I accidentally on-purpose saw transformers last night. I meant to see die hard, but it apparentally wasn't playing, and then we noticed that transformers was there at midnight, and i wanted to see that movie much more.

disregarding the fact that suspension of disbelief is required, I will list the ways the movie defied logic.

(NOTE: POSSIBLE TRANSFORMERS MOVIE SPOILERS)

1. decepticons can kill any non-main character easily even when they are well armed. However, they have no ability to kill or even hurt a main character that might only be carrying a pocket knife.

2. each transformer has the ability to turn into any form it can scan, yet the autobots(the good guys) all choose ground civilian vehicles, and the decepticons (almost) all choose air military vehicles.

3. the transformers can change into something half the size that they are as robots.

4. as a follow up on the size difference, there is also a cube that shrinks from the size of a house to the size of a small microwave. this isn't so bad except that the box would be so massively dense at that size that a person could never lift it, but they do.

5. people in the movie are given important responsibilities that a transformer could do 20 times better. it's like watching professional athletes play their sport with grade school kids, and actually deferring to the kids, while the other team doesn't hold back.

6. the fact that more people don't notice giant clumsy robots hanging out outside.

7. how did they get that stuff out of the south pole, especially during that time period.

8. matters of utmost importance are delayed for illogical reasons. honestly, if it's that important, why is there any delay?

9. the incredible amount of serendipity.

10. the fact that any new robot created was instantly evil, yet the story claims that they were originally peaceful.

Of coures I still really liked the movie. I think all of the errors cancelled each other out.

My plane ticket: resolved. (I fly back to Canada July 5th. And because of the time difference, it was still be July 5th when I get back)

My potential new job: check

The souvenirs: working on it.

Interesting things to note: I'm giving the message at church this Sunday. I'm talking about perseverance.

Non-sequitur: I was thinking of getting an interesting new watch. The problem is finding a watch that is reasonably functional. http://www.tokyoflash.com/en/

Observations: There is a strange feeling of collision in my head. One thought is excited about going home, another is so worn out. It's like running a marathon, seeing and seeing the finish line a couple hundred metres away. While feel so tired, and want to celebrate, you're not sure your legs will support this notion.

I feel so lucky to be apart of a not so selective club. Ze Frank has been apart of this club, and... crap, I remember reading so many other disgruntled people's thoughts on this, that made them apart of this group too. However I can't remember who they are. Anyway, this wonderful group that I'm talking about is the pre-mile high club. It's called such because you get screwed by the airline before you even take off. Luckily, I wasn't screwed to the extent of jail bitch.

The situation:
Airline representative: Okay, can you just give me your email address so I can send you the confirmation of your changed airline date.

Me: Ok, it's t-h-e-m-a-l-c-o-l-m @ _______

Airline representative: Ok, so it is the + your last name.

Me: no no, it's the + my first name.

Airline representative: oh, that might be a problem.

Me: What? Why?

Airline representative: Currently, we have your first name, and your last name reversed in our system. You won't be able to board the plane if it stays like that.

Me: But I already flew here to Korea with the ticket like that.

Airline representative: It doesn't matter.


So, now i need to go through a dumb process of changing the name.

I shouldn't have went here. http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/ it made me homesick.

http://www.grendel.org/tsc/klosterman-enemies.htm

I read this article about nemesises (or nemesi i suppose) and archenemies. As a quick summary I will explain, you apparently need both of these people in your life to succeed. It is the hate and competition that drive you, or something like that. The differences between the two are that... actually I'll just copy and paste this blip.

RECOGNIZING YOUR NEMESIS •At some point in the past, this person was (arguably) your best friend. •You have punched this person in the face. •If invited, you would go to this person's wedding and give him a spice rack, but you would secretly hope that his marriage ends in a bitter, public divorce. •People who barely know both of you assume you are close friends; people who know both of you intimately suspect that you profoundly dislike each other. •If your archenemy tried to kill you, this person would attempt to stop him.

RECOGNIZING YOUR ARCHENEMY •Every time you talk to this person, you lie. •If you meet someone who has the same first name as this person, you immediately like him less. •The satisfaction you feel from your own success pales in comparison to the despair you feel at this person's triumphs, even if those triumphs are completely unrelated to your life. •If this person slept with your girlfriend, she would never be attractive to you again. •Even if this person's girlfriend was a hateful bitch, you would sleep with her out of spite.


So this got me thinking, who are these people in my life? I think the nemesis will be easier for me to find. I think the first one was probably my brother. Second, and probably the most beneficial was Johann Koorn, look him up on facebook if you want. He was the one that gave me competition for art. If he didn't move away after grade 9, I bet I'd be an even better artist, and he'd probably stay forefront as my top nemesis. maybe. After he left, I think my brother took the nemesis title again. This was about the time Brad started travelling, and maybe I was jealous or something. I guess this has mostly dissapated now. well as much as nemesi dissapate. And if I was to guess my latest nemesis, it would be Alison Bulger. My ex-girlfriend. The secret competition rages on. Maybe. I'd probably do better at it if i wasn't as apathetic.

