look, cartoons for everything. even this door that has ambulances. i guess you have a less anxious nation when everything is friendly little caricatures.


this big rock looks like a whale. i bet that says whale on the side. either that, or do not ride.


i talked to some girls today. it was the funnest conversation i've had with koreans. it was four 17 year olds at church, and they only spoke a little english, but they were really trying hard to communicate. they would do little skits to try to demonstrate what they mean. for example, the one girl was trying to say that she saw me one time at the mall, and she waved, and i just ignored her. so she acted out with her friend how i snubbed her. and i apologized and said that i didn't see her. and then they were describing this one guy, and they said he walks like a penguin, and they demonstrated a penguin walk. and while they did that they said dui doon dui doon. i imagine dui doon dui doon means waddle waddle.

i think i'm going to use that word all the time now. it's good to incorporate useless words into your vocabulary when learning another language.

some pictures of the kids we were teaching.

to the left and ducking is angel. she was the smartest. and she always tried to help. one time some kid was being a brat with a balloon and she took it away from him and said he can have it back at the end of class.

the pouty one is kerry. she liked hitting me, but she was cute.
the bottom picture is self-proclaimed handsome david. everyday he went on about how handsome he was. in this picture i told him to be handsome.
there was another picture i tried to include but it's not here for some reason. and i'm on a public computer, so i can't get it here.

Your Vocabulary Score: A-

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Life’s for the living, so check me tomorrow. Actually no, but those were the lyrics to the song I’m listening to, and I needed some segway into a topic about life. I was playing it this weekend. Life. The game. Board game. Yes. What else do you do on a long weekend.

Anyway as I was playing I went to university first. Maybe a little reflection of my own life. And then when it was time to choose a career I had to randomly grab a career card. And of course I grabbed the ‘teacher’ career. With the teacher career you get to randomly grab another career card, and through chance I became an artist as well. And thirdly I had to pick a salary, which ended up being $30,000.

Funny,

I’m going to be a teacher, an artist, and the teacher’s starting salary is $30,000. it’s not entirely indicative of my life though. A) I never had kids in the game(which I think I’ll have in real life), and b) I had to pay someone $150,000 in technical repairs right at the beginning. Ugh.

In other news, I’m starting to read Shakespeare, and also, I spent the entire day organizing myself today. At least it feels semi-productive.

Mc Mong
(he's called that apparently because he looks like a monkey)here is a video of his. it is blatant rip-off of 'where is the love' but it's still catchy, and it give you some images of korea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmDFzLLbfA

1. the start of the video is in a pc bang(bang, pronounced bong, means room). these things are all over the place.
2. the guys that are being all rough, are really about as agressive as i've seen koreans get. which is not at all. it feels really safe walking around here at any time of day or night...except for the really bad driving.
3. the word com-sa-nee-da means thank you, informally(to friends) you'd say com-sa, and to be really polite you'd say com-up-sa-nee-da. the girl in the video uses the really polite form.
4. i forget where it is in the video but you might notice that when someone gives something or receives something, their second hand that is not holding the item is either touching their heart(= really polite), or touching their shoulder (= fairly polite), or touching the inside bend in their elbow(= polite), or touching the hand that is giving the item, or pouring the drink, or receiving the pour (= ordinary polite).
5. finally, at the end of the video mc mong is eating food in a tent. this is a street vendor, and they are everywhere. honestly. it looks exactly like it is in the video, except that you'd see more people in the tent, and the street would be busier in general. probably filled with more street vendors.

some other korean artists that i know of are a guy name 'rain' on his website it says 'more higher, more wider'. and another band named 'in soon i' (i is pronounced 'ee').

thinking things through and realizing that cyclical contains us in it's million arms. i am as i was as i will be, i was always this, but i am always better. it keeps me smarter. it keeps me trying harder to surpass my father and fathers' fathers. to go farther, but really just deceiving myself because i am and will always be something other, no matter which way i spin it. new generations always survive in new contexts that can't properly be compared to the previous thoughts. i never previously thought i would feel as i do, except i always expect to feel contrary to my present tense with each next step. each chapter contained with each chapters rules of format and plot development. i am a story for you to read. i am a thought to be remembered later in nostalgia.

it's valentine's day. so fellas, here's a slick move from the book of justin timberlake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA

in the news at my school in korea,
-hairy arms
-getting run over
-japan delayed
-and a crazy game called gostop

hairy arms...
apparently when you wear shirts that expose your arms, and you have some hair on them, kids like to pet your arms like you're a dog, or kids like to draw pictures of you looking like an ape. and it's not mean spirited, because they actually say they love the hairy arms. all in all, it's kinda strange. and for the record, i've never considered my arms to be that hairy. see.
getting run over...
i was afraid this might happen at some point. i mean given the crazy drivers around here that consider cars to have the right of way, not pedestrians, it only made sense that i would get run over at some point. basically what happened was that i've decided to run to the subway station from now on. i like it. but today, as i was running, i made a slight hesitation as i was running across a crosswalk because a car was coming, and that hestitation was enough to throw off my cantor, and it made me twist my ankle and fall. and of course as all good korean drivers do, once something is out of their vision(in my case being on the ground), it means go. and the car ran over my foot. the bottom of my shoe happened to be facing up as i was lying on my stomach, and the guy ran that over. i was ok, and i just kept walking because i didn't feel like telling the guy he was a dope. i'm sure he wouldn't understand anyway.

