wrong hand gesture. But overall Koreans seem very tolerant to Westerners and foreign ideas. I mean, the country is apparently trying to become functionally Korean/English bilingual by 2014. Can you imagine trying to even suggest an idea like that in America? People would be throwing tea at bodies of water left and right. (And for Christ's sake, we're already practically English/Spanish bilingual, even though nobody wants to admit it.)

Westerners: Westerners basically seem to roam the country in drunken packs, like benevolent English-teaching Vikings. I haven't witnessed a lot of it yet but I have a feeling I'll be seeing a lot more of it while I'm here.

The Language: The Korean language isn't easy, although some of the locals seems to be really impressed if you know as much as a few phrases. The grammar is extremely dissimilar to English, and some of the vowel and consonant sounds are a bit tricky to get used to, but every day I thank my lucky stars that King Sejong the Great saw that it might be a good idea to establish a phonetic alphabet. If you can read the Korean alphabet you can at least sound out an unfamiliar word even if you don't know what it means. This comes in handy a lot for the "Hanglish" words that are English words phonetically adapted into Korean. It's always a pleasant surprise when you slowly sound out a Korean word and realize that what you're reading is actually something like "sausage & special toast." (If you're even in Jeonju, I highly recommend the sausage & special toast. I haven't found a toast shop in my town yet but there's a lot of unexplored territory left out there to explore.)

Of course, the difficulty also works the other way around. Anyone who's familiar with the offensive "Engrish" stereotype of the way Asians speak English might not be surprised to learn that "R" and "L" are the same letter in Korean. The Korean alphabet also doesn't have equivalents for letters like "F", "V", "Q" or "Z." "F" tends to get replaced with a "P" sound in Korean, thus "coffee", for example, becomes 커피, pronounced "kaw-pi". Some Koreans use this Korean pronunciation when they speak English, which can lead to some awkward moments. For example (and I'm going to leave out a lot of detalis so as not to embarrass any of the parties involved) I was speaking with a group of Koreans and Westerners about the state of the film industry and how the industry needs to learn how to deal with different forms of digital distribution. One of the people I was talking to chimed in, and to me what he said sounded like he was suggesting the future lay in "internet porn." I was more than a little embarrassed that he seemed to be suggesting that I should get involved in pornography. (The only time I was ever offered a job on an adult film in LA I passed it on to an acquaintance without knowing what the exact nature of the gig was. That acquaintance tends to bring this fact up whenever I see him.) Soon after, another member of the conversation said something about "watching movies on your phone", and I realized that my conversational companion was actually saying "internet phone", which is the Korean term for a smart phone. I'm really, really glad that a snappy one-liner about getting into porno hadn't crossed my mind before I realized the nature of the misunderstanding.

Food: There are certain things that one expects to be difficult when one is wandering around a place as a functional illiterate, but food isn't typically one of them. At most shops and restaurants I can usually get away with pointing or plopping things down on the counter. If I'm feeling really conversant I might manage to stammer out something like "Americano hana juseyo." ("One Americano, please.") But I never expected what sort of trouble I would run into at the grocery store. Namely, I couldn't find rice. Nothing makes you feel like you're completely out of your depth like the realization that you can't find rice in East Asia. As it turns out, the problem was that I didn't realize the rice was rice. In America, rice is typically of the long-grain variety, so to me the short-grain white rice they have here looked more like a bag of kosher salt. I only figured it out when I went to a different grocery store and found short-grain brown rice. Even though I brought Korean and Chinese cookbooks with me, anticipating that it might be hard to find Western food, it's still going to be tough figuring out exactly what to eat on a regular basis. Most of my LA staples (bean burritos, spaghetti sauce, Chunky soup, hot dogs, franks and beans... did I mention California's economy sucks?) aren't as readily available here. Even stir-fry is a little tougher to manage when the label on the soy sauce is in Korean, the cuts of meat are different, there's no bags of ready-mixed frozen vegetables and you're too much of a stupid greenhorn to find fucking rice.

By the way... it's true, people eat kimchi for breakfast here. I actually picked up the habit during orientation, although I'm back to cold cereal and milk now.

