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.