Mildly amusing Korea

Been a long time

2011-12-04T18:26:00.002+09:00

So...yeah...it's been a long time since I've blogged. I really don't have much to say tonight. A lot has been going on, but I'm not up for writing about it now. At some point, I think, maybe, I'll write again. A friend of mine just finished a book. Another friend of mine has already published a book, and they don't really seem all that much smarter than me...I mean fuck...one of them is a Ron Paul supporter so that alone disqualifies him from the intelligentsia.

Anyways, all I really wanted to say tonight is that I'm in the process of watching the "Fright Night" remake, and fuck, seriously. What happened to the Roddy McDowall character? Fucking Vegas ruins everything. He was really the best character in that movie, and yeah I like the Charlie character, and I think the guy from "Star Trek" is a good casting choice, but the Vegas show bullshit of the Peter Vincent character, as modern as it may be, kind of ruins it for me.

That is all.

Although, I will say the Chris Sarrandon cameo was cool.

Only in Korea

2010-04-19T19:31:00.003+09:00

So I know it's been a long time since I've made a post. And it'll probably be a long time before I make another one. The blog is still here, sooner or later I'll be motivated to write again. It comes and goes.

Anyways, something happened yesterday that I just had to share. This is something that I can really only see happening in Korea.

My girlfriend and I were at church. In the middle of the sermon someone stood up and started yelling. I have no clue what he was yelling, but it seemed as though he was protesting something. I kept pressing my girl to translate for me, but she wouldn't and would only tell me that he was crazy. After about a minute of him yelling whatever, taking the typical Korean protest posture, standing very straight like he was addressing a drill sergeant, and speaking in short, loud, bursts, he was finally escorted out of the building by about five ushers.

It was really quite the scene. Of course, we have had many protests in America around churches, but usually even the protesters are respectful enough to actually do it outside the church. This guy just stood up and started yelling what seemed to be random shit.

I never thought church could be that interesting. Although, I must say that my girlfriend was a little bit upset that I found it kind of funny. Oh well.

Too many hobbies

2010-03-03T22:44:00.002+09:00

I haven't been posting. I realize this. I've slowed down. The reason is I have a lot of hobbies, or maybe obsessions would be a more accurate term. Currently, I'm back on guitar. This is what happens when I play guitar...

Yeah, that's me, after spending too much time playing guitar. I recorded that about a year ago. Now I'm playing again. Only this time I'm attempting to tackle some Beethoven stuff. It's a pain in the ass, but I love it.

I've also been given a keyboard by someone at work, so I'm trying to learn that now too. Lately, I've also started giving lessons to someone else from work, so I'm trying to put together lesson plans for guitar in case that's something I ever want to do to make a few extra bucks on the side.

Anyways, I'll continue to play and probably continue playing PS3 as well. And, I'll continue to try to post at least a couple times a month on here. Cheers!

She loves me, she hates me...

2010-02-14T12:11:00.002+09:00

My girlfriend's mother hates me now. Not because of anything I've done.

I knew something was wrong a few weeks ago when I went to my girl's brother's wedding. Her father was really nice to me, he likes me a lot, but her mother didn't even say hello. I mentioned this to my girlfriend, and she just told me it was because her mother was busy, but I had a feeling something was up.

Up until then her mother had always been very nice to me. She bought me clothes, made kimchi chigae for me, and always went out of her way to make me feel welcome. Because of that I knew it was more than her just being busy.

About a week ago she and my girlfriend got in a big fight and the truth came out. Her mother had read an article in the paper about a foreign teacher who had filmed a porno with his Korean girlfriend. This is the reason why her mother now hates me and wants my girlfriend to stop seeing me. Because some jackass up in Seoul made a porno with his girlfriend.

This is why I sometimes hate Korea. If it was some Korean guy who made a porno with his Korean girlfriend it wouldn't even be news. Because it's a foreigner it becomes news, and all the irrational Koreans find another reason to hate foreigners. I didn't think her mother was like that, but apparently she is just as crazy and irrational as the rest of them.

Anyways, thank God my girlfriend loves me or I'm sure a repeat of what happened with another girl I dated would be imminent. A girl once broke up with me because her father didn't like Americans. I'm also glad that my girlfriend's father has not fallen into the same insanity. He likes me. He's the kind of guy that either likes you or doesn't like you. He's not going to let some stupid article about someone else influence his opinion of me.

My girlfriend hasn't spoken to her mother all week now. I'm not sure what the next move will be. Either her mom has to get a brain or they will just not speak for the next year or so. She's not going to break up with me just because her mother has no sense.

Happy New Year everyone.

I'm lazy

2010-02-01T19:18:00.002+09:00

Writing is funny. When you make a habit of it, then it seems like no big deal to spend 20 minutes writing an update, but when you've been neglecting it 20 minutes seems like too much time to spend.

Recently, I've become addicted to "Demon's Souls". It might possibly be the best game I've played since the first time I played "Final Fantasy VII". It's the kind of game that is so difficult at times that it makes you want to break shit, but when you've finally made it past that challenge you feel like jumping up and down and breaking out the show tunes. It's really great. After the smoldering pile of shit that was "Dragon Age", I'm glad I've finally found a game that can keep my interest. However, I would advise, if you're a casual gamer you will not like this game. It's just too difficult in certain parts and I guarantee you will give up. If you are a gamer, and like a challenge then this game is for you. It is worth the money, but don't take it lightly, it'll chew you up and spit you out like bad kimchi. It'll make you want to cry for your mommy. You will die. You will die often. You will die so much you'll forget what it was like to ever be alive. This is not a game for those who quit after dying once or twice.

Other than that I had my first Korean wedding experience this weekend. My girlfriend's brother got married. I've never seen so many white envelopes in my life. They take money, they give money, they take money, they give coupons, who the hell can keep up with all that shit. Do they get a coupon? Do they get money? And who the fuck gives the guests money at a wedding? "Thank you for coming, here's ten bucks." I should just start going to weddings every weekend, it could be like a part-time job. Just go around collecting envelopes.

My girlfriend was pissed off because she didn't even get to see the actual wedding. She was so busy with the great envelope swap that she didn't get inside to see her own brother get married. It's okay though, I have like 5 shitty pictures to immortalize the magic moments when his friends were singing off key to him and when they flashed tacky pictures of the lovely couple in their matching pink jumpsuits on the white screen behind the altar. Wonderfully tasteful.

The good thing about the wedding though was once it started it was all business. The ceremony started at 12:30 and we were out of there by 1:00. No fucking around. In and out quickly, just how I like it. It all seemed a little more casual than a western wedding too. People in the crowd were talking and laughing when the bride and groom were going through their spiel, it wasn't nearly as uptight and uncomfortable as an American wedding.

I met the rest of my girlfriend's family too. They all seem very nice, though nobody speaks any English. The few that do shouldn't. They asked far too many prying questions. Basically, "Hi, how are you? When are you two getting married?" They didn't waste any time with small talk.

Anyways, that's about it for now. Maybe I'll try to get back in the habit of writing soon. It's just hard to pull myself away from that game right now. It's so fucking good.

Short explanation for my absence

2010-01-20T22:14:00.002+09:00

Well, first of all there was the holidays. I was obviously busy around Christmas doing stuff with my girlfriend. I met her parents for dinner. It was interesting. Her mother had a calender in her purse, pulled it out during coffee, and told me to pick the day we would get married. They picked September 11th, I said that would be a bad idea, and picked September 4th. They weren't really thinking about the significance of 9-11 to Americans.

After that intensives started in early January. They're still going on, but I only have one class left next Monday morning. I just don't have the motivation to write when I'm pulling two or three split shifts a week. Today for example I worked from 9:00-1:00 and then from 3:00-10:00. Makes me weary.

I also finally got my PS3. I've been keeping myself busy playing "Dragon Age". It's pretty good. Not as good as it was hyped up to be, but decent nevertheless. I think next I'm going to get "Demon's Souls" or "Fallout 3". Haven't made up my mind yet.

Now the bad news. My girlfriend is pissed off at me. She's so pissed off I'm not even sure if I can call her my girlfriend anymore. We got in a huge fight on Saturday night and she hasn't spoken to me since. I'm giving her a little space and hoping that she comes back. It's been driving me crazy all week though. I couldn't even eat on Sunday or Monday I was so sick over it.

We've both been really stressed out because of the wedding, money, and on top of that we have intensives so we're very tired as well. It all just kind of came to a head on Saturday night. The worst part is that we got in a fight in front of other people. Of course, I don't care about that part. I'm a guy, I'm American, embarrassing myself in front of people just isn't a big deal to me. However, it is a big deal to her. That's what's bothering her, not that we got in a fight as much as we got in a fight in front of people.

I just hope she takes me back. I'm a good person. I would never cheat on her, I would never hit her, I would never get in a fight in front of her parents or anything. We were just out drinking at a noribong and I had a few too many. I feel really bad about it now. I hope we can get over it. I don't want to have to date again. I don't want to have to hang out and drink with a bunch of people I don't even like just so I can maybe, possibly, meet someone that I might like.

Anyways, that's what's up. Hopefully, I'll find some more motivation for writing again now that intensives are more or less over.

Hope everyone else in the blogosphere is okay.

don't worry

2010-01-05T11:43:00.001+09:00

I haven't stopped blogging. I'll be back. I've just been busy with life and intensives. There just hasn't been much time to spare, and I haven't felt much like writing when I do rarely have free time.

Been playing my PS3.

I'll catch everyone up soon.

oh sony, why do you toy with me so much?

2009-12-29T23:05:00.002+09:00

EA Sports NHL 2010, called the best sports game ever by gamespot, not produced in Asia, and region locked in the West. Fuck you. So even if I buy an American version, it's one of the few PS3 games in existence that's actually region locked. Total and complete fucking bullshit. I hate EA. They fuck everyone. Has anyone ever tried that piece of shit hype-machine 'Spore' that was supposed to revolutionize sim gaming and turned out to be a mosquito smudge on my car window? Yeah, eat my nutsack EA, you fucking suck.

Anyways, I have lots to write about, but I'm just too busy. Intensives started this week so I just don't have any time for anything. Pretty much all my free time is spent preping classes, and the rest of my time is spent in class.

I'll try to update later this week and tell my tale 'o' Christmas. I met my girl's parents finally, and we set a date for the wedding, and a bunch of other shit happened, but I just don't have time now.

Don't worry though, I haven't abandoned the blog, I'm just too busy.

Plus, I finally got the PS3, so I've been spending a bit of time playing that too.

Later.

ASA!!!!!

2009-12-21T12:53:00.004+09:00

Amazing.

