Over the past couple of weeks I noticed I hadn't received any comments lately, which seemed a little unusual, but not that unusual. I don't generally get enough traffic to notice a sudden drop.

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 morning I used the last of my supply of nicotine patches. Hoo boy, I'm not sure if I'm ready to go patchless just yet. Starting tomorrow I plan to chew two or three pieces of nicotine gum per day, and gradually taper off over the next two weeks.

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

Today is my 45^th day without a cigarette.

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

My students are taking exams today, so I don't teach any classes, so I have time to write a little more than usual.

As reported previously, today begins a new phase in this strange new life of tobaccolessness; that of the 7mg nicotine patch. You know, I just want to pause here to make an observation. At the stores where I got my supply of patches, they had a lot less shelf space devoted to stage 3 products than they did for stage 1 and 2 products. Why do you think that is Beavis? Because not that many people make it to stage 3, that’s why Butthead.

Ok. I apologize for my cockiness. It’s just that today is a big deal is all. On with our story…

This morning I opened my patch packet and was happy to find it was half the size of the 14mg version, which makes sense I guess. Trying to find a hairless bit of skin that I hadn’t patched in the past few days was getting more and more difficult. I was starting to feel like a junkie in search of a fresh vein.

About an hour ago I got the jitters and an attack of dizziness. Right now I feel a little odd, but no odder than usual. It’s still early though. It doesn’t make me crave a cigarette however. If I didn’t know what was going on, I would just think I felt a little weird. I hope this will pass in a day or two and I’ll start feeling more normal again, normal for me anyway. I’m not going to be a hero though, I have some nicotine gum. Even though they recommend against it, if I get truly desperate I will supplement the patch with one or two pieces, but still make sure my total intake is less than 14mg.

* * *

To prepare for this day, I knew it would be necessary to finally do something about the nineteen packs of cigarettes still in my apartment. At this point, giving them to another smoker, supporting someone else’s habit, just seemed wrong. The smokes cost about thirty dollars, but I couldn’t think of it that way. If you found thirty dollars worth of spoiled meat in your fridge you wouldn’t keep it around and think about possibly eating it because you hated to waste the money, would you? You’d throw it out, because the wasted money is not as important as the risk to your health if you ate the poisoned meat. So it had to be with the nineteen packs of cigarettes.

Merely chucking them into the trash wouldn’t do. The packs needed to be spoiled in some way; I guess as a symbolic gesture to show that I was really and truly done with them. An act of violence was called for. Tobaccocide. I grabbed a pair of scissors and the cigarette cartons and dumped the packs out onto my bed, then with a waste basket at my feet commenced to cutting the packs in half. It proved more difficult than I had imagined, and my hand quickly became tired. Laying the scissors aside, I went to the kitchen to get a cutting board and a serrated knife. Perfect. I knelt down on the floor and carved the rest of the cigarette packs as if I were preparing tabac rôti for dinner. Soon I had just one pack left. Here I stopped. Instead of sawing it in half, I felt for the cellophane tab and pulled open the wrapper. I listened to it crinkle in my hand. I flipped open the box and gave the foil a tug. With my thumb and forefinger I pinched out a cigarette like I’ve done thousands and thousands of times before. I brought it close to my nose. It smelled sweet. Without giving myself too much of a chance to think about having “just one more,” I broke it in half and dumped it into the trash, along with the rest of that last pack. As a final act of desecration, I dumped a full glass of water over them.

No murder is complete until after the body has been gotten rid of. I tied up the trash bag, gathered up the carton boxes along with the rest of the recycling, and went out to the elevator. Once in the basement, I gave the trash bag a final fling onto the heap of other trash bags, and thus ended the story of the nineteen packs of cigarettes.

Labels: Nicotine patches, quitting smoking

There’s just really nothing exciting going on that I feel the need to say anything about. Here’s a collection of minor updates instead.


My new vertical blinds will be installed this Saturday. The guy came the other day to measure and show me some samples. If you’re really into beige, then Korea is your kind of country.

I’m using a Mr. Bean video in my lessons this week. The kids love it. I’m doing a couple of different activities with it and most of them are good, but I made a short worksheet to use for the second viewing (CELTA veterans will know this as the Minimal Response Task or MRT). My MRT is way too hard.

My usual lesson planning pattern seems to be plan the lesson I want to do, then make it easier, then make it easier again. Debut the lesson on Monday, decide it’s still too hard, then modify it yet again. That’s not an exaggeration.