The good news is, there is pizza. Koreans don't seem to share our affection for the combination of mozzarella and tomato sauce, though. It's more likely the pizza here will have a teriyaki or sweet mustard sauce, or maybe a thin layer of sweet potato paste. The last one I ordered came with a side of pickles. All in all, though, I haven't had a slice I really didn't like. (That might say more about me than the pizza.)

Pink: Pink is a really prevalent color in Korea and there's not nearly as much of the gender bias against it as there is in the west. Hey, remember the 2006 World Cup, when Korea's kit was officially listed as red and white but their jerseys were hot pink? We kept adjusting our TV because we couldn't believe it. Turns out that shade of hot pink is actually very traditional in Korea. Who knew?

Electronics: Appliances in Korea are fun because they all seem to be programmed to play a little song when you turn them on or off. Also the elevators are programmed to use the absolute most formal form of the Korean language when they address you, so I always felt like a big shot whenever I got to my floor. On the other hand, Koreans don't seem to believe in hot air clothes dryers. There were dryers in the laundry rooms at the Jeonju University dorm, but for the most part they just seemed to spin the clothes for a long time, and on the hot settings they basically gave your wet clothes a sauna. I have to admire the dedication to energy efficiency, but I kind of miss the phenomenon of getting an unwrinkled shirt out of the laundry. (I asked one of our group leaders how to set the dryers to the permanent press setting and he had no idea what I was talking about.) Mo was nice enough to loan me his steamer for my shirts for tomorrow. Now I'm only wishing I had paid more attention to what the costume designers and wardrobe assistants did with their steamers on the films I worked on in LA. (Most of the time I didn't have to deal with them until they blew a circuit. "A steamer and three curling irons pull as much power as two of those big lights? Really?!?")

There's more I could touch on--T-shirts lauding strange combinations of locations in America, Starcraft on two cable channels simultaneously, Olympic curling on TV instead of ice hockey, the obsession with this Kim Yu-Na person--but it's getting late and I need to work tomorrow. In summary, I'm happy to be here, I'm looking forward to the upcoming semester, and I hope to do the kids of Korea right by my English teaching. And I need to buy a steamer and a coffee grinder as soon as possible.

PS Pics as soon as I figure out how to get them developed. (Film still kicks digital's ass, people...)

Anticipate Tomorrow's Headaches

2010-02-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

Ha ha ha. I was going to post the lyrics to the Bluetip song "Slovakian" instead of a blog post, but I can't find the lyrics and Rhapsody won't let me play it because I'm outside the United States. I guess you'll have to make do with this crappy iLike link for now. Cheers.

Slovakian by Bluetip

More Bluetip music on iLike

Day... Wait, what day is it?

2010-02-20T01:21:00.000-08:00

I believe I am now in my fourth day in Korea and my third day in orientation, although I have to admit with the change from Eastern time to Far Eastern time the exact flow of the days has gotten a little mushy. I think the first shock I experienced in my first time in a foreign country (excluding trips to Toronto or Tijuana, neither of which I think really counts) was that it wasn't very shocking at all. Yes, I couldn't get the payphones to work at the airport because I couldn't figure out how to buy a calling card or how to ask for 100 won coins in change for a 1,000 won bill. (A word of advice to travelers to Korea: when shopping for a prepaid calling card, either buy one with a magnetic stripe, if you can find such a thing, or bring at least one 100 won coin and make sure your calling card has a toll-free number starting with 080. Most pay phones either take only mag stripe cards or require a coin deposit to get a dial tone.) But all along I had half-expected to land in Korea and suddenly be overwhelmed by the insanity of moving to a country where I don't speak the language to perform a job I've never done. What actually ended up happening, as I was waiting in line to board the EPIK bus to orientation in Jeonju, was that I realized the following two things:

1) If the job sucks, I can quit and come home. (I'm not actually going to do that because I would be out a lot of money, unemployed and possibly barred from re-entering Korea if I didn't quit following the terms of my contract, but it's not impossible.)

2) This is basically just another temp job, like all the millions I've done before, except this time I'm actually getting some training.

