The one where I mention Skype

The ROTC boys took me out to dinner our last day of the course.  Naturally, I chose dalkgalbi.  Everyone loves dalkgalbi, especially me!  Afterwards, we had a drink at some underground bar near the restaurant, but I was tired and went home after an hour.  However, it was great to be surrounded by young people!

Christmas was rather lonely; I stayed home and watched a couple movies.  The planned buffet event fell apart with only one other co-worker showing up at the Hilton Hotel's Christmas buffet.  It was a pretty bad dinner.  Nothing tasted good, plus it cost me $40.  Merry Christmas, eh? LOL  I did get to Skype two of my sisters.  It was late Christmas night for me, but their Christmas morning was just warming up.  With Skype I can imagine that I'm actually in their houses.  It feels comforting.

The winter re-sit class is going well.  I have a fantastic class of eager beavers and most of them are quite willing to participate in activities without any coaxing.

The one where I spent 40 bucks for a bad dinner

Ah, the goosey-goon, or "Salvation Army" as they say in English.  Some will be surprised to learn that in 1979 from Thanksgiving to December 23, I was a Salvation Army bell ringer in Brooklyn and Manhattan.  I lived in Queens, and every day the Captain took me, Wes Hughes, and Robert Propert to our various bell ringing sites.  My favorite was... well, I hated New York, so there was no fave, but when we were at the Brooklyn courthouse, there was a restroom handy, so I liked being there the most, I suppose.  Some stories to tell about that little "holiday".

Christmas has come and pretty much gone.  I didn't do all that much today.  I had planned to go to the Christmas buffet at the Hilton.  So I did, mainly because I felt obliged, but I was also feeling lonely; however, after I got there, I learned that hardly anyone was coming!  Drinking parties all over town, it seems, were keeping folks away.  I can't drink much anymore, really, despite the big talk LOL, so that doesn't appeal to me.   Drinking makes me ill, really uncomfortably ill.  I hate felling sick.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh, yeah, I had dinner with Doug and his girlfriend at the buffet.  I'm not going to recommend the Hilton Hotel buffet, and I'm not ever going to go back, but I'm not going to come right out and say it was a god awful waste of $40.  Well, yes, I am.  It was exactly that. Let's be honest! They had turkey, and lots of other stuff, so I certainly got full.  It just wasn't very good considering how much it cost.  Maybe they should learn how to make any kind of pie, though.  That would help a little.  Anything besides those horrible sugar cakes they like so much. Yuck.

That's my tree in the picture.  It looks pretty in real life, but in this photo it looks like crap!  No presents, though.  :(

Merry Christmas anyway to one and all.  I hope you have a great day and live to see the new year! LOL

The one where I show off my mouse

Can you guess which one is the new mouse?  The nice thing about the new mouse is that it has no wheel.  You do all the scrolling and page turning by running your fingers along the surface.   Apple made something that was not only useful but is truly intuitive... for once!

Yesterday morning at 8 AM we had a foreigner faculty meeting to discuss new books and how the courses might be set up for next semester.  Though there were some important matters, some stuff could not be addressed since the department hasn't created the master schedule for next semester yet, and we don't know how many of the 20 new teachers are actually going to show up in February.

I am interviewing the last of my students today, then a makeup listening test, and then I will have everything I need to finish the raw grading.  I downloaded a PDF from the internet that explains how to do Excel spreadsheets.  I asked for help at the uni, but nobody understood what I wanted, so I'll persevere and do it myself.  We all have exactly the same 5 categories to include in our grading.  I have all the raw scores notated for each of the 5 categories and just need to insert equations for the weight of each category so Excel can pop out the magic number at the end.  Should be simple, but a template would have been nice to speed things up.  My office computer has Vista Home Basic, and I don't have Excel on it$  The university system is in Korean, and Home Basic doesn't do multiple languages (and can't be forced to), so uploading the uni system spreadsheet to my office computer is impossible. I will have to use the head office computers.  I have been a nervous wreck this week worrying about missing deadlines, forgetting to do things (which I have done already), figuring out how to organize the portfolio they started making us do, recording grades correctly, entering them into the system, and finishing up interview testing.  I have had a continual headache and stomachache for over five days now.  Some of the stuff is absolutely stupid, though, considering we teach conversation courses.  These should be pass/fail, since there is no valid way to test whether a student has actually learned to converse better having attended class for 1,300 minutes (I'm being generous here!).  We basically grade learners on how well they speak in general, not on whether they have improved over the semester.  Indeed, how can we know whether they have improved since it takes a while to figure out their level of competence in the first place?  Some students tank the placement test to ensure a high grade.  Pass/Fail is the only fair way to construct these conversation courses.  Some teachers give their learners even LESS instruction time since they have two weeks of midterms and two weeks (or more) of finals!  So the learners sit in a class of 25 for 1,100 -1,300 minutes over the course of 16 weeks, which means IF each student gets an equal amount of attention, 4 minutes each class, he gets 50 minutes or so of the teacher's instructive attention over the course of 16 weeks.  And then we have to assign a letter grade to him.  Beyond the pale, if you ask me.  If someone can rationally defend the current grading scheme, I'd love to hear it.  I think it is so unfair considering the subject we teach as to be borderline unethical.

The one where I'm not cooking with gas

The other day my landlady came by to see what I was whinging about regarding the city gas service to my apartment.  I told her the gas wasn't flowing regularly, smoothly, through the line.  She called the Rinnai A/S (service department) who promptly concluded that the gas range was too old and needed replacement at her expense.  She seemed to think that was reasonable and ordered a new range (top).  I thought that since she was being so gullible, I might try to convince her that foreigners like ovens and maybe she should buy a new oven for me instead.  No go.  But it was worth a try.  So the service guy shows up with the new range top, and I show him how the gas is behaving, so he gets on the phone to tell his office that it's not a problem with the range.

This is the guy in my kitchen calling his office.
(Yes, I take photos of all service people who come to my house.  I don't know why exactly, but there it is! -- Who are you calling insane? LOL)

So he told me that it's the gas meter that is obviously malfunctioning, and he'll have the landlady call for an appointment with the city gas company.  Voila!  I now have to be home supposedly at 3 PM Monday, but I know that as soon as I make a quick 9 AM trip to the university, I'll get a phone call from the gas guys asking where I am.  If I stay home all day, they won't show up until 5 PM.  It's a subsection of Murphy's Law called the Korean Clause.

