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.

i haven't posted for a while, so i just thought i'd say, a student has named themselves after me. and the funny thing is that the student is a girl. i thought it was endearing in strange way.

and here's a bear on a horse

i'm searching for another korean job right now. and i just saw this as the headline link for one job:

NEW: !!!!!!!!!! EXCLUSIVE Positions ONLY. Are you READY to be BLOWN AWAY by my positions ??

now what kind of job do you think you'd be getting with that?

Here's another batch of pics on my students tests. i got my friend to help me for a couple this time.


my friend chase did this one. www.milkyourmind.com
this student asked for a pic of everyone in class.
these two girls that sit next to each other always ask for pictures of each other in strange ways. this one is of one wearing cat clothes.
this one is of the other wearing rabbit clothes
and here's another one chase did. it's a tiger. strangely, he drew this without seeing this picture:
http://bitsandpieces.us/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/imagesbig-2btiger.jpg

Buddha's Birthday was monday. I forgot my camera. his name is bu-cha-neem in korean. he's 2552 years old.

I went to a temple with tons of people around. there was a small golden boy statue. many people were lined up to pour some water on him. apparently it was buddha as a child, and apparently buddha bathed as a child. so of course everyone ceremoniously does the same to buddha. and the donate some money to do it.

i thought this was odd until i realized that we pay money to put our children on a strange old man's knee and have a picture of it during jesus' birthday.

i went to a restaurant with some friends and we got separate bills. the waiter didn't know our names so written in korean on my bill was ma-run-boon. which roughly translated means the skinny one.

i sabotaged my class today. it was fun. it was almost nihilistic experimentation. but done somewhat cleverly. i started the class with something that i knew would work, i ended the class with something i knew would work, and then the middle was a little chaos to see the ways things wouldn't work. i created 6 individualized assignments, and 6 little groups, and i set them loose so i could know what would and wouldn't work later. it was my method of quickly learning mistakes. it's as if i was a haphazard social scientist that had one day to figure out people's capacity for problem solving. so as this scientist i gave the 6 groups these items:

1.a live grenade
2.an angry skunk
3.a man quickly bleeding to death from a missing leg
4.edward scissorhands on speed
5.a foreign pregnant woman in labour
6.an old naked man peeing on everything

then i quickly documented in my head how each group positively or negatively reacted to each situation. and tada, that's some fast science.

by the way- pretend right now you just received each of the aforementioned problems. so, just imagine, you are sitting right now at your computer, and a live grenade rolls in, or a naked peeing old man walks in. now, for each situation, suggest what you would do.

I've killed 3 birds with one stone. The 3 problems were sometimes being bored at work, not drawing enough, and not creating enough personal relations with the students.

so, when my students got 10/10 on the daily test, I drew a picture on their test. the first time i did this it was ok, but i ran out of ideas for what to draw. so next class i asked my students for suggestions. they said zombies and flowers, and teddy bears and stuff. i drew some of those, but i still didn't know specifically what to give each student. so this last time i said, write on your test what you want me to draw. and when i got the tests it felt like reading a christmas wish list. it was great. some things i drew were: detention, starcraft battlecruiser, an ugly picture of the girl sitting beside them, and here are 3 examples of other things...

a phantom and a zombie duking it out.
a teddy bear and a cat...at lunch time.
a motorcycle...


i think next time i will warn my students that they might not get exactly what they expect.

interesting and useless things to do on the internet...
go to youtube.com, type in a random animal (it could be a fox, a giraffe, a sloth, it doesn't matter) then watch some videos about that animal. it's a personalized, and hackneyed self-serve discovery channel.
i typed in polar bears and i found this...

alright, the video won't load so, here's the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Nyt4Bmi8

koreanisms

transportation:
bus- the bus driver yelling at everyone for talking too much. buses are libraries. actually all public modes of transportation are libraries. shhhh.

motorcycles/scooters - as the motorcycle turned the corner, the riders sandal fell off. and as he wheeled his bike back to get the sandal, i thought, forget about lack of helmets, how bout just some proper foot gear. or better yet, how bout not carrying a big metal case in your hand as you ride.

subway - the rule applies that everyone should be quiet... unless you're a solicitor that stops with a cart of junk and announce your sales pitch. the best solicitors of course are the ones that sell compilation CDs from the 60's of generic music. and then they play the music to let you "enjoy".

cars - screw child safety seats, we'll do things korean style.

fashion
notables - i saw a guy with little teddy bears dangling from his ears. i think they were supposed to be on a keychain.

konglish- even my english don't really read what the english on their shirts say. and they definitely don't pick up on the atrocious grammar. i liked the shirt that said "Jesus I will save you"

Observations - fluorescent is coming back in. and also currently girls still try to look like magazines, and they succeed more often than in Canada. Lastly I noted in many of my classes an element of superficiality. Actually more than an element. I asked what makes a person a good person and they said if they are good looking. I asked if an ugly person could be a good person. they said no. partly joking. only partly. so i asked if their mother was good looking. and they were a little stuck for an answer. check and mate.