japan delayed...
yay!, we're going to Japan. yay, the plane tickets are booked. 2 days later... oh, remember how we booked your plance tickets to japan, cancel that. yes, of course nothing happens for us as we expect it to. and i've come to the point where i don't think anything will happen unless it's happening right then. of course we definitely will go to japan, because we need to get our work visas before the march opening of our school, but apparently not yet. we're going to osaka when we go though. so it should be exciting when it finally happens.
gostop...
it's a gambling game that i learned how to play the other night at a work party. then the next night, i bought some go stop playing cards and i played it for about 2 or 3 hours with some friends. and theeeennnn, i found out we played it for 2 or 3 hours WRONG. apparently there was a bit of trouble with the translation when they explained it to us at the party. but it's still a fun game. and now i'm gonna play it right. and if anyone wants, and they're really nice to me, i might buy them gostop cards. but only if you learn how to play properly, and you really want them... and you're really nice. here's 2 sites with the rules.

http://home.comcast.net/~t.sloper/gostop/rules.html

http://www.pd49.dial.pipex.com/pockets/games/hwa-tu.htm

I'm not saying I'm a big prorastinator...well, maybe sometimes. and blogs definitely are not a by-product of procrastination.

but anyway, here's a scientific link about it.

Sometimes there seems to be as many theories on a topic as there are people researching it. Fortunately, over the last 25 years, we have been testing these theories, trying to determine which one works best. Here we review four of the most popular theories of procrastination and consider the evidence for and against them. The empirical evidence comes from a recent meta-analysis, which is a systematic review of the all the literature written on the topic. The theory with the most support is Discounted Utility Theory, which is presented last.

or just go here: http://webapps2.ucalgary.ca/~steel//Procrastinus/theories.php

it's essentially the same thing.

i've taken to drinking walnut milk instead of regular milk. i thought i'd explore the milk alternatives. I actually think this is the best tasting one yet. too bad, it's only in korea as far as i can tell. it seems like it should be healthy for me too, although i can't really find anything on the internet that talks about it. i'm one step closer to becoming a vegan now, although i don't think i could give up cheese. it'd mean i'd have to give up pizza. and also i recently bought a 100 pack of cheese slices because they don't really sell chunks of cheese here, and because it's cheaper buying in bulk.

oooo, that reminds me. the day i was grocery shopping and i bought the cheese, i was in this quaint grocery store. y'know, kids in grocery carts and all. and then i noticed the song being played on the radio sounded kinda strange. so i stopped and had to listen to make sure i wasn't just hearing things. and yes, that songs chorus really was 'if you suck ___ put your hands in the air, if you lick ___ put your hands in the air.' and yes, the verse really was a step by step instructional on how to be ultimately slutty in a club, and an instructional for the guys on how to... anyway, all in all it was shocking and hilarious seeing the koreans non-chalantly shop while one of the dirtiest songs i've heard was played on the radio. and it's not the first time. some of those rap songs played in the dollar store are beautiful.

and for no particular reason, here's a picture of jon making a snowflake. he was practicing for when he had a class that needed to make a snowflake.

Car horns in korea don’t just give a good solid honk. They honk, and fade out. It’s kinda funny how it deflates any anger that may have been put in the honk.

And I think most people have a leak in their mouth, because there’s always some gobs of spit around. Maybe it’s a word I haven’t learned yet, but they also often do that horking noise.

I sometimes sit at the end of the hall in my building. There is a 4x5 foot area that is like an enclosed balcony. It is supposed to be a smoke area. I sit here to use the internet, because I can’t get internet in my apartment. I also don’t have tv. Well, I do, but I don’t want it. For some reason I feel like internet isn’t as mind numbing. But I know it still is, but in a different way. At least with the internet I often type things, and I develop my writing skills… I guess. And sometimes I find recipes for pancakes(I know, pancakes are impossibly easy, but I needed to make sure that I wasn’t forgetting anything).

But then, the problem with the internet is that I need to sit out here to use it, and it looks kinda awkward to anyone coming home to this floor.

I just saw 3 girls go into one apartment. I hope they don’t all live there. These apartments are very small. I think I’ve seen some public washrooms bigger. I mean, I like the place, but I don’t think 3 people would be comfortable.

They advertise on doors a lot. I made sure they only advertised on one door tonight. Rebecca’s. hehe. I collected all the ads from all the doors.

I almost forgot, I got a business card today. It was from the new owner of the convenience store in our building. I bet you’ve never gotten a business card from your convenience store owner.

Happy Birthday to you,
happy birthday to you,
happy birthhhhhhday kim jong il,
happy birthday to you.

