I found a dog soup restaurant just a moment's walk from my house. I'm going to give it a try in the near future, you know, just so I can say I did. Apparently in korea they only use a particular non-pet breed of dog, in order to maintain a healthy psychological disconnect for patrons many of whom own dogs for pets back home. I think people do a lot of stuff so they can add the experience to the list of 'things they've done' in conversation for years to come, rather than for the experience itself. Not so much overtly, but I think it's a motivation for many people's decisions, especially when it comes to travel. I've been here for 9 months now (past the half-way point of a 16-month stint), and it feels so dramatically different every month from the last, in terms of how I see the culture. I can remember the sense of Seoul I had in September, even in October and into the winter, and it was so different and heavily informed by my life in Victoria. T...
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The ex-president's funeral is today here in Seoul. This last week will have it's own chapter in Korean history books for hundreds of years to come, what with this death, and with NK blowing up its nuclear weapon as well as renouncing its armistance treaties about military buildup. Anyway, The ex-president's death got me thinking about just how awkward a funeral would be if the deceased killed him or herself. I've been to 5 or 6 funerals in my life, and when it came to the people who lived fully and died old (my paternal grandmother for example), the atmosphere did have in it a combination of sorrow and happy reminiscence. There is a certain sense of celebration; the little jokes came more easily and the tears felt more natural. The one funeral I went to where the person died at a younger age and by her own doing was a different affair. It was like it was the wrong time to have a funeral, almost as though she was still alive. Such is the same feeling at a funeral where...
South Korea is reeling... just the day before yesterday the ex-president ('02-'08) killed himself via a cliff, and now today North Korea is exploding another nuclear weapon. Holy crap. In other news, I love brushing my teeth at work. Everyone here does it, and I thought they were all nuts until one day I brought my toothbrush in and tried after lunch. It's so refreshing!
I told my girlfriend I could make a working hot air balloon, and she said she had absolutely no faith in that statement. So, being the competitive guy that I am, I bet her 5000WON (5 bucks) that I could do it in one evening using nothing but candles, parchment paper, straws, and some tape and glue. Four hours (and a bottle of soju) later, she stands next to me on my balcony watching as I triumphantly light the candles, only to see my creation sit there on the ground like a rock for a minute, then catch on fire. Good times.
If I were to begin to think that, while my job is good, I could make a lot more money with a little risk involved, I'd hatch a plan... it would be a plan to pay nearby apartment managers a small fee in order to post advertizements on their resident bulletin boards for piano lessons taught in native English. But that would be a slightly risky plan because if one of those residents happens to be a high-level immigration worker having a bad day, he or she might do some investigating and boot my ass back to Canada. That would be extremely unlikely though. But, it would also be a very lucrative plan, in theory, because piano lessons are all the rage and native-english-speaker lessons are too; logically, parents would pay good coin for the two-in-one deal. Not that I'd ever go through with that plan :)
I watched "Waiting." It's a comedy from a couple years ago about a bunch of restaurant workers. Honestly, it's not a good movie at all with the exception of some funny moments, but I'd recommend it to anyone who has spent more than a few months in the restaurant industry. I don't know how they managed to hit the nail so dead-on with the personalities of the characters and the dynamic of the job, but they did. The best jokes and themes are only fully understandable to the diner-style restaurant employee.
During some free time this morning, I tried to name all the states in the USA. I got to 34. I'm not going to get any help until I have at least 40. It's weird, I know that the name of every state is in my memory somewhere, in the sense that if someone said one of the ones I can't think of, I'd say "On yeaaa, that one." So it's just a matter of getting access to the memories. I think this simple example is a compelling proof that our sense of identity as a singularity is wrong; that it is some sort of illusion.
Dear Discovery Channel, Here in South Korea, you have a captive audience among westerners because it's the only channel with consistent English-language programming. But over the years I've slowly become more and more disappointed with the kind of material you are producing and putting on air. I remember many years ago that Discovery had real nature shows, and real science shows, about interesting and informative stuff. But these days the shows are less and less about discovering new information and ideas, and more about mimicking the human dramas and fiery explosions that all the other major networks push. If I want to watch a reality show about people arguing and bitching, I turn to Survivor, or Top Model, or whatever else. I used to turn to Discovery when I wanted a break from all that; Discovery was a welcome refreshment that marched to a different beat. But you're ruining it, slowly and surely. And when you do have interesting content, you seem to assume the only way t...
I've seen more domestic turbulence here in the last eight months than in the rest of my life combined. Last night I went to sleep at four on account of fighting neighbours. And this morning as I left for work the tenants below me were yelling at each other. My god, how can people fight at 7:00 A.M.?!? I can barely get out of bed, let alone muster up any kind of emotional outrage. Before about 9:30 (when my coffee kicks in), my attitude is a dreary, dark-eyed "whatever" to absolutely anything and everything people have to say for themselves.
kids
Kids are a freakin mystery sometimes. I have these stickers and Canadian pennies as prizes for good behaviour, and all the kids have wanted lately is my alcohol-based hand sanitizer, because it feels cool and a bit tingly when you rub it on your hands. And I happily indulge them, because it means a dirt-cheap reward that keeps their disgusting hands somewhat cleaner. The great thing is, if you make somehing hard to get, no matter how small or cheap the thing is, the kids go nuts in competition for it. I could make an old piece of string the grand prize, and they'd covet the thing like it was solid gold so long as I say there's only one and only the best kid can have it. ------ So in August I've decided tentatively to take a trip to some country nearby (SE Asia is a LOT cheaper to fly to from Seoul than it is from Canada). I'm choosing between Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, or even China somewhere. It would be for a few weeks as I have the whole month...
