Today's missions included getting a haircut, having my watch repaired, getting new lenses for my glasses, browsing for materials to use in my classes, shopping for shoes, investigating depilitation options (yes really), and one other thing. I'll get to that in a minute.
Right now I'm at Starbucks, not in COEX itself, but under the ASEM Tower, or whatever the building is called. It's less busy here. I'm writing this while I wait for my glasses to be repaired. It looks like I'll have to finish my errands tomorrow, if I finish them at all.
The other thing I mentioned earlier? 8 gigabyte iPod nano. What? Did you really think I was going to wait 'till December? If you did, then you don't know me very well. Ok. Even I'm disappointed with myself for breaking down. I feel it was a reasoned, judicious decision however. The old mini I had laying around turned out to be unwieldy when I tried to use it at the gym. I found myself avoiding going to the gym because of it. Obviously that wouldn't do. Does that sound like bullshit reasoning? Yeah, it does to me too. Oh well, too late. Le Pod est a moi.
Besides, I have been smoke free for about 70 days now, and that ain't nothin'. I know you'll understand.
Labels: life in Korea
Finally the dry spell had carried on long enough that I got concerned, so I looked to see what was up, and found I had changed a setting to where I had to approve comments before they appeared on my blog. That would have been fine, except I also somehow failed to notice that there were comments waiting for my approval.
I've now cleared the backlog of comments (all four of them), and changed the setting back so comments now appear again immediately. I only changed it in the first place because I had gotten some comment spam I was most unhappy about.
Since the comments themselves sat around unanswered for a while, I thought I would address them here instead of just adding my own comments on the blog pages.
First of all, I loved Brazil. It's maybe one of my all-time favorite movies. I just think it's fucked-up is all. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Brazil is a serious mind-fuck, but you see, I like that sort of thing. Blade-runner on the other hand...meh.
Also, I have been patchless for five days now, but I'm chewing 1 or 2 pieces of nicotine gum each day, so I'm getting 2-4mg a day now instead of 7. I'll continue like that for the rest of October, then finally get off the nicotine altogether.
Thanks everyone who posted words of encouragement. It's now been 58 days since my last cigarette, and I've saved almost $150 toward my replacement ipod. I will have "saved" enough when I've been smoke free for 110 days, or on December 7. Ok, although I said I'd give this delayed gratification thing a try, I may decide that 100 days is close enough. It's only because I used to smoke cheap cigarettes that it's taking me so long anyway.
Labels: blog business, movies, quitting smoking
This is only a drill...let's hope.
2 Comments Published by Brian on Monday, October 16, 2006 at 2:46 PM.
By the way, just to clarify, my little editorial yesterday is not so much about Korea as it is about the controlling fear tactics used by my own country.
* * *
At 2pm today the Korean public school where I teach conducted something along the lines of a nuclear attack drill. I was only informed of this event about 30 minutes before it happened, and I was unsure what form it would take. In my head I had images of black and white "Duck and Cover" training films from the 1950s.
I thought this was an internal school exercise, but two o'clock, the vice-principal came on the PA system, then kicked it over to a KBS broadcast. It looks like it may have been a nationwide exercise. As the KBS announcer began an air-raid siren sounded. The voice on the broadcast spoke loudly, in short, clipped phrases. He sounded urgent and ominous, but then the loudspeakers on vegetable trucks sound urgent and ominous to me, so what do I know? He continued for about 20 minutes while the students mostly ignored him. During the broadcast a military jet flew overhead, sending several students scrambling to the window to see what was going on. One can't help but think it was a choreographed part of the broadcast. When it was over the vice-principal returned and announced the end of the period.
Back in the teachers' office, I asked another teacher what was said during the broadcast. She said she had never heard anything like it in her life. I asked if "Propaganda" was a fair desription. She agreed it was, but that the tone was very different this time around. She didn't elaborate further.
My own take is that this has nothing whatsoever to do with civil readiness, and everything to do with cultivating fear. An excercise like they did today is pointless for at least three reasons I can think of: A) As I hope we all know, NK doesn't yet have the technology to mount a nuclear warhead onto a missile. B) Their missle tests have been kind of dodgy so far; they'd be as likely to blow themselves up as anyone else. C) Obviously, if such an attack ever did occur, no drills, sirens, or announcements would matter.
My parents both did bomb drills when they were in school in case the Russians decided to attack. When I went to Russia people told me they had bomb drills in their schools in case the Americans decided to attack. These things serve no practical purpose as a defense againse foreign hostiles. They are however, extremely useful as a means of a government exercising control over its own people. People who are afraid are less likely to ask questions.