GUESS WHAT! it's kim jong il's birthday today. i don't know how old he is, but isn't that neat. what do you get for a crazy dictator that has everything, even a kidnapped director to help him star in his own movies. i think i'd knit him a pair of socks, because that sort of thing comes from the heart, and you can't just buy that. and i'd write on the side of them some funny quip like 'you put the dick in dictator'. and we'd all have a good laugh.

anyway, my weekend pretty uneventful, aside from seeing my friend in Guri. i like his crowd. they're really... neat. it was one dudes birthday. and at one bar we went to there was a song playing in the background. and it was a song i've been trying to find the title for for awhile. so finally i could ask someone. and it's called ice cream by mc mong(because he looks like a monkey). or something like that. it's korean, and it sound like a complete rip off of where is the love. but i think it would neat to get a korean cd.

and the other neat part about seeing my friend is that he gave me a cell phone. now i just need to get a number for it. apparently receiving calls on it is free. horray.

maybe next weekend i'll actually explore seoul a little more.

granted i did go back to ipark, the huge electronic superstore. and i got my money back on an item that didn't come with an installation cd.(and i didn't have a receipt, hehe). and then i bought a new one. and the item is a USB lan thingy. it's basically an external device that allows you to get the internet. i know, i can already get the internet with this computer, but i built a mini satelite dish for the external one so it would boost the signal much further, and i could get internet from my bedroom. but of course i tried it out, and, sigh, it didn't work. so in the end it was still a waste of money.

Money

It’s amazing how easily you can confuse money in a different country. I saw a homeless man on Saturday. It clicked in my head that I really should give him something. My heart goes out to most homeless because of where circumstance has brought them. I could just as easily be there with a slightly altered disposition, and some bad luck. And on top of an abysmal financial state, dignity is taken from them as well. Anyway, so I went to give the guy 2000 won which is equivalent to about 2 bucks. After I put it in, I noticed that my money was a different colour than the other money in his bin. And then I realized that I actually put 20000 won in. and I feel really bad, but I had to switch the money with the intended amount. I know, you don’t need to chastise me anymore than I will chastise myself.

Later I went to this place called I Park. It’s one giant electronics place with tons of different vendors that you can haggle for a price. I found a music vendor in it and I realized I needed a guitar strap so I asked the guy for one, and he said 5000 won. So to get in the mood of haggling I said 4000. and he laughed at me and said ok. I assume he laughed at me because you usually don’t haggle for the little things.

Finally, after a little research I realized I could probably get the internet from my apartment if I just boosted my signal. And this one site on the internet taught me how. I just needed a USB wifi connector. So I found one for 20000 won. The word for this in Korean is ‘ EE MAHN’ . I wanted it for 15000 though, which is ‘MAHN O CHON’ . However I said, ‘O MAHN’ accidentally. So as he said 20000, it sounded like I was bargaining to have it 50000, not 15000. In the end I got it for 18000. And I’m extremely annoyed because it didn’t come with the startup CD that it was supposed to have. So I need to figure out how to make it work without it. Gah.

Other events: I hosted a surprise going away party for Danny(or Myungho, his Korean name). All of us crammed into my apartment, and played some games and stuff. I put my bed against the wall to make more space, and we stole a whole bagful of balloons from work. Danny’s going to Japan now to improve his Japanese. He also has a book deal to write a book about how to make Western friends as a Korean. It sounds kinda funny that this is the book topic, but actually it’s a very valuable subject for some Koreans. If they make Western friends then it’s like a free English lesson. Most Westerners are wary of Koreans being too nice to them, and wanting to be their friend, because most of the time it is simply to improve English. Then there’s a number of westerners that don’t mind because they use the Korean ladies for something else(I don’t think I need to say what). It’s kinda terrible how the system works, and also I noticed that some Korean girls English is still limited. Like the one time I asked one if she wanted some chips, and she said ‘yes yes, that feels good’.

I played guitar at church. And I even got to introduce a song from my home church. It was awesome. And since no one else knew, I just had to belt it out. And then they got me to play it again during offering. So I’ll play it again next week, and then the week after I’ll introduce another song. Maybe by the time I leave I’ll have converted the entire playlist to freedomize songs, and then it will be just like I’m back home… except I’d be at the front instead of singing in the audience. And the coolest thing! I asked someone there to buy me some peanut butter from Costco. And he did. And now I have a huge tub of peanut butter. Except the funny thing was that I left the tub in a room while I went to do something, and someone took off with it. So we figured out who it was, and we chased them done in the car, and tada, I got peanut butter again.

That was my weekend.

this past weekend i went to a palace. the one that the korean alphabet was invented. it wasn't nearly as big as it once was, because warring nations love burning down buildings. but it was still big. apparentally the king at the time noticed that japan wasn't attacking china because they had such big palaces, so this korean king decided to make his palace big too. ya, that didn't work.

the best part of the palace grounds was all the senescent trees. all their limbs were propped up by these metal crutches. it looked really funny.

we also saw a museum and some traditional korean dance. both of which were as boring as you'd expect, but i guess they stilled carried a bit of charm considering they represented the culture.

sadly my camera's batteries died just as i got there, so i don't have any pictures. however i'm gonna steal a bunch from brooke and michelle.

this year is the year of the golden pig. it happens only 3 times a century. everyone buys a golden pig piggy bank, the bigger the better. it's supposed to symbolize financial luck.

here's mine:

based on the size, i'm not counting on too much financial luck. i learned from the museum that this oriental tradition is where the piggy bank came from. it cause pigs had such large litters of piglets and this meant good fortune, and plentitude that they translated into meaning wealth. but i guess pigs would've been a form of currency way back then.

i also had to get some pictures for my work visa the other day. the guy actually photoshopped my face right in front of me. actually it wasn't a bad thing, because i wasn't looking great that day anyway. but i noticed that he kept he kept lightening my skin tone. really white is either an ideal here, or that's just how they view us westerners. the guy also tweaked my face so that i'm smiling more, and he fixed my hair a bit.

finally, i'd just like say, koreans have some pretty awesome entertainment. check it out, you can ride this guy. i'm really not sure what the goal of it is, and now i'll never find out because they took him away just the other day.

i made a list of things to do and/or get the other day.

