The one about garbage bins

Back in the States, I always just dumped my food waste in with my regular household waste, but here in Korea, they use these little buckets for food waste.  The lining is slatted to allow liquid waste to pass through so you can dispose of it in the waste water system and the solid food waste you can... well, I really don't know what to do with the solid food waste.  Some apartment houses have special containers out near the trash collection area just for food waste, but our apartment house doesn't have that, so I end up draining my food waste and simply tossing it in with the regular trash much as I have always done my whole life.

The other day the old lady who, with her elderly husband, kind of acts as the overseer of the building came ringing my doorbell at 8:30 in the morning.  I usually don't answer the door at 8:30 since I'm more than likely still in my underwear.  Each apartment has a video camera on the doorbell; I looked at the monitor and saw it was the old lady, so I slipped on some pants and answered the door.  She stood there telling me about these garbage buckets and something something "go bring you one" something something.  I couldn't really understand what she was saying, but I think the gist was "if you need one of these buckets [she was holding one up for me to see] I'll go and get you one."  She can hardly get up and down the stairs here, so I might have gotten mixed up on that bit.  She might have been telling me to go get one.  However, I already have one, but I don't know what more to do with it. There is a special truck that comes by and empties these garbage containers at buildings that have them, but since our building doesn't have one, I'm not sure what to do.  Should I just take my little bin out there and hope nobody steals it?  Who would steal a garbage bin? You never know, but these 2-dollar bins are small enough to walk off with unnoticed.

It's a good idea to separate food garbage from regular trash.  It keeps down vermin and the collected material can be used for composting.  I'm sure the collectors earn money from farmers for most if not all of it.  Maybe I'll start investigating this more, though not sure anyone in my building will understand me. I can order food in a restaurant and go shopping, use taxis, and read most posted signs around town, but my Korean language skills are abysmal for getting spoken information.  Maybe I need to try anyway, just because it's the right thing to do.  Isn't it funny how something as mundane as garbage can compel us to change the way we think?

The one about waiting in line

Every year when I visit America, something rubs me the wrong way so bad that I have to respond with passion.  This year it is that stupid way Americans stand in line.

This past summer I spent a month and a half in America.  One day at Wal-Mart in Bay City, Michigan, I approached the self check-out area and saw an empty station.  There was a woman and her child standing in the area, well back from the self check-out stations, but the woman made no move toward the empty station, so I walked up to it.  A few seconds later I hear this muttering, "He saw me standing here..."  I turned and after a few choice words, we argued, and I told her off because IF she actually were waiting in line, she shouldn't have been standing 15 feet away.  I'm not happy that I lost my cool, but sometimes these people have to hear how stupid they are or else they'll never know.



During one of my motorcycle trips around Michigan, I stopped at a Dairy Queen in Grayling, and while I sat on my motorcycle eating a cone, I snapped pictures of patrons coming up to the DQ and standing in line.

When I was in line earlier, I stood right behind the person in front of me, and when she had received her order, she turned around to walk away and shot me a look that said, "What is wrong with you?"  I was 2 feet behind her, which seemed completely normal to me.  To her, that was way too close for comfort.

Americans grow up with distance between them.  Our houses are usually not abutting the neighbors (except maybe in older crowded cities). We also grow up scared to death somebody will touch us.  At Wal*Mart, on this same trip, a woman brushed by me, literally her shirt brushed my shirt, and at her reaction I instinctively flinched because she turned suddenly on me and raised her arms and said, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"  At first I had no idea on earth what was happening and why this woman was frantically trying to appease me.  She proceeded to apologize more specifically for "bumping into" me (!)

All the while she's apologizing, I'm thinking about my last 14 years in Korea where bumping and pushing are just part of daily life.  She had no idea that her little brush of my shirt was literally nothing compared to what I'm used to.

Americans have conditioned themselves to need as much space as possible, both physically and psychologically.  The concept of personal space is real, but I think Americans take if way too far.  Humans have no real reason so keep such distance from each other.  We are all in life together; we are all related.

Distance does not create community.  Closeness creates community. If America is to become a real society, a peaceful, caring society, this notion of huge personal space has to vanish.  Get close to your neighbor.  Stand near each other in line.  Reach out and touch a stranger to show that you're no threat, that distance is not necessary.  Use your body to spread the message of peace and love for your fellow human beings by making your personal space as small as possible.

The one about Venus and stuff

Several years ago, in 2004, I started a search for solar filters for my binoculars so that I could watch the transit of Venus.  It was not easy!  If you live in Korea, you know how nearly impossible it is to get specialized items, so you can imagine that in 2004 it was even harder.  However, I eventually found a little astronomy club in Seoul that ran a shop for that sort of thing and I got my lens filters.  They worked great!