Labels: life in Korea, North Korea, Nuclear crisis
The other day on the way to work, I had the ipod on shuffle and a Japanese pop song came up. I’m not really into Jpop, by the way. I just had these remixes of songs by Ayumi Hamasaki that I (ahem) acquired, and I liked some of them so I kept them around. This particular remix I didn’t recall ever hearing before, but I really liked it. When it finished I backed it up and listened again, then did it again, and again.
Listening to Japanese music got me to thinking about Japan, and the fact that I have a three day weekend coming up next week. (Our principal gave the whole school a random day off next Monday. No one is sure exactly why, but no one is arguing either.) That thought sent me to the last-minute deals sections of the Korean air website, scouting out fares to Tokyo.
I’ve been to Japan once before. In December, 2002 I took the ferry from Busan to Fukuoka, then traveled to Hiroshima, Osaka, and Kyoto by Shinkansen. I’ve never been to Tokyo however, and have never been to Japan in decent weather (and have also never been there when I wasn’t hammered, but that’s another story). The bad news is, even at a deep discount, Seoul to Tokyo is just a fucking expensive ticket. For just a little more money I could seriously go to Bangkok for the weekend. Hey, now, there’s a thought…
…Wait. Stop. Stop. Stop. So anyway, thinking about Japan got me to thinking about how I’d always hoped to spend more time in there before I go back to live in the States. One thing led to another, and by the evening, I was looking up information about applying for the JET program. (The program I’m in now is modeled, poorly, on the JET program.)
I learned JETS make more than the average teacher in Japan, and their housing is comparatively more subsidized. My salary would work out roughly the same, or a little less than what I earn now, but of course Japan is psychotically more expensive than Korea. Also, JET doesn’t give you a lot of choice about where they place you, or what kind of school you teach at. None of those things are deal-breakers, but it turns out you have to attend an interview in your home country. So I’d have to fly from Korea to the United States to interview for a job in Japan that there’s no guarantee I’d get anyway. Not gonna happen.
In the past day I’ve done more research, just to satisfy my curiosity, about possibly making the transition across that body of water with those rocks that some people seem to care a lot about. Sadly, the numbers just don’t add up. I guess what that really means is, the only way I could see living in Japan is if I were really committed to living in Japan, which clearly I’m not. In fact for me, like a lot of other people, living in Asia is the means to a different end, not the end itself. Maybe that’s the wrong way to go about it. It must be said though, that Korea makes it very easy to live in Korea without being committed to Korea. It might even be that Korea wants it that way.
The same thing happened when I went to Russia two years ago. I approached moving to Russia the way you might approach changing your hair color. In time I realized the other foreigners around me who were having successful lives either had a Russian background or they had studied Russian in college. Maybe they had some special fascination with Russian history and culture, or maybe they were neo-bolshevists (I seriously knew someone like that). The point is, they had a reason to be there, and I didn’t. I only went because I wanted to leave Korea, and that’s where I got a job. I thought I could live a detached life in Moscow the way I had in Seoul. It was a disaster. By the way, I think that speaks well of Moscow. Moscow, for all the difficulties I had there, was more real. Life should be like that. It’s entirely possible to live in Korea without really living in Korea. The more I think about it, it just feels wrong. Any teacher, business person, or other ex-pat who makes an effort to integrate theirselves into Korean life, and who gains acceptance into Korean society, totally has my respect. By the way, I should also say that, I also don’t regret going to Moscow. It was an important turning point in my life, and finally, I did make some important relationships there that are still with me to this day (Hi Masha!)
But there I go again. See how easy it is to get off on a tangent? I was talking about Japan. The Japan idea is not totally dead, but I’d say it’s in its last throes, like the Iraqi insurgency. I very much doubt I will actually move to Japan. In the end, what I really need to do is accept the fact that I will most likely live in Korea for at least two more years before I can move back home. I’m just getting that familiar itch again. Eventually it’ll pass.
But I am still thinking about going to Japan next weekend. Thinking that is.
Here’s a video clip of Ayumi Hamasaki performing “A song for XX,” the song that started this whole thought process. This is the original version, not the remix I really liked. I couldn’t find a source to link to for that.
Labels: japan, jpop, life in Korea, Video
Chad Vader: Day shift manager.
episode 2
episode 3
episode 4
Labels: chad vader, you tube
I've now been smoke free for over 50 days, and have saved over $130 dollars in money I would have spent on cigarettes. I'm nearly halfway to the goal I set of using my not-smoking money to replace the ipod I trashed. I go whole days now where I hardly think about smoking. Sometimes though, it's like I forget that I don't smoke anymore. I'll come out of a restaurant and reach for a cigarette, completely unaware of what I'm doing. Then when I realize I can't get what I want, it just sucks, but only for a minute. I'm still happy I quit.