I don't know my archenemy though. I'm sure if I did though, I shouldn't mention it. Maybe I'll go find one.

It has been a game since maybe 2 or 3 months ago to make my msn name subtle enough, and yet still indicative of my current situation/feelings. Or maybe just subtle poking fun at others on msn.

I think it started with the msn name, "self-deprecation is the height of cool" in reference to someone else's self-deprecating msn name.

and right now my msn name is "not enough corners".

Rather than just explaining the meaning though, i will present 3 options as to the meaning.

I think it will be more fun.

a) I keep rounding a corner towards success. but i'm afraid of the actual success so i constantly try to find more corners to round to postpone that possible outcome.

b) there were too many misbehaving children, and it felt like there just weren't enough corners to put each one in.

c) corners represent an unsafe area for children. so my subtle sarcasm is pretending to be the voice of the builders of my school's play area.

i need to post some cool, so i've stolen some:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html
For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads -- the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.
"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."
On a visit to Hamburg, about 100 miles away, he noticed that he was conscious of the direction of his hometown. Wächter felt the vibration in his dreams, moving around his waist, just like when he was awake. [...]
When the original feelSpace experiment ended, Wächter, the sysadmin who started dreaming in north, says he felt lost; like the people wearing the weird goggles in those Austrian experiments, his brain had remapped in expectation of the new input. "Sometimes I would even get a phantom buzzing." He bought himself a GPS unit, which today he glances at obsessively. One woman was so dizzy and disoriented for her first two post-feelSpace days that her colleagues wanted to send her home from work. "My living space shrank quickly," says König. "The world appeared smaller and more chaotic."
[...]
During a long brainstorm session, they wondered whether the tongue could actually augment sight for the visually impaired. I tried the prototype; in a white-walled office strewn with spare electronics parts, Wicab neuroscientist Aimee Arnoldussen hung a plastic box the size of a brick around my neck and gave me the mouthpiece. "Some people hold it still, and some keep it moving like a lollipop," she said. "It's up to you."
Arnoldussen handed me a pair of blacked-out glasses with a tiny camera attached to the bridge. The camera was cabled to a laptop that would relay images to the mouthpiece.
I cranked up the voltage of the electric shocks to my tongue. It didn't feel bad, actually -- like licking the leads on a really weak 9-volt battery. [...] I walked around the Wicab offices. I managed to avoid most walls and desks, scanning my head from side to side slowly to give myself a wider field of view, like radar. Thinking back on it, I don't remember the feeling of the electrodes on my tongue at all during my walkabout. What I remember are pictures: high-contrast images of cubicle walls and office doors, as though I'd seen them with my eyes. Tyler's group hasn't done the brain imaging studies to figure out why this is so -- they don't know whether my visual cortex was processing the information from my tongue or whether some other region was doing the work.


and this....


Brain Generated Music: The user attaches three disposal leads to her head. A personal computer then monitors the user's brain waves to determine her unique alpha wavelength. [...] Music is then generated by the computer, according to an algorithm that transforms the user's own brain-wave signal. [...] the fact that the sounds are synchronized to the user's own alpha wavelength to create a resonance with the user's own alpha rhythm also encourages alpha production.
The music itself feels like it is being generated from inside your mind. Interestingly, if you listen to a tape recording of your own brain-generated music when you are not hooked up to the computer, you do not experience the same sense of transcendence. Although the recorded BGM is based on your personal alpha wavelength, the recorded music was synchronized to the brain waves that were produced by your brain when the music was first generated, not to the brain waves that are produced while listening to the recording. You need to listen to "live" BGM to achieve the resonance effect.
And now there's this brand new vaporware:
Project Epoc is a headset that uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals naturally produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expression. It connects wirelessly with all game platforms from consoles to PCs. Project Epoc now makes it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the player's mind.

dear blog,
i owe you one blog. it's been too inconsistant. and i have things to say i think. but apathy often prevails in times of exhaustion, or actual sociality. i guess it's not really a bad thing the sociality supercedes an articial world of binary and junk.

i am signed up for a ESL teacher job search website. Now i get tons of emails each day. maybe i do it just to feel popular. but really, can you take a job offer seriously from someone named wooky?

It's Buddha's birthday coming up. It's apparently a huge celebration. I think things such as Buddha's birthday, or Christmas are kinda ironic. Jesus and Buddha are such huge figureheads of 2 prevalent religions, and their foundations are in humility. Yet when we celebrate each of their births, it is ultimately extravagant. Very little piety is displayed, rather mass consumption, and parties. I guess given enough time, nearly anything can be transformed into something else. My compost is a good example. ugh.