I've done some cooking!  Take a look:

This is a batch of corn bread cooked in a caste iron pot in my toaster oven (hence the uneven browning).  I like to put hot milk in it and eat it like a cereal for breakfast.  It's a good batch.

This is a meat pie I made with chicken, potatoes, and fried onion inside.  The pastry turned out really nice, but I had to camp in front of the toaster oven most of the time to make sure it didn't burn!  *sigh*  I wish the landlady would've agreed to a real oven.  She'll let me buy one and install it at my own expense, but that would be a huge hassle come time to move next time.  However, if I don't plan on moving, what's the big deal, Michael?  Just do it!  Do it! Do it now!  Yeah, that's what I thought, you wuss.
- - - - - - - -


Hey Grandpa!  What's fer supper?

(I know this gets re-posted automatically over on Facebook, but it doesn't format very nicely... sorry for that, but nothing I can do about it.)

The one where I went to a church and wasn't struck by lightning

This is the big, scary Ferris wheel on the roof of some building in Ulsan.  Jon L. and I went to see Kwangsoo's wedding there today.  It was at a church, but some generic protestant one.  It didn't look like a church, but they called it one, and there are more things to argue with christians about than their choice of architecture.  LOL  The officiant rambled on and on, then all of a sudden he asked the foreigners to stand up so the congregation could see us!  I'm sure he meant well, but Koreans don't seem to realize that we don't always want to be singled out, especially at someone else's wedding, and in a country where anti-foreigner sentiment is growing.  After the wedding, we chose to go to Outback instead of the Korean restaurant for the reception.  I'm sure the place would've been swamped, and the newlyweds' family and real life friends should get priority.

My Apple Mac iWeb has ceased to publish my other blog.  It just stopped suddenly, and I've done all the recommended steps, but it will not publish (upload).  I don't know why I bother spending money on Apple Mac.  Oh, speaking of spending money... on a Mac... my Bluetooth mouse has gone haywire, so I wanted to replace it, but there are no more replacements.  You can only get the new "Magic Mouse".  It isn't actually available yet in Korea (of course) but it should arrive next week and they'll send me one as soon as they are in country.

I'm feeling pressured at the university.  Our coordinators have made certain that every scrap of pleasure is wrung out of teaching with a string of goal-less robotics to perform for the entertainment of the Korean staff.  The only consolation is, it is SO easy to get a teaching job in Korea that changing jobs is a breeze if it gets too complicated here.

The one where I find some canned goods

I was digging around in the cupboard and came across these two cans that must have been in there for two years (or more?), and disciplining myself not to look at the "best use" dates, I threw together a pastry shell and mixed up a pie.  Anyone who's been to my apartment knows that I only have a little electric toaster-style oven that doesn't heat evenly or consistently.  However, the result is not that bad.  The pie cooked thoroughly, which is important with expired canned goods, I suppose.  This piece here I ate while it was still warm.  No side effects, yet, but it's only been a few minutes.  (If I die in the night, tell the coroner to question the pie! LOL)

In other news, I did not leave the house at all today! 
OMG, is that right? Not at all? 
I guess it's true, because I just read it on the internet!
LAMOLJ*

Joel told me about this "great sci-fi series" called Torchwood.  I downloaded season one.  It's so bad I want to cry, but it is starting to grow on me, like a fungus or something.   I'm downloading season two now.  Someone stop me!



*laughing at my own lame joke

The one where I'm disconnected

I can't get enough of traditional Korean architecture! It's  a complicated and intricate weave that produces an aesthetic to knock your socks off.  I would love to have a house like the building in this photo, even without all the detail painting.

Last night the internet service to my place went down, and all my prayer and fasting couldn't bring it back up again.  From my office today I gave KT a call, and they'll send someone around tomorrow morning.  Eh, it'll give me some quiet time.  Speaking of which, my apartment is all rearranged for winter now.  The living room is functioning once again as a living room rather than a cat habitat, and the little room that was the computer room is now my meditation room.  It's a perfect place: small and cozy.  The ondol heats the floor just right in there, too.

This week my syllabus called for giving my classes outlines of the final exam!  Is that right?  Isn't it too early for that?!  The end of the semester is indeed just around the corner.  I dread the paperwork, though the classes are all a pleasure to teach.  We will actually finish the textbook this time!  Thank planning and good learners for that!

Today is the dedication of the new building on campus and the enshrinement (?) of some dead monk.  Not sure what enshrinement is, but the university wants all free faculty to attend.  I might go, though Friday is a high-pressure day for me.  We'll see.

The one where I diss my Mac again

I am such a child.  Toys! Toys! Toys!  This Bluetooth headset has been lying around on my desk at the house for a couple months, no, make that several months, and today I came across it by accident and decided to do something with it.  The booklet is long gone, but it was written in Korean anyway, and Korean is confusing enough without the added hurdle of technical mumbo-jumbo.  So, it was trial and error as I struggled to connect it to my home computers.  I tried the Mac first, but of course, Macs aren't very intuitive, so I tried my HP desktop replacement laptop.  Zing! Connected instantly.  Back to the Mac. I fiddled with this and that, tried some of these and those, and finally I got a screen that seemed like the one I needed.  "What is your device?" asked Mac.  "Bluetooth headset" I naively typed back.  "Hmm, sorry, but there is no Bluetooth headset anywhere near here."  Hmm. Mac is blind, I thought.  But I already knew that.  Then I noticed it, an option for "Any Device" and tried it.  Voila!  Mac said "I found a Bluetooth headset!"   I threw my slipper at him, but being a machine, he simply rolled his unseeing eyes and finished the connection.  So, wow, it's an emotional moment for me.  I love technology.  It does work with Skype, and that makes it quite useful.  Hands free, I can walk around the apartment talking to people thousands of kilometers (or even miles) away.
In other tech news, I also got a program to help me stream audio online, but I'm waiting for the creator to come online and help me with the thing.  It, too, is for a Mac, and it, too, is not intuitive.  I'm sending a letter to Apple Computers.  Their new Mac motto should be, "If you're an experienced computer geek, have we got an intuitive machine for you!"