Labels: quitting smoking
Greg of Not Another EFL Blog recently posted an essay on what events led him to live and work in Thailand. Today is the anniversary of an important event in my life’s journey, so if Greg will pardon me for borrowing his idea, I thought it would be a good time to tell my own story.
Five years ago today, October 10, 2001, my life took a dramatic turn. Events were set into motion that brought me to where I am right now. Five years ago today I was fired from my job.
It was my first day back to work after a short vacation. When I entered the office building in downtown Portland where I worked, I found the call center manager and the human resources director sitting in the coffee shop downstairs, which seemed unusual. I had been friends with the manager and I made a joke about how she had resorted to hanging out with the HR guy in my absence. They didn’t laugh.
Losing your job sucks. It sucks anytime, but things were especially uncertain around this time. The American economy was in a deep freeze, and it was extremely difficult to find work. More importantly though, I was no longer interested in doing the kind of work I had been doing. My liberal arts degree wasn’t serving me so well. French majors aren’t so much in demand, especially ones that weren’t that good. With few exceptions, the only jobs I had ever done were customer service related. Nearly all my jobs since college were in call centers, the Mcjobs of the new economy.
For the next nine months I collected unemployment from the state of Oregon, worked temp jobs here and there, watched TV, ate too much, drank my 401k, and generally wondered what the hell I was going to do with my life.
Along the way I hatched numerous plots and schemes, looking for a way out of my funk. For a short time I considered working as a professional French to English translator, until I discovered most people who do that sort of thing are native bilinguals, or at the very least better French speakers than I was. An addiction to late-night re-runs of ER got me thinking about going to nursing school. That fantasy ended when a friend who was an actual nurse asked me whether I’d be able to catheterize an elderly female patient. A passing obsession with baking bread had me considering baking as a vocation. Deciding that more education was the answer, I applied to Oregon State, where I intended to get a second bachelors degree (political science this time) and go on to law school, the idea being fueled by West Wing this time, if I remember correctly. It turned out I was maxed out on my student loans, so there was no way I could get any funding to go back to college. I did however get my acceptance letter after I’d been in Korea for a month already.
In June of 2002 I went to a bridal shower. Yes, you read that right. I went to a bridal shower for my friend Cyndy, the same friend whose wedding I performed the day before I left for Korea later that summer.
At the shower, I asked Christine, one of Cyndy’s roommates, about some other friends of theirs who had recently left for Korea. They were doing fine, she said, having a good time and saving their money. She then suggested that maybe I should think about doing the Korea thing as well. Although teaching in Korea had been suggested to me before, I had never seriously considered. I assumed you had to be a qualified to get a job. Silly me. She assured me it was amazingly easy to get employment in Korea, with all kinds of perks like an apartment, airfare, and bonuses that I have now come to take for granted as part of a standard contract, but which seemed pretty cool at the time. She said if I wanted to know more I should look at a certain website. (If you know anything at all about EFL, then you know which site I’m talking about.)
Even then I didn’t think I was serious about it. It was just a new idea to entertain, like any of the other hundred other career paths I considered. I knew how these things worked. I’d toy with the idea, maybe even get mildly obsessed with it for a time, then eventually lose interest and move on to something else.
Later that night though, as I looked over the ruins of the past several months, and faced the bleak prospects of the months ahead, I reached a mental breaking point. It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to look into the black abyss that is your life and think, “well, anything has got to be better than this.”
Can I just stop here to editorialize for a minute? Many in the EFL community are very sensitive about dispelling the notion that English teachers in Asia are losers who came here as a last resort because they were unable to find work in their own countries. I would totally be sensitive about that too, except that when I came here I was a loser who couldn’t find a job in my own country. English teaching was a last resort for me, at the time, and I’m not ashamed of that. EFL gave me a second chance to do something useful with my life, as I hope you’ll see. Anyway, on with our story…
Around 2am I fired up the computer, typed in the address Christine had given me, and began browsing for jobs. I applied for four jobs I found in the listings, and within a day had received offers for three of them. Few questions were asked. None of them wanted to interview me. The most pressing question on their minds seemed to be, “How soon can you get here?”
I didn’t jump at any of those first offers, but continued to apply for positions for the next few weeks. Then one day a job in the town of Gimcheon that offered a motorcycle as part of the package caught my eye. Though I had never once ridden a motorcycle in my life to that point, the offer seemed just kooky enough to suit my style. I first arrived in Korea on August 12, 2002.