The NBA is sucky right now. Maybe it's being sucky because i'm getting too into it, and it's giving me the hint to back off a bit. It's just like a relationship that becomes too obsessive. Anyway, it's sucky because i don't care about any of the 4 teams still playing. And also because Phoenix Suns were cheated by the NBA so bad. I guess double standards are ok when you're playing favourites.

After 6 months of attempting to plan curriculum for this school i'm working for, i've learned so much. Mostly i've learned what not to do, and how to fix it. I've recently started putting together my own curriculum. I only have an outline right now, I think it's a good idea. There are so many school's that need a good curriculum here, and i think i can do that. I'm going to bore you a little more with some explanation. Just recently, as in last year, the TOEFL/TOEIC exams format were changed. The TOEFL/TOEIC exam is a test for english proficiency, and it's invaluable for korean's to do well on it to do well on it to benefit the post-secondary education. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOEIC . The format has been changed to incorporate a need for more listening and speaking fluency, not just writing. Since this is so recent, private english are now catching onto the trend of making their schools dialogue orientated but curriculum isn't fully formed for this type of teaching yet. That's where I come in, someone that jumps on a trend at the right time. hopefully.

i have other plans that i need to discuss later.

sorry i've left that creepy picture up headlining my blog for so long. things have been busy around here. i'm tired, and it's hard to concentrate on any particular thing. the jist of it is that all the korean teachers were let go/fired the other day. it really sucks because they were becoming really good friends of mine, and it also sucks because they taught the students academic. without them here we have to teach twice as much. but i've said to myself that i'm gonna suck it up because being a real teacher is twice as hard anyway.

anyway, here's a new painting i painted. i have another completed, but i don't have a picture of it.

this is great. the best bread ever:
http://www.hemmy.net/2006/03/10/human-bread/

the question is, would you eat this stuff?

ok, let's see if i can go through this list about the weekend. I could probably logically arrange this through chronological, or , but that's work that i don't care to do.

-kindergarten disasters
koreans seem to take safety as second place, and hence a kindergarten broke his leg as he tried to get out of a moving ride.

-jeju island
it is an island in the south of korea that has been created by constant volcanic eruptions. however the last time it erupted is out of recent memory. it is known for these little statues, and mermaid women. the whole group of us went there on the weekend.

-shjon's last daywhen at jeju i found out that shjon has quit. he started looking for a new job last monday, and found one on wednesday, and now he's done. he was sick of the constant inconsistancy from this school. i however am going to stick this out.
-shjon being violated
as a going away present shjon got violated. korean's have a tendancy to blur the gay lines because "there are no gays in korea". so men are more comfortable acting like how girls act with each other back in canada. at one point, when we were lying down, about to go to bed, this one ambiguous guy (pretty boy) latched onto shjon's back in a spooning action and said to him "girlfriend". jon and i couldn't stop laughing. we were crying. and the kid stayed on him for a good 15 seconds. and after he was received so negatively based on our laughing, he now seems to be afraid of shjon.

-korean words i've learned
i've learned how to say:
it's exciting, it's annoying, it doesn't matter, cute, who, why, what, where, when, and a number of other things. it's motivating me to try harder to learn.

-the older girls
i hung out with them most of the weekend. they stayed away from the politics of work. i liked it. but of course they're older, i'm sure i don't have a chance. sigh. not that knowing girls is about trying to pick'em up.

-the girls that don't speak any english
the two bosses daughters were cute. they're adopted, and they don't speak any english. so i tried to hang out with them a bit. i had some eye-contact with the one. but i lost out to someone that actually spoke korean.

-the korean teacher girls
they were distant the whole weekend from everyone. i don't think they wanted to be there. but along the theme of girls, they teased me that i was hitting on amy anytime i talked to her. but i wasn't really. i guess it's just fun to tease people about liking someone in any culture. by the way, amy has a boyfriend of 5 years, and i've learned my lesson about home wrecking.

i mention the idea of girls these 3 times just because it's always interesting conversation. but really, i'm realistic about dating koreans. none of that for me. i'll strictly stick to making out with them... or just pretending like i have a chance.

-the gash in my back
the second morning i woke up in jeju i stood up. the window was open. the window opens inward. and the window was right over top of where i was. it left this nice mark on my back.

-acclimating to floors
before i came to korea i was used to my super-comfy bed. but since then i 've gotten used to a rock hard bed. it feels great, now i can feel comfortable going to sleep on someone's floor. an example being when i fell asleep on a floor in jeju.

-gayness, or not
as i mentioned before, gay's don't exist in korea. you have to get used to the openness. since no korean is really worried about being accused they're gay.

-interesting diningthey ate the pig the first day.
the second day along the beach front we found these ladies. they have a bunch of fish in buckets. a few of them ate the orange ones. they just sliced them up, washed them and served them on those little stools with lettuce and sauce. i didn't eat any.