We were spirited away by bus from Incheon to Jeonju almost immediately after landing, so all I've really seen of Korea so far is the area surrounding the Jeonju University campus and what I could see out of the steamed windows of the bus on the way here. I have, however, observed a few extremely awesome things:

- Somewhere not too far from Incheon there's a Niagara Hotel. I believe it was a Best Western. This makes me laugh because I'm from Niagara Falls and therefore Niagara Falls is no longer a romantic notion to me in any way. I actually went to Niagara Falls before I left to look for souvenirs to bring as gifts, and the American side was literally a ghost town, other than the Seneca casino. When I told my Mom I would be driving to the Falls past 5PM she acted like I would be driving through Johannesburg or Port Au Prince . The whole thing was just kind of sad.
- They have 7-Eleven here. It was the first place I managed to get a working phone card and film. God Bless 7-Eleven.
- They must have pizza here because we passed a Domino's truck on the way to Jeonju and the pizza that was pictured on the side was just INSANE.
- We also passed a pink Mary Kay Hyundai Sonata. God Bless America.
- Today on the way back from Lotte Mart (which is kind of like Korean Super Wal-Mart) I was passed by a blond Korean gentleman taking a sharp corner on a motorbike. He had no helmet, was smoking and was steering with one hand while talking on a cell phone with the other. God Bless Anime.

Currently in Jeonju we're going through orientation, which consists of speeches, events, lectures, "Survival Korean" classes and Korean Movie Night every night at 8:20. (Last night's selection, "Le Grand Chef," was not really on par with great Korean films such as "Dragon Wars" and "Attack The Gas Station!") It's also apparently consisted of a lot of beer and soju consumption, although so far I've managed to sleep (or watch a lackluster movie) through every night's madness. Socially, certain aspects of orientation have been a little awkward for me. For example, every meal has been like lunch on the first day of high school. The only difference is that there's at least 500 people here (which is a lot more than we ever had in the cafeteria at the same time in my high school) and since I know I'm probably never going to see most of them ever again (unless they end up in Gyeongsangbuk-do) I don't feel especially motivated to get to know all of them. Meh, it'll pass. Plus, it's nothing that a little beer and soju won't solve. Gotta run, the pack of rowdy Westerners is on its way out for the night...

On The Road To Find Out (part 2)

2010-02-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

As I’m writing this I’m somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. (Unfortunately I won’t be able to post this until I land. Apparently the modern miracle of WiFi on planes has not quite reached Asiana Airlines’ trans-Pacific flights yet. Not that I’m complaining—it’s pretty amazing that any airplanes have WiFi. Internet in the air! What a country!) I have no idea what time it is, although my watch is still set to Eastern time and the video display in front of me is flashing the current times in LA and Seoul on a regular basis. Time is kind of relative when you’re on a red eye over the Pacific.

I had a great time in New York. Got to hang out with a lot of old friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in years. (Even some of the ones with kids! They don’t all get out much, you know, on account of the kids.) I remember one of the last times I visited New York, I got off the subway at Grand Central some time around rush hour and thought, “Man, I don’t know if I could ever live here again.” Once you’ve been gone it’s hard to imagine jumping back into the crowds, the expense and the long subway rides. This time around the town seemed a lot more… manageable? Amicable? I’m not sure. Probably it all had a lot more to do with my state of mind. It’s easier to enjoy any place when you know you’ve got a good salary coming and you don’t have to squeeze every dime until it screams. (Not that I was on a spending spree or anything, but you know how it is, New York has a way of getting into your wallet.)

It also probably had a lot to do with the last year and a half in LA, which was not a fun time to be in the film business in California. I’ll admit, I’m going to owe the city of LA an explanation for all the trash I’ve been talking about it if I end up back there. I mean, there’s things I like about LA… the weather, the Dodgers, absurdly large, sloppy hamburgers (I’ve probably enjoyed that aspect a little too much), running into random directors at movie screenings, the lax speed limit enforcement on the I-10 going west between the hours of 10PM and 5AM, and of course all the friends I’ve left behind. An increasing number of my New York friends are actually moving out west as of late. Unfortunately, with the lack of decent work and the broken government it’s hard to focus on the good things instead of the other things: the traffic, the persistent layers of dust from the air pollution, the fact that the whole city acts like it’s made of sugar every time there’s a light rainfall, Beverly Hills snobs who cock-block West Side public transportation (no offense to my very reasonable friends in Beverly Hills), Orange County Republicans, liberals who care more about chickens than civil rights, people from Ohio who move to the desert, build giant strip malls and still insist on watering their lawns (to quote the late, great Sam Kinison, “YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!!!”), going to bars where everyone seems to be more worried about looking good than having a good time, anyone wearing anything by that fucking Ed Hardy designer… I think it all boils down to the fact that I hate living in a place where it seems like most people’s aspirations are to look good, show off, smile for the camera, stand in lines and spend the most money on the least important shit, and the people with decent aspirations and dreams just seem to end up getting trampled underfoot.