The one where I found Queen Grimhilde's orchard

Yesterday was a beautiful, warm, sunny day!  After some letter writing was caught up, off to the local mountain for a hike I went.  Along the way, I passed a lovely little apple orchard, and the devil inside thought no one would miss one apple, would they?  Fortunately, before my soul came into jeopardy, this sign came into view.  I knew every word on this sign, but what did it mean?  Let's first see what the basic vocabulary says: <<Warning apple poison insertion responsibility (particle indicating uncertainty) is not>>  It is a sign after all, and sometimes signage is in shorthand.  Also, Korean avoids pronouns like the plague.  "If you can't guess who's doing what, then you can't speak Korean yet."  *sigh*  Honestly, I cannot tell you what this sign means precisely, but I can tell you that the presence of the phrase "poison insertion" was enough to keep me honest. LOL

The weather has taken a turn toward winter now.  I doubt we'll see days like yesterday again until March.  My ondol under-floor heating is running on low, and the humidifier is billowing faithfully.  Buttoned up snug, the cats and I are settling in for a cozy evening of a good book, French radio from Canada, and hot store-bought apple juice that I pretend is cider.

The one where the gas lady tried to get in

Since my body has been ravaged by some viral whatsit all week, my trips to the corner store have included a look at the vitamin drinks they proffer.  This looks like an energy drink, but I'm not so sure I feel lucky enough to get it!

Today there was a notice on the front door of our building that the gas lady would be by this morning between 11 and 12.  Her job is to come alone into strangers' apartments with a meter and make sure there are no gas leaks inside the apartments.  Well, that wasn't enough notice for me to clean the apartment, so I've been dodging her (she comes back at night if you aren't home in the day).  I wasn't home during the day, because I spent a good chunk of time at the university trying to catch up on correcting midterms.   There were no classes at the uni today, thank goodness.  My illness has taken away my vim; I could not have done teaching and stayed upright, I fear.  I did get to help one of my co-worker's students, though, which is always a nice feeling.  One time in college, my French professor, Colonel Olsen, helped me with an assignment for Miss Gulick, our other French professor.  I bothered him at home while he was in his bathrobe.  I've never forgotten that, and I have always aspired to be that kind of language teacher, willing to help even if I'm busy.

The one where I suffer my yearly cold

Casually walking through Seoul, there's no telling what you might see.  I guess they lifted the ban on American GIs going out at night and getting wasted, eh?  I walked by an hour later, and he was still passed out, but a lot more people were taking his picture! LOL  Anyway, this photo kind of looks how I feel:  Blecky!

I started getting sick on Thursday, but didn't feel it in earnest until Friday, then this weekend it's only gotten worse.   It isn't the flu; it's a cold.  And I have tried to be so careful!  Argh!  I have not been sick at all since last October!  Maybe going through homework papers and licking my fingers to turn pages once in a while wasn't a good idea.  Bad habit. Time to buy a sponge.  Fortunately, my schedule allows an extra day to recover before my classes start again for this week.

What's waiting on my desk:  Midterm tests that need grading!  And recording!  And photocopying for the required portfolio!  The only drawback to teaching is the paperwork that must be done.  The paperwork has increased each year in the two I have worked here.  Hope the trend plateaus somewhere soon.  I can understand grading and keeping grading sheets, but this new portfolio thing is over the top.  Plus, we need to do spreadsheets!  English teachers doing spreadsheets like some science department?  There's no reason articulated for the spreadsheets, of course, just some wild demand from the head office.  Of course, the university system only operates smoothly with Microsoft Office spreadsheets, and I can't afford MS Office, so I use OpenOffice.  Can't get that to work at all.  Our local computer nut's directions don't work, because I have Vista Home Basic in my office, and that system is too basic and won't allow dual languages.  What a mess. We're just adjuncts according to the university, not real faculty, so why all the fuss?  They haven't announced whether they are rehiring us or not.  Better get another job lined up just in case.  Koreans are so unpredictable; you can't assume anything here.

Time for another Nyquil capsule (I have a stash I brought from the States last summer.)

Aaaaagh.......... |:(

The one where I reflected on a dixie cup

This was today's reminder of the Korean motto:  "Make do."  On the bus to Daegu, the light over the door was housed in a dixie cup.  Every day, I am surrounded by little things like this, things that I've grown accustomed to, but every once in a while, it dawns on me that they aren't proper.  They're half-ass and sometimes dangerous; but after so much for so long, you simply don't see them unless you're stuck on an airless bus with nothing to do but look around.

You know it's autumn when they stop running the air circulation on the buses.  Koreans believe that if cold air blows on them, they will get sick.  However, in the summer, they will not only sit but often sleep with the A/C blowing on them, and the summer A/C temps are colder than the weather outside in autumn!  I just don't get them.  I don't think I get them at all.  I have so little patience for ignorance.

As for the time I spent in Daegu, I did not find the XBox game Fallout 3 anywhere in Daegu, not even at the XBox kiosk in the electronics mall.  I went to several of the large stores, also.  So I will have to do the eBay thing, I guess.  That game is just too fun not to play! LOL  Oh, I wanted to download an add-on for Fallout 3 (I'm using a borrowed copy), but I can't get Microsoft XBox points since I am in Korea and I am not a citizen with a citizen's ID number.  However, Vaughan got me a code with points, but XBox would not let me redeem the code using my gamer ID.  Undaunted, I tried something on a lark, and it worked!  I set up a new Windows Live account, and I set up a new XBox ID that was totally Korean, and that was the trick that did it!  XBox Live thinks I'm Korean, so it will redeem the codes for the points I need.  Yea deception!  It's the only way to survive as a foreigner in Korea.

The one where I found butter beans

As you might have gathered, I've been trying to get to a real supermarket/department store for some time, and today I went to Busan to that end.  Actually, I hadn't intended to go, but Rob forgot his phone at my place, and I thought I'd use it as an excuse to go to Busan.  The only problem is, I didn't look for what I had intended to look for, because I never looked at my list the whole time, so it was a fairly fruitless trip, though I found canned butter beans and lentils someplace, Lotte Department store, I think.  Surprise, surprise!  I'll have to look up an interesting recipe to use them in.  Don't remember exactly where I was (I get lost in Busan so easily), but I got to watch the Krispy Kreme store make doughnuts.  They have their apparatus set up in front of a long window that has the process all explained in Korean on a tape the runs along the bottom of the window.  Fun and educational!

