The world's last non-porn website

I bought a cell today. It's to the point now where a cell is cheaper than a land line for people who don't talk on the phone much. My goal of dying of old age cell-phone-less has itself died, and so be it. I made it until the good year of 2010 (and Korea doesn't count, because land lines don't even appear to exist there anymore). Speaking of South Korea, it's quite something to see how far behind Canada lags in terms of its mobile technology and reception. My phone doesn't even have a touchscreen! Pfft. By Korean 2010 standards, I might as well be chiseling my texts onto stone tablets and strapping them to the back of a dinosaur.

My Grandmother, and current host, is an absolute hoot to talk to sometimes, amid the lengthy discussions about life, love, work, and philosophy that we have regularly. "I don't know much about rappers. Their pants always seem to be falling off."

I've been terribly behind on this site... there are many pictures to post but the fact is that, unlike facebook, blogger.com requires much more time and effort on the part of the user to resize, upload, and format them. All in good time. I am once again destroyed by jetlag. I've flown on no less than 12 different planes since I left for Korea 17 months ago, and that has been more than plenty. I even know which of my belt buckles set off airport metal detectors and which don't. I learned quickly that, at Seoul's airport, one can get a rather thorough frisking from one of the their unusually attractive security ladies (who you'd think were flight attendants by dress and smile) if one chooses to wear the right belt buckle through the metal detector. Hypothetically, that is. Back in Vancouver, I found that I could take a new skytrain line part-way to the ferry terminal. A security fellow, in response to a question about the new line, mentioned offhand that it had been c...

On the Trip I might as well publish the story here. Apologies in advance for the lack of photos; they will have to wait until I can access a computer which allows me to use USB, because hostel computers don´t. The trip has been, basically, cancelled. After a week in Madrid and a few days in Barcelona, I´ve realized that this isn´t the time for such a vacation... I´ve been feeling terribly homesick, partly because it´s been over 16 months since I´ve been home, and also because I just left my second and more recent home, Korea. I thought, while leaving, that I´d feel more ¨at home¨ going to western Europe, but it had the opposite effect... I´ve felt disconnected fully on both fronts, and sad for not having either of the homes or sets of routines that I´ve become accustomed to over the years. I had these intrepid ideas in my mind, of traveling to remote places, spending each night with new faces, and generally going rogue through Europe... but now that I´m here I just miss the people I...

Times have been good. I´m working on posting photos, but the hostel computers have time limits and typically don´t like people plugging in their USB cables. All in good time. I hope everyone is well back home, back in Korea, and back wherever else you all are! I tell ya, the wealthy demographics in the world are so spread apart, they go just about everywhere to travel and study and meet lovers and do everything else! Would we be so inclined to live this way if it weren´t for the close contact kept thanks to the internet? Madrid was great. I think the best part was staring ito Bosch´s ¨Garden of Earthly Delights¨at the Prado. Great stuff. Today Em and I may also hit up Barcelona´s picasso museum!

The culture shock even during this first day has been bewildering, confusing, and tiring. I've spoken Korean thank yous to a number of shop keepers, and I keep passing things and accepting things with both hands, Korean style. Everything is different, the buildings, the people, the sounds, even the smell of things. I'm tired, and frankly lonely and sad, missing what feels like two separate homes and emotional connections on opposite sides of the world at the same time. The hostel is nice, albeit smokey and full of people my age with drinking and drug stories to which I simply cannot relate. God help me I just don't binge or pass out or fight or deprive myself of sleep or make any of these stories that get passed around the bar table by my generation. On the upside, I can speak more Spanish than I previously thought. Somehow, those dozens of hours doodling on my desk in the back of Ms. Ciccone's class through high school weren't a complete waste. Looking back, ...

I'm going to Madrid on Saturday, after 16 months in Seoul, South Korea. It's been a good time here in just about every way. I'll be home in Victoria around the end of March, after a bit of touring through Europe, India, and possibly Thailand. Wish me luck, and I'll be home soon! I'm packing the computer now, so the next post will likely be from Spain.