Unfortunately, the transit of Venus took place for us in Korea late in the day, so it would be visible only during sunset.  It was also on a work day.  I told the hagwon owner where I worked what was going on, that the transit was a rare event we would probably only see once more in our lifetimes.  I also suggested that since I had the binoculars and the filters, the middle school children might be interested in the phenomenon, too.  We could talk about it and then maybe look up information about Venus.  Hagwon owners are notoriously anti-education, and lest you think that it is strange for educational institutions to be anti-education, let me remind you that hagwons are for-profit businesses and are run as such.  Not only did the hagwon owner say no, emphatically, he forbade me to go outside during work to see the transit of Venus.  Of course, I went outside anyway, and some of the students came with me to see this rare event for themselves.  I'm a teacher; I'm not a businessman specializing in education for profit.  The business of education in Korea gets in the way of education all the time here.  This was just one example that I experienced, a rather glaring example of why Koreans don't learn anything.  They are some of the most ignorant and ill-informed people on the face of earth.  They start out with curiosity just like anyone else, but the business of education, that reach for the almighty won, squashes curiosity in favor of the ruts that lead to company jobs and million-dollar apartments in Gangnam.  Don't ever tell me that Koreans are better learners than Americans.  The only thing Koreans do better is memorize formulas, equations, and facts.  Americans go outside and see the world, experience the universe, learn for the sheer joy of learning whether it makes them rich or not.

Everything is finished!  The students have all had their final one-on-one interviews with me, and all the grades have been posted, the absences entered into the university system, and my semester portfolio turned in.  The students have two weeks to contest their grades.  Two weeks?  Yes, in Korea, a tiny country where almost every house has high speed internet access they still give students two weeks to contest their grades.  Usually, if they want to contest what they got, they'll do it right away.  So far no one has ... oh wait.  One student wrote me this email:


Hello!

Last semester I'm happy to listen your lecture.

I enjoyed talking with you and many students.

However, I saw my conversation grade yesterday.

I thought that my grade is a little low.

And I heard that in absolute evalutation many students get good grade.

Is everything left to your own discretion?

Why did I got grade B+? 

Please tell me~ㅠ_ㅠ

Would you upgrade my score?

I really need your consideration!

If I get A0 , I can take classes more. It is school rugulation.

The reason is that I complete a course in teacher education.

It means that I have two major subject.

I have to take lesson more than other people.

I need to take three required subjects next semester.

If I give grades 4.0 , I can do it.

But I can't do it. I got B+, so I lack point a little.

Please consider it again~^,^

My guiding criterion in that class was how much they talked.  It's a conversation course after all, and the more they talked, the higher their grade.  This young lady didn't talk even enough for a B+, but I was generous.  Now, I can guarantee that if I don't up her grade to A, there will be repercussions that could eventually result in my contract not being renewed,  That's how they do it here.  Korea is not known for its high academic standards, and every semester we have to decide whether our academic integrity is more important than our jobs.  I have learned from several mistakes that the job is more important.  It's their country; they set the standards.  They threaten us all the time not to renew our contracts unless we do as they say, and happy students mean they will stay at our school and therefore mommy and daddy's money will stay here as well.  Follow the money.  That's where "education" is these days.

The one that needed to be said

Nobody in my family will come and get me at the Detroit airport when I fly in from Korea. So, I had to make a car rental reservation to drive to my hometown of West Branch. The closest place to my hometown where I can return the car is a small airport 50 miles away. Even at that short distance, a mere 50 miles, an hour's trip (after my 6,700 miles and 13 hours to get there from Korea), nobody wants to go that far on "the fourth of July weekend" to drive me back after returning the car. They're afraid of the horrible traffic, even though the weekend doesn't start until Friday evening and the car return is Friday morning. Here is what I wrote to my family, then deleted and didn't send. However, I needed to get this off my chest:


The entire state of Michigan has a population that is one third the population of Seoul, South Korea, a single city. You do not have traffic, trust me. If everyone in Michigan decided to go to one place all at the same time, you still wouldn't have traffic.

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my own family believing that me traveling literally halfway across the planet to see them is easy, cheap and stress-free. It isn't. There is not a one of you I wouldn't go meet at any airport, literally any, or risk life and limb to pick up even if you had only gone a few miles to get there. I could never allow anyone I love to be stranded anywhere for any length of time if I had the means to prevent it.