-calculator

-stamp

-groceries

-basketball

-glue+string

-art design

-journals

-sit-ups

-call home

-headset

-nunchucks

-clean

-learn song

-laundry

-fill out instant games

-read

i showed someone the list and they asked about the nunchucks and the string and glue.

i said that the string and glue were for my antlers. because i was redecorating. i think it's best to use visuals for this.
...and just for the heck of it, here's my stolen chairs. they're so nice. i rarely sit on them though. oh, and the other stuff are my other decorations.

profile#7

Wow, I just keep putting off talking about andrea. The last person I need to write about. Andrea lives in room 647 which coincidentally is an area code in Toronto. It’s easy to remember. I’ve needed to know her room number on occasion cause she’s my church buddy. Her father is actually a pastor, but don’t paint a stereotyped picture of her. She’s not like you think. I’ve actually seen her kill a man with her bare hands because he looked at her cock-eyed. I imagine that expression originated from old-time roosters that had lasers in their eyes, and when they looked at you it really annoyed you just like those laser pointers are annoying at movie theatres. She hasn’t given me the what-to yet. Anyway, she usually walks at a leisurely pace after work, probably because after-work symbolizes relaxation. But the other day she took the stairs instead of the escalator down to the subway station, and she beat all our asses(or for euphemistic joy: bums).

Andrea has probably had the most annoying initial living circumstance out of all of us. Her toilet was clogged. It remained clogged for at least a couple weeks. In fact it might still be clogged. She’s had to use the building’s public toilet. Ugh.

It was michelle’s birthday on Saturday. She’s 28 now. the scary thing is that that doesn’t sound old anymore. Not that 28 should be old, but you know what I mean. It’s one of those small acknowledgements to yourself that you are also getting older. And the world around you is a grown up world now, as much as you try to do stupid things to retain a grasp onto some semblance of adolescent vitality. It’s similar to the transition kids undergo upon entering highschool. They still like their lego and Barbie dolls, but lego and Barbie dolls just aren’t cool in highschool. So these grade 9 kids have a mini-battle in their heads between liking something, and telling themselves they’re not allowed to like that something anymore. And that is the essence of transition stages in life. I may or may not be going through a transition stage in my life. Actually, I know I’m going through a transition stage. But I don’t know if I can specifically characterize what I don’t want to allow myself to like anymore, even though I still like it. Or maybe I just don’t want to admit it in this semi-public space called blogging.

But all of this is wayyyy off track, and for some reason I allowed myself to wander. Right, so it was michelle’s birthday. A bunch of us went to a club in Seoul that mostly caters to wiguks(this means foreigners, such as myself). I didn’t like it. I don’t really like clubs, but I didn’t mind dancing that night. If I go to things such as clubs rarely enough, than I’m fine with them. The reason I didn’t like it was because it felt strange being around so many wiguks. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. I think maybe it’s that korean’s behaviour is more predictable and more polite, and less showy, and less ‘look-at-me’. And maybe it’s just that you adapt to where you are, and when there’s so many foreigners around you don’t feel like you are in that place you adapted to.

But again, I’m off track. My whole intention was to talk about karma police. This guy told me that he didn’t pay enough upon exiting the subway(I don’t feel like explaining how the transit works right now), and so the subway security came over to him. When they saw that he was a foreigner that didn’t understand Korean, they just said forget it, and walked away. So on our way to the club, I hopped the turnstile into the subway, and of course no one stopped me. And I thought I was genius, or badass, or something. Later that night when we left the club, we had to take a cab home because the subway was done for the night. Now here’s the tricky thing none of us noticed, the cab driver didn’t put a meter on. When he dropped us off he charged us $40(except in Korean of course). None of had taken a cab before, so we begrudgingly paid it, not knowing if it was a typical price or not. We found out the next day that it should only cost $20. so anyway, the karma police found me, and made me pay for cheating the subway.

I guess I should also watch my back, because I took a couple of chairs from a restaurant/café patio that night… and a milk crate too.

Almost Profile #7So I was gonna write about this girl from alabama today. But she just quit. this a picture of her walking out the door on her last day. i won't take up any more time talking about her since she isn't even a coworker anymore.

instead i'll mention some fun korean stuff.

1. most double doors in korea swing both ways, but the label on the handle always says pull. and also one of the two doors is usually always locked for some reason.

2. i saw a whole kitchen crew at a restaurant line up and give each other massages at the same time. apparently koreans sometimes pump themselves up before they start work.

3. this is awesome:
it's a cup that has chicken nuggets at the top, and your drink at the bottom. the guy doesn't actually serve this, but he still keeps the picture up for some reason.

So I’ve been blogging about my coworkers. And there’s 3 left to write about, but I don’t have pictures of them right now.

So I’ll refer to my notes.

Work 7days…

Koreans work very hard. Like 7 days a week hard. That’s why you see a lot of them falling asleep on the subway(sometimes on your shoulder. Gah.) I read that one thing to do to combat culture shock is to become a regular at some place. And it works extra good with these 7day a week Koreans. Sometimes they’re the only one that works at a particular place, and so you’ll only see them if you go there all the time. I have 2 regular spots so far. I’m working on 3, maybe 4. one spot is a pizza place, and one spot is a taco place. And at both spots I think it’s only one person that works at either.