I saw Avatar. It was very good. Some may like the plot and characters, and some will not. I think it depends on whether you've already seen films like Dances with Wolves, and Pocahontas, because if you have, you've already seen the plot of Avatar. The script was thin and stretched a bit too far. The visuals however, are more than worth it. Once you're settled in and enjoying Pandora, you'll be willing to forgive and forget any script problems. That movie officially crosses the line in my mind of knowing how movies are made. Until Avatar, I could see how shots were constructed and how CG is used to suppliment the sets and characters. But Avatar just doesn't make sense anymore... the digital and physical realities are so blended that there's little way to intuitively separate the two. I think this is what people mean when they say Avatar is some sort of revolutionary film. Today was my last day of work. It was a bit sad, but only a bit. I think I'll genuinely...

And winding up! My time in Korea is down to a mere 12 days. Four of then will be spent working, three on a hiking trip, one is Christmas, and the remainder will be spent organizing and preparing and seeing various people and buffets off for the last time. I'm saving a large number of pictures to be made into an entry about life here, as well as some extra to be posted after I get home. But for your pleasure, here's a photo of delicious, delicious pig feet (in the middle): Do not be alarmed. In all fairness, you probably eat just as many pig feet as Koreans do, only in the form of hot dogs and luncheon meat.

Over the last few days I've spent several hours (and there are more to come) organizing, filing, and purging my email inbox. It's painstaking, because there are all kinds of attachments and photos and valuable letters worth keeping, so I need to look at most things before they are deleted. And here's the thing: I can see an entire relationship run its course simply through emails. In the start, they're kind, friendly, helpful, and generally written with a sense of reaching out one's hands out to the other. As time passes, the emails become more practical, simply setting plans and occasionally bickering. Soon, we started to pick little fights and respond passive-aggressively. Eventually, the writings are consumed by issues and problems and over-reactions to words and events that, at the beginning, would have been utterly forgettable. Finally, there are the post-breakup emails, where both parties try to make some sort of amends, in the "we were both wrong, s...

Imagine you're a tall man. You're 6'3, well built, and very handsome. You're in the prime of your life and career. You are obscenely rich, worth somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars. You are a professional sports athlete, among the most famous, recognizable and ground-breaking athlets on the planet. You're a married man, but you spend much of the year travelling around the world on the professional circuit, staying in classiest of hotels and getting sports massages, while amassing seven-figure paychecks for tournaments and product placements. There are literally millions upon millions of beautiful women who would have you for a night or a lifetime without one moment's hesitation. I'm not saying he should have done it, or that he couldn't have helped it, but I do understand.

Google's been under fire for "posting" unpleasant things at the top of it's search results. Last week it was anti-semitic websites at the top of the list for the search term "Jew," and just this week it was a doctored image of Michelle Obama (to make her look like a monkey) as the first result for an image search of her name. First, people may as well stop being offended by things on the internet. It's a free medium, and many of its users are accessing it while in a private setting. Unconventional content is a norm, and understandably so; the internet doesn't have the compelling behavioral pressures of a social community, and its content reflects that. Second, it's not google's fault. I don't know what their search algorithms are (and they would baffle me anyway if I did), but they're just giving you the results. Google, not unlike a binocular company, isn't promising that you'll like what you see, it's merely trying to gi...

Manliness of main character (10 points) Camera work and production values (10 points) Usefulness of survival advice (10 points) Overall realism of show (20 points). Category 1: Manliness of main character Stroud comes out strong in the manliness department because in his show, he's in the wild for a full week rather than a mere 48 hours. He's also alone with no crew, making the ordeal that much more difficult. Grylls, on the other hand, is much more daring and balsy when it comes to what he decides to do on the show. He goes out of his way to eat absurdly disgusting foods, ascend and descend absurdly dangerous cliffs, and he also makes sure to involve large dead mammals as food and/or clothing in most of his episodes; a manly decision there is no greater. Digging deeper into their pre-show lives, we find that Grylls pulls ahead for manliness. According to Wikipedia, he's paramotored over the Himalayas (I don't know what that means but it soun...