That said, I’m trying to keep in mind that everywhere looks nicer when you’re a tourist. I mean, I hated Buffalo when I was growing up there—it was boring, it was economically depressed, and there just didn’t seem to be much for anyone with any sort of ambition to do there. Now that I’m older and I’ve seen a little more of the world, it seems a lot nicer. We’ve still got an NFL team (barely), the people are notoriously nice and friendly, and since the housing bust completely missed Western New York because the housing values never went up, everyone my age there is taking advantage of the new federal tax credits and buying houses. Sure, it’s still boring, but sometimes as you get older your priorities change. I mean, for an $80K house and a job at M&T maybe I could give up on Pho, decent Mexican and Major League Baseball…

All this coming from the guy who’s on a plane to Korea. Sheesh.

At any rate, I guess I should be glad that I’ve had the opportunity to take on this amazing job opportunity, as well as travel across the country and say “so long for now” to so many people. So in closing, I hope you’ve all enjoyed my mostly unedited rant, and I’ll see you again as soon as I get some vacation time or they fire me and throw me out of the country for some reason. Maybe I should use the time I’ve got left to start reviewing my scant notes on how to speak and read Korean…

This is what I've been reduced to...

2010-02-12T16:32:00.000-08:00

OK, so actually I took this photo before I had to add one more suitcase because I figured out both my suitcases were at or exceeding the airline weight limit. Better to know you're getting charged for one bag and have some flexibility than end up with two overweight bags at the airport, right? Right? But my point is, I could live out of the trunk of a car right now if I had to. The only keys I have on my right now are for the locks on my suitcases. Kind of a strange feeling.

So, stories from the road... What can I publish now that my family has this blog address...?

I'm happy to report that I believe this is the first cross-country car trip I've ever made that didn't end with a major auto problem or a major storm, or both. The storms on the east coast did slow down my friend I was staying with in Nashville, but I did have an enjoyable evening with her boyfriend that I'd never met before. Seriously, it was fun though. Chicago was good, although I'm a little disappointed we couldn't get in to the hipster metal burger joint that names all of their burgers after metal bands. (I did get to peek in the door... Do they really have whiskey on tap? Is that possible?) The three days I spent in Buffalo were productive, but a few things did end up getting left by the wayside, and it would have been nice if things had been a little less stressful. Hopefully New York will be a little more laid back... and I'll still be able to finish the last few things I need to do before I leave. Like finish the pre-orientations classes. And learn Korean.

Party Saturday night in Astoria--check Mark's Facebook page.

On The Road To Find Out (part 1)

2010-02-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

Writing this from a Motel 6 in Rockwall, TX, just east of Dallas. Good trip so far. Highlights include:

-Getting the hell out of Los Angeles
-Having an excuse to drink coffee and listen to music for twelve hours a day (iPod on "Shuffle by Album" is a nice little trip down memory lane.)
-Visiting Sherwin, Mitch and Amy in Las Cruces
-Getting tagged at 12 MPH over the speed limit in El Paso and getting off with a warning (Thank Christ it was El Paso Police and not the highway patrol. I've heard stories about those guys and anyone with out-of-state plates.)

The last four days in LA were crazy. On one hand, I got to spend some quality time with friends watching Lost, getting dim sum in Arcadia and fighting a Slinkee in the Bradbury building. On the other hand, it took me two more days than I had planned to get out of my apartment and into storage, and I ended up having to make at least two unscheduled trips to storage to retrieve stuff or get rid of stuff that didn't fit in my car. On top of that, I've barely had time to touch EPIK's pre-orientation material (which is apparently due by the first week of class instruction) or the ESL class I signed up for (which is not required but would really help me do a better job at performing this job.)

