The Other

I wrote a poem, which is the first one in over three months. There used to be a time when I'd write at least a poem a day. I wonder what happened to all that creativity. Anyway, about this poem, I was walking home and it was drizzling, sightly chilly, and I met a man walking the other way. That small incident got me thinking and before I got home I had this poem. The rhythm is at times halting, but this is how I would walk if this realization dawned on me while walking home. As narcissistic as I am, I'd appreciate your comments and criticism on this.

The Other

Two travelers if they be called
Converged upon a yellow walk,
Twas brownish viewed within the day
But yellow lamps made it to match their hue.

The Other's shoes was all the Other one espied
For umbrellas did block their view
'gainst cold and wind and rain and dark
And carried each to hearth and home.

And in passing each decried
How like and like their feet were built,
And how their gaits were matched so well
As the pants that atop their shoes did sit.

The night, it had been filled
With wine and merrymaking,
But when the Other left he left his
Mistress sitting, smiling upon her bed.

And as the Other traveled, traveled with a smile
He thought about his wife to whom he tarried,
Who at that selfsame moment sitting upon her bed
Wore nary save a smile.

The Happiest Place in Korea

Grace and some friends decided last-minute to go to Everland, Korea's version of Disneyland or maybe Six Flags, on Saturday night and invited me along. We got there shortly after 7pm and the big attraction, T Express (which goes 140km/hr, or 79mi/hr) closes at 8, and I'm not at all sure why we didn't immediately go there but of course when we did eventually get there it was closed. I think the group didn't know it closed. Anywho, went on a couple of vomit-inducing rides (I was going to describe them but then realized how incredibly hard it is to describe rides), and ate some vomit-inducing food (not really, but I couldn't resist the pun). I told all my students today that I went to Everland on Saturday and they were all angry at me, and then I followed up my news with a test, so they really hated me today, mwahahaha! Ah, the joys of crushing the joys of children...

So my boss reminded me that one of the kids I taught last semester always comes to class in his hopkido clothes, so I asked me where his dojo was. He told me it's near Ori station, which is one subway stop from me, so I'm going to go there some morning this week, if I get up early, and try to find it, or I'll just go Saturday.

Wonderful news: I met a girl who is interested in me, and I share the feeling. One major drawback, however, is that she spends a LOT of time on Saturday and Sunday at church. She wants me to go to all her stuff, but it's in Korean so in refusing it looks like I'm a heathen (which I am, but that's not the point). Her English isn't great, but it seems like it's just rusty from disuse because from Saturday evening when I met her, to Sunday night when we said goodbye, her English had already improved. She's an EMT here, so we can share some stories about nursing and stuff. It's also funny the English she knows from being an EMT, like she knows what a laceration is, but not a scratch, haha. I explained it to her this way: laceration->cut->scratch.

[Insert Clever Title Here]

I bought a bicycle! It's certainly nothing special, it cost about $65 used, but it's a bicycle. I've ridden it around a little bit and it makes it much more convenient to travel to the 24-hour place up the street to eat. I found a halfpipe and I played around on it a little bit. I had never ridden a bike on a halfpipe and it was pretty scary. I didn't even ride to the top, which was no more than 5 feet, but I did start to get a feel for how to do it. I may keep playing around on it, I don't know.

The other exciting thing to note is that I organized a teacher get-together last night. 9 of us went out to dinner after work. More would have come but they had phone calls to make before the end of the month, which is rapidly approaching. I plan to make it a weekly thing. At first we went to a Korean barbecue place and had soju (the Korean rice liquor stuff). One or two left at this point, but we did play a lot of drinking games until the place closed down. Then we went to a karaoke place for an hour, where we drank more soju. Then we went to our favorite bar, which was closed, and then on to a seafood place that was still open, where we drank more soju. By 4am there was just 5 of us left, and we all went home in varying states of disrepair.

I figured the first few get-togethers would just be a time to dump on our bosses and vent some frustration that we otherwise can't because the office atmosphere is one that dissuades one from conversation and friendship, and that's exactly what this one was. One of the girls is quitting whenever they train her replacement, and she had some fun stories. It's really a shame because she's a good person and she enjoys the kids, and without smearing anyone on my blog, I will say there are irreconcilable differences and bridges have been burned. It was great for everyone involved to begin to feel a kindred for their fellow-workers, and I hope these weekly forays into the local bars continues for a long time (though in truth I could do without the karaoke).