I miscounted on the change. The actual number is 600,360. I thought I was going to have a heart attack carrying it all to the bank.

An adjumma who happened to be sitting near the change machine was amazed. "이 해" I told her. Two years it took me to collect all that change. I'm almost sorry to let it go.

My girlfriend can't complain about me buying the PS3 now.

I'm still shocked. I thought I did a pretty accurate count, but I was off by 25,000.

I can't believe I thought I only had about 250,000 before I counted it.

the things we do

2009-12-20T12:57:00.004+09:00

Next weekend I'm meeting my girlfriend's parents for the first time. She is worried about the age difference, even though they know how old I am, and doesn't want them to notice that I'm older than her. So she insisted that I dye my hair. I am still only 34, but I've got quite a few gray hairs up there.

I was resistant. I don't really like the idea of dying my hair, it seems kind of fake. I just want her parents to like me for who I am and not care whether I have a few gray hairs. Is that too much to ask? Her parents actually seem like really nice people. They've given me gifts without even knowing me. Every few months they get me some fresh juice from a farmer they know. Their nice people. I don't think they would care that I have some gray hair.

My girlfriend cares though. So yesterday I went and got my hair dyed. It actually looks pretty good. I was worried, but it turned out okay. I can still smell the shit in my hair though. A constant reminder of what I'm willing to do to keep my girlfriend happy.

Other than that I've just been very busy with classes.

Yesterday morning I took some time and counted how much change I have. I've saved 575,000 won in change. Looks like the PS3 is coming earlier than previously expected. I think I'm going to order one this week. I've already ordered Dragon Age, so hopefully around Christmas I'll get the game, and maybe the day before I'll get the PS3.

I'm psyched because last week I bought Call of Duty 4 and I'm fucking seriously disappointed with it. After all the hype I thought it'd be great, and the graphics really are. However, if I spend $50 on a game I want to actually be able to play it for a while. It only took me 5 hours to finish all the missions. Fucking waste of money. Maybe it's just because I usually play RPG's, but I'm used to having 50-100 hours of gameplay, not fucking 5 hours.

Don't waste any money on that piece of shit.

The online part is supposed to be good, but I don't really feel like getting massacred by a bunch of fat 12 year old kids who play it 16 hours a day.

Listed

2009-12-14T19:19:00.005+09:00

Well, I got my listing on the Korean Blog List. It's cool, I guess. I've already gotten some traffic from it. Although, I'm not even sure why I care. It's not like I'll ever put any ads on here or try to sell anything.

Nothing much has been happening lately. The new term started at my hagwon (academy), so I've just been busy with classes and getting to know my new students. It's too bad that we are only with each class for three months. I don't think that's really enough time to get to know the kids. I'm a much better teacher when I have kids who've been in my classes for a term or two. That way I know the methods that suit those particular kids the best.

Hagwons can be a little bit like fast food sometimes. Get them in and out quick, punch the little hamburger button on the cash register, and move them along to make way for the next customer. Sometimes I wonder if the average kid is learning as much as they could. The best students will always learn, but the average kids suffer. They get pushed through the levels to keep their parents happy, even though they should be staying at the same level.

We have to make it appear as though the kids are actually learning, even if they aren't. So we push them up a level if the parents bitch enough. It results in kids who are reading shit that's college level English, when they're barely high school level, sometimes even lower.

Anyways, I'll bitch about Korean education some other time.

This weekend my girlfriend was all pissed. For once she wasn't pissed off at me though. That was actually nice, to have her pissed off at someone other than me.

She's pissed off at her parents, and she's pissed off at her brother. Her brother is getting married in January. His fiance's parents want them to get a nice apartment after they get married. The way it works in Korea is that the guy has to pay for the apartment and the girl buys the furniture. It's all bullshit if you ask me, but hey, it's their traditions, who the hell am I to tell them the way they should live their lives.

The apartment the girls parents want them to get is like $80,000USD. A pretty fucking hefty chunk of change for a 29 year old Korean guy to come up with. I think he's only actually had a job for about a year. The 28 year prior to that he just lived off his parents.

This brings us to the reason why my girlfriend is pissed off. Her parents are giving them $50,000USD. Because of this, they have to move out of the apartment they now live in and move to a smaller place in Dongnae. My girlfriend loves her culture, but she understands how fucking stupid this is. She said to me "It's Korean tradition, but why the fuck do they have to give him the money?" Yeah, she even said 'fuck'.

So she's pissed. We'll get $0.00USD from her parents when we get married. And personally I don't give a shit. The last thing I want is to be indebted to her parents. I wouldn't want it even if they did offer anything like that. But it bothers her. She's upset with her parents, in part because it means that she has to move also, and because they're following the retarded tradition that the first born son is king of the shit heap. She wants her parents to treat her equally, and I don't blame her. And she's pissed off at her brother, because he's receiving this gift that causes his parents the hassle of having to sell their apartment and find a smaller one. And she hates his fiance because she thinks she's a greedy bitch.

Anyways, that's the conversation we had this weekend on our way to church. Then we left church early because the 4 year old kid in front of us kept getting up and down, and spinning around in the aisle. The little pain was so antsy that my girlfriend got so dizzy watching him that we had to leave because she thought she was going to get sick.

Sir, yes, sir!

2009-12-14T08:38:00.002+09:00

Some funny shit here. A facebook friend posted this video of elves doing "Full Metal Jacket".

Anyways, I know it's been a few days since I've posted. I'll put up something soon. I've been busy.

Exactly what the FUCK is your JOB???

2009-12-09T09:36:00.003+09:00

Hello. I work at the front counter of your apartment building. I know my job looks easy, but it really is very difficult. There are many parts of my job that you just don't understand. You may think I'm a lazy dick, but that's only because you fail to put yourself in my shoes.

First of all, I'm always tired when I get home. When you spend 90% of your time at work sleeping at your desk it really wears you out. My adjumma wife is always complaining. I get home from work, have a bottle of soju and go back to sleep. She also doesn't understand the severe physical and psychological toll that my job takes. It's really not easy.

I realize that every time you walk by me you see me sitting there watching Korean dramas on my cellphone TV, but I'm really doing work. You see, in my spare time I keep up a fan blog of The Kingdom of the Winds, so it might look like I'm just a jackass who spends all his time watching TV when I should be working, but I'm actually doing research. In fact, I was so emotionally drained when Boys Before Flowers ended, I had to take an entire week off from work. Of course, I didn't tell my employer that I was taking a week off, and I didn't actually stop coming to work or accepting my paycheck, I just slept a little bit more often at my desk.

You also don't know how my work is killing me. Literally, it's killing me. Because I can't just sit at my desk all day and do work. I have to take my fifteen cigarette breaks. This job is giving me cancer. I only wish I was doing it in the USA so I could sue my employer for polluting my lungs. I have worked so hard here that I really deserve to be able to retire.

And you also don't understand how difficult it is to send all these text messages about packages to tenants. Of course, I could take the packages up to your apartment, but why should I exert myself in even the slightest of ways. I'd rather just send you a text message. That way I won't miss any of my shows.

I realize that you also think I'm supposed to be a guard of sorts, but keeping tabs on who comes in and out of this building is really not my responsibility either. I'm not really sure whose responsibility it is, but I'm pretty sure it's not mine. So when I'm out smoking my fifteen cigarettes with the door open it's not my job to care about how anyone can come in and out of the building. My only responsibility is to make sure that when I'm at my desk I don't buzz in anyone who is delivering any kind of food. I really hate those delivery guys, so I try my hardest to keep them out of the building, they are the real threat.

So please, Mr. Waygookin Renter, keep all these things in mind if you ever need my assistance. If you ever have a complaint, like someone living above you pounding on the fucking floor from 2:00am until 7:00am every night, understand my position. I realize that it's not only you that's complaining, I know that both of your neighbors have also complained. But what you don't know is that if you live in 513, I have no way of figuring out what apartment number is directly above you, I mean it could be 613, or 612, or 614...that's a lot of apartments to check. Things like understanding the layout of a building are not part of my job description. And logical thinking, like reasoning out that 613 might be the apartment directly above 513, is just too much thinking for my job.

Because of this, if you ever hear those BOOM, BOOM, BOOM's again at 4:00am don't call me and ask me to do something about it. You need to come down to the front desk, wake me up, and hold my hand while you walk me up to 613. I can't find 613 on my own, I need your help getting there. I'm not even sure how to work the elevator, do I just say "613" out loud? What are all those buttons for? Why isn't there a 613 button? I understand that you don't speak enough Korean to actually do anything or explain anything when we get up to 613, but I think it'll be funny for the renter up there and myself to laugh at the silly foreigner who thinks his complaints matter.

Anyways, please, I'm just a tired old man who needs to watch his dramas and get 18 hours of sleep when I'm not outside smoking and criticizing you for not knowing which trash bucket is for colored plastic and which is for clear plastic. It's not my job to tell people to stop banging on the fucking floors constantly or to address the complaints of the people who live underneath said floor bangers.

Thank you for your time. Anyeongi gah sayo.

P.S. Fuck you, you silly, stupid, waygookin.

New PS3 on the horizon

2009-12-08T10:27:00.002+09:00

It's definite. I'm getting a PS3 after the holidays. And I'm a sneaky bastard.

I planted the seed with my decision not to get the iphone. When I told my girlfriend that in the long run it would cost me less money to get a PS3 than an iphone she started warming up to the idea. She knows that sometimes I'm going to spend money on things like that, she just wants me to keep it under control. Of course, I haven't mentioned how much the games actually cost, but she's not my wife yet so she doesn't have to know that Final Fantasy XIII is going to cost me about a hundred bucks.

This weekend the decision was made. 100% certainty now. I will get a PS3. I was smart. What I did was I told her that first of all I would buy her engagement ring first. If I spend $1000-$2000 on a ring for her, she really can't complain if I spend $400 on a game for me. The next step was that I told her I would use change to pay for half of it. That's right, change. She laughed when I said this. She said, "Haha, okay, if you want to use change to pay for half of it, then you can buy a PS3 anytime." Little did she know that I've been holding onto my change since I moved here over two years ago. I already have like $200 in change. I am a sneaky bastard.

I said, "Great," and walked upstairs to the loft to get my gigantic load of change. It was great seeing the shock on her face when I came down the stairs with a bag that had so much change in it I could barely carry the damn thing. The bag was so full that I think my downstairs neighbors must have thought I dropped a bag of bricks on the floor when I put the bag down.

Now all I have to do is hit the gym a few times a week so I can actually carry all the change to the bank to exchange it for cash.

