in light of recent events i will make a top 10 frustrating things that i have experienced in korea.

starting with...

1. this is definitely the most frustrating: i lost my hat.
it was on a day i was supposed to meet up with a friend but i had a few too many hours to kill. i went to the movies by myself and later as i was in a completely different part of seoul i discovered my long time canadiana hat was not in my bag, it fell out in the theatre. that hat had the most character of all the clothes i own.

2. the event that just happened: i'll tell this one after all the other stuff.

3. class: there are many many frustrating kids, and stories related to class. i'll pick 3, but i can't pick which was the worst. my first job i taught brothers with zero ability for knowledge retention, and one brother that would always cry if he didn't get his way. literally. with every single game we played. or actually anything we did. he was brutal.
the other class was 2 supposedly higher level girls that refused to say anything. i mean anything. i took it to the very base response. i asked them what color they like. they refused to even say that much. i actually stood there literally for 5 minutes waiting for them to say anything. they didn't, and then the class bell rang.
the final class was just hard to control in a manner of respect they gave me. in the end i think maybe 4 or 5 of the students dropped out. i partly blame myself, but they were also a bunch of brats.

4.losing my mp3 player
this was a brand new mp3 player. i was tired of my old one. she i went out and bought a nice brand new mp3 player. i then promptly lost it a couple weeks later on new years eve. i still don't know if it was stolen or it just fell out of my pocket.

5. the great dilemma of satisfaction. that's all i can mention of it.

6. deciding on a job. too many to choose from, and so many to screw you. i think i have been screwed by the deciding process a couple times.

7. girls: girls are frustrating in general i guess, but the most frustrating are the inexplicable premature ends.
-during my 2nd job near the start i had a date with a girl. maybe i'm a bad judgment of my charm, but i thought it went pretty decent. but she still stood me up the next time. and refused to return text messages.
-another one that confused me was a girl that called me each day for a week. then after that she refused to call answer my calls, or call me.
-the truth came out with one girl about standing me up. she said she was afraid of english.

8. my old manager. i don't know what to say. he was inappropriate, greedy, sleazy, juvenile. i was rather annoyed when he personally attacked my character on my last day there because he didn't want to pay me for one day, i argued against this.

9. losing my scarf. it was a stylish scarf. i actually don't know how i lost it. i even retraced every step to try and find it again.

10. running out of batteries on the bus and being forced to listen to the epitome of bad music the bus driver likes playing.


so the event that just happened.
my friend sent me a text saying she just arrived back in korea but she was stuck because it was so late. she didn't want to take a taxi because there's been some bad stuff with taxi drivers and lone ladies at night. so i decided to be over the top nice and i offered to meet her with a taxi. i got all the way to the airport and found out she wasn't there, she took a bus into seoul. so i took the taxi all the way back. i then discovered her old text message that said she would be in seoul not at the airport. so a) i wasted $80 b)i wasted an hour c)the girl just thought i was dumb. nothing more. absolutely nothing good came from all of this. in fact, while i was in the process of riding my taxi, the girl actually did take a different taxi that night.

NO INTERNET!!!!( for a week)

self-denial does wonderful things. i've realized that 90-95% of what i do on the internet is wasting my time. so i'm curious how i'll feel without it.

i issue this challenge to everyone. try to do zero internet for one week. no msn, no skype, no email, or blog, no facebook, no wikipedia or anything else.

obviously this may be pretty much impossible for some people who may rely on the internet for their job, in which case your internet-less week can have adjustments to the extent that all internet use is limited to only the absolutely necessary. call friends on the phone instead of email for that one week. who knows it could be better.

i was convinced i need to do this for several reasons. these are two of them:

and...

ze frank - procrastination


if you really really don't want to do this, maybe that's all the more reason to do it. when you're finished tell me if you accomplished anything more. if not, then maybe it's just me that needed it.

My students asked me yesterday what are some English swear words. I said I won't tell them, but i'll give them euphemisms.

i wrote:
F___ = frig
C___= ?
S___=shoot
A______= a - hole

although i found it hard to believe that these kids didn't know at least the first one yet.
i warned against these words, but they were actually able to figure the first one out on their own.
so then they asked me what it meant. these kids were around 13, so i figured they knew this as well. so i said, sex figuring that it translated to korean since koreans also say sexy. they didn't know what sex was. i quickly moved on to the next topic. i really didn't want the parents calling the school and asking why i was teaching about swear words, and i really didn't want them calling asking why i was teaching about sex.

just so you know, i typically will not delve into words and ideas like that, but this is an open class, meaning that the kids don't even have books. my role is to facilitate discussion, and it was an interesting discussion. i asked why do people laugh when people swear. etc.

anyway, later i was talking to a friends girlfriend, and i asked her when she learned where babies came from. she said she was 17. i asked her where she thought they came from before that, she said she thought a couple just held hands, and then the girl became pregnant.

hmmm, i think they kinda taught this stuff to me when i was in grade 6. i remember seeing a video of a baby being born when i was in grade 9.

If there's anyone that still reads this blog, i need suggestions. I was looking at other peoples blogs, and i discovered that i suck at taking pictures. as a simple fact, i just don't.

my request to you, tell me to take a picture of something, and i'll see if i can oblige.


i'm in korea right now, so maybe ideas stemming in that nature. or just simply pictures of feet. i either way.

no rules. but if it's a stupid or ridiculous picture idea i won't take it.

Korean Japanese Challenge

Many people say they can tell the difference between Koreans and Japanese, well now you can prove it. Here's a list of 12 pictures. Simply write if you think they're Korean or Japanese.

If you know me, write me an email for the answers. If you don't know my email, then write a message asking for my email.
1.
2.3.
4.
5.
6.7.8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

what is stupidity?

I just watched a documentary about stupidity. it wasn't that good. i then wrote a rant about why it wasn't good with the intention of posting it on youtube. i think the rant was too long or something so i'll post it here instead(note this movie claimed there weren't many books written about stupidity):

ironically, this video was created very stupidly. it lacked substance. it contrived stupidity at its surface value. the reason that there are not a great number of books about stupidity is that scholarly books aim for much more specific matters. how about searching for books that describe the psychology of social interaction. I'm sure there'd be a number of books that describe and analyze why people commit seemingly stupid acts as a result of social mechanisms. the majority of the discussion in this movie was based on that aspect of "stupidity". other images and ideas of "stupidity" could be subdivided and more thoroughly analyzed as heightened emotions, or inconsiderations, or lack of eloquence, or laziness/lack of motivation. but none of that is really looked at. the human brain is also a muscle and just like working out, some people don't like to strain it, or challenge it. that's not exactly stupid, it's just motivationally challenged. this is such a shallow documentary created for the lowest common denominator. i actually found the smartest part was from the guy that wrote the book ignorance is bliss. the guy presented a well argued satire of the human condition.


anyway, that's my rant. if you want to see the video, it's here:

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=NApWEB7VB1k

you'll have to search for the other 5 parts. it's not too hard.