Yesterday was my one-year anniversary of coming to Korea. My original plan was to be on a jet home right around today. All in good time.
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August
The ride brochure was just too tempting. I had to go to Lotte World, Korea's Disneyland. It's an indoor and outdoor complex, the indoor section being one of the largest indoor theme parks in the world. They even had (not pictured) a full loop-to-loop roller coaster inside, which I rode. It was the first real roller coaster I've ever been on, and it was fun but also nauseating. They also hold periodic parades and dance shows. For the second of the three cool things I'd planned for thie month's vacation time, I went with my girlfriend to Jirisan National PArk for a camping/hiking trip. The original plan was for 5 or 6 days, the first two or 3 with my girlfriend, and the remainder on my own hiking across the mountains in the park. The latter got rained out, but we still managed to get in our camping, and I did one good day-hike to the top of the park's eastern peak. When I reached the top, I was surrounded by tourists who came up via a road I didn't really know...
"Eternal happiness for a dollar? Hmmmm... I'd rather keep the dollar." - Mr. Burns - While entering a national park to go for a hike, I saw an older western lady haggling with a vendor over a couple of hiking poles. She was ruthless, catty, suspicious... really the ultimate haggler. I thought, I'm sure if we both went to the same markets and stores here in Korea and bought the same crap, she'd come out having spent less money by a good measure. But then, I don't think I'd come out any less satisfied with the purchases and overall experience. In fact, I find the more worried I am about pinching pennies here and there, the less happy I am when I actually hand over the money. And people say I'll get ripped off that way. If I travel to poor countries and buy stuff, I'll get a bad price, I'll get taken advantage of, I'll be made a fool. Ok, so be it. If others want to scrimp and save instead of giving a few extra bucks out to vendors in imp...
For more than a few years as a child, I was bent on becoming some sort of a field geologist. I had (and still have) an impressive collection of rocks and fossils; I spent the lion's share of my allowance many weeks on that rock store near Mayfair mall. I loved the rock and crystal store in Sidney too. I could (and still can) identify quite a few more kinds of stones and gemstones than most people. These days the notion of being a geologist is baffling to me. It's not up my alley in any way. I also remember, as a 13 year old, reading WW2 books to no end. There was never a career in mind, but I learned a load about that war, particularly about the battles and weapons and machines. As I read those WW2 books, I listened to classical music. Classical music was my genre from day one. That, and the B52's for some crazy reason. I can't say how many times I've heard Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto, but I still fall in love with it every time. My dream was, a...
Well, my big hike got rained out. We (girlfriend and I) managed to get in a couple of nights at Jirisan National Park, one camping and the other at a nice little pension. I also managed to take a day-hike up to Nogodan peak at the west side of the park (this was intended to be my kickoff for the trek across) and back down. There are some nice pictures that I'll post. But as it happens, the typhoon that just had its way with China moved north and is now dumping all kinds of rain on Korea. I thought about whether to just do the hike in the rain, because I really don't mind rain that much, but two reasons stopped me; first, I didn't have my shoe spikes for that kind of hiking weather, and second, there'd be no good view of anything because the ridge path is right up there in the rainclouds, giving the appearance of plain old fog all the way. Anyway, the hike is being re-scheduled for winter after my contract is up. I'll get those pictures up soon enough.
I was watching a Discovery Channel show about how they make perfectly smooth telescope lenses for observatories, and as it turns out there is a technology like sand blasting, but instead of sand they use individual atoms. They didn't explain how this device actually functions, but they proved it darn well buy taking a single hair from the show host, putting it under an electron microscope, and proceeding to inscribe his name into the hair width-wise, quite neatly at that. The first thought that hit my mind was that this sort of technology is only possible thanks to a massive division lf labour in industrialized workforces. Renissaince men aren't really around much these days, because technologies are so well-developed that to be innovative in any one field tends to require years upon years of training in that specific field. In fact most of our famous recent technological leaps (e.g. steel, steam engines, aviation, combustion engines, computer chips, lightbulbs), weren't at...
Personal post; please skip if you're not interested in the mundane details of my life.
I tell ya, teaching English in Korea does have one perk: Korea is mighty close to lots of other great travel destinations. For less than 400 bucks, I've booked a round trip flight to Beijing and 6 nights at a well-reviewed hostel that is right downtown near the Forbidden City. That's breakfast included! See, I've got some serious travel plans stewing up for January/February/March, and it's time now to get in a bit of practice going it alone. But then, it's not really "alone," is it? My girlfriend said to me as I made the plan "...but you'll be all alone in China for a week!", to which I replied "Well, there are 1.3 billion people there." Oh god, I just quoted myself. Apologies. Never again. Anyway, that's happening on the 15th. For the rest of my August vacation I have planned this: one week of relaxing and working on my Korean ( Rosetta Stone is such a stellar program, I actually feel bad for downloading it illegally), ...
A couple of months ago I deleted over 200 people from my facebook friend list, leaving only people who I think represent my real-life family and social circle. I invited everyone I know to follow in my footsteps. Well, a few people said it was a good idea, but nobody seemed to follow. Anyway, my next big move, which I hope everybody emulates, is this: I have completely stopped looking at the comment sections of every website I visit, excepting only the blogs of people I know, and this site of course. This applies especially to youtube. Honestly, I can't read youtube comments for more than 30 seconds without losing a few IQ points strait up. It's like watching Flavor of Love in terms of eroding a viewer's higher functions.
This is the latest hit single from what I believe is the most popular music group in Korea. K-Pop at its very best, it is. It's kindof catchy, and it'll give you a whole new definition of 'skinny' in celebrity culture. Western pop stars look like a bunch of manatees compared to "Girls Generation." Enjoy.
TOM
I've written about Tom before; he's the receptionist/liason/general stuff guy at the BCM office. But here at Hwarang Elementary, there's a constant and raging debate as to whether Tom is a good guy, and as to whether we should or should not like and/or respect him. Jordan and I (and Ty, but he doesn't work at Hwarang; only at the BCM office) like Tom; we think he's a bit of a mopey sad sack, but that in the end he's a generally good guy who can be relied upon to get the job done. He's taken Jordan to the hospital, and helped me with several random affairs relating to my visa, banking, learning to work the water heater at my apartment, and online shopping the Korean websites. He even came out with the three of us once and stood by watchfully as we got completely drunk and stumbled around the neighbourhood karaoke bars. The other foreign teachers here really, really dislike the guy. It's 7 to 2 here against Tom at the lunch table discussion. My cowor...
How far would you say is the peak from my vantage point in the below picture? Well, the sign thinks it's a little more than 300m. The signs are totally useless when I go hiking, because they only tell you how far something is if you were getting there by way of helicopter. Sometimes it takes me an hour to go 0.5k because it's all just twists and turns and stairs and rocks to climb. My part of town (it's a big city, and you can only see about a quarter of it here on account of the pollution). For Victoria readers, each one of the apartments in this photo is about the size of View Towers on Fort Street (that giant grey monstrosity, you know the one). When people move into condos, they don't bother with the elevators. All the buildings are pretty much the same, with large deck doors, so there is a huge market for these lift companies that run around town all day helping people move in and out of their apartments. Believe it or not, the service is only about 50 bucks, for o...