I can't wait. I predict I will have my PS3 by the end of February. Intensives are coming up in January so buying her ring will be easy. Then it's all PS3 all the time baby.

If you notice a big lapse in my blogging for a two month period after I buy it, you'll know why.

월요 병

2009-12-07T13:55:00.003+09:00

월요 병 means "Monday disease".

Fortunately, I don't have Monday disease. Probably because I only have to work 3 hours on Mondays. That makes breaking the week in a little easier.

Today, I had my Korean class. It went well. I need to study more. Now there are a lot more students in the class though, so I don't feel like I'm at the lowest level anymore.

We learned some adjectives today, and how to conjugate them. It seems like it'll be easy to learn them. The conjugations are all the same as the verb conjugations, so I just need to learn the vocab. I think that's what I really need to focus on, learning as much vocab as possible. I should make some more flash cards and actually make an effort to study them for an hour or two everyday.

I had a really great weekend. On Saturday we finally got to Nampo-dong and we finished all of the Christmas shopping. I got t-shirts for almost everyone, at least all my nephews. I let my girlfriend pick out the present for my niece. That makes it a lot easier. I never really know what to buy my niece, being a dumb male, so having a girlfriend pick out her gifts is a load off my mind. Now that I'm done with the shopping all I have to do is actually mail the gifts to the States. That'll probably be the hardest part. Shopping is easy, but getting together the motivation to go to the post office and mail all that shit will be difficult. I'm so lazy sometimes. Anyways, I'll try to get them out within the next week or two. They might be a little late, but a little late is better than never.

Nampo-dong was nice. They had some Christmas decorations up. I would post some pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera. If I'm going to really make a run at this blogging thing I need to get better at remembering to bring my camera with me.

After Nampo we had Daegi-galbi. That's my favorite Korean meal. I used to love Samgyeopsal, but now I prefer the galbi. They're both BBQ'd pork, but galbi is marinated.

When dinner was finished we came home and relaxed. We watched something on TV but I can't remember what the hell it was. It wasn't anything exciting. Maybe 30 Rock or something? They've started playing American sit-coms on one of my Korean channels so we can watch something in English now without my girlfriend complaining or falling asleep. I just wish they would pick better shows.

The only other news I have is that my nephew tried to hoodwink me with a trade on fantasy hockey. He actually tried to trade me Daniel Alfredsson for Marc-Andre Fluery. Crazy. No way am I going to give up my number one goalie for Alfredsson. I really don't need another right wing. I have Doan, Kessel, and Semin at right wing, so I'm stacked as it is. I counter offered Kyle Quincey and Thomas Vokoun for Dan Boyle and Nittymaki. It's a fair deal. He gets the goaltending he needs, and I get the producing defenseman I need.

Anyways, time to put in my 3 hours of work...sigh...life is difficult.

Church day

2009-12-06T12:41:00.004+09:00

It's Sunday morning, and all of you who read this know what that means. Church day. You also know that I'm not really a church guy. I told a friend of mine I went to church and the only reaction I got was "Wow, you go to church?" Yes, I go to church. It's the best hour of pure reading time I have all week. And I don't understand anything of what the Korean pastor is saying, so it's really more like an hour at the library than church. I don't mind. It keeps my girlfriend and her parents happy. That is enough of a reason for me.

Yesterday morning we woke up and my girlfriend was mad at me. I never did find out why she was mad. My suspicion is that she was mad because I woke up an hour earlier than she did. Not only that, but I'm actually in a good mood when I wake up in the morning. I told her my theory and she neither confirmed nor denied. I'm pretty sure that's the reason. She just won't admit it because she knows how crazy it is for her to get mad at me for that.

We didn't have this conversation until later. She stormed out at 8:30am yesterday without saying a word. She just had an angry look on her face and refused to talk. I can tell when she's mad. It's not that difficult.

After she left I watched the Bruins get their asses kicked by Montreal. That's why I posted the old PJ Stock fights, it was better than watching the game. It was Montreal's big 100th anniversary, so I expected it to be a tough game for the Bruins. They came back today and destroyed Toronto, so all is right in the world. Savard got a hat-trick and Kessel ended the game a -3. Hockey justice.

When the game was finished I had to go to the bank and withdraw some cash from my US account. I'm still a little broke because of my vacation, so I had to dip into my funds back home. My phone rang when I was getting back to my building. It was a friend of mine. He told me he just saw me outside the building. He called me an ignorant bastard. I asked him why.

"Why? Because you're wearing the stupid fucking White Sox hat." He's from Chicago...guess he's a Cubbies fan.

"I know. I have to wear it once in a while," I said, "_____ bought it for me. She gets pissed off if I don't at least wear it once a month." My girlfriend heard me say I'm a Sox fan, so she went out and bought me a White Sox hat. It's the thought that matters. She told me later she knows I'm a Red Sox fan, but she thinks the color of the White Sox hat is better.

I don't really care. She later bought me a Red Sox hat, which I wear constantly when I'm not at work, but I have no problem wearing the White Sox hat. It's the least I can do to keep her happy. If I was back in the States it'd be different, but it's not like anyone here knows the difference anyways, so I'm fine with it.

The only place I refuse to wear the White Sox hat is poker night. I've taken enough shit for wearing it there already. Now it's Red Sox on poker night. That is if I ever have enough money to go back again. Like I said, I'm broke because of vacation. I'm also trying to save enough cash to buy a PS3, so poker night will have to be put off for another couple of months.

Anyways, we did manage to go to Nampo-dong for Christmas shopping yesterday. This blog's getting a little long though, and I have to get ready for church, so I'll fill you in on the Christmas shopping details a little later.

Pj Stock on the Habs broadcast???

2009-12-05T11:20:00.002+09:00

Apparently little big-man PJ Stock is part of the Montreal broadcast team now. I thought I'd put up a little post of some of his best fights back when he was wearing the spoked B.

This first one was back in 2002 against Stephen Peat. The funny thing is that it looked like he wanted to take on Chris Simon before this.

Here's a long one between Stock and Barnaby.

Here's the little trooper taking some serious damage from a guy who is about 4 inches taller and outweighs him by about 30-40 pounds.

Stock Vs. Boulton

And finally Stock and Vandermeer. At about :42 you can see Vandermeer break Stocks nose, then Stock gets a good shot in. The best part comes after though when Stock uses Vandermeer's jersey to wipe his nose.

Stock Vs. Vandermeer

Chicken Licker!!

2009-12-04T14:27:00.004+09:00

Normally I don't delve into international news. I tend to stick to stuff in country. I'm not saying I don't keep up on news outside Korea. It's just not that relevant to my daily life. Also, I don't post my thoughts on news in general, and politics specifically, because I don't feel like getting schooled by a bunch of people who are much more intelligent than I am. Hell, on most days I have a hard time spelling intelligent. Is it an 'e' or an 'i' that goes in the middle? I don't fucking know.

Anyways, I couldn't resist posting this little gem out of the UK.

Chicken Licker

Maybe he just really liked the chicken? I don't know.

Anyways, time to put in my 3 hours of work. I'll be pretty busy this weekend. I'm going to Nampo-dong tomorrow, so long as the lady and I don't get in a fight. I'll drop a post sometime Saturday or Sunday and let you know how my Christmas shopping adventure goes.

Have a good day.

Gatsby

2009-12-04T11:18:00.003+09:00

Don't forget to sign up for a page of the English-Korean-English translation of The Great Gatsby over here Deo Geureat Kechupi Project

I've been assigned page 8.

Here it is:

Across courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.

See bay well-mannered? There Caucasian big house to trendily East (not Japan) Egg sparkling with water. The summer history start on evening drive there to many eat evening with the Tom Pukecannon.

Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago. Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven-a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.

Daijy my cousin was removed one time, I knew Tom removed Daijy, it was college. Two days he removed her and war them in town Chicago. Daijies husband, with many bodily finishing’s, had one powerful end. Modern Haven football he play. He nation’s person. One reaching a cute limit. He excellent twenty-one years old and after he saves and will not climax.

His family were enormously wealthy-even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach-but now he’d left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

His family was many money. He money free college and many approach. Now he leave town Chicago, come east like fashion, and breathing. He buy tiny rope horse from water trees. It was hard to see man age money like that.

Why they came east I don’t know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it-I had no sight into Daisy’s heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

Why they come east? They no like west? They spend French year for reason none specific. They drift, rest no, and play rich polo with people other many money. The move solid. Daijy told me. She call me on phone. I don’t believe. In Daijy heart I can’t see Tom float. He like dramas on airplane shaking and football game that he not find.

-----------

It'll be published here after page 7 goes up. Don't forget to sign up for a page of your own and join in the fun.

I'll probably try to do one or two more pages myself, if I have enough time.

another plug

2009-12-02T19:42:00.005+09:00

Just stopping in for a moment. There is this blog that I read. I read a post on it this weekend, I revisited it again today and between then and now he sneaked in a plug for my blog. This is his blog Here and There and it's a good read. I hope he will continue to write. He is another expat living in Korea and has some interesting insights. I won't mention where he's from, because he's chosen more anonymity, but I will say that I feel a certain kindred because of where the large majority of my ancestors come from. We certainly both have the cynical nature that is common among our people. You should read his blog.

Speaking of cynics. It reminds me of a story that my philosophy teacher told me a while back about the genealogy of the word cynic. It's probably bullshit, but I'll relate it to you regardless. According to my professor when Aristotle first opened his university there was a certain group of philosophers who would rabble rouse outside the gates. If they heard something they thought was pure rhetoric they would throw chickens over the walls. Because of this they became known as chicken throwers.

Now, according to wikipedia the word cynic actually is derived from 'dog-like', so all I can hope of my cynical brethren was that they weren't actually throwing dogs over the walls. Unless they were ankle-biters...I hate those fucking rats.

Anyways. Yeah, read his blog.

i need a 30 hour day

2009-12-01T21:12:00.007+09:00

I wasn't going to post this because it's just a rant. But it's my blog, I'll rant if I want to. If you don't like it you can just read some other blog.

24 hours just isn't enough. I have too much to do. Too many things I want to accomplish. It isn't helping that one of the people I'm taking the Korean class with is now obsessed with learning. I wish I would have never asked him to take the fucking class. There was only four of us at the beginning. We've lost one already because of his bullshit. We're in danger of losing another, and I'm barely hanging on as it is.

I don't have time to study Korean for two hours a day. I'm also trying to study Korean history, study writing, keep up with my blog, prep for upper level classes, and keep my girlfriend happy (which is a full time job itself). I wanted to read one chapter of "The Elements of Style" everyday. When I finish the book, I want to go back and read it again, and again, and again, and again. I want to memorize that book.