I am still half-heartedly saving for an iPod, but I'm hoping for some bday money to get me to my goal (hint hint, mom). I've been without one for almost two months and want to convince myself that I don't want it (which is true), but I definitely want it enough to still justify the purchase of it. It seems like half the use my laptop sees is just as a music player, which is quite a waste of resources and electricity.

Due to John's inspiration in China, I've decided to take up a martial art. Taekwondo is the national sport, but the form I've wanted to learn for a long time is aikido. Unfortunately it's not popular enough to have a presence in the smaller town I live in, but maybe hopkido is close by. If nothing else I will just fall back on taekwondo because I do just want to do it more for the exercise. A potential hurdle I've been made aware of is my schedule. I am free in the mornings on the weekdays, when most others aren't and therefore many things are closed. I could do it only on the weekends, but that's not what I want because it wouldn't be a sustained, continual workout.

The weather is becoming chilly at night. Tonight's low is 14C, or high 50s for you people. The days rarely get further up the scale than the low-to-mid 70s, and the humidity is almost non-existent (at least to a sub-tropical native such as myself). It's quite interesting to see the seasons change in such a dramatic fashion, since I've haven't seen anything like it in 10 years. I look forward to the quickly-approaching winter. I hope to get some hiking in before the temperature gets too cold.

Chuseok is on October 3rd. Briefly, Chuseok is like Thanksgiving. It's a three-day festival, so it if happens to fall on a Tuesday or Thursday then a 5-day weekend results. However, this year, it falls on a Saturday, which means I get 1 day off. I don't want to complain, but can't Korea get its act together and make sure these holidays always fall on a weekday, like America does? This is year is the worst in recent memory for holidays falling on weekends. In the 6 months I've been here I've had 1 holiday off, and took 1 day of vacation off. I've worked most Saturdays and many Sundays. The next holiday isn't until Xmas and New Year's, and the one after that is March 1st, which may or may not be an important holiday, and anyway is the last day of my contract. With all the holidays added up, in the 365 days from March 1st, 2009-March 1st-2010, there will have been only 4 holidays that affect weekday workers. But at least I got a job.

Success!

I sit here eating the most satisfyingly-attained meal I've ever had. If I had caught and strangled a tiger with my bare hands, I scarcely believe it would be more satisfying. You see, I ordered delivery...in Korean. I gave my order, my address, and when it came, my money. So blessed is Korean delivery that there is no extra fee, nor tip. God Bless Korea.

P.S. for the curious, I'm eaing al toke toke bap (fish egg rice).

Whitewater Rafting: Canceled

So. Whitewater rafting. Love it. Gonna go. Got canceled. Frowny face.

Topia was going to go whitewater rafting today. It cost about $30 for everything, traveling, eating, and rafting. I was pretty excited. Then yesterday, I got to work and was told too many people had canceled last minute and transportation therefore became more expensive, so they canceled it. I'm almost speechless...almost.

The online overtime that they're outsourcing to the Philippines got a little change. They're not ready to outsource it yet, so they're going to allow us to do them for 1 more month. I'm really hoping that it continues to get pushed back. Anyway, since it's the last month, I told my boss that I'd do as many as I could, up to 100 per week. That'd be about 10-13 hours/week overtime, and would get me about $200+/week. I ended up grading 70 this week, but you have to factor in those students who didn't do it for one reason or another, so I've probably got 80-100 students who, if they all do it, will get me lots of money. As it is, 70/week is W175,000/week, or $143 right now, according to google. That'll be a nice chunk of change, at least for one last month. And another nice thing is that the quality of the ones I'm grading this semester is much better. One week, last semester, only 19 did them, and I had to fail 10. I nearly always faild 30% or more of them. This week, however, I failed 1/70. Not bad.

Yesterday was 9/11, and as fate would have it one of the books that the students had to read for the online overtime stuff is called Capital Kids. It's about kids who live in different capitals around the world or something. Anyway, the first part is about America, and one of the kids lives in D.C. It talks about the terrorists hitting the Pentagon, and 9/11. It was kinda weird to be grading them yesterday. Got me a little patriotic and I told my first two classes what 9/11 was (most know about it, but don't necessarily know the date, I mean, they're 7-9 years old).