Why is it that companies on the internet are allowed to just lie to people? All those spam emails and pop-up ads... are they legal? Imagine if other places worked that way, like grocery stores for example... imagine if every food company was allowed to just lie flat-out about nutrition information ("sugar-free ice cream!") ("packed with all your daily vitamins and minerals!"), or offer free prizes ("guaranteed gold nugget inside THIS box!") in the packages that are never there. It would be chaos! I know food companies lie by ommision, or try to imply their way to misleading people with little semantic games ("made with 100% juice!" - note 'with'), but it's not even in the same league as my junk mail inbox. Someone needs to do something about this internet.
We'll begin with St. Patrick's day. A celebration was held in Hyehwa (a part of Seoul) attended mostly by westerners. Oh how I don't miss loud drunk westerners. Still it was a good time, and they had free guinness as well as irish dancing. I rarely get drunk. This was last month, just moments before my very first haircut in Korea. I wanted to take a picture to give to future hair dressers should the haircut go horribly wrong: My favorite restaurant, a buffet: What's that? A cotton candy machine mounted to a motorcycle? What a brilliant invention. The guy literally drives around town like the ice cream man and makes cotton candy on the spot: My regular hiking path, near the apartment. This is part of the lowest section near a large temple. I've seen more hilarious signs than I can count, and just recently I've decided to start taking photographs of them as often as possible. My hope is to make an album solely of funny signs for my kids to see someday. Two aw...
Shit gets done fast in this city. About two weeks ago I walked to a nearby convenience store for some ice cream. Then, not 4 days later I was walking by and it was a bbq restaurant, full of customers. The place was completely different, with a new sign and furniture and walls and everything. It happened so quickly that I wondered whether I had lost my bearings and was on the wrong block (the whole neighbourhood looks the same).
One thing that Korea has in common with Canada is that if you stay up late enough, you can watch nudity on regular cable. But here's the interesting part: while Canada has badly-acted drama movies with nudity, Korea has comedies (also badly-acted). Korean late-night sex comedies are hard to describe, but the most common gag involves a beautiful woman on her back being thoroughly un satisfied by a goofy-looking man, who in turn is straining himself hilariously. It's good watching.
I had a dream last night that I was an artist. My method was to rummage around the dumpsters of university campus art buildings, and make billboard-sized collages of all the rough drafts and unfinished ideas of the students. The collages were two and three-dimensional, mixing paintings with sculpted limbs and twisted metal all at once. The artistic 'idea' was to present the unintended conclusions that aspiring artists came to before rejecting them, as a collective, to the public.
I tried a new teaching idea today with my best grade two group as well as my best grade five group: not talking at all . I didn't utter a single word, or write anything on the board that wasn't first suggested by a student, for the entire classes. I didn't even tell them what my plan was when it started. And it worked wonderfully. Working only with my hand gestures and nodding and head shaking as responses, the kids had to work together to decipher the lesson plan, in english, and then follow the steps. They read a textbook dialogue in pairs, expanded vocabulary on the board, and practiced writing sentences that describe people (clothes, hair, etc...). We even marked old homework and assigned new homework. Kids mimic behaviour of their authority figures. The louder I'm willing to be when I tell them to quiet down, the louder they think they can talk before I stop them. In today's classes, hardly a word was uttered other than what was necessary to advance the l...
As of today I'm going back to being a vegetarian. By now I've tried in excess just about everything Korea has to offer traditional-food-wise, and as much as I love it all, it's time to revert to a less consumptive lifestyle. Exceptions will include only large gatherings where meat is the dish served, as well as seafood when I happen to be out for dinner (there really aren't many, if any, truly vegetarian dishes at restaurants). Vegarianism isn't a matter of absolute principle for me, but a matter of measured principle; that is, "the less meat the better" would be the maxim by which I eat. The other reason is that I can't for the life of me lose weight with all this food... cheap restaurants, all-you-can-eat lunches every day... all the hiking and strength training I do is to no effect! Anyway, I'm going cold turkey today (so to speak). Wish me luck.
I really enjoy youtube. It's a great site with a great philosophy. Just yesterday the youtube collaborative symphony orchestra got together - musicians from around the world - to play at Carnegie Hall! There's only one thing I'd like changed about the site. I want the option of disabling comments on video pages. That is, I don't want to see the comments for videos, especially videos concerning politics, religion, or anything else that seems to bring out the stupid in people on the internet. People who want to write and read comments should be welcome, and people who want nothing to do with them should have the option.
I've never really had a steady 9-5 job before, until now here in Korea. All my past jobs have been either part-time or have been scheduled for unusual hours. Now that I'm part of the standard workforce, I have a question for all the other people who've been in it a long time: When in God's name do you go to the bank? I've needed to do it for, like, a month now.