I'd also like to continue studying Korean history. I've found some interesting books on Korean traditions and I'd like to be able to really put some quality study time in. Not just a once through novel read. I want to study them. Take notes, do some research, even go to some of the places mentioned in the books.

It's also important to me that I continue to keep up with my blog. I haven't written consistently in a long time. So far I'm doing great. They might not all be great posts, but at least I'm working at it and putting in the effort that lacked earlier in my life.

On top of that I also want to continue the Korean classes. I just don't want to be crazy about it. It'd be nice to be conversational in a year, but who the fuck am I kidding? I took Russian for a year at uni and I wasn't really conversational. Unless you count being able to say "Hello, my name is Michael, I love Rock 'n' Roll," conversational. I could say some phrases, and understand a bit, but it's pretty fucking tough to be conversational in a language in one year. Besides, I'm most likely a lifer in Korea, why should I hurry? Do I really want to understand everything Koreans say about me? Do I really want to have political conversations with my girlfriends father? But, one guy in the class is fucking it up for the rest of us. He wants to pick up hot Korean girls. Fuck him, I already have my hot Korean girl.

As if that isn't enough, I asked for all low-level classes this term so I wouldn't have to do any prep work. What do they give me? They give me all fucking high-level shit, so that adds about another 10-15 hours a week of work just prepping the fucking things. Yes, I get paid 15% more for those classes, but I just wanted to have a relaxing term in which I could focus on myself for once. Apparently, that's not an option.

The only time I really get for relaxation is in the morning. In the morning, I like to watch hockey. I prefer the Bruins, but it really doesn't matter, I'll watch anything. I'll watch Toronto and hope they lose. I'll watch Washington to root for Ovechkin for my fantasy team, even though he's a punk who does pussy shit like today's knee shot on Tim Gleason. I don't care. I'll even watch the west coast games just to see if Joe Thornton is still playing half as hard as he could be, or if Vancouver can continue to be pseudo-contenders.

Now, even my hockey watching is tainted. I can't just relax and watch hockey. I have to prep. I have to study Korean. I have to do one of fifteen different things on any given morning. Fuck.

Anyways. This was a bit of a rant. I feel better. I need a macjew and some hot chicken. Hope everyone is having a good week.

spam, spam, spam, spam

2009-11-30T12:44:00.014+09:00

I love that song. That's what I was listening to when I got home from work tonight. I only have "The Escorts" version. This version is a little better.

I skipped my Korean class today. I only studied about 5 minutes all week. There just wasn't enough time. Hopefully my teacher will not be too upset. Unfortunately, the other two guys in class skipped too, so she won't be making any money from us this week.

I needed a break. She goes so fast that it's impossible to keep up with her. It's good for me that the others skipped the class, because now I won't be even further behind than I already am. Right now, I'm about a week behind. I'll try to get some studying done this week if I have time.

Last night I was supposed to go to a Thanksgiving dinner with some people from work. My girlfriend and I were both supposed to go. At first I thought it was just going to be work people, but I later found out there was around 50 people coming. I would have been more likely to have gone if it would have been only work people. I didn't realize half the foreigners in Haeundae were invited. My girl didn't feel like going either. That's good for me because I just blamed it on her. I told the guy who organized the party that I had no choice. If she doesn't go I can't go.

We decided to just stay in. We had pizza for dinner. It was pretty good. Pizza Etang. It's the same shit we order for the kids at school. It's not my favorite, but it's hard to get decent pizza in Korea. The sauce is too sweet at half the places. It just doesn't taste like pizza sauce. At the remaining half it's difficult to get a pizza that just has sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. They all want to serve it "Korean style". Korean pizza has corn on it.

Pizza Etang's sauce is the best I've had in Korea, but they never cook it enough. They also put the pepperoni under the cheese. Any jackass who's spent five minutes in a kitchen knows that if you under cook the pizza, and the pepperoni is under the cheese (instead of on top of it) the pepperoni is going to be fucking raw. So I ate my under-cooked pizza, with raw pepperoni, with a smile on my face. I pissed off my girlfriend Saturday morning when I woke up at 2:00am to watch the Bruins game, and I wanted to keep things civil last night. Pizza Etang is her favorite and criticizing it elicits the same response I would get if I called her mother a bitch. Pizza Etang is famous, it's famous so it has to be the best. Korean logic always amazes me. So I didn't complain in order to keep the peace.

The thing that really pisses me off about Korean pizza is the corn though. Who the fuck puts corn on a pizza? I really don't understand this countries fascination with corn. It's not like corn is really that healthy. Of all the veggies that you could put on a pizza, corn is probably the least healthy. They put corn on everything. I love corn with a little butter as a side veggie, but I don't want corn on my fucking pizza.

They also put corn in all their salads. Who puts corn in a salad? I like my corn hot, with melted butter, some salt, on or off the cob. I don't like it cold, uncooked, and mixed in with my blue cheese dressing. I used to love eating salads, now I won't eat a salad unless I make it myself. I don't need corn on my salad. I'm sorry, but corn and salad dressing are not a delicious combination.

The other food anomaly in Korea is Spam. I will never understand why they love Spam so much.

Why are they so amazed by Spam? In the US I remember Spam as being something that people who couldn't afford to buy real ham would eat. It always brings back memories of the "Hamburger Helper" scene from Vacation.

Koreans love their Spam. It's like white-trash paradise.

I like this article that equates Koreans love for Spam with the French's love for Jerry Lewis. I predict a future thesis for an anthropology major in there somewhere.

What meat's a treat? In Korea it's Spam.

Here's a generic article from the Korea Times on the subject:

More Spam.

I'll just never understand. It certainly seems to draw a parallel to other cultural selections of Koreans. Instead of copying American Rock 'n' Roll, Jazz, Blues, Punk, or any other unmentioned, interesting, type of music; they choose to copy pop.

Anyways, I think that's it for today. Time to eat some food...without corn or Spam.

It's Sunday night...pg-13 for the family

2009-11-29T20:41:00.004+09:00

I haven't posted for a couple days so I thought I should at least get something down. On Friday morning I got up at about 5:30am and spent about an hour talking to my family on Skype. They were all together for Thanksgiving. It was nice talking to everyone. I wish my oldest nephew would have been there, but I guess he's busy with his girlfriend now.

That's something that makes me feel old. My nephew is 20 years old. I still remember changing his diapers.

Anyways, I am being a bit lazy and don't feel that much like writing today, but I promised my sister-in-law that I would write a pg-13 blog; so today I'll write that one and try not to cuss or talk about lady parts or anything like that. Today even my youngest nephew can read the blog, if he actually wanted to. I'll be good.

One thing I would like to say is that I've finally gotten HD for my TV. It took me a while and HelloTV kept giving me the runaround. They tried to tell me that I already had HD, but I told them they didn't know what they were talking about...or I told my girlfriend they didn't know what they were talking about, and she relayed the message-probably in a much more polite way than I had originally stated it.

Now I'm addicted to HD. I wish I could see the real world in HD. Seriously. Stuff looks so good on my TV that I'm wondering if I can buy HD glasses that intensify the real world. After watching things in HD I realize how dull the real world is. I just want to stay home and watch Star Trek in HD again.

Other than that not a lot has happened. Not really up for writing that much tonight. A new term at school starts tomorrow and I have a lot of work to do. I'll try to get a couple posts up this week.

For my family--this will probably be the only pg-13 blog for a while. I need to swear.

Ice hockey...and noise...in Korea!!

2009-11-26T13:26:00.005+09:00

Thanks to a post from Brian I know where to go to find some hockey. It's a long way up to Anyang, but certainly worth a once-a-year trip to see a little live hockey. Hopefully my girlfriend will buy me some tickets for my birthday for the weekend after my intensives. I'm looking forward to it.

The Bruins managed to win their fourth consecutive game this morning. They played great the first period, but fell apart after that. Still, they pulled it off in the shootout and beat Minnesota 2-1.

Wideman sucks. They need to get some better tape for his stick because he's about as reliable as a girl with 공주 병. He coughs up the puck more often than I cough up junk on a Sunday morning after drinking and smoking all night. Wow, my metaphors are bad. Mark that down on things Man-boy needs to work on.

Noise is really starting to drive me crazy. This morning there was some dog outside that wouldn't shut up. Not a deep-voiced, big, lab-type dog bark. A whiny, tire-squealing, nut-squeeze, bark. I really hate ankle-biters. I hate the girls who carry them around dressed in their little ankle-biter tweed outfits. I hate seeing the little fucking rats pissing and shitting on the subway, while their owners watch, pretend nothing happened, and go about their business without cleaning it up.

I'm glad my girlfriend doesn't like animals. If she ever asked me to get a rat dog I think I'd disown her. I just can't take those stupid little things. I think the smallest I would ever go with a dog would be a beagle. At least a beagle has some self-respect.

In a perfect world boshingtang (dog soup) would be made only with dogs that are the same size as, or smaller than, cats. I might even eat it if I knew it was made of one of those little bastards whose shit I had to step around to get off at my subway stop. Mmmm, delicious. Now that would be mashi-fucking-sawyeo.

In other noise, the asshole living above me continues to pound on the floor. There's no sense to it. I'm beginning to think that he found out a foreigner lived below him. He maybe lost a girlfriend to a waygookin and decided to annoy every other foreigner he comes across. It just so happens that I'm his next target.

Every few hours I hear "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM" upstairs. There's no discernible pattern to it. At first, I thought maybe it was a working girl living up there, but it just can't be. Only three BOOM's? Come on, I think the last time I only had three BOOM's was when I was a teenager. It can't be that.

My next conclusion was that they are doing some kind of construction work up there. But even that doesn't make sense. Three swings of the hammer, and then rest for four hours? What the fuck? It happens at the strangest times too. I'll hear it at 8:00am, then at 3:00pm, then at 2:00am. I don't fucking get it. What the hell is going on up there? It's not from people just walking around, it's too loud, it's too deliberate. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM." It's fucking killing me.

I called the front desk and they said they'd find out what was going up there. That was two weeks ago. It's still going on. Two months it's been going on. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM." Pretty soon I'm going to take my hockey stick and just start pounding the ceiling with it. Brush up on my Korean insults and start screaming in my deepest, pissed off, adjoshi voice.

Anyway, thanks again to the "Idiot". I got about 150 extra hits yesterday thanks to his plug. I hope I don't disappoint.

now i'm pissed

2009-11-25T13:35:00.004+09:00

As I may have mentioned, I often play video games.