I know my value to my family, I have known it for years, but I persist in visiting you all anyway because you are dear to my heart even though I am of little account to you. When you're gone, any of you, I will be beside myself with grief. On the other hand, if I were to die tomorrow I can guarantee that not a single one of you would bother to come and collect the things that were special to my life or see where I lived or show any interest in my accomplishments. So enjoy this visit; it is the last I will make. There are places I would like to see, but I haven't, because I thought visiting you was more important. No more. I will see the places I want from now on, and if you want to see me, you'll do the traveling, you'll spend the money, you'll take on the stress.

Love,

Mike

The one about nothing

“For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves.”

Letter to the Galatians 6.3

To accept that we are nothing is one of the hardest things to do. The more we understand about the universe and how it works, the more we realize that we aren't all that special as a life form. The rise of life on this planet has been remarkable. It's survival has been phenomenal. Life began from a single source, a simple cell that somehow multiplied and expanded into all the marvelous variation we witness today. However, for generations, for millennia actually, Mankind has believed that he is not just distinct from all other life, he is specially made. He has a soul that, unlike any other life forms, will survive beyond the death of the physical body.

Something about us wants to live on after the death of the body. We don't want to think about an eternity of nothingness, non-existence, and oblivion. Oblivion, a state of non-existence, a real oxymoron since “state” implies existence! See how hard it is to talk about this? Our very language constrains us because we have rarely confronted the true nature of human life. Like all other life that developed from the same humble beginnings as we did, at the end of our lives, we cease to exist. We do not have souls that go to heaven or hell to be rewarded for our good and punished for our bad. We do not become ghosts to wander the earth waiting for the resurrection of the dead on judgement day. To believe that Mankind is a special life would require a dividing line between our current form and our ancestral species. At what point did our evolving species gain these souls? There would have to be a generation of humans/protohumans where the children were granted souls and the parents were not. That's a very unpleasant thought. The first evolved humans with souls would not be able to live in eternity with their parents or grandparents. It is that logical reality that demonstrates the idiotic mentality of those who believe Man is a special creation. We are obviously evolved. It's a proven fact. But who is willing to draw the line in our evolution where this generation has souls and the previous one does not? The only logical conclusions are all life has a collective soul, each life form has a soul, or no life form has a soul. There is no evidence of the first two, so only the third option remains.

We are nothing more than a variation within the world of living creatures. We are not special except among ourselves. When the sun expands and engulfs this planet down the road a couple billion years from now, everything we were, had, built, or spoken will be disintegrated. Not even the dust particles of our long dead bodies will remain intact. Perhaps the descendants of our species will survive and learn to live among the stars. Perhaps another species will evolve and do so in our stead. A billion years is a long, long time.

Not wanting to die and disappear from existence is one thing. It's an understandable longing. Creating a fantasy where that really doesn't happen despite all evidence and observation is quite another. Facing reality is better. It's honest, and honesty is really the best policy, as the old saying goes. Knowing that this life is your only life compels you to live better. It urges you to live it to the best of your ability. It makes you stop to enjoy it more often. It chastises you for taking life for granted in yourself and others. It tells us that even if we are nothing in the long run, we are something in the here and now.

The one on the waterside

This weekend I had hoped to enjoy a motorbike trip up the eastern coast of Korea, and yesterday, I did do that, but I ended up coming home at the end of the day instead of staying at a min-bak (B&B/inn) or camping. I didn't like being alone. It kind of brought me down a little to be seeing all this beauty and experiencing the trip without having anyone to share it and talk about it. It was a gorgeous day, though, and I saw some interesting things, like this old lighthouse.




Some folks gathering and sorting seaweed to prepare it for drying.

People fishing off these old rocks at the base of the lighthouse cliff.

A lone fisherman.










A crew headed out to sea...













... from their peaceful little town.





Even though I felt as lonely as that man on the rock seems, the ride and the scenery made up for it. The Korean coast is a good excursion on a motorbike. It has several beaches, parks, seaside villages, inns, and little ma & pa diners, but also long stretches of open road to enjoy the view of the sea and the hills and the peaceful waterside life here. On the one side is the smell of the sea, a smell that reminds me of some of the happiest days of my life. It's the smell of untold ages of life on earth, the smell of danger, bravery, and power. On the other side is the smell of farms and barns and chicken coops, the scents of my earliest memories. I breathed deeply, and the simultaneous aroma of the sea and the farm aroused primal longing that ran through my soul so freely I couldn't stop it. I reveled in it. I stood naked and still within it even as the wind embraced man and machine.

I've never been comfortable with being alone, though it seems to be my destiny. However, even alone, the Korean coast is an adventure. Take it, if the opportunity arises. It is not the usual Korea.