Food
Sales- whole watermelons were about $10 and half watermelons were about $4.

Extra - if you thought we were bad for extra packaging, come here. Plus everything in the grocery store is wrapped with another random product. Example, i got pencil crayons with my cereal.

soju - the ultimate teenage pressure system plays out in korea. except it's not only with teenagers. the bosses take their employees out drinking, and they need to accept, and then they need to drink soju a horrible tasting cheap alcohol. it's gotten so bad that sometimes these employees carry an extra empty bottle with them so they can pour their drink in it when the boss doesn't look just to avoid drinking. my friend that has started university told me that she will need to drink a lot this weekend even though she doesn't want to. all the students are forced into drinking games... with their professor for frosh week. it's funny, i remember my university completely banned drinking during frosh week.

that's all the koreanisms for now.

On my way to work today I saw something very strange. I saw a claw vending machine. Actually, that isn't so strange. there are claw vending machines on almost every corner in korea. These are the machines that look like mini cranes that try to reach down to pick up toys. Usually the claw drops the toys. Anyway, this claw machine didn't have toys in it, it had real lobsters sitting in a tub of water. There were 3 older guys gathered around trying to get them. They already got one. It was great.

Then I got to work, and I started reading some of my students' essays. Actually, I couldn't even get past the first one. I laughed 'til i cried. Let me explain some details first. The school I work at is Avalon, The head teacher who disciplines the students is Jinny. And the essay topic was that they had to write their own ghost story. Now, here is the story (edited a bit for readability)...

World of Ghost

A European horse, and a Korean dog, and an Indian cat and a French crocodile all crash at the same place. They all die. Their souls all combine. They are made into a ghost. The ghost is crazy. It stole a knife at the Korean dog's master's house. When it finds people, it carries them to Avalon. Then the human feels horror because Avalon makes them feel horror. Finally, the humans kill themselves. One day, it carried a woman to Avalon but she didn't kill herself. It carried the woman to the top of Avalon. It said "why don't you feel horror at Avalon?" She said "I'm Jinny". The ghost was surprised and felt horror, but it said "I will hit you."
"Okay".
It advanced to Jinny, and it kicked her arm. Then Junny was angry, so Jinny kicked the ghost's face. The ghost picked up a knife and threw it at Jinny, but Jinny did the matrix. She kicked between the ghost's legs and the ghost is a boy. It ran from Jinny far away. The ghost felt horror. It wanted to die. So it tried to fall out of an apartment, but it didn't die. It was still okay. So it cut some trees and made a house and carried a female European horse, Korean dog, Indian cat, French crocodile, and crashed them at the same place. The souls combined too. It made a ghost. They loved and got 100 babies and went to kill Jinny. The got knives. They advanced to Jinny and hit Jinny. But Jinny is very strong, so they all died.

Did I mention that the students hate going to avalon, there's too much work, and they're always tired.

updates:

-soylent green is only 14 years away

-the head teacher was fired... er... i mean he "quit"

-our office is effectively a snowglobe, once us snowflakes settle into confort, we gotta be shaken up. so we recently changed seating in the office again.

- billkapoun.com when i saw this website i was deeply affected. it was the first time i've donated to anything online. i realized how easy something like that could happen to any of us.

-facebook is popular

-i've started interviewing foreigners over here. i'm going to compile their perspectives on korea

-i wanted to do a korean photo scavenger hunt, but i got almost zero interest

-i'm inconsistent at putting periods at the end of sentences

-i yell at students for not putting periods at the end.

-i saw "yell" figuratively.

i'm not sure exactly what's going through their minds, but i'm sure they've mistaken the bus for a sports car. these bus drivers honestly swerve in and out of traffic more than i ever did with the honda accord i drove. i'm constantly amazed.

actually, i've never had car sickness until i start riding the bus here. i'm almost positive that they need change the bus brakes every 500 kilometers. they stop at every bus stop as if at the very last second they realized they actually need to stop there. and if you are not looking directly at the bus you want on, the bus driver will drive away faster than you can turn your head. either that, or he won't even stop. i've had it happen where i was just looking in my wallet for the right change, and the bus was gone as soon as it stopped. now, whenever i want the bus, i am overly emphatic about showing that i want on that particular bus.

i think they have a stop watch at the bus starting point, and they are always trying to get the best record.

i won't even tell you about the taxi drivers.