Dukboki

(pronounced: duck-bo-key)

This is the food served at my third spot I’m working on becoming a regular. It’s this chewy pasta type stuff served in a spicy red sauce. It tastes really good, and it’s really spicy even when you tell them only a little spicy. And sometimes the two girls that work at the place laugh at you while your nose is running, and you get the hiccups because it’s hot. And sometimes they bring you a glass of pineapple flavoured milk because they think you’re funny. Actually I’ve only been to this place once. But like I said, I’m gonna work on making it a regular place.

Residence…

This is soooo much like residence in university. It’s awesome. The size of my place isn’t that much bigger either except with the addition of a bathroom and a small kitchen area. Also, I don’t have tv or internet in my room, just like when I was in res. And also there’s a number of other teachers also in the building that I can call on, just like res. And also I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s almost useless eating at home because I’ve went grocery shopping a number of times, and I’ve still barely found anything quick, and substantial to eat. Besides which, eating out is cheap.

Long end to words…

A peculiarity to Korean speech is that it’s considered friendlier if you extend the last part of your words. For example, thank you, would be like ‘thank youuuuu’. Everyone does it.

No F, No Sh, No V…

There’s no f sound or sh sound, or v sound in the Korean alphabet. So it would be ‘puck you, you sit head, you have a bagina’. Also, there’s a number of letters that aren’t distinctly pronounced as one particular English letter. For example, there is a letter that is a cross between a ‘g’ and a ‘k’. one letter is a cross between a ‘p’ and a ‘b’. one letter is a cross between a ‘ch’ and a ‘j’. one letter is a cross between a ‘t’ and a ‘d’, and one letter is a cross between a ‘r’ and a ‘l’. there was one Korean that went by the name ‘landy’ for 4 years. Then some westerner asked how’d he choose that name, and he said it was his favourite baseball player. Landy Johnson.

DVD Bong…

Bong means room. You go to one of these to watch movies in your own private screening. I went to one tonight, and it was pretty neat. There was a couch/bed thing we laid on and watched the brothers grimm on a movie projector. I could imagine that those rooms are serious make out rooms though….or worse.

No correction food…

If there is a mess up on your food, don’t expect them to really fix it, they don’t like wasting the food, or time. For example, I got bacon bits on a baked potato so I sent it back. They clearly just scraped off the bits and brought it back. There was still a whole bunch of bacon bits around the potato.

Korean kid ass gun…

Bratty Korean kids think that putting their hands together in the shape of a gun, and trying to shove the thumb part up your bum is funny. For some reason it’s ok to do that as long as your hands are in the shape of a gun.

Advertising…

Maybe it’s because they don’t tape flyers on polls that instead they just drive down the street throwing loads of paper advertisements on the ground. I’ve also seen cars with giant blow-up tubes slightly blocking traffic to advertise. I also like the cars driving around with loud speakers. And my personal favourite is the 50 flyers taped to my door every time I get home. No wait, I got an even better favourite. There’s this dude that yells out constantly something in Korean(probably ____ for sale). I can hear it for several blocks and he reminds me of a drunk dude I saw during frosh week at york. Winter’s college at york would go around to all the other residences at 2am during frosh week and just sing them songs. The one time there was a drunk dude that followed them and just started chanting by himself, HEY-OOOO, WINTER’S BLOWS NUTS!!! And so winter’s college adopted this as their own song they sang all the time. Anyway, the advertising dude sounds like the drunk dude.

Ice cream…

Koreans like ice cream year round. I walked by a baskin robbins last night when it was still very cold out, and the shop was full with people.

Ok, that’s enough(or more than enough for now)

If I could just catch it, just hold it like a fly in my hand. Maybe then I could crush it or smother it or swallow down. I could face everything if it were in its right place. square my corners, seal my box with tape. But no reflex can be conditioned to lose any inconvenient moment. No flavour wanders too far when it’s left to ferment for so long. Like wine, the good is the bad all rolled into one. It’s an acquired taste that I’ve never reasoned out. But the flies seem to like it enough to drift around.

Profile#6This is Chantel, and Jon, and waterjug. They're the couple...except for the waterjug, he's only around for the 'riding the bucking bronco' game. see how jon stares at chantel lovingly. and see how chantel is distracted by a puppet show with pink bunnies on LSD's. jon proposed to chantel earlier this year... no wait. i don't know when he proposed. and i don't really remember how. and neither of them are around to help me out. but apparently they like each other enough to do this crazy couple adventure of teacher together in korea. neat. they're both from ottawa. jon really likes the montreal canadiens. chantel likes artsy stuff, like theatre. it's a wonderful stereotype. the sports loving guy, the cultured girl. they're nice people though. not that they wouldn't be because they like sports and/or theatre.

jon and chantel live in a different building than me. so we don't hang out that much outside of work. actually, that's a funny notion, because i don't really call on the people that live in my building all that much. i called on rebecca last night, because i wanted her to tell me how to make this korean food i brought. of course, i still screwed it up. but as a constellation, she lent me some spongebob dvds. yes, i wrote constellation, not consolation. i think it's funnier this way. MAN! could you imagine a spongebob dvds constellation!!!

jon just came in the room a second ago. i said i was writing about him and chantel. he pretended he was saying what i was writing, 'i give them a week'. man, he's such a funny guy. CRAZY. yes, i'm yelling. imaginary yelling.