Originally, my next gadget was going to be an Iphone. They go on sale in Korea this weekend. Then, my friend, cunt that he is, planted an idea in my brain. Playstation 3. I hadn't considered it before, but I have games from PS2 and PSX, so if I buy a new console it might as well be a PS3.

The hard part is convincing my girlfriend to let me buy it. I've mentioned it a couple times and it has started a fight both times. I think she's softening up a bit though. Now, I have to be careful about my timing. I can't mention it when I'm broke. I have to wait until after intensives, because then I'll have plenty of money, and I can make sure that I buy her engagement ring first.

My best approach will be to mention it in conjunction with the Iphone. She was okay with my buying the Iphone. Having a great cellphone is a status thing in Korea. However, I really don't need a new phone. Of course, I don't really need a PS3 either, but the game would be much more fun.

If I make it clear to her that it'll actually cost me less money to get the PS3 than it would be to get an Iphone I might be able to convince her. The Iphone would cost me about $250, plus at least another $50/month for the plan. I currently have a pre-pay phone and I use it for text-messaging more than anything. Because of that, my current phone only costs me about $50 every two or three months. I don't want to switch phones, because I will never be able to get one for that cheap again.

The problem right now is that Korea is about 6 months behind the rest of the world in PS3 prices. I made the mistake of looking at how much a new PS3 would cost me back in the States, and compared it to Korea. I have to pay close to an extra $100 here. It's fucking stupid. Nobody in Korea buys PS3's, yet they refuse to lower the prices.

This is the best buy price in the US:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+PlayStation+3+%28120GB%29/9476952.p?id=1218115837227&skuId=9476952

This is the best price I could find here in Korea:

http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=172924349

That's a fucking $80USD difference. Bullshit.

I just don't understand Korean business practices. It reminds me of the bullshit housing costs.

My girl and I have started looking into what we'll have to do to get our own place when we're married. There is an apartment complex near my school that we were considering looking at. They charge around $700 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. The problem is that half of the building is fucking empty. Nobody is willing to pay $700/month for a two-bedroom in that place. Instead of lowering the prices so they can at least make some money, the owners just prefer to have the apartments empty until the market catches up with their prices. It's retarded. They just don't seem to understand the laws of supply and demand. They end up making $0.00 in a 12 month period, when they could make $7800.00 if they just lowered their prices to $650.

Anyways, the damn PS3 prices better fucking catch up with the rest of the world soon. This is really pissing me off.

returning the favor

2009-11-25T11:21:00.004+09:00

If anyone wants to read a seriously funny, and honest, blog. You should check this out: http://yankeenom.blogspot.com/

His blog is great. It's not pretentious at all. Very creative and funny.

"An Idiot's Tale" is what inspired me to start writing again. If you like simple, easy to read, material from someone who doesn't take himself too seriously, then you will love his blog.

It's a great read and I recommend going all the way back to the beginning and reading about his trials and tribulations with his "Mongol" wife. You might even get a glimpse into what awaits me in my future here in Kimchiland.

"It's got a great title"

2009-11-23T23:31:00.004+09:00

"The Recliner" was a short story I wrote when I was in college. I thought it was good. I was proud of it. All my insecurities about writing stem from that story. It was a love story. It was philosophy. It was clever.

It was about the attachments that we form with inanimate objects. A man's attachment with his reclining chair eventually led to the downfall of his relationship. It was absurd, it was unrealistic, but there was something about it that was real.

I got an A on the story.

It was well written.

Was it interesting? I don't know. I don't have it anymore so I can't go back and check. Was the structure readable? Probably not. I wrote it a long time ago and I had no clue about form. Was it as clever as I thought at the time? Of course not, but I didn't know any better. Was it original? Definitely.

After I got the grade back I wanted to discuss it with my professor and pick his brain to see if there was room for improvement. When I asked, "So what is your honest opinion of the story?" I got a one sentence answer.

"Well...It's got a great title."

A great title.

Fuck.

I was expecting more than that. I was expecting my professor to bow down to my greatness. I was expecting him to tell me how fucking great it was, and how he never had to read another short story again, because nothing could ever be better than "The Recliner". Instead, I heard, "It's got a great title".

Disappointment.

Honestly. It was probably one of the most profound moments of my life. I needed, and need, a lot of work. Writing is not easy. Especially when you take a ten year hiatus. Writing can be fun, but it's also a lot of work; a lot of dedication. But here I am. My prose has improved exponentially in the elapsed time.

It's still pretty fucking far from perfect. However, it's better.

The thing about writing is that I always have to be thinking about writing. I have to think about what's interesting, and what is not interesting. I have to think about style. Think about what makes a bunch of words on a page appealing to the eyes. Think about what's appealing to my own eyes. Think.

This brings me to my real point. I've learned more about writing after reading three chapters of "The Elements of Style", than I learned in four years of university. I'm sad that this was not part of my curriculum. It should have been. It should be part of every freshman writing class. It's truly sad that it is not.

Anyways. This was a bit of a personal ramble. I'll have more tomorrow or the next day about some other shit.

the end is near...or is it??

2009-11-22T23:26:00.007+09:00

The weekend is over. In the morning I have to get up and make it down to Haeundae for my Korean class. I'm having a hard time keeping three people going. If the attendance drops below three the teacher will cancel the class. There's only two at the moment. One of my friends is being moody. I thought I was abnormal until I moved to Korea and began to meet all the other expats. A thirty-three year old man, too moody to go to Korean class at 12:30pm. He got turned down by a girl at a bar on Friday night, it ruined his entire weekend. No joke. Another friend is just getting drunk again, so I don't know if he'll be able to make it for the 12:30pm class, but at least I can understand hungover.

This weekend was pretty good. No fights. I was even pushing it a little bit. In the middle of church today I turned to my girlfriend and said "자고 싶어요," or, "I want to sleep". Surprisingly, that didn't start a fight. I even accidentally dropped an empty coffee cup on the woman sitting in front of us. Normally, that would be grounds for 24 hours of the silent treatment.

After church we went to see the movie "2012". It sucked. After an hour and a half I just wanted them to fucking die already. Seriously, just live or die, don't make me sit through almost two and a half hours of boring, non-suspenseful, crap just to let me down at the end with two-hundred thousand people on a boat. Even "The Day After Tomorrow" was a better disaster movie.

One good thing did come from the movie though. My girlfriend is worried about the world ending in 2012 now, so she says she has to love me even more. Maybe that means more sex? Maybe an occasional blow job? Maybe she'll even cook? Who knows what it means, but I'm not going to burst her bubble and tell her it's all bullshit.

On the lighter side, I have one student in my Monday/Friday class who is an idiot. He pulled the fire alarm on Friday. This was probably not the smartest thing to do one week after this:

A total of 10 people, including eight Japanese tourists, were killed, and six others were injured Saturday afternoon (Nov 14) in a fire at an indoor shooting range in Busan, a southern port city of South Korea, local media quoted police as saying.

The fire broke out at about 02:26 p.m. local time at the second-floor indoor shooting range which was located in a five-story building in the second largest city of South Korea, and was quelled at around 03:04 p.m., police said.

Preliminary investigation showed that the fire started in a lounge adjacent to the shooting range, where seven bodies have been found later, and eight bodies believed to be Japanese tourists who were visiting the shooting range as part of the tour program, with the two others South Koreans, the police said.

http://www.newsgd.com/news/world1/content/2009-11/16/content_6333397.htm

I told him that pulling the fire alarm is always wrong when there is no fire, but if you pull it one week after a bunch of people died in a fire than you could really cause serious panic. I warned him that people could actually get hurt if they panic in a situation like that, but I don't think it got through to him. I sent him to a Korean staffer who yelled at him in Korean for ten minutes, but he returned to class with a smile on his face, so I don't think that made him realize the seriousness of pulling the alarm either.

I'm also a little worried about swine flu. I feel okay, but on Friday one of the teachers forgot to take his kids temperatures. Of course, that would be the day that one of his students would get violently ill in the middle of class. During the fire alarm fiasco one of the Korean staffers was walking the sick kid out of his class. I happened to be in the hall at the time and saw him. He was sweating and coughing. Kids here are not taught to cover their mouths when they cough. As luck would have it this little fucker coughed on me as he was being walked past me.

I really hope I don't get the fucking swine flu.

Anyways, that's it for now.

my first movie review

2009-11-21T13:48:00.002+09:00

Orphan

Let me just preface this by pointing out some of the most joyous times of my life. My girlfriend agreed to marry me: awesome, even though we were in a fight at the time it was still one of the happiest days of my life. My last class when I graduated from the university: it was a long road, but I was proud to have finally made it through my philo degree. Getting my license: finally I felt like an adult for the first time, and I could do what I wanted without needing my parents to cart me around. The first time I had sex: I was a bit of a late bloomer, having to wait 18 years when everyone around me was doing it was tough, but I finally got the virgin monkey off my back.

I now have a new one I can add to the list. Watching that fucking crazy bitch drown at the end of this movie almost brought tears to my eyes I was so happy.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I will say that this was actually a pretty impressive movie. At the beginning I wasn't sure what to expect, and thought that it might be another run of the mill thriller or "Children of the Corn" type movie with a crazy kid who goes on a killing spree, but this was far more interesting than that.

When the movie opens and you meet a small family. They seem quite nice, but you realize that they're all getting over the tragedy of a still-born child. In an attempt to get their life back to normal, they decide it would be a good idea to adopt a kid. They go to an orphanage run by some nuns to meet and talk to some kids. That's when they first meet the "Orphan".

Upon first meeting the kid you think she's a little strange, but is nevertheless a good kid. She's quiet, intelligent, thoughtful, and a remarkable artist for a child of about 12. Her abnormalities are seen as nothing more than quirks at the beginning.

Then, she has her first day at the new school. A little girl in one of her classes makes fun of the way she dresses and that's when all hell begins to break loose. Slowly, you begin to see that this innocent little girl is one scary little bitch. Aside from her throwing a tantrum in the middle of school, the first big clue comes at a playground.

She sees the girl who made fun of the way she dresses. Then she to sneaks up behind her and pushes her off the top of a slide, breaking her leg in the fall.

After that everything goes downhill. She kills someone in front of her sister, so the sister is so scared of her that she won't tell the parents. Then, she threatens to cut her brothers balls off with a utility knife like the mini-terrorist she is.

If that's not bad enough, she then proceeds to turn every one of the retarded adults against the mother. The mother is the only one smart enough to see the girl as the psycho-bitch she is, but the rest of the adults in the movie think that the mother's past alcohol abuse has resurfaced and is clouding her judgment.

Finally, you begin to realize that this sweet little girl may not be a sad little orphan after all. I won't give away the ending completely, but I will say that the last couple scenes were pretty fucking disturbing in a few different ways.