It’s now 39 days since my last cigarette. Today I used the last of my “step 2” 14mg nicotine patches so that means tomorrow I start using the “step 3” 7mg ones. I’m a little worried about that. At least I don’t have any classes tomorrow, so my students won’t have to feel the wrath of my disease. On the other hand, I’ll be sitting around in the teachers’ room all day, and that might not be the best thing. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.


Because of my foot thing I skipped going to the gym on Monday, but I’ll hit it tonight. I’ll spend a few minutes on the cross-trainer, and maybe [grumble, grumble] walk on the treadmill for a while.

There’s more to my disastrous workout last Saturday that I haven’t even mentioned. Besides rendering myself incapable of walking for a day, it looks like I may have toasted my iPod. Maybe “drowned” is a better word. See, I have this headphone-lanyard thing that holds the iPod around my neck, and it’s the neatest thing ever, except on Saturday it was kind of hot in the gym and of course I was exercising, so I worked up quite a sweat. This next part is kind of gross, but what happened I guess is the sweat ran from my neck down the lanyard and directly into the ipod. Oops. About 15 minutes into my workout the sound started cutting out. I looked down at the iPod and saw the battery indicator flashing back and forth between fully charged and nearly empty.

Of course I immediately removed the soaking wet iPod and tried to shut it down. As soon as I let go of the button it sprang back to life and resumed its manic rapid cycling. Crap! Over the next few days I let it dry out completely and did all four R’s of trouble shooting. Even a complete restoration didn’t fix the problem. It operates perfectly now, except that it won’t turn off, so the battery runs down. Now it constantly shows that little plug symbol whether it’s on the charger or not. This does not please me, as you might imagine. This gym thing is turning into a costly venture.

Labels: EFL teaching, iPod, life in Korea, quitting smoking

More thoughts about quitting smoking today. It’s on my mind rather a lot these days as I’m sure you can imagine. (34 days now). Sorry, I didn’t intend for the Blog of Brian to be completely hijacked by the smoking issue. It’s like having my own personal General Sonthi.

*

I never thought I’d be able to stop smoking in Korea. Well, I guess it’s technically true that I didn’t stop smoking in Korea. I officially stopped smoking in the United States, but what I mean is I stopped during the Korea phase of my life, which seemed rather unlikely until…well, until it happened.

See, during most of my career as a huffer and puffer, my main thoughts about quitting came from economic worries instead of concern for my health. (We could go deeper into that, but we’ll save it for another session, okay doc?) When I got to Korea, and saw how cheap cigarettes were I said to myself, “I guess I won’t be quitting smoking for the next couple of years.” In case you’re wondering, which I doubt, but in case you are, it’s even worse in Russia. There, the “expensive” imported smokes are about 65 cents a pack, and the domestic brands are something like 30 cents.

The thing is, price doesn’t actually matter. I didn’t smoke more in places where they were cheaper, and I didn’t smoke less in places where they were expensive. I smoked how much I smoked because that was what I needed to service my addiction. After I’d been here a while, it didn’t matter anymore what the cost was. They just cost what they cost.

So anyway now that I’ve stopped, at current Korean pricing I figure I’ve already saved about 85 dollars. Amazing how quickly it adds up. I should reward myself. I deserve it, don’t you think? Maybe when I’ve “saved” a hundred dollars I’ll get myself a bauble.

I also have to come clean about another thing I haven’t told anyone yet: I still have 19 packs of cigarettes in my apartment. See, before I left on my vacation I bought two cartons at the duty-free shop in the airport. That just goes to show I had no intention of quitting before I actually did. For the first week I was at home I worked on the first pack out of the two cartons, but then I quit before it was even finished. Even then, I continued to carry that unfinished pack around with me until just before I left to return to Korea. It was like a security blanket you know, in case I really, really needed it. The same could be said I suppose–if you wanted to get deeply Freudian–about the 19 packs still in my apartment. As long as they are just sitting there on the shelf, still in the plastic duty-free shopping bag, they don’t bother me, but if they were gone I think I would freak out a little.

So just get rid of them you might say. If you haven’t been a smoker or an addict of some kind I can see how it must seem that simple, but it isn’t. Let me illustrate with a joke on a slightly different topic:

Q: What do you call it when someone drinks half a glass of wine, then walks away and leaves the rest on the table?

A: Alcohol abuse.

At first my plan was to take the cartons to my school and leave them in the maintenance shed where the (male) teachers go to smoke between classes. It seemed like that would be kind of smug though, like “I guess I don’t need these anymore, but I thought you poor bastards might like them. Enjoy.” Anyway, I kept forgetting to bring them in (more Freudian stuff there), so now it would just be weird.

Well, regardless of what I do, I guess it’s time to get rid of them one way or another. Anyway except smoking them, right?