Profile#5


This is Daniel. He's not really as badass as he looks in this picture. And Daniel isn't his given name. He adopted the name as his english moniker because he was in the American military in Korea, and he had a friend named Daniel. He's never lived in an english speaking country, but his english is really quite good, and his japanese is alright too, although i suppose i wouldn't be able to tell. He sometimes uses english slang, and it's really funny. i use danny a bunch. translate this, translate that, paint my bedroom... ok, i don't ask him that. my bedroom has wallpaper on it. He taught me the korean slang, shi gin ee day. it's sounds like begin a day, and it means it kills. you say it when something is awesome, like a hot girl, or some cock fighting. hmmm, i wonder if there is any cock fighting around. Danny is in my group for groupwork. On the side he privately tutors japanese girls, but i'm still doubtful about the tutoring part. he asked me if i wanted to chill with him and his ladies one weekend, but i had other plans, and like i said, i'm not sure about what he calls 'tutoring'. i wouldn't actually be tutoring though if that's what it was, because i'm legally not allowed.

Danny is taking off for japan in a month to live there for a year. it'll be sad times, but i guess to be honest time never stops and we are constantly moving on somewhere. everyone is. and i myself will be leaving here in around 7months, but i can't think about that yet. time can't exist to me yet. it'll ruin me if it exists too soon. i like it here anyway.

...and that's danny. i like him... not like that.

Profile #4
This is Brooke, she's from australia and she arrived just the other day. she's the one that didn't want to eat the squid head because it was gross, so she ate another part of the squid that she didn't know what it was. and then we told her that what she ate was actually the squid head. she was in china last year. her boyfriend is working in england. she calls cotton candy fairy floss. she's always cold because she's from a warm part of a australia. and usually a girl that's cold is good for guys such as myself, but i don't want to hit on her. she thought geese standing on the frozen water was neat.

i was supposed to post this blip about brooke yesterday, but i got busy, and i didn't have time. ...that sounds kinda funny saying 'i got busy'. right, so i would ask brooke some other fun things about her, but she's no longer in my group(therefore, she's not in the same room). apparently my group is too flooded with awesomeness, and more awesomeness found in brooke would just be overwhelming. that's why she had to move.

so i guess i'll make up the rest about brooke. brooke once shot a missile launcher, and blew up a bridge. it was awesome. she was sick in the hospital when she was 6, and she went temporarily blind. that experience taught her to value bats. she has a pet dingo back home.

and that's brooke.

ha, i fail terribly at taking pictures. there's something about the imposition of it that makes me uncomfortable. maybe that's why i prefer abstract images, or maybe myself as the subject. actually, no, i'm sure i prefer myself as the subject because i'm ego driven... ok not really. anyway, in remedy of my anti-tourist approach to korea, i will force myself to become a photographer by creating photography days. these will be theme days that need to be fulfilled much to the same capacity as i fulfilled the scavenger hunt. there's something about a challenge that stirs one's heart.

so far my themes are as such:
-bad grammar(believe me, this is funnier than you think, take a look at www.engrish.com)
-corporate art (i don't know if it's all of korea, or just my area, but there is A LOT of this stuff. and despite the negative connotation that some may derive from the title 'corporate art', i think it's alright)
-cartoons(cartoons are everywhere, and used for everything. i even saw some cartoons used for the police station)
-food(yum. lots of gross fish. last night this girl brooke had pasta with seafood. there was squid in it and she made sure not to eat the one part she thought was the head but she ate another part. shortly thereafter, we told her what she just ate was the head, so she just ate the whole thing. i guess her aversion wasn't that strong)
-architecture(mostly typical buildings, but i'll find something)

that's what i have for now. i think i need more ideas. i just bought a calendar, so i'll mark those picture taking adventures on it, and then i'll add more later.

oh, by the way. new years was good. i went to three bars. the last of which i ended up in because of a fit of indecision and self-preservation. maybe self-preservation is too strong of a phrase. i'm pretty sure i wouldn't have died if i had gone to the other option. i just would have gotten home at 4am, and i was already tired. so i watched new years on a big screen in a bar. seoul city hall had music and junk. there was a band called 'in soon i'. i think they're big or something, but so far i haven't been able to download any korean music. that's ok, i like my indie scene anyway.

Profile #3:
this is shjon. it's pronounced shawn. when we got our bank cards the bank teller had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to pronounce his name just based on what it looks like. shjon's from portland oregon. he's crazy about koreans, and he'd love to get a korean girlfriend. i saw some koreans staring at him in the elevator. i think it's because he's 6'3, and western. they don't stare at me as much because i'm 5'6 and i have black hair and brown eyes.

shjon was the first western teacher i met when i came here. or as i affectionately refer to every foreigner, wiguk. i heard shjon can left 1000lbs. actually, i don't have a lot of anecdotes about shjon at the moment, so i need to make things up. and today is 'nice' day. i just decided that, so i can't say anything bad about anyone. ooo, here's something. shjon has a mac laptop, and his ipod is not compatible with my pc laptop.

shjon is telling me some new things to say about him. he played college football, he was in the marine corps, and other stuff. horray.

profile #2

This is michelle, she is the other half of the dynamic duo. michelle and Rebecca were friends back in Niagara falls, and they worked in Korea together last year. Michelle is generally the instigator that gets Rebecca to do the stupid things when they’re drunk. Michelle is like me in that she doesn’t know how to control her facial expressions all the time. It’s particularly funny when she runs into a bad smell, she starts doing kung fu moves on it. She’s also like me in that she’s a vegetarian too.