Well, inspite of being a bit ill this weekend, I made it to the dentist for a checkup and cleaning. Only 60 bucks, x-ray included for good measure. I think the reason people hate the dentist is all the very small metal things... some are just a little bit too pointy, some a little bit too scrapey, and some spin around at uncomfortably fast speeds. And all of them go into your mouth. I know it's not a torture chamber, but if I wanted to own and operate a torture chamber, I'd just buy a dental office and add some straps to the chairs. It'd be a turnkey operation. And the good news is, the dental hygene streak continues! Looks like I'll make it to 25 without a single cavity. Brush and floss daily, kids. It'll save you a ton of money in the long run.

I think that I've lived in more places (I mean to say apartments/houses) than most people my age. Since I left home at the age of 21, it's been six. If you include my living spaces before that (my parents lived separately; they both moved around a fair bit and I was with my father on weekends/summers), you can add seven or eight more to the list. One thing that never fails to surprise me is that, when I move from one place to the next, I always have more stuff than I thought I did. You think it's going to be one car-load, maybe two. Then it's four. Things just tend to fill up boxes faster than you expect them to. One blanket and a couple of pillows; that's a box right there. A few books and a blender; there's the next box. Add to that your computer desk and modest CD collection, and the borrowed van is full already. But the older I got, the fewer things I wished to accompany me to the next apartment. Every time I moved, I moved fewer things and gave up mo...

Well, third time's the charm. My hike got rained out yet again... I was ready for a bit of the wet stuff, but then it started to pour down like Noah himself was ready to set sail on the morning of my departure from the park's nearby town. The town is called Gurye, and what I'm writing here now about it will probably contain more detail than any other (English) source you can find online. I ended up staying in Gurye for three days on account of my cancelled trip, and it was a pleasant time; the town had a few stories to tell, which added a silver lining to the disappointment of not being able to hike. When I first arrived early Friday afternoon, the weather was wonderful, and I hoped dearly that it would stick. The view from the motel window, facing Jirisan National Park But, it did not. It turned on Saturday, so I postponed the hike until Sunday morning. Come sunday it was even worse, so I stayed in town snapping photos and trying to have a good time amid the on-and-off ra...

Well, I'm off to Jirisan, for take two. There are clouds in the sky, but I'm taking my shot anyway... loosely prepared for rain this time. I'm hoping, it being november now, that it might just be cold enough to snow instead of rain up on the ridge (5000ft) where my hike takes place. I'll be back on tuesday with photos. I'd like to give a shout-out to the swine flu outbreak and my school's alarmist policies, for making this 4-day trip possible. Additionally, here's an article for your reading pleasure while I'm away. I promise, it's pretty funny. Cracked is kindof my guilty pleasure in Korea, and this article is a good one. http://www.cracked.com/article/139_5-ridiculous-ancient-beliefs-that-thrive-internet/

Lately I've been having dreams nearly every night. Long ones... memorable ones. Last night I had a dream that I was near death, and chose to have my body frozen on the hopes that future technology could revive me and regenerate dead tissue. So, along came the future, and suddenly I "woke up" inside a clone of myself. Scientists explained to the clone that they'd used brain matter too make him, and duplicated hard-wired memory patterns to make the clone feel as though he was the same person. The thing was, somewhere in the process, the original "me" got transferred into the new body, but I was only able to experience the physical senses that the new body was experiencing. I wasn't able to have "his" emotions, or speak, control the body in any way. I could only think, listen, see, etc... as though the brain were supporting two separate inner "I's" and one of them was a mere observer. It was strange and melancholic as I watched...

It seems an unspoken maxim that you haven't really partied in Seoul unless you've partied until the subways start running again in the morning. See the thing is, most of the residential areas are a very expensive cab ride away from the clubbing districts, so on a night out one must choose between taking the late train around 11:30, emptying every pocket for a cab, or taking the morning train at 6AM. And the choice really is a difficult one, because unlike in Canada, Korea has no (enforced) laws regarding liquor service and venue closure limitations. Popular joints just stay open until the sun breaks and people clear out on their own. Anyway, I figured I should have at it at least once. And it was an alright time. Apparently I'm a good dancer (that's an opinion from two real no-foolin' females, though one of them might have been saying "I like your red vest" instead of "I like your dancing"), and our social gang got up the pace at a club for a sol...