The coolest part is the curtain of glaze.  This tube fills up a small reservoir that overflows and coats the little buggers as they pass under.  The worker pours water into the receptacle vat underneath every so often to help in the recycling of glaze.  It reminded me of my job in the kitchen at Asbury College: making doughnuts at some ungodly hour of the night (that they insisted was actually morning-- yeah, right).  It wasn't a bad job, though, if you had to work as well as study.  I even got praise from the school chef for saving money by mixing leftover batters instead of wasting them.
They tell me it's midterm exam week now.  You'd never know really.  There's no special scheduling like we did at Hanyang University.  So, I'm doing my midterms next week just to give my learners a little treat.  I'll tell them that it's to help relieve their schedule some this week, they'll think I'm great for it, and then they'll evaluate me a decent teacher and I can stay! Yea!  (When you schmooze students just to keep your job, you know things have gone to the dogs. LOL)

The one where I was the hunter cat

I was in the pet shop today to play with the puppies and get cat litter.  This was on the box of some kind of plaything for cats.  The English is so mangled that, even after looking at the diagrams and the pieces, I still can't figure out exactly what it does or how.  Are we EFL teachers losing the war despite winning battles in the classroom?  Things like this discourage me.  

I can no longer find the Whiskas packets of cat food in Gyeongju.  I visited the usual places that have sold them in the past, but no luck in the hunt.  So, I will have to make a trip to someplace else tomorrow.  There are three choices:  Gyeongsan, Pohang, or Busan, all within an hour of here.  Good opportunity to test the motorcycle I bought from Todd (through John).  The steering seems a little wobbly, but the mechanic seemed to think it was OK.  Hope he's right.  Korean drivers are not known for their attentiveness, patience, or generosity on the road, especially to bikers! LOL

Yesterday's online class in Second Life went well considering it's a completely new time for lessons.  It was a lesson designed for beginners, but there were no beginners there, so the learners that did show up let me practice doing a lesson as if to beginners.  Sweet.  

For the first time this semester, I felt glad to see a week come and go! LOL I don't know why it was such a tough week for me.  Friday evening's class was ROTC cadets; they had just finished a long day of some athletic event, and they were literally falling asleep in their chairs.  We did a stand up activity, but that didn't help much.  The boys were simply exhausted.  Watching them nod off made me sleepy, too, and last night I slept the sleep of the just. 

The one where I pretend my motorcycle can travel hyperluminally.

There are things about computers I don't get, I admit it.  The basics, yeah, like buying cool hardware and installing it.  Buying or stealing cool software and installing it.  Removing undesirable stuff, too.  But every once in a while there is something that makes me scratch my noodle and wonder about.  Take for instance the following screen captures:

Do you notice anything?  The one on the left is a screen capture of my computer at the office. It could just as easily be a screen capture of my desktop PC here at home.  The one on the right is my HP desktop replacement PC, affectionately known as a lap crusher PC.  I got a little more of the background on the HP screen capture, but they are basically shots of the task manager window, both Windows Vista.  I go in task manager and close down things if I intend to tax the system with some big application like Second Life or World of Warcraft.  Well, maybe you haven't noticed it, but it's a real pain in the arse.  The HP task manager window doesn't have any way to close the window except to "End process" under the processes tab.  (There is no X in the corner.) It used to have the X in the corner, but I somehow lost it.  Now I'm sure there is simply something to tick in some list of files somewhere to get those little buggers back in their corner, but what do you call that stuff in the corner?  It will undoubtedly have some specific nomenclature, and with a computer, you really need to know what everything is called in order to hunt down how to fix or destroy it.  Tonight I will either sleep the sleep of a victorious computer conqueror, or I will lie in bed for hours wondering.

In other news, the motorcycle I bought from Todd B. is in the shop for a new battery, new tires, and to fix the tachyon readout, or tachometer or whatever it's called.  Actually, the guy called and told me it's done, but I was already in my underwear guzzling a Hoegaarden and listening to Keith Olbermann's show, so I'll pick it up tomorrow.

It was windy today.  More than usual for Gyeongju.  And the sky was totally overcast.  Wonder what that's about.  Are we in a feeder band?

The one where I was in Ansan for Chuseok

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  For us in Korea, it was a national holiday.  I performed my usual pilgrimage to Ansan, a city southwest of Seoul, where I stayed with the Rees family and met a couple other friends while there.  It was a gorgeous weekend, though back home tonight there is a definite chill.  The electric heating pad is on very low, and as soon as the cats discover that, it will take more than pretty words to get them off the bed! LOL

While in Ansan, I discovered something that I had heard about.  McDonald's delivers!   So here are a couple pictures to prove it:

Here, the delivery boy is checking the map and checking his delivery thingy.  Click on the photo to read his back.

McDelivery! LOL  That is so funny.

I have had to change my online English lesson time from Monday nights to Friday mornings.  That will be great for me.  Nights are not my thing.  I'm a day person.  I can run a lesson from my office desk, and my office mate is off that day, so it won't bother anyone.  The only question is, can I get learners to come at that time?  We'll find out! LOL   There are a lot of people who are learning English, so the lack of a convenient time for some might have put them off.  We were not getting many from the New World side of earth due to the timing of lessons.  Maybe we can change that.

The One Where I Used the Word 'Bindle'

Since our Homeplus/Tesco department store is so tiny, they made room a few weeks ago by co-opting the entryway into a sales area and pushing all the lockers outside.  If you aren't aware, Korean stores often have lockers for your bags and accessories, I mean lap puppies.  So now the local Korean ladies get to stuff their lap puppies into lockers outside in the hot sun.  This little guy was really distraught, probably overheated and thirsty, but I learned a long time ago that a foreigner in Korea can lose his job if he raises a stink and it gets back to his employers somehow, so I just leave them alone and hope for the best.