Overall, I would recommend this movie. When I downloaded it I really didn't think it was going to be very good, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was really much better than I expected.

Too much to do

2009-11-20T13:45:00.002+09:00

Don't really have a lot to say today. I just got some books in the mail. I'm quite excited about them. My copy of "The Elements of Style" has finally arrived, as well as Stephen King's book "On Writing".

I also got three books on Korean history that look pretty interesting. It's unfortunate that I'm unable to get any books on Korean history written in English in country, but at least I will always have Amazon.com.

The term at my school is almost over, next week is the final week. Because of that it's been virtually impossible to control the students. They all know that nothing they do makes any difference at this point. Whether they level-up or not has already been decided so they realize that any work they put into their studies now will not have any effect on the final outcome.

The test scores have been so bad that I've made a game of it. Most of the test scores this week have been below 5, the vocab tests have 25 questions, so I'm having them predict the collective class scores. Whomever gets closest without going over gets 5 pieces of candy. Last night the winning guess was 5. That's in a class of 8 students. So the class average was less than 1. It's good to know that their parents are really pressing them to finish the term strong.

Anyways, I'm working on my first movie review. I'll be posting a review of this:

It'll be done at some point this weekend. I just want to watch it a second time and take some notes before I finish it up and publish the post.

Have a good weekend.

Korean Music

2009-11-18T13:26:00.011+09:00

Just the thought of what is about to come makes me cringe. Someone asked me about Korean music though, so it's my duty to bring to you the wonderful world of K-Pop...opps, I just threw up a little in my mouth.

Our first group is a boy-band that goes by the name of Big Bang. In my class we're doing lessons on the history of Rock 'n' Roll. I asked my students what music they listen to and a 12 year old boy told me that his favorite band is Big Bang. I asked him why, to which he replied "Because they're handsome." Yes. In a nutshell, that is the Korean music scene. 12 year old boys and girls listening to the most horrible shit in the world because the singers are handsome.

Sigh...generic beats rule all here. And forget about any Rock 'n' Roll.

This next one is not so popular anymore. However, for about a six month period I had to endure every kid in my class singing this song 20 times a day. It got to the point where I had to tell them that singing the "Tell me" song would result in an automatic F for the day.

I can understand why the record labels put these groups together. It's simple marketing. But, back home we at least had other options. I have to hear this crap everywhere I go. There's zero indie rock in Busan save for a few groups that occasionally play something like Radiohead covers in the foreigner bars.

The next group no longer really exists, at least not as far as I know. As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the singers was kicked out of the band, and pretty much exiled from Korea back to America, because he wrote that "Korea is gay" on his myspace page when he was 17. While Korea itself may not be gay, this band certainly is. I present 2pm:

This next one fucking drives me nuts. I have to hear this shit a thousand times a day on the television now. Bullshit song was basically created to market a shitty cellphone. Of course, the girls are pretty hot, but dammit if I hear this one more time I'm going to throw my cellphone at the fucking TV.

Yet, another shitty boy-band called "Super Junior".

And finally one more monstrosity from some of the finest pieces of ass on the peninsula. Hell, if I was 16 I might listen to Girl's Generation. That way if I was ever lucky enough to meet one of them, I'd have some material to work with.

If you turn the volume all the way down it's actually great.

Indeed...

the wonder of korean language books

2009-11-16T20:13:00.013+09:00

Everything is back to okay. When I got to work it was like the weekend never happened. She can never stay mad at me. It's great.

I had Korean class today. I feel like I'm really learning a lot. The thing that makes this class so great is that the teacher actually spends time teaching us how to form our own sentences. I'm so tired of the Korean language books I've bought. Every book has some dialogue in it that you will only use once or twice in your life. You're supposed to learn vocab through these dialogues, but when you think about it they're really retarded. How can I use the vocab if the books don't actually teach me how to make my own sentences using said vocab?

A couple shining examples of this: one book has a great conversation between a FOTB (fresh off the boat) and a Korean stewardess on an airplane. How often will I have that conversation? Maybe 3 or 4 times in my life?

Another example is an amazing dialogue about how spring will come soon. Yes, I can use that gem once every single year!!

Another awesome one is talking to a travel agent about going to Jeju-do. I'm so happy that now I know how to make reservations. Of course, I hope she doesn't throw me any curve-balls, like asking me if I want to go in any month that isn't March.

Here's another good one: I can say that the food I'm eating is too spicy. This one is awesome, because Koreans invented spicy food, so they know that no foreigner could possible enjoy Korean food, because it's so spicy. As we all know, chili peppers only grow on the Korean peninsula. I think it would be much better to change this dialogue to the foreigner saying "This food is too salty, did you just empty the entire salt shaker in this chigae?"

And now, I know how to write a classified ad if I'm ever looking for a roommate as well. That'll really come in handy. I really wish I would have known how to do that years ago, because the first thing I needed when I got off the plane was the ability to use Korean to look for a roommate. Awesome.

I love this teacher. I can now say what I want to do. When I want to do it. I can ask questions about things. I can actually conjugate verbs. Of all the books I've looked through, not one of them actually has detailed descriptions on how to conjugate verbs. You'd think that might be something important when you're learning a language.

I actually wrote 8 sentences for homework. I studied about 5 different books before going to this teacher and the only sentences I knew where "I can't speak much Korean" and "Can you give me a discount." Cute maybe, but still pretty worthless if you're actually trying to communicate.

That's it for today. Tomorrow morning I'll be watching the B's play the Islanders. Hope they keep putting the puck in the net.

wild weekend

2009-11-16T11:20:00.008+09:00

Uhhgg, where to start.

Well, Friday was relatively uneventful. My girlfriends mother was a little sick, so my girl had to stay home and take care of her the whole day. I think that put her in a bad mood for the rest of the weekend, because I just couldn't do anything right this weekend.

On Saturday I cleaned my apartment. In the process I found some gold necklace that I had given to an ex-girlfriend. She returned it to me when we broke up and I just didn't know what to do with it. I asked my girlfriend what she thought we should do with it. Bad idea. I should have just kept my fucking mouth shut. I asked her if I should sell it, and buy something nice for her with it. I asked her if she wanted it, I didn't think that was a big deal since she still wears a necklace her ex-boyfriend gave her about 4 times a week. Or if she thought I should just throw it away, it's gold, but it's really not worth that much money.

She refused to speak to me for about an hour at the mere question of "Do you want it?" I opted with the third choice, just throw it away. I figured that was what she wanted anyways. So, I put it in a trash bag and returned to cleaning. I cleaned almost my entire fucking apartment while she sat there on the couch watching awful Korean tv shows.

After about an hour, she finally offered to actually help. Then she spent ten minutes sweeping the floor, five minutes washing dishes, complained about how tired she was and took a nap on the couch, while I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the shit out of the floor. When I was finally finished she was in a better mood, so we went out for daegi-galbi. Daegi-galbi is about the greatest meal in the world. It's basically just marinated pork that you cook yourself on a grill right at the table.

We had a good meal and talked about going to the beach or something, but decided it was too cold, so we just went home. On the way home, she decided that maybe I should sell that necklace instead of throwing it away. So, when we got back to my building I had to sift through all the disgusting garbage in the big trash bin looking for the bag that had the necklace in it. After about ten minutes of clawing through fucking old kimchi, cigarette butts, and thrown away toilet paper, (they're all afraid to flush it down the toilet in this country because of bad plumbing) I finally found the necklace.

We finally got back to my apartment and I decided that after climbing through all that shit I deserved a cigarette. This was a big problem, I'd already had my allotted one cigarette of the day, so this was the ultimate betrayal of her trust. I promised I would try to only smoke one cigarette a day when we are together. I usually do great with only one, it's not a big deal. But after climbing through that shit to retrieve a necklace that should have never been in the trash, and was only thrown in there because it was the only thing that would make her happy, I made an executive decision to up my limit on this day to two cigarettes.

When I got back in the apartment after smoking she was pissed off of course. I took a shower to get rid of the smell and clean off the shit from climbing through the garbage, but she was still pissed off.

Finally, after about an hour more of the silent treatment I went upstairs and tickled her. Seriously, if we're fighting and I tickle her she forgives me. I love her, but she's like a four year old sometimes. The tickle strategy worked and we were friends again. We talked about marriage and I asked her to marry me. She said yes. End of story.

Saturday turned out well in the end. But, here I am on Monday and she's not talking to me, why is that you ask? Well, I haven't told you about Sunday yet.

Sunday started off well enough. I got up and watched the Bruins game in the morning. They lost to Pittsburgh, but they played well and it was a hell of an entertaining game, so it's okay.

After the game I waited for her to show up for church. She's always late. Church starts at 2:00pm and she showed up at my building at 1:58pm. I got downstairs at 2:00pm. She was mad at me for being two minutes later than her getting downstairs. She called me before and told me be ready in three minutes. I assumed that meant she was leaving her house in three minutes, that's what it usually means. However, this time she was actually on her way here when she called. I didn't know this, she didn't tell me. So, she was mad because I assumed that she was going to be late like she always is. We got to church at around 2:20, which is about ten minutes earlier than usual, so she was at least happy about that, and was back in a good mood.

When church was over we went to Sfunz (pronounced spungee) and walked around a little bit looking at some stuff. She likes to look at boots, so we looked at boots. She has "Ugz", I guess they're pretty popular boots. She likes to look at "Ugz" imitation boots and tell me how they're not as good as the ones she's wearing.

After looking at imitation boots we went to the bookstore, because I want to get a new bible. Mine is falling apart. Like I said before, I just sit there reading the bible in church because I can't understand a fucking thing anyways. I might as well have a decent bible that doesn't kill my eyes to read. I didn't buy one though, because I wasn't sure if any of them were the King James version. They have a lot of the books for foreigners wrapped in plastic so we can't actually inspect them before we buy them. Instead, I just ordered one from amazon today. We also looked at lonely planet guides and decided that we'd like to go to Prague for our honeymoon. Assuming we're still going to have a honeymoon.

We got home after that and everything was hunky fucking dorey. I started making some spaghetti and meatballs, she watched shitty Korean TV shows, we were the fucking picture of domestic bliss. Then, we started talking about apartments. I mistakenly asked her about some coworkers and what they pay for their two bedroom apartment. I should know better by now, we just can't talk about money yet, it ends up in a fight every time we discuss it.

At one point, she told me that she wants to have a two bedroom apartment. It'd be nice to have an extra room for our extra stuff. I'll just call it her tantrum room (not to her). She can use it to go and have her tantrums when I say something she doesn't like, and I can use it for my music stuff if I ever feel like playing.