Michelle has an identical twin. However, they’re apparently quite different. It’s funny how it works out.

Michelle brought her dog, dexter, here to Korea. It’s a real brat that will not stop wrestling with you, and it likes smelling guy’s pants for some reason. Not the crotch, just a pant leg. The one time dexter got in the apartment hallway and he ran into someone’s room. The dude was apparently pissed off, but you really shouldn’t leave your door propped open in case a dog runs in.

Michelle really likes dill pickles.

so here's the setup,
i work with other teachers. and now i can introduce you with this crazy invention called the in-ter-net. and another invention called a kam-er-ra.
so i'll introduce one teacher at a time, starting with...

Rebecca


Rebecca sits right beside me. The Korean kids call her robocop. Actually, there are no kids around, so that's not true. Rebecca taught here in Korea last year. Her, and another teacher here have a lot of funny drunk stories. such as the time she put a chopstick down some tough dudes pants, and she had to hide in a restaurant kitchen from him for about an hour, or the time she rang a doorbell in italy at 4am and when went to run away she thought she could fly and she just jumped on the pavement pretending she was superman.

she's really funny. i can't get enough of how she says 'ya, i know'. i'm gonna record it. she's also the head foreign teacher here. and that's rebecca.

MARY CHRISTMAS!!!
(bad korean translation)

So i chilled with brayden christmas eve. i knew him from york, and he's teaching in korea too. this was our tree.


awesome.


you adopt friends quickly when you're in a foreign country. i adopted brayden's friends. we went to TGI friday's and i got a loaded baked potato. and i made sure there was no meat. and then they brought it out with bacon bits. and i sent it back. it's too bad korean's don't really understand vegetarianism. they scraped the bacon bits off, although there was clearly still bacon bits all around it. ugh.

and here's the best, on christmas day a bunch of us teachers were supposed to meet at a buffet for dinner. of course it was a seafood buffet. me and this other vegetarian teacher opted out.


christmas day in the morning was good though. i went for a really long walk, and it was amazing. there were speakers setup out front of a number of shops and they had dance music playing and girls dancing, and talking into microphones advertising for the store. and i found it hard to keep the smile from my face. it was so funny. and i decided at one point to buy a bunch of socks and candy to give to the other teachers as stockings. i figured it would be a nice gesture, especially considering that we're all far from family.

and that was my christmas.


oh, and here's the extent of the graffitti i've found in korea.

i'd just like to take a break from korea for a moment and say that this was one of the funniest bathroom writing conversations i saw. it was at york university. i'd just like to add someone else wittingly responded to it by writing, 'wouldn't you have a serious shitting problem, not a fucking one?'

in other news, i need to go on a photo hunt taking pictures of all the corporate art, and the best konglish. i'll post it when i got it.

My Apartment...



this is my entrace.

this is basically my room, and all there is to it.


this is my kitchen which opposite my bed.

and this is the bathroom. look , the sink is in the shower. i now brush my teeth while i shower.

and this is just one little pic of my area. it's ridiculous big and packed full of everything. and i swear it's gonna take me the whole time i'm here just to discover all my neighbourhood.

The wonderful world of internet connections. Me and the internet have this fun game. I can’t get the internet in my apartment, but I can get it just sitting right outside the apartment.

Apartment pictures…

(gah, they'll come later... they're not load very good. that goes for all the other pictures too)

Oh right, guess what, it just snowed in Ilsan! It’s so beautiful, and so cold, and I don’t want to sit outside for too long.

I went for a walk the other day to find out where I could get an internet signal. I ended up sitting just outside a church at 7am. Finally when I was done internetting, I decided to go inside the church to check it out.

Church….

funny thing, I should’ve just went inside to begin with. It was comfortable and warm, and probably the biggest fanciest church I’ve ever seen. No joke. This thing had an escalator leading to the sanctuary that was probably 50-75metres. It had its own cafeteria, and a ton of other rooms that would’ve got me lost if I explored. It looked almost like an office building with a cross on top from the outside. I think the web address is www.bethel.co.ko I went to the 10am service. There is a headphone piece that you can pick up that has a translator speak into it. You go into the church and they show you where to sit, and pack you in good. I didn’t exactly like it, but then I realized why they needed to. The church gets completely filled. Every seat! There’s even people standing in a glass room at the back with their kids, and probably people sitting in the cafeteria listening to the sermon there too. I did a quick count/estimate and I think there is seating for at least 1500 people. It was ridiculous.