I had a nice chat on the phone with B.C. up in Seoul.  They're not traveling for the Harvest Festival holiday next weekend.  With this swine flu thing, I suppose they have the right idea.  I'm planning on being in Ansan for the holiday.  Simon says they have plenty of room for me.  Not sure if I should get the half-ton of honey or the quarter ton of ginseng gift boxes.   I can wrap whatever I get in a large kerchief and carry it like a bindle... well, then it actually would be a bindle, I suppose! LOL


I had intended to go into the uni to my office today to get some work done.  I'm behind sending out pats on the back for this past week's classes.  Friday's classes haven't gotten their kudos from me yet!  Plus, I try to look at the homework and let them know the major problems I see in it.  The ROTC lesson yesterday never materialized, because while I was taking roll, I asked them what their weekend plans were, and then I used what they said as a basis to demonstrate better ways to say those things, and that pretty much became the lesson.  We don't have class next week due to Harvest Festival, but I gave them U.S. military ranks to memorize, because we're going to play Army and talk about how to address officers and give commands, etc. when we meet again.  Yes, Sergeant Major!

The One Where My Motorcycle Kind of Looked Sexy for a Few Minutes

Yes, even I must endure the mundane!  This is my bike getting its check up and oil change.  It occurred to me as I stood waiting how beautiful she is really.  Not very strong, but she gets me where I'm going and looks good doing it.

Yesterday morning I discovered my internet was out, but I went off to the uni anyway to putter, kind of believing it would all sort itself out when I came home.  But it hadn't.  So I ended up on the phone trying to tell the woman my problem with her talking just about as fast as a person can talk without making gibberish.  I asked her to slow down, but she didn't.  That's when I got pissed and told her to find someone who spoke English.  So there I was on hold, and this was the message that came on periodically in a womanly digital voice while I was waiting:

"Now is another inquired call.
One moment, please.
Please wait for a while.
Sorry.  Connection is delayed.
It is a lot of inquiring call now.
One moment, please.
Please wait for a while."

How can I recall it word for word? BECAUSE I HAD TO WAIT AND LISTEN TO THIS AD NAUSEAM!  My guess is they ran the Korean through a computer translator that produced this masterpiece which they plugged into a (fairly good) voice synthesizer.  Anyway, the internet guy who eventually answered kept asking me questions, and when I didn't understand, I could hear him slowly draw in his breath like he was trying not to yell at me, but eventually we got it all worked out and my internet was restored.  Nick of time, too, since I had to teach online last night.

The One Where I Don't Go to the Secret Faculty Meetings

Google Calendar is becoming a better value than Mac's iCalendar, it seems.  They've come out with this list of national holidays for various countries that can be added to your Google calendar.  I've subscribed to the South Korean one, and it put in all the Korean holidays automatically!  Will wonders never cease?

Today was a long day. Finished at 6:30 tonight, but all my classes were good.  We did some great practice and learned a lot of new stuff about describing people. Some of them had trouble with their Second Life homework, but we worked most of it out.  Linden Labs must be having a bad day or something.  I extended their Second Life homework one more week since it is tricky getting used to how things work in world.  Some of them had their avatars wear the Dongguk T-shirt I made and gave them.  Cool.

I'm having second thoughts about a trip to Gyeonggido tomorrow.  I might go, but in the afternoon, maybe.  I doubt anyone would ever come here nearly as much as I go up there, and that kind of irks me.

A friend and I were talking about how rigid everything has gotten here... that there's a "grading" scale for our participation in the university, and we foreigners can never get a high grade because we don't even know some of the things we get graded on.  I have never been told about faculty meetings for our own department, but we are supposed to go to those to get the points.  Apparently we also get graded zero on our devotion to Buddhism,  probably because most of us don't find pandering to religious ignorance very useful and partly because we have no idea how to get Buddhism points.  Nobody said we had to be Buddhist to work here, but if we aren't Buddhist, it is a mark against us, it seems.  Anyway, we chatted about the money in the Middle East might be enough to make the recent rise in anti-foreigner bullshit in Korea something to think about.  So I'm thinking.

We know what this means: festival week.  Every Korean university has a "festival" every semester, and it is always at some time during the course of regular classes.  Students often expect to be excused for festival if they are working their group's booth, but unfortunately they are not excused from my classes.   With the swine flu, you'd think festival would've been canceled, but the flu apparently is something to sneeze at.

My ROTC class was rather small on Friday as several cadets had to be tested for the swine flu.  It seems that some cadets actually have it, but I'm not completely sure that is accurate.  This morning I went in to the university to work on lesson plans, and there seemed to be more people walking around with face masks on than usual.

I'm teaching tonight online.  The lesson is 'humor in English'.  I've done this before, but I'm going to introduce puns and oxymorons to them this time.  A lot of the jokes are along the lines of "goes into a bar" type stuff.  Here's an example:

<< A dyslexic man walks into a ___. >>

What would you put in the space that might be funny?

Any answer would be good use of language skills, but only one answer fits the sentence humorously.

Tomorrow I'm observing a co-worker's class in the morning.  We have to observe and report on three separate co-workers throughout the semester.  Isn't that so Orwellian? LOL  Big Brother will reward me.

 

The one where I get chastized by a young lady.

The little sign reads, "Disinfect basket, please."  I didn't do mine, since what good would it do in the long run while I'm inside the store.  I'll be touching things while shopping.  Anyway, I got this picture at a price.  Korean stores get hysterical about anyone taking pictures in them, so after snapping the shot, I had to stop and listen to a lecture from a HomePlus employee about not taking pictures in the store.  There are two ways a foreigner can react that won't cause trouble.  We can play dumb and pretend not to understand what's going on, or we can apologize profusely with a fake reddening of the cheeks and a couple serious bows and saying, "I'm sorry," in the most humble manner.  Naturally, I chose the former, because I wasn't really sorry for taking the photo.  Why be too hypocritical?  LOL  Anyway, let the world know that HomePlus/Tesco is doing its part to stop the spread of swine flu!

At work today, I organized a little for this week's classes.  It's a light week considering it's the first week, and a drop-add week, but I want the students to have something to do in class all the same.  My higher level classes will get their introduction to Second Life this week, because part of their participation grade will come from Second Life activities.  I'm toying with the idea of allowing them to have a one-time unexcused absence that can be made up by attending an extra event in Second Life.  Naturally, I can't have them absent regularly and making it up in Second Life, but once seems like a fair way to handle it.  I hope that one day the university will authorize an entire course called Virtual English or something where I can have a real class of 20 students or so that meet only online in Second Life.  That's feasible; lots of universities have Second Life classes.  Am I dreaming?  Yes, but realities often begin with dreams.