The standard in this area for a two bedroom is about 700,000 won, or about $650USD. Sounds great to me. Sounds like a steal to be able to live in a two bedroom for that amount. However, me saying that sounds like something we can afford infuriated her. She wants to buy an apartment, and so do I, so she doesn't want to pay that much. Fine with me. I want to buy a place too, but I'm actually realistic about our abilities financially. She wants everything and she wants it now.

Therein lies the problem. She wants everything and wants it now, but she expects me to do all the fucking work. I don't speak Korean. I can't look at apartment listings to find out how much they cost and where we should be looking. I just can't fucking do it. They don't list that shit in English. However, I'm expected to know everything, regardless of the fact that I can't speak the fucking language.

So, here I am today, wondering what the fuck is going on. She stormed out last night saying, "I have my standards, and you have yours, and they're different." I don't have any fucking standards, I don't give a shit. I just wanted a two bedroom apartment because she told me that was what she wanted. I just want her to be comfortable. That's all I care about.

Now, I have no fucking clue what's going on. I'm sure she'll be over it by the time I get to work today, at least I hope so. I don't want to have to tickle her in the middle of school.

Anyways, that's about it. I just finished Korean class and still haven't heard from her. This post might be a bit disjointed, because I started it before my class and finished it after, but I'll re-read it later and maybe edit it a bit and add some details. Right now, I have to get ready for work.

So, long story short. I'm engaged...I think???

Comments

2009-11-14T09:51:00.007+09:00

Comments are really good. I like it when people leave comments. I'm also aware that some people reading this know me. That's good too. But when you're leaving a comment please be aware that my name on here is Man-boy for a reason. There might be times when I say some negative things about Korea. If I think there's something about this country that is retarded I'm going to say something about it. So, if you leave comments call me Man-boy, MB, or Jack-ass, Dick head, Loser, or anything else you want, just don't use my real name. If I happen to say that Korea is gay or Kimchi doesn't cure cancer (it might actually cause it). I don't want to have the netizens starting a "Man-boy should commit suicide" website or something like that. They actually did that to this guy:

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/10/113_51713.html

One day Koreans loved him, then within 24 hours they were starting a petition on the net trying to get signatures of people who think he should kill himself. I heard they got like 2000 people to sign it in one day. The K-netizens can be crazy.

According to this guy, they're so scary even Japanese netizens are afraid of them:

The online Japanese community "Ni Chan" (2ch.net), has made comments such as, "Is it because of the netizens again?", "It's a scary country", and "Didn't someone commit suicide before (because of netizens)?"

http://www.allkpop.com/index.php/full_story/japanese_netizens_afraid_of_korean_netizens/

Here's a list of famous Koreans who may have been driven to suicide by netizens:

Choi Jin-sil (December 24, 1968 – October 2, 2008) was a South Korean actress and model. She was considered as one of the best actresses in South Korea, nicknamed "The Nation's Actress".^[1] On October 2, 2008, Choi was found dead at her home, and the police chief stated that it was "a clear case of suicide".^[1] It has been speculated that negative comments by Korean netizens^[2]^[3] and rumors regarding her lending money to Ahn Jae-hwan^[1] contributed to Choi's depressed state.

Ahn Jae-hwan (April 25, 1972 – September 8, 2008) was a South Korean actor.Ahn was found dead in his car on September 8, but the exact time of his death has not been revealed. It is considered to be a case of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.^[1] He was 36 years old.^[2]

Woo Seung-yeon (24 May 1983 – 27 April 2009) was a South Korean model and actress.On 28 April 2009, Woo was found hanged at her home in Jamsil-dong, Seoul, in an apparent suicide.^[3] Her body was discovered at 7:40 pm by her roommate. Prior to her death, Woo sent a text message to her sister saying "I'm sorry", and left a note in her diary that read, "I love my family. I am so sorry to leave early."^[1]^[2] Police believe that depression over her situation and fear of the future led to her suicide.^[3]

Jeong Da-bin (March 4, 1980 – February 10, 2007) was a Korean actress who committed suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_Da-bin

Lee Eun-ju (Hangul: 이은주; 16 November 1980 – 22 February 2005) was a South Korean actress. She committed suicide at 24 years of age.

All those were found on Wikipedia.

Needless to say, I don't need the netizens trying to track me down because I say they smell like garlic or something equally as innocuous. So, please, leave comments, but don't use my real name.

Have a great weekend. I'll be cleaning my apartment all day. Fun stuff.

smells like kimchi spirit

2009-11-13T22:53:00.017+09:00

I have no school spirit. Today, I came to that realization as my buddy and I watched every other teacher from school making some silly video. I just couldn't be bothered. It's not that I don't like my coworkers. They're all good people. I just don't feel like coming into work an hour or two early to work on some retarded video with them. I have better things to do with my time.

My hagwon (English academy) is having a video contest. I work at one of the largest chain academies in Korea. The branch that comes up with the best "School Spirit" video will get about $500 bucks. Of course, the teachers don't actually get that money, the school does. If we actually had a bonus to our paychecks I'd be more inclined to participate.

The video that they're making apparently has something to do with scaring the shit out of the students. Seriously, my students were freaked the fuck out when they got to class. I had to talk them down and tell them, "No, don't worry, the crazy foreign teachers don't want to kill you."

What they were doing is waiting by the elevator. When a load of students would come up on the elevator the teachers would all scream and yell "Wooohhoooo, Yeah, ____ is the best!!!" at the kids when the elevator doors opened. I guess they think that showing a bunch of horrified kids in the video is going to win us the $500 bucks. All to the tune of:

Who the fuck came up with this shit?

I probably should have helped, I think they probably could have used my assistance. For my musical taste if for no other reason. The only real ideas I had were to use the Koolaid guy...

I have no clue how I would have used the Koolaid guy, but I don't give a shit, I always liked him...

The other thing I was thinking about was our schools love of the 'transition'. Transitions are just conjunctions and logical connectors between ideas. Anyways, I always have thought about using the Dead Milkmen's song "Nutrition" and writing my own lyrics to it using the word "Transitions" instead. Of course, I would edit it to make it appropriate for kids, but I always thought that was a pretty cool idea.

On the bright side, they did manage to almost give a Quiznoes sandwich delivery guy a heart attack when he got off the elevator. I don't think he'll be delivering any sandwiches to our school again any time soon.

They should use that in the video.

Anyway, that's all I gots for now. Have a great weekend.

two tubes of toothpaste and a calender

2009-11-11T23:03:00.002+09:00

Today was bill-paying day. I am still a little tight on cash because my paycheck yesterday was pretty small since I had the vacation at the beginning of October. I still haven't gotten used to getting paid only once a month. I'm just not that good at planning and budgeting, but I'm getting used to it.

I had to go to the bank and pay my bills. One thing I love about Korea is that I can pay all my bills using an ATM machine. That is incredibly convenient. I just go to the bank, hand my bills to the security guard, because I haven't quite figured out have to navigate the Korean instructions on the ATM, and he pays all my bills at once.

While I was waiting for the security guard to take care of my bills for me, the teller comes over and says "Hey, I have to talk to you about a transfer you made two months ago."

A couple months ago there was a problem with a transfer I made back to the States. I keep my receipts from all my transfers, and just bring them in when I want to make a new transfer. That way we can just copy the information from the old one, instead of going through the long process of routing numbers, and accounts numbers, every time I transfer. Two months ago I did the exact same thing I do every time. The problem was that my bank never got the money.

When it happened I went to my bank here, and they told me that for some reason my bank in the States rejected it. So, I asked my bank back in the States why they rejected it, and they told me that the Korean bank never put the transfer through. I went back to my bank here and told them they didn't send it through, and they tried again, and of course, the transfer went through.

My bank here tried to tell me that the reason my bank rejected it, which they never did, was because I didn't use my middle initial when I signed the transfer. I brought this up with my bank, and was told they would not reject my transfer just because I didn't use my middle initial. So, I was basically told by both banks that it was the other banks fault.

I'm inclined to believe that it was the Korean banks fault and that they didn't actually send the transfer the first time. Then, when they realized they fucked it up, they had to come up with some excuse to absolve themselves of any fault. This is important in Korean culture, it's called saving face. Nothing that goes wrong could possibly be their fault, there must be someone else to blame. I don't think my bank has any reason to lie to me.

So, anyways, the teller tells me that he has to talk to me about that. Because they had to redo the transfer, they have to charge me 8,000 won (about $6USD). He even admitted that it was not my fault, he kept trying to blame it on my bank in the US. He apologized about 20 times, not admitting any fault of course, just apologizing because he had to charge me the fucking 8,000 won for their fuck-up.

Then, to attempt to continue in his face-saving, he gave me a free calender and two tubes of free toothpaste. I now have my very own Shinahn Bank brand toothpaste. A fucking bank that gives away toothpaste?? Very strange indeed.

That's all I got tonight, that was my day. I'd been wanting to go out and buy a calender, but now I don't, so I guess it's okay.

i'm panicking...a little

2009-11-09T19:27:00.004+09:00

Looks like marriage is definitely in my future. Closer than I had originally thought. Originally, my girlfriend and I had been talking about getting married next fall. Her brother was going to get married in the spring, and her parents had told her that they wouldn't allow her to get married until after him, so the fall was the best spot for the two of us. This weekend her brother told them that he wouldn't be able to get married until the fall. That means that we can't get married in the fall. Can't steal the thunder of the Han-male-child and all that shit, so we're left with either the spring of 2010, or the spring of 2011.

I'd be perfectly happy with the spring of 2011. That would give us some time to plan and save some money. However, her parents are starting to get pissed off. She stays at my place every Friday and Saturday night and mommy and daddy are not happy with this. They flat out told her this weekend that if she's going to continue this behavior she'd better just get married or they're going to put a stop to it.

Now, I'm left with two options. Marry in the spring of 2010, and enjoy a relatively stress free 6 months with my girlfriend being happy. Or, I can put it off until the spring of 2011 and deal with a year and a half of a crazy girlfriend, pissed off parents, and a general shit-storm of stress. Even though it's a little faster than I had planned, I think I'll opt for option one. In the long run, it'll just be easier to deal with. No angry fathers, no bitchy girlfriend, just planning shit sooner than I thought we would have to.

I haven't even officially proposed to her yet though. She'll say yes of course, we've already been talking about dates and stuff, so I'm not really worried about that. But it's still a huge step. I didn't know that things would happen this quickly. Last night I had a twinge of panic run through me when I thought about being married. It's definitely what I want, but it's a little scary. I will be in the land of "Fan death" for the rest of my life. Or at least until we retire. That's a long time. It certainly wasn't what I had planned on when I came here. Fuck, two years from now I might have a Man-boy junior running around the house. Wow.