-the fake coldsore
i dripped hot syrup. on myself before i went to jeju. it went on my lip and burn me good. and it looked exactly like a coldsore for a week. it's just finally went away today. it was funny, someone that saw right after i burned myself asked me the next day with all honesty how my coldsore was.

-gostop
i played gostop the one night with the koreans. as soon as i joined we started kicking ass. we won about $30 the first hand. and that's huge since most time you only get about $2-$8. so i played it out the a number of more rounds, and then when we quit, the guy that i was playing with gave me $20. it was great. the next day i played with a couple of the westerners. and i didn't want to play for money, but they pull the pressure. and i cracked, and i lost $8. later, i played for no money, and i won a bunch. gah.

-the ways i've changed
i think i've changed in good ways. more mature. more independant. but also i've noticed that i've worked on almost every aspect of myself that i want to improve.
teaching - check
working out - check
basketball - check
painting - check
guitar - check
sociality - check
reading the bible - check
self created projects - check
independance - check
etc.

granted, i'm afraid that this motivation may be temporary based on my situation.

-even steven
i calculated all that i spent this weekend, and it equaled exactly 10 cents.

-unseshy swimmers
it's actually unsexy swimmers, but koreans pronounce sexy, seshy. it's because anytime an "ee" sound follows an "s" sound, the "s" becomes an "sh" sound.
anyway, there were stories that got around about these fantastic women in jeju island that swam and caught immobile sealife like clams. they could swim up to 20 metres deep and hold their breath for about 2 minutes. word of this got to japan, and the japanese thought, wow, these are mermaids, they're probably so sexy. then they got to jeju island and found that these women are the most unsexy women you could imagine. but they can get you some gooood sealife. i saw some of these women there, and yes they are interesting, and yes they are quite the dying breed. i guess girls these days just don't aspire to this type of glory.

-nicknames
there were so many nicknames passed around on the weekend. it was funny. some of the guys were named hot stuff, beefcake, sexyback, and i think stallion. the 3 daughters of the head managers were called cutie, pretty, and sexy.

-reused cups
i've found that koreans have no qualms about reusing any cup they find. they'll simply tap it upside down to empty the last previous drops, and then offer to pour you a drink. i quickly found a new cup, and then accepted. i guess they figured that the alchohol would kill any bacteria.

-understanding korean
the one white dude i was with actually understand korean pretty good. he carries on long conversations in korean actually. anyway, when him and i went through the airport security, apparently a couple of the security check girls said we were handsome men. they didn't realize that he understood korean. and that's why my goal is to understand korean.

MAN! i have so much to talk about this weekend. but i'm at the pc bong right now, so i don't want to type up all the stuff. so instead i'll just write point form note reminders for myself to write about later.

-kindergarten disasters
-jeju island
-shjon's last day
-shjon being violated
-korean words i've learned
-the older girls
-the girls that don't speak any english
-the korean teacher girls
-the gash in my back
-acclimating to floors
-gayness, or not
-interesting dining
-the fake coldsore
-gostop
-the ways i've changed
-even steven
-unseshy swimmers
-nicknames
-reused cups


i may or may not write about all these things, but i like making brainstorming type lists and then filling in what i want. i'll put in pictures too.

kids names i saw in yesterday's kindergarten class...

natasha
smile
lion
andra
bianca

hmmm, there were a bunch more, but i don't remember them.

maybe if today's kindergarten names are fun, i'll try and remember them better.

yesterday i ate pizza. it was a half and half pizza. half vege, and half with meat. i ate the last piece, a piece that didn't seem to have any meat on it. and then as i swallowed i tasted pepporoni on my palate. i know, it doesn't sound so bad, but then a minute later my gut hurt like hell. honestly, for 20 minutes my stomach was in the most pain i've been in since i've been here in korea. note to self, i'm never eating meat again. i wonder if the same feeling would happen to someone that ate a carrot after 5 years of no veggies.

we did curriculum planning at work yesterday.
the new direction we are taking with curriculum is spending 40 minutes on vocabulary, 40 minutes on dialogue, and 40 minutes on activities.

example dialogue:

Pay me Nine dollars.
Eight dollars?
No, I said nine.
I understand.
So you will give me the money now.


This isn't the exact dialogue we use, but if you look at the acrostic, some people are doing this. i know, a little immature, but still rather funny.

Secondly, we had someone convinced that once a week we are going to try express english accents from around the world. So each of us are supposedly required to put on a different accent. The girl we had convinced hesitantly said well she thinks a british accent would be easiest. and then we all lost it, we could hold in the laughter anymore.

i saw a shirt yesterday that said:

Jesus
I Will
Save You

i think it meant jesus will save you. but all of a sudden this shirt turns you into an ironic anachronic hero.