The one where I wondered

Yesterday while I was hiking on some trails I've never been on before, I came across this. No idea what it is, but now I have you to share my perplexity!


I tried to upload a video response to my friend Simon's hagwon video which I thought was cute, and I kept getting this message:

본인확인제로 인해 한국 국가 설정시 동영상/댓글 업로드 기능을 자발적으로 비활성화합니다.
We have voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law.


So, what this is all about, I have no idea! It's probably a good idea on one level, but like all Korean good ideas, they implement them so badly they end up pissing everyone off in the end.


Sorry, Simon! You'll never know the nice things I said about your students! LOL


At the infirmary on campus today, they took my temperature, 37°, which is normal. Then they stuck a long cotton swab up my right nostril about 2 inches or so to get a sample to test for Swine Flu. Even though anyone visiting my house might conclude that I do indeed suffer from a form of pig disease, I can assure you, it is not the flu. It is just pigstyitis.

The one where I get my new passport

I got a call on my cell phone today, one of the random times the stupid thing actually rings when someone calls me. It was a Korean guy, and he was babbling as fast as he could in Korean even though I had answered the phone in English. I wasn't quite sure what he was talking about at first, except that it was about a visa ("bee-ja" to be precise). It took a few seconds, but I finally asked him if it was a passport from the US embassy, to which he answered, yes ("neh" to be exact). He wanted to know whether I was home or not, which I was. And as you can see, I have my shiny new passport! They tell me there's a chip or something inside it so that Homeland Security (the KGB that George Bush established) can keep track of me and anyone else that obviously doesn't love America enough to shun foreign travel.

The other day while I was in Ansan visiting friends, Simon loaned me a copy of "Fallout 3".<-- [See note from previous entry] At first, I didn't think I'd like it, but after I got into it, it became really fun to play on the XBox. Unfortunately, nobody told me that when the main quest was completed, the game stops! I had so much I wanted to play yet. Oh well, no sense crying over spilled nuka-cola.

Saturday evening, we had a nice BBQ over at Teddy's place on the deck. It was a composite of Korean and Western style barbecue. Very delicious. The next day, Kyle and I took a trip over to COSTCO for a few items. We also had a disagreement about the Palestinian situation. He thinks that all news reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian problem is totally biased toward Israel. I don't believe that.

On a lighter note, I teach online tonight! The new place we meet in Second Life... I don't feel comfortable at the new place. It's not cozy enough for my style of teaching. However, I obligated myself, so there it is.

The one where I apply for a new passport

So this is the photo that will be on my passport for the next ten years. After I found the same shop I had had my photo taken at in 1999, I spent $13 for four small photos only to discover later in the lobby of the embassy an automated photo booth that takes legal size/shape photos for $5! Ugh! If I had known that machine was there.... Grrr. Anyway, since the conservatives increased government control of and interference in our lives with the ominous Department of Homeland Security (aka, the KGB), things are different in the passport renewal business. In 1999, I took my old passport in for renewal with a legal size photo and had my new passport within the hour. Now, you have to wait two weeks to get your renewal passport so that the American KGB can collect data on your private activities abroad. They didn't even give me a temporary paper in case the local authorities want to see my passport for some reason. The police can demand to see any foreigner's passport at any time, though they don't usually do that. However, since they can do it, I'd rather err on the side of expecting the worst. I've sat in a Korean police station lock up before, and it's not something I want to do again anytime soon.

Yesterday the dentist pulled out my stitches. Next week I'll go back, and we'll start the arduous process of capping two teeth and building a bridge over the space between them. Sounds fun. At least nobody said "root canal". I don't know what a root canal is, but I do know the very words make grown men quiver and faint, so it is definitely not something I want to go through, being a grown man only on the outside! LOL

Simon loaned me a copy of Fallout 3, an XBox game.<-- [Correction! Simon says he didn't loan it to me. Maybe it was Joel who loaned it.] I started it, and now I'm getting hooked! It has the feel of Oblivion, but with modern clothes and weaponry. If Bethesda came out with more games like this, I'd probably never get any work done!

The one where I went to the Road Bar

Brett and I went out trying to find something to do a couple days ago, and we came across this sign.  Try to guess what the sign means.  I'll tell you at the bottom of this post.

After some delicious dalkgalbi, we thought we'd find a movie to watch.  I had seen Harry Potter in the States, but I wouldn't have minded seeing it again; however, the movie theater only shows it twice in the early afternoon, so we had missed it.  We ended up at the WA Bar, then we went to the Road Bar where two hostesses doted over us all evening in a modified Korean style.  Lucky me. LOL

The weather has been crappy for three days now.  Yesterday, Brett and I took a drive out to Bulguksa (Buddha Land Temple).  I've seen the place probably six times, and even though it's very old, it gets boring after six times.  I made some chicken fajita with tortillas for dinner.  Since I get up early every day, I was exhausted and left Brett to stay up and watch DVDs or whatever he did all night.  He got up at noon today (I have never in all my life been able to sleep til noon no matter what time I've gone to bed.  Just not in my nature.)  Anyway, he took off to collect his wife and kids at the family farm four hours away.  He hasn't answered my text message asking if he got there all right, so better send another.  Tomorrow I'm off to Ansan, then Monday I go to the U.S. embassy to renew my passport.  I hate going to the embassy.  It's worse, literally, than visiting an inmate in prison.  I feel so dirty and violated afterward.  I've always wondered what it would be like to come from a regular, normal country that doesn't go out of its way to piss off three quarters of the world. *sigh*

I started recording for my podcast experiment today.  I got a decent program to help me.  I want to marry my classes in Second Life to the podcasts so that learners can prepare for my class as well as do follow-up.  The podcasts will always be related to my lesson of the week.

Anyway, for the curious, the sign above probably means "We make coffee one cup at a time."  There is no way to be absolutely certain.  Why do they bother writing signage in English?  The nice answer:  It's chic.  The correct answer:  They're insane.