Had to divert to Dallas instead of Oklahoma City due to the weather. Revised plan for the next few days appears to be: Friday night in Nashville, Saturday lunch in Louisville, Saturday night and Sunday in Chicago, Monday arrival in Buffalo. Still haven't decided exactly what to do about the Albany/New York leg of the trip.

Now, better get on some of those classes...

Want to see what ₩300,000 looks like?

2010-01-28T14:58:00.000-08:00

Don't get too excited, that's only about $280 USD.

If I've learned anything from my music video experience, all I need now is an Ed Hardy hoodie, a white cyc and a rented Lamborghini and I'm on my way to becoming a hip-hop star!

All Tomorrow's Parties

2010-01-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to thank everyone who came to the going away party last night. I believe a good time was had by all. Except for Vikings fans, maybe. But seriously, I'm really lucky to have so many wonderful friends, and I'll miss you all while I'm overseas.

If you picked up one of my business cards with the blog URL and the new phone number on it, I should clarify that, if everything goes down the way AT&T has described it, I'll be keeping my current LA number for trips back home and such. The new number is a Google Voice number. If all goes well I should be able to retrieve your voice mail messages on either number from overseas thanks to the modern miracle of Google Voice.

Oh, and by the way, here's the current status of the Korean Marriage Pool. I think you'll have to get in touch with Zak if you want to participate.

Goodbye, Mr. Blue

2010-01-18T09:48:00.000-08:00

Dropped my pet fish off with a friend last night. Fare thee well, Mr. Blue and Nice Guy Eddie. Hopefully Eric will treat you better than you treated his fish. (Sorry about the loach and the chinese algae eater, Eric...)

Your minutiae, your perks, your perspective, my paperwork

2010-01-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

Took a big step in completing all the paperwork I need to compile for the trip today by applying for my visa at the Korean consulate. Went fairly smoothly, although I did have to buy a new passport-style photo as I forgot to bring one of the spares from my passport application. (The new one was a much better photograph, but not nearly as comically mustachioed as the old one.) Most of the remaining preparations involve buying small electronics (what can I say, I'm a gadget junkie) and generally packing up to get out of LA. Oh, and I broke down and bought the shirt. Hope it shows up in time for the going away party (rescheduled to Sunday the 24th, by the way).

Saturday night I went to a party held by a friend of mine to celebrate his wife finally arriving permanently in LA. (She's from the Czech Republic and the move has been held up by visa problems for something like three years. Sure hope an E-2 visa to Korea is a little easier to acquire...) Thought it was ironic and kind of sad that the time between her arrival and my departure is only a couple of weeks. Saw a lot of friends I haven't seen in a while, including some that just recently moved here. I'm starting to feel a little bit like Shia Lebouf at the beginning of "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints," when he's confessing to how he abandoned all his closest friends when he left Astoria. (Of course anyone who's watched the movie knows that he did it in an effort to get away from dead-end poverty and getting shot by the Puerto Rican hoods in his neighborhood, but I digress.) I guess the downside of living, traveling, blessing, adventuring and not being sorry is that you always miss someone somewhere...

The Last Picture Show

2010-01-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

So after a holiday visit to Western New York I'm back in LA and working as best boy grip on another low-budget feature. So far it's been pretty typical of your 2-3 week shooting schedule type affair. To review: Day 1 - the sprinklers went off on the HMIs. Day 2 - not as bad as Day 1. I have to say, after three and a half years of working on 95% low budget crap in LA, and still encountering the same people on those jobs three and a half years later (meaning they haven't moved on to bigger and better things either), I have very few regrets about moving on to something different for a while.

So here's the rough schedule for how this going away to Korea thing is going to work:

January 23rd: Just-announced going away BBQ (check your Facebook invites)
January 31st: Vacate apartment, move onto someone's couch for a couple days
February 2nd: Ong Bak 2 on DVD
February 3rd: Begin World Tour in Las Cruces, NM
February 4th: World Tour - Oklahoma City, OK
February 5th: World Tour - TBD (probably Nashville or Louisville or Chicago via St. Louis)
February 6th: World Tour - Chicago (possible stopover in Louisville)
February 8th: World Tour - Buffalo, NY
February 12th: World Tour - New York, NY
February 13th: Blaggard's Day/Mitch Fowler's Birthday/Henry Rollins's Birthday
February 15th: Depart New York, brief stopover in Los Angeles
February 17th: Arrive in Incheon, Republic of Korea

Episode 1: It's Official

2009-12-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

So I just got the news this morning via email...