As a teacher that first year, I sucked. I had no idea what I was doing, but gradually, I began to realize the hogwon was also clueless. As far as they were concerned, I was doing a great job. To them, I was fulfilling my main contractual obligations, which seemed to be show up, be foreign (read: white), and speak English. My role as a teacher and they way I’m perceived by my employers and students is an issue I continue to struggle with, even now. Back then though, I just knew that I was dissatisfied. My job was extremely frustrating at times, but I really enjoyed the relationship I was developing with my students, and liked teaching just enough to know that I wanted to be better at it.
It was not romance but economics that led me to take my CELTA course in Bangkok. The course is simply cheaper there than in other places where it is offered. The others in the group may not know this, but I was scared to death for most of the course. Ok so it wasn’t a semester at MIT. It was still one of the most intense things I’d ever done to that point in my life. We had a really good group though. We pulled together and got each other through it. That isn’t to say we were the best CELTA group ever or anything, but I’ve since heard stories of training groups that broke out in fistfights and stuff like that, so I think were did pretty well over all.
Since that time I returned to Korea for another year, then fled to Russia, where at least my training would be appreciated. It was. I’m a much better teacher for having taught in Moscow, but at the end of the contract I finally decided to return to Korea yet again.
Now I’m in a public middle school in Seoul. Some things in my life could be better, but over all it’s going quite well. A lot of other things have happened along the way that have gotten me to this point, but I do believe the fundamental shift that put me on this path happened five years ago today in that coffee shop in Portland.
Labels: EFL teaching, life in Korea, personal history
Hwagye-sa, a well known Buddhist temple, sits at the foot of the mountain, and several hiking trails take off from there. It is quite a large mountain, and I hear some of the trails are very difficult. The one we chose wasn't too bad, but there were a few tough spots. We got about two-thirds of the way up and I was ready to turn around and head back, but the others in the group kept wanting to go a little further, then just a little further, until we finally got to a peak where had a panoramic view of the city. It was hard, but I'm glad pushed me to keep going up. The view was worth it. Looking out over Seoul really brings home what a truly massive city it is; especially knowing we were seeing a relatively small portion of the total megalopolis.
Naturally, I brought my camera and took a lot of photos of the day. Here are just a few...
It's nothing to lose your head over
1 Comments Published by Brian on Wednesday, October 04, 2006 at 12:10 PM.
It looks like my iPod really is kaput. It’s ok though, because I have a plan. Let me break this down for you. The new 8gb Nanos retail for $275.00 in Korea (they’re slightly more expensive here than in the states.) The cigarettes I used to buy cost $2.50 a pack. Are you with me so far? When I’ve been smoke free for 110 days, I’ll have “saved” exactly $275.00 on packs of cigarettes that I haven’t bought. I think that’ll be about the right time to give myself a nice little reward.
You know, if I really wanted to I could go right down to the Apple store in Myeong-dong and get me a new Nano, lickity-split, but I hear this delayed gratification thing is pretty cool, so I guess I’ll give it a try for once in my life.
* * *
About a week ago, at the Gwanghwamun subway station, I stopped to look at a table of DVDs for sale outside the Kyobo bookstore. They were mostly older movies, documentaries, and music videos. All legal, but none of it A-list stuff. They did have a copy of David Lynch’s Eraserhead on the table however. I had never seen it (I’d never seen any David Lynch film in its entirety in fact), so I picked up a copy, along with Tirez sur le pianiste, and The King and I.
On Sunday night a friend came over for dinner and we watched it. Up to that point the most fucked-up movie I’d ever seen was Brazil. Brazil is Mary Friggin’ Poppins compared to this. It’s been three days and I’m still creeped out over it. Next time I think my life sucks I’m going to remind myself that at least I’m not the guy from Eraserhead.
Labels: iPod, movies, quitting smoking
It's almost November, so that means Nanowrimo starts soon. Registration on the website opened the other day, and the excitement is palpable.
Did you not feel it palpate?
Well anyway, notice the sleek new "participant" icon above the archive links. Hopefully in about two months I can change it to a "winner" icon.
If you've never done anything like this, it's hard to understand why you would ever do something like this. Any answer I give beyond "I'm mentally unstable," fails to ring true. Besides, the Nanowrimo FAQ (click the link above) does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could.
I haven't thought much about my story in the past few days, but I'm hoping to do more of that during the break this week. Really though, I want to just start writing, but rules are rules. 28 more days.
Labels: Nanowrimo
On Friday I finally got around to uploading more of my pictures to flickr and did some organizing as well. So today I'd like to present another slide show of my best vacation pictures. Wait, don't click the "back" button yet, there's not that many. Some of them have already appeared in this space, but now they're in context you see.
Labels: flickr, Photos, slide show, Vacation