The one where I show off my new camera

Yesterday I went to High-Mart to find another Sony Cybershot. My old one was bequeathed to my sister Connie. The old one is still quite good, but it was time to move on. High-Mart only had one of the cameras that I would even think of getting, but the price was WAY too high. However, the clerk did some figuring on his machine and cut the price from 509,000 to 392,000. I expected maybe 10 bucks off, but this was more like 117 bucks off! You can see it here in the photo. Pretty groovy, eh?
Next Tuesday my passport expires, so Monday I'll be in Seoul at the U.S. embassy getting a new passport. That means my dental appointment to pull out my stitches will have to be postponed until Tuesday. The department wants our syllabi posted by Friday, and I haven't even started. The university program doesn't work on my computers at home, so I have to go all the way in the school to use the office computer. Apparently we lose points toward being rehired if we don't post on time. The funny thing is, I have talked to two professors here in two other departments, and they (as Korean professors) don't have a point system. Is it only for the unreliable, lazy, and unprofessional foreigners? Probably, but I stopped caring years ago what Koreans think of us.
On a lighter note, my first class in Second Life since our group moved to the new location went fairly well considering I was hepped up on medicine from the dentist. After a month's absence, it was kind of weird to be teaching online again, but I'll get back in the swing of things soon enough.
My desk chair roller wheels device had broken many weeks ago, and the other day I went and got a new one to put on. I finally figured out how to attach the hydraulic post to the new roller wheels assembly, but I forgot one of the seals, and when I sat on the chair, the hydraulic thing spit out the grease from inside and I lost the pressure that makes the seat go up and down. It's now permanently down. It's usable, but too low. Now I'm working on seeing if I can get a new hydraulic post. Oh, the trials and tribulations.
Tomorrow Brett's coming to visit for a while. Haven't seen him for a long time. I'm cleaning the house ( a little) so he doesn't throw up upon entering my humble den.
Sugar is needier than ever now, and it's getting on my nerves. I feel bad that I resent her and hate to have her around, but it really is driving me nuts that she can't stop jumping on me, following me, meowing CONSTANTLY, and generally annoying me at every opportunity.

The one where I went to Aloha

This is what happens when you ask some random Joe to take your picture... Be that as it may, that's me on the left and my motorcycle instructors Jessica and Tim.  They were excellent!  I've been riding in Korea for several years, but I still learned a lot about motorcycles, motorcycle safety and the law.  We did a weekend course at the elementary school I attended as a child.  Eleven of us started the course, then one guy fell off his bike and damaged his knee, so we were down to ten.  All ten of us graduated, and I got a 100% on the course written exam even though I messed up two times on the riding test... a little.  The tight U-turns inside a small box were no problem during practice, but as soon as they started testing it, I got nervous.
Yesterday, Bette and Jack and I went up to Aloha, Michigan, where my brother is remodeling a house into a B&B... but not really a B&B.  It's more like a French "pension" if you know what that is, a kind of half-ass inn.  Anyway, despite three years of work, my brother hasn't completed even enough of the building to allow for habitation of any kind.  No water. No sewer.  That's the difference between us.  I would have completed at least one small section to live in (including water and sewer hookup) then proceeded to work on the rest.  Eh, c'est sa vie et pas la mienne!  All the same, it was a beautiful day for a lovely drive through the northern woods to Mullet Lake where his new house is.  Here's a picture of the house/pension.  It's right at the front gate of Aloha State Park.

Chuck and Deanna and their kids Matt and Lacy stopped in on their way up to Copper Harbour.  They have a cabin up there in the wilderness of the Upper Peninsula.
My niece's daughter Amber arrived safely on Sunday and is now staying with us.  She seems to be getting used to the place quite nicely.

The one where I visited Beverly again

I went to see my cousin Beverly again today at the nursing home. We watched an episode of The Golden Girls.  She seemed happy for the company, and I got a nursing attendant to take our picture.  So I ran down to the Rose City drugstore where the photo shop lady helped me print out a hard copy which I put in a frame.  Then I ran back up to the home to give the picture to Beverly.  She was on her daily oxygen.  I brought her and the nursing staff a couple bags of doughnuts and some fig newtons, too.  I hope to visit her a couple more times before I have to go back to Korea.
I did a once-over at Wal-Mart for some things I need to take back to Korea:  bed sheets, a humongous towel, a couple card games, a board game, and a couple cheap bags for the trip back... other sundries, too.
One thing I'm finding nice but different from Korea is that TV shows start exactly on the hour or half-hour!  However, they cram scads of ads in every 4 or 5 minutes, so watching American TV isn't very relaxing.  I endure one show (NCIS) but that's about as much as I can tolerate of TV in America!
The Downtown Café lunch special today was grilled turkey on rye with chips french fries-- not very good ones, but OK.  There was a painting on the café wall by my mother's old friend Naomi Bunting, but the waitress had no idea whether Naomi is still alive or not.  I might try to find out tomorrow.  Tomorrow is a motocross at the high school, so I'm going to go out there to watch that.  Should be fun.  I did stop to look at the high school.  The sports field is all shiny and new-looking, but the rest of the facilities I saw were the same as when I went to school there, though somewhat dumpy and dingy.

The one where I go to Rose City

Yesterday, I decided to go see my cousin Beverly in the nursing home in Rose City then head out to a sports shop in the north woods to get a motorcycle helmet.  The car was low on fuel, so I stopped at the gas station.  Here's the fuel pump in Rose City.  I used the 89 octane button, and that's where that speaker device is located, and I'm not sure if that speaker would have started up had I chosen a different button, but be that as it may, as soon as I pushed the 89 octane button, that speaker started blaring out an advertisement designed such that it sounded like a radio station broadcast... anyway, I nearly dropped the fuel nozzle when it began as it startled the bejesus out of me.  I caught Beverly at the tail end of her breakfast, so I chatted with her and the ladies at her table before wheeling her down to her room.  We had a nice talk about dad's side of the family.  There are pictures on her wall of people I'm supposed to know, I think, but I don't.  At the sports shop, the lady helped me choose a nice helmet, and we chatted about the economy and teaching English in Korea.  Their store is in the country outside Mio.  I made a video of my trip out there.  There is so much empty land between towns in Michigan!  Stopped in to see Bette and Jack after all that.  They're having a time selling that motorhome.  Bette made brownies... really fudgey ones! Mmm.   Today, I'm off to see Bev again, and I'm taking my new helmet to show her, then we'll take a picture.  At the drugstore, you can get prints of pictures off your digital camera, so I'll get a print for her and put it in a frame.  They say it might rain this afternoon.  I'm hoping to see a thunderstorm before I have to go back to Korea.  I miss those.