Bargain hunting…

After church I walked a LOT. I walked to Emart, which is the walmart equivalent I guess. I wanted to buy a printer, and the cheapest they had was 40,000 won. (conversion tip: think of that as $40.00 american) so I asked for that one, but they only had the display model. And then it was funny trying to arrange the sale when his English sucked, and my Korean is non-existant. He got the box out and everything, and was getting ready to sell it to me, but he kept trying to convince me that it wouldn’t be a good buy because the ink had been sitting too long, and maybe it would be frozen, and stuff like that. Eventually, I just decided not to get it. Then for the next 3 or 4 hours I walked around looking for a guitar store. I stopped and asked any western looking person I saw if they knew where one was, and finally I found one. John helped me out. I bought one from a couple that didn’t speak any English at all. And I inadvertently bartered for it. I got it for 95,000 won. And now I feel comfortable being here, because I have a guitar. Oh, and the other thing I found is a pizza hut right outside my apartment. And the only thing that was strange about my pizza was the potato wedges on it, which weren’t too bad. And it was only 5,000 won. So I think I might have pizza once or twice a week. It lasts 2 or 3 days anyway.

And those are my adventures so far. Oh, and the cross walks are really annoying. They leave pedestrians standing there for forever! And I’m not sure if this one dude was a really bad driver, or if they’re allowed to turn left on a red. And also, they have cross walks, but I don’t think drivers stop for them, so you kinda have to wait til it’s clear, and then run across.

The next blog I’ll make it a full fledged picture blog. Regretfully I don’t have pictures of strange Koreans because a) I don’t think I could ask to take pictures of them, and b) there aren’t really any strange Koreans. They all try to dress really nice. There isn’t even any grafitti anywhere. I did see a dog with it’s ears dyed blue though. And I saw the saddest looking homeless person. He was laying down on a rolling cart that was about 6 inches high, and he shuffled around with his arms on the ground. There are also plenty of military people around. I guess there’s a military base nearby. I’m in a city called Ilsan which happens to be right on the border between North and South Korea. I’m not too worried, I figure they wouldn’t want to bomb anywhere so close to them, it’d affect them too. Here’s something about ilsan, I haven’t actually read it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilsan

If it didn’t say it in that little write up, you should know that Seoul’s subway system is extended to Ilsan, however I was told that it’d take about an hour to get to downtown Seoul. So that’s that.

I walked around, and I wrote a list of things to comment on.

Mean girls…

I was told that because of the loose copyright laws they sometimes use some western images without care. For example, there was a blown up image from the cover of the movie ‘Mean Girls’ used out front of a strip club.

Smoking…

There are also no laws prohibiting smoking that I know of. So far I’ve only seen one restaurant with no smoking signs, and they had to draw them themselves. This is something that really really sucks. Although, interestingly girls generally don’t smoke in public. Someone told me that he once saw a girl have a cigarette ripped from her mouth by a strange because she was smoking in public.

Water…

Apparently I’m not supposed to drink the water.

Walking across the street…

I still haven’t figured out when I’m supposed to cross the street in some places. I guess I’ll just follow everyone else. But so far my impression is that Korean drivers are a little crazy, and traffic is ridiculous.

Singing…

Koreans love singing. I’ve seen at a couple different Koreans just singing outloud as they walked. And they don’t care if they’re out of tune.

there's too many of these personal 'expression' type of sites.
this one(blogspot)
livejournal
facebook(which can sound like facefuck if the wrong person is saying it)
myspace
msn space
youtube(if you're a video poster)
purevolume(which is strictly for music)
plentyoffish(for dating)
flickr

ugh

it's so hard to keep up with the trend on this stupid internet thing.

as a sidenote, i've realized that facebook is probably the best one for uploading images so far.

guess what! i rediscovered what my user name and password were for this blog. now i can actually write on it again.

i had a lot of fleeting thoughts that i intended to post before. but fleeting thoughts are rather fleeting. so now they're just relegated to that world that thoughts fill in their free time with while they wait to be discovered again.

i will say this, i just finished reading Maus. it's a quick read as most graphic novels are. and i don't think i've been affected like that by a book before. maybe i should read more.

Maus is a true story about nazi germany as retold by a jewish survivor that went through some of the worst of it. it is from the point of view of the comic artist interviewing his father, the survivor, about his experiences. the jews are drawn with mice heads, the germans with cat heads, the poles with pig heads, the one french guy had a frog head, and i saw a couple of british with fish heads, and some americans with dog heads.

A couple things really stuck in my head. One was a scene describing how the nazi's took jewish children often around 2 or 3 years old by the ankles and swung their heads into walls so they would cry no more. Another scene that really got me was the father describing how he got typhus. and many many others got it too. he would have to go to the bathroom all the time, and there would always be people lined up, and the halls were piled with the dead. he would slip his footsteps over the slick heads of the dead piled so high. and he would be sleeping next to the dead. and it was the absolute base of human existance just looking to survive when even stumbling over the dead becomes happenstance.
i want to do something, but i don't know what exactly. these events happened over 50 years ago, but there's still shit constantly going on. there's statistics like 33% of the world does not even have a clean source of water, and 50% is malnourished.

sorry, i didn't mean to be so heavy.

sometimes these things feel like holding onto nothing at all.
moments want your attention like newborns.
i am flying in jumbo jets while they cry themselves to sleep.
i am whatever you called me while i slept.
i wish i could remember my dreams.
i think i was holding you in one of them.
where do thoughts live in the offseason.
i'm forgetting everything, and i need to go to their vacation.

if you are going to be featured in a borat segment, here is what you should look for in a consent waiver...

i got a job in korea. now i can look forward to seeing these girls. not like that, i mean look at them... weird.

http://www.theseoultimes.com/ST/