The new iPods came out Wednesday, and should be available in a few weeks. I'll be saving up for one this month and it'll be my birthday present to myself. There was a lot of hype, as always, and Apple responded by delivering a wet fart of an announcement. All iPods got a video camera (but no still camera), except the Touch, which would benefit most from it. The nanos did not get a memory upgrade, while all other models did. The nano did, however, get an FM tuner which I don't need or want, a microphone which I don't need or want, 0.2 more inches of screen which seems paltry, ever-so-slightly better battery life, and an almost-useless pedometer. The prices on nanos dropped $20, and the Touches dropped as much as $120. The classic got a memory upgrade and price drop, and the shuffle got a price drop. Nothing special in the least. Quite disappointing. Some, however, will love the new features on the iPod, but I just want it to play music, and do it well, and it took 5 years for iPods to become as good at that as the competitors such as Creative. EDIT: Just found out that the iPods are available now, but the prices in Korea are expensive. A 16gb nano in America is $179, while it's $220 here. Very disappointing. Not sure I want to buy a new one now.

To end on a positive note, I'm enjoying this new semester with 2 less teaching hours. I am actually able to go into work at 2pm, and not early. And even then I don't always have much to do. Sometimes I just sit at my desk and read. However, as the semester gets into full swing, there will always be "something" to do, just like at any job, and I will try to always do something.

I can see!

I went to the eye doctor Thursday morning with Grace and they determined that my glasses and eyes were matched, and then found out that the tear ducts in my right eye don't work right, so they prescribed me some eye drops. The whole thing cost less than $20 for the appointment, checkup, and eye drops. God bless Korea.

First day of the new semester

Well, it's official: I've got 6 months left. Today was the first day of the new semester. Lots of new teachers who have been slowly trickling in over the past two weeks, doing meaningless office work, today got to actually do their job. The atmosphere in the office is usually quiet, work-like, no family-feeling (which I hate), but the new teachers are changing that a little. I hope us teachers can feel more and more comfortable with each other, though it is weird knowing that just about everyone will leave after 1 year, or in lots of cases less than that.

And speaking of leaving in less than one year, my friend Vivian left. Before getting a job at the school, she applied to be an airline stewardess. She passed the qualifications and stuff, but they weren't hiring so they kept her on file. They called her on Saturday or Sunday and offered her the job. She came into the office on Monday morning and told the boss about it, offered to work for 2 weeks, but instead of congratulated, negotiated with to work longer, praised for her hard work, she was guilted and made to feel like crap for abandoning her job. As if this job is that important. They told her she could just finish the day and leave. That left quite a bad taste in her mouth, and she left last night, quite unhappy. I'm happy for her, she'll be doing more what she truly wants to, but of course we'll miss her and she'll miss us. She gets to work out of Hong Kong, and fly all over the world! Freaking sweet! I'd love to live in HK and fly everywhere!

Vivian's leaving affects me more than just on a personal level: she was going to be my desk partner, and she is notorious for giving her desk partners food. I have now, thanks to fate, been cheated out of a semester of candies and snacks. Woe is me, woe is me! My new desk partner seems nice enough, but no promises of candy in her eyes.

My first day this semester was fine, I had my mastery classes (kids that are basically fluent), which was no surprise because they like to give them to teachers for 6 months rather than 3, and I had even given them homework last Thursday so it was class as usual. My only other class today was an older class that is pretty good at English. I had actually taught two of them my first semester, so it's nice to see them 3 months later and see how they've improved, especially since the single greatest destroyer of teacher spirits is thinking your students aren't learning. I didn't need to be overly strict with them because, being more intelligent students, they're a little more mature and don't need to be beaten as much. Tomorrow, however, I have every intention of slapping around a couple of kids, laying down the law, that kind of thing.

Oh, and Grace is going to go with my to the eye doctor Thursday morning at 9am to get my eyes checked. After that I can order some glasses online and get them shipped here, hopefully within a couple of weeks, and will be able to see well again.

One more "Oh, and." Oh, and the weather here has been a-ma-zing since Friday night. Friday was hot, but the night got into the low 60s. Since then, the high has never gotten higher than 85, and the low has been about 65. I would rate the current humidity level as "unbearable," which is at least two levels lower than Charleston's "freakish death-level" humidity. Therefore, it is quite comfortable to me, while still quite sticky for everyone else. I can laugh now, but when the winter comes and my snot freezes, the glove will be on the other foot, so to speak.