The One Where I Drink Root Beer and Vernors

Yeah, two things I have missed in Korea: root beer and Vernor's ginger ale! I had to switch to "diet" versions since I've been guzzling them for the last few days! Yum, yum! Today is the gathering of my siblings and their spouses at my sister Connie's house in my hometown of West Branch. My brother John and his wife showed up yesterday afternoon. They were sitting on the deck with Lyle, and I thought they were some friends of his; I didn't recognize them at all. Well, I am told I met John's wife in 1980, but I don't recall. John I haven't seen since April 4, 1980, and he's made no attempts to see me on my trips to Michigan the last 25+ years. As typical for the phoney christians and their "family values", work always comes first with those types. Anyway, I have been told to keep my mouth shut and not cause any trouble, so I've only sat to chat when Lyle is around so that he can guide the conversations rather than I and my seething resentment! LOL I'll be glad when the elder sisters come... people I can talk to whose lives aren't consumed by some cult philosophy.

The weather today is gorgeous. A build up of heat yesterday caused a minor shower during the night, and today all that's cleared out making way for sun and moderate temperatures. Of course, the Michiganians think it's "hot" while I'm thinking it's just right, as long as I wear a jacket or loong sleeves! Speaking of which, I went to the Harley Davidson shop down the road and got a pair of boots and a long-sleeve riding shirt. The HD stuff here isn't very expensive at all, while in Korea, HD stuff is exorbitantly expensive! Next week, they'll have a jacket in my size that I want. It's pretty cool, and I'll look oh so sexy in Korea wearing it! LOL

Well, I'll write more later. For now, I have to stick on a smile and go mingle a little.

The One Where I'm at Narita Airport

I'm sitting in the airport outside Tokyo playing on my laptop. There isn't much else to do. Had a chicken sandwich and cuppa coffee. I'm very tired, but if I take a nap here in the public lounge, I'm afraid I won't sleep on the plane, which would make the trip even longer. I bought the movie "Ironman" and put it on my iPod to help pass some of the time. The book I brought is only mildly entertaining. There's still nearly two hours remaining for me to wait for my connecting flight to Detroit. I hope it isn't a small plane. The trip from Korea to here was only an hour and a half, but I was so cramped and uncomfortable that it felt like a lot longer. Last night Robert C. brought his girlfriend to my place, and despite his promises to take her to a motel, they didn't, and I only got two or three hours of sleep. He drove me directly to the airport in the morning, so that was nice, but I'm still peeved that he brought that woman along.

Well, I better get up and walk around before I fall asleep right here! Update once I get to my sister's house in Michigan!

The one where I sigh

Waiting for lunch at the school cafeteria.

Well, school is over as far as teaching goes. Now we're inputting grades and sitting on our hands waiting for students to complain about their grades, then we will be free to travel. There is a lot of bureaucracy when it comes to foreign teachers going to their home countries on vacation. I still haven't gone to the office to get my paperwork that will let me leave Korea and have my job when I get back. Maybe today.

Going to Seoul sometime this week to try to find a laptop case for my HP. It's a big laptop, and nobody around here sells them that big. Well, it isn't THAT big, but it still isn't a regular size, and it doesn't take long to learn in Korea that you can only buy regular and usual stuff in Korean stores. They don't even have stores for the unusual outside Seoul!

My cat sitter didn't show up again. Sigh.

The one where I avoided the dentist again

There you see in my shopping trolley, about $200 worth of stuff. Some underwear, some chicken brats, buns, Splenda, peanut butter, and a block of cheese. The underwear was the most expensive, but Costco is the only place I can get underwear that fits me. Korean stores only sell underwear for small people.
A second tooth broke last Friday, but I've been avoiding the dentist since then, because 1) it's embarrassing that two teeth break nearly back to back, and 2) the last dental work hurt like hell, and I want to avoid going through that again for as long as possible. I suppose Wednesday is a good day to go.
I compiled my final exam today. In the morning, I'll photocopy the two versions then set up for the interview exams I have to do this week and next. Why two versions of the exam? Because the students sit side by side; there is no room to separate them. So if they copy, they'll definitely get the wrong answer. It's better to guess than to copy in this case.
Tonight I teach in Second Life. The theme is Crime and Punishment. After the lesson, I'm taking them to a virtual prison to see a courtroom (the prison lock-up part is only open to role-players, not visitors). Then we're going to a CSI sim.

The one where I started shutting down

I deleted all my videos from YouTube last night.  I'll eventually shut the site down.  It only causes problems, and the videos aren't very interesting anyway.   I'll be shutting down Facebook fairly soon, too.  I've got over a hundred FB "requests" (those irritating applications) that I can't keep up with.  What I hear about "friends" is generic and impersonal, not what I had hoped at all.  People I tried so hard to locate and stay in touch with really don't want to stay in touch after all.  The lost contact was deliberate, it seems.  My blog on iWeb I'm going to phase out as well with fewer and fewer posts there.  Nobody reads it anyway, and paying a hundred bucks a year for a Mac account isn't really worth it when Google is free.  It's just one of those times, a time to pull it in and regroup my resources and try to build up a charge again.

The one where I humped a day

I'm trying out the feature where I can just send an email to my Blogger site and it posts automatically.

Today has been a dreary, overcast day, but the nice thing is I only teach one class then I can goof off during my office hours.  The cats told me I have to get some more kitty litter or else not to bother coming home.  I'll get the litter after work.  My rent is overdue, so have to pay that after work as well.  And another bill came.  That's about all for now.  I'm actually only writing this to see how well sending an email works with Blogger!

The one where I get a lucky break

I got this call yesterday, and at first, I thought it was Kate calling from over in Gyeongsan.  After a minute of generic conversation about my search for a cat sitter while I'm away in the States, it dawned on me that I was talking with Kathleen!  Medium-sized story made short, she's volunteered to check on my cats while I'm away.  Wahoo!

This week is review in preparation for next week's exams.  The exams will take two weeks for all my classes except the Friday class.  Today's classes will be good, because they get into the lessons I prepare.  The rest of my classes need a lot of guiding and gentle pulling to get them to even acknowledge I'm in the room! LOL

Last night at Cypris Chat in Second Life, I think the lesson I had went well.  There were a lot of people!  They kept coming, and it was hard to keep up with who was there.  Eh, live a little, learn a lot.