Labels: cigarettes, quitting smoking

Today is Wednesday, September 20^th. It’s now been more than a full month since my last cigarette. The cravings are fewer, but when they do happen they come on strong. When I’m leaving a restaurant after dinner for example, I’ll get the urge to light up. It's not that I’m consciously thinking about it, rather it just feels like the most natural thing to do. I remember I don’t do that anymore, then I kind of panic for a second because I feel a need and I know it’s not going to be satisfied, and this primal, childish part of me wants to freak out about it. Thankfully, the rational, adult part (at least so far) wins out and employs some alternative method to meet the need, or at least keep myself occupied until it passes. Gum helps.

In about 10 days I’m supposed to switch to the “step 3” patches, with a lower dose of nicotine, so I’m already gearing up mentally for that.

A friend of mine who quit like four years ago told me he still gets cravings from time to time….so I guess good times are ahead. No really, I know it’s far better than if I just kept smoking, but seriously? I get to jones for the rest of my life? Oh well. It’s a small price to pay compared to dragging an oxygen tank around with me, or getting giant tumors on my lungs.

So, there’s my pep talk for today.

Labels: quitting smoking

It’s now been more than three weeks since I’ve had a cigarette. Yesterday was a challenge though. The next hardest one before that was the day I first came back to Korea. The next one before that was the day I first stopped smoking. Does it get easier? Most of the time, yes, with occasional periods of sheer torture. They don’t last long, thankfully, and I’m still fighting the good fight.

When a strong craving hits I try to take a few deep breaths and appreciate being able to do so. I smell the air and think about the smells I used to miss. (That wasn’t always a bad thing, but still…) Drinking water and chewing gum also help. It’s the classic oral stimulation thing. Mostly though, the real trick is not sitting around and stewing about wanting a cigarette. It’s important to stay occupied, better still to be occupied and with other people, preferably other non-smokers.

Come to think of it, I haven’t really talked about why I suddenly decided to quit. I’m sort of violating the stuff I just said, since I am alone right now and explicitly focusing on smoking, but maybe telling my story will be worth it.

My first cigarette was a Gauloises blonde, at the highly unusual age of 25. Like, who starts smoking at 25? How and why I started smoking is part of a much larger story. Suffice it to say it was one of the dumber, if not the single dumbest decision I’ve made in life, worse still because I can’t blame it on peer pressure or Joe Camel. I chose it.

During my last semester of college I smoked maybe one or two cigarettes a day. I smoked so few I got a buzz every single time. Somehow two became three, then three became six, then before long I was up to half a pack. Still, it wasn’t until I moved to Portland in 1997 that I became a truly dedicated smoker. There, I quickly ramped up to about a pack-a-day, and stayed there for the next eight years.

The problem was whenever I would visit my strict Mormon parents it would cause me much anxiety. They never “officially” knew I was a smoker, but they aren’t stupid of course. I’m sure they knew, and I knew that they knew, but it became one of the many things we didn’t talk about. (Uncomfortable silence is really the foundation of a healthy family, don’t you think?) Nevertheless, it’s not like I could say, “Excuse me Mom and Dad, while I step out for a smoke break.” So during my visits home I would be reduced to the level of a fifteen year-old, sneaking out to get my fix, and then scrubbing my hands and popping breath mints to try and cover the smell.

On this most recent trip home, I decided to use nicotine patches and do my best to live like a human and not simply be ruled by my addiction. The patches helped a lot, but I still found myself sneaking two or three cigarettes each day I was home.

When I left Phoenix this time and got down to Tucson, my first thought was “Thank God! Now I can smoke again,” and lit up immediately. Fortunately, my next thought was how stupid that was. I had had such a great head start over the past few days. Instead of going back to the insanity, why not just keep going forward? “No pressure,” I told myself, “and maybe I can’t do it, but let’s just try it for a while.”

That was Thursday, August 17^th. The next day, I didn’t smoke any cigarettes at all. On Saturday the 19^th I had a slight relapse and smoked two. From Sunday the 20^th until today I’ve had none.

While there is never really a best time to quit smoking, I think the odds were pretty well stacked in my favor. Besides using the nicotine patches (which I can definitely recommend for anyone else thinking about quitting) and getting the little head start at my parents’ place, I had the advantage of being out of my normal routine, being away from all my usual triggers, and being with supportive friends almost constantly during my first two weeks on the wagon.

I hope I’ve had my last cigarette ever, but who can tell?. In my world it’s best to avoid sweeping proclamations. I know I’m not going to smoke today, and then we’ll see how tomorrow goes.

Labels: Nicoderm, quitting smoking