"Subj: It's Official!

Congratulations! You both have been placed in Gyeongbuk starting from the March 2010 semester. We expect to start sending out our contracts in the next month, and when we do, I'll send you a longer email with some more information about arrival and visas.
For now, you should congratulate yourself on a job well done!"

To take all you newcomers back a step... For the past three and a half years I've been working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, mostly doing lighting with some office work on the side. I've also been steadily losing money working in the entertainment industry in LA for the past 3 1/2 years due to a combination of economics, changes in technology and a general lack of good fortune. In short, it's a rotten time to be crewing films in LA if you're not established in the business and you've got bills to pay. A little over a year ago, when the economy went down the shitter (thank you shortsighted American greed and George W. Fucking Bush) I decided that I'd better pursue some new career options and a full time job. To diversify my job skills I started taking accounting classes through UCLA Extension. As for the full time job, I started sending out resumes to a lot of accounting clerk positions, but no one seemed to be willing to hire someone with little to no experience in accounting.

For a long time I've been wanting to travel overseas, but I've never had the time or money to do it. I've also had this wild-eyed idea that I might want to teach some day. My dad and probably half of my family on his side work in education, and while none of them ever made it sound like teaching is a walk in the park, I guess it's in my blood to some extent. (Granted, I always pictured myself teaching film at a university, but I digress.) While searching for jobs, I had come across several listings for jobs teaching English in East and Southeast Asia, especially Korea. (When I say "Korea" I of course mean South Korea. Considering that Westerners almost never set foot in the PDRK, I don't see a lot of reason to make the distinction.) That summer, I happened to run into a company recruiting for the Korean government's national teaching program for native speakers of English in Korea. Their rep informed me that, because I have a master's degree, I would be well qualified to apply for the program. I figured, what the hey, why not, what do I have to lose?

My attempt to apply for the Fall 2009 semester was... a disaster. I'll save the whole story for another post, but for now it'll suffice to say that EPIK (English Program in Korea) is no longer using the services of that recruiter.

I'm very happy that, after this round of gathering paperwork and standing in lines in government offices, it looks like I'll finally be heading off to somewhere in Gyeongsangbuk-do (that's a province in eastern Korea, it's the north half of what was at one time Gyongsang province from what I'm told) to teach Korean youths of an as-of-yet to be determined age a few things about how to speak American. I will also fight the urge to title Lesson 1 "Learn Chinese Instead." I suppose the English-speaking world still has the vast majority of the world's best universities, so English will still be a valuable skill for some time to come. You know, the same way people still study Latin for some reason.

So a couple notes about the blog: the name is, of course, adapted from the classic album and song by S.O.D. Hopefully everyone will overlook the somewhat racist connotations of the source material and see the humor in the title. I've been revisiting my metal roots lately, and at some point it popped into my head how funny it would be to me if I stepped off the plane to teach English in a foreign country sporting an S.O.D. "Speak English Or Die!" tee. And by funny I of course mean grossly inappropriate.

The name you see above is a sloppy attempt to translate "Mr. Blond" into Korean. I'm sure I'll figure out it's a meaningless grammatical mess as soon as I actually learn Korean. (I've got about 60% on the alphabet down and I have a book and collection of CDs on the subject from my local library so hopefully I'll get it figured out soon.) I'm trying to keep the blog vaguely anonymous, mainly because A) I'm intensely paranoid, in case you hadn't noticed and B) since I'm working for a program run by a foreign government, I figure I'd better keep a low profile, since I'd hate to end up losing my job because some salaryman in a government office doesn't appreciate my sense of humor. I don't plan on posting anything inappropriate, and I do plan to be on my absolute best behavior while I'm a guest in another country teaching other people's kids, but... you know how it is, some people just don't appreciate the comedic side of Stormtroopers of Death.

Woo, it's Christmas Eve and I've finally got a job! Time to go get a giant hamburger while I still can.