Anyways, that's it. I'll talk about my Korean class tomorrow.

DON'T PANIC!!!!!

2009-11-08T12:33:00.004+09:00

I found this in the subway and thought it was a little funny that the two people on the side of the escalator are yelling at the people coming down. My girlfriend said the poster is about earthquake safety. Apparently earthquake safety involves being screamed at by people on how not to panic.

Today is church day. Those who know me know that I'm not generally a big church guy, but my girlfriend insists that I go, so it's okay with me. I spend the time reading the bible, it's an interesting read so far, but the print is so small it's really hurting my eyes.

We went to the English language mass once and that was enough for me. I'd rather be blissfully ignorant of what's being said than have to actually listen to that drivel for an hour every Sunday. At least now I can pretend that what's being said isn't at all crazy or ignorant.

The one time we did go to the English mass is was kind of funny. The deacon (I think that's what the priests are called in a Presbyterian church) was relating a story of his youth to us. He told us about this friend he had when he was about 12 years old. His 'friend' was a very attractive 22 year old Korean man. A really good church going kid. Apparently, all the adjumma's were fervently trying to set their daughters up with this guy, and he had women knocking on his door 24/7 trying to get to him. The deacon, told us how he thought it was really special that this eligible 22 year old guy would much rather spend his time with a 12 year old boy than with all those women...needless to say, I'd had about enough after that. I'm not really interested in hearing his stories about how he and 'Joon' had a 'special' relationship and how he was 'touched' in so many ways by the friendship. I'd heard plenty of stories like that through my Catholic upbringing already.

So, that was it for English mass. I'd rather just not understand what they're saying. At least that way I can enjoy the hour of reading time.

Tomorrow is back to Korean class in the morning. Our teacher told us last week that she is going to overload us with homework this week. I'm actually kind of looking forward to the homework. I've been studying this week a little bit, but she didn't really give us any guidance as to what we should be studying, so I've just been kind of winging it a bit. It'll be nice to have some actual guidelines.

Other than that, not much is going on. I watched the Bruins this morning and was pretty happy with the way they played. Wideman is still scary, I counted 3 giveaways by him in the defensive zone in the first period, but after that he tightened up a bit. Having Bitz back made a difference already, but they still need to get Savard and Lucic back, and fucking SI laden Krecji. Fucking swine flu.

One of my students has swine flu. There was a big problem this week because he was posting it on the internet. He's a good kid, but he just doesn't think things through sometimes. It's not the first time there's been a problem with the things he posts on the internet this term. It seems like about once a month he posts some thing on the school message board that gets him in trouble. Usually it's a lot more innocuous than this time, but christ I was worried that he'd start a panic. Everyone here is on edge enough as it is because of SI. I'm seriously tired of having to take every students temperature every single class. Plus, I've already lost two students this week because their parents are afraid of them catching the flu. I don't want to lose any more and get sanctioned because my fucking retention is too low.

Anyways, that's it for now.

Oh, one more thing. If you're reading this then leave a comment. It seems really empty on here so let me know if you're checking this out so I don't feel so much like I'm just writing to myself here.

Bye.

And people say Koreans are bad drivers...

2009-11-07T09:43:00.003+09:00

I found this article posted on http://www.eslcafe.com/

SEOUL, South Korea – A woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver's license with near-daily attempts since April 2005 has finally succeeded on her 950th time. The aspiring driver spent more than 5 million won ($4,200) in application fees, but until now had failed to score the minimum 60 out of a possible 100 points needed to get behind the wheel for a driving test.

Cha Sa-soon, 68, finally passed the written exam with a score of 60 on Wednesday, said Choi Young-chul, a police official at the drivers' license agency in Jeonju, 130 miles (210 kilometers) south of Seoul.

Police said Cha took the test hundreds of times, but had no specific total. Local media said she took the test 950 times.

Now she must pass a driving test before getting her license, Choi said.

Repeated calls to Cha seeking comment went unanswered. She told the Korea Times newspaper she needed the license for her vegetable-selling business.

All I can say is that I'm glad she won't be roaming the streets of Busan. Knowing that she is going to be out there driving scares me. If I took the drivers test 10 times and still hadn't passed, I think I would have given up, but 950 times...my god, how many people's lives are going to be at risk now because this adjumma is going to be on the road.

In other news the trip up to Seomyeon today is still on. My girlfriend told me to be ready at about noon, so she'll probably get here at about 2pm. It's a good idea to give her a two hour cushion for any plans that she makes. She's never on time. I have no idea what she does to make her late as often as she is, but I'm just used to it now.

I think I'll try to take some pictures when we're there today. Maybe I'll get something decent and start posting some pics on here to make it a little bit more interesting. My prose is really not that compelling, so I need to spice things up a little bit on here.

Anyways, that's it for now. I might have something more to post a little later or tomorrow morning.

bad english=bad teacher?

2009-11-05T23:21:00.003+09:00

Fortunately, despite my horrendous English, I'm actually a pretty good teacher. The problem with this country is that they aren't really interested in good teachers, at least not for Hagwons. I don't know about public schools, but in Hagwons all they really want are entertainers. I'm not really an entertainer. No jumping, singing, clowning, or acting like a babo (fool). Of course, I do joke around with the students and have a good time, but learning is always the top priority in my classes and if I feel like they're fooling around too much and not learning the classes become much less fun.

This week the kids are all doing level-up tests. They hate them, and honestly, they're not very much fun for me either. I have to basically sit at my desk for three hours looking like I'm proctoring them. Every ten or fifteen minutes I have to take a walk around the class to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to, but I won't be doing any real teaching this week. Instead I've been at my desk working on my past tense verbs.

I'm working on a list of about twenty. It feels like it'll take me a year just to memorize those twenty. Korean language is a bitch. French and Russian were so much easier. At least the French alphabet is pretty much the same as English, and Cyrillic is close it just has a few extra letters tossed in. Reading Korean is like reading some alien language that was scrawled on rocks found in a cave. The structure of the alphabet is truly genius, it's like reading computer code, but it's a pain in the ass and completely different than anything I've ever read.

Other than that there's not really a lot to talk about. We had been planning on going up to Seoul in two weeks, but we've postponed the trip until the spring, because we're both cheap and just don't feel like spending the money. Instead we're just going to go to Seomyeon here in town. I really would like to get some Christmas presents this year for family back home, but I just don't really know if I can find anything decent here in Busan. Most of the stores have shit, and the ones that don't have shit, just have typical Western stuff. So I don't know, I'm not really sure what to get for anyone. I hate Christmas. I really do enjoy spending money on my nephews and niece, but I just don't know what the hell to get anyone. I have no idea what they like.

Well, I think that's it for now. It's been a pretty uneventful week. School is boring because of the tests and my girlfriend and I haven't had a fight for almost two weeks now, so everything is really great. I'll probably have a little to say tomorrow about the Bruins game...I'll be watching tomorrow morning of course. Let's hope they score a fucking goal for a change.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Fuck the Yankees.

Bye.

오늘 기분 어때요

2009-11-04T10:17:00.003+09:00

Oh-nuel-keyboon-awtayo. It basically means "How are you?" The literal translation would be more like "Today mood/feelings how?" I've been saying that to everyone the last two days. I think I've said it about 50 times. It's been a while since I've done any real studying, so I'm really trying to take this seriously.

It's hard to learn Korean. Especially for someone like me. I don't speak much in my own language, so forcing myself to speak a foreign language is not easy. Plus every time I show her my work my girlfriend laughs at me. It's not a mean laugh, she just thinks it's cute, but it does seem a little condescending. I've noticed that this is how a lot of Koreans are when you try to learn their language. Instead of being impressed that someone living here is actually taking the time to learn their language, they treat that person like a baby and insist on how cute it is that the retarded foreigner is trying to learn something that they don't think he'll ever be able to do. I've spoken to many people who've tried learning English and I never once laughed at them for trying to learn it.

On a different subject it seems like winter has finally hit. I don't know exactly what happened to fall, maybe it was only one day? So much for Korea having four seasons. One day it was sunny and 75 degress, and the next day it's windy and 35 degrees. I even had to wear my winter coat yesterday. This morning I turned on the heat for the first time. Here in Korea everyplace has what's called "Ondol" heat. It's basically just radiant heat, or heat that radiates through the floor. They like to believe that they invented it and are the only people in the world to use it. They like to believe that nobody else in the world is as equal or as inventive as they are. The truth however, is that radiant heat is not a Korean invention. Like many things in this modern world it was a Roman invention. Here's the wikipedia entry on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underfloor_heating

"Underfloor heating was first used by the Romans. Initially the preserve of the rich, underfloor heating became increasingly commonplace in public buildings and villas, particularly in the colder regions of the Roman Empire."

Anyways, I'm mildly anti-Korean today so I might as well also post this article from the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02race.html

I realize the article has already been posted in a lot of Korea blogs, but it's definitely an interesting read. Fortunately, I have not been the target of any real racial discrimination yet. People always tell me that Seoul is a much more cosmopolitan city than Busan, but the fact of the matter is that it always seems like more of this xenophobic behavior occurs in Seoul, and of course the rural communities throughout Korea, than it does in Busan. I have yet to hear of or experience any real racism here in Busan. Everyone has been extremely nice to me. Maybe it's because there have been foreigners in Seoul for a lot longer, so the novelty hasn't quite worn off yet here in Busan, but as I said, everyone here has been great.

Anyways, I can kind of relate nevertheless. If I think about the girls I've dated here it does become a little more clear. I've never directly had any racist things said to me, but I'll relate a couple experiences. My first girlfriend never told her mother that she was dating a foreigner. She was afraid that her mother would basically disown her. However, she did tell her brother and her brothers reaction was not unlike this:

"Ms. Hahn said, “Even a friend of mine confided to me that when he sees a Korean woman walking with a foreign man, he feels as if his own mother betrayed him.”"

I can imagine him thinking that. She told him that she was dating an American and his only reaction was to ask "Why?" and then he stopped talking to her for a month.

I also dated another girl for about a month. Everything was going great. She told her mother, and her mother was worried, but overall she was okay with it. Then her mother leaked it to her father. That's when the shit storm happened. Her father basically locked her in the house. She was not a child, she was 26 years old. Her father locked her in the house, took away her cellphone, took away her credit cards, and basically told her that if she continued to date a foreigner she would have to do so without a family. Needless to say, that was the end of that relationship.

Now, I just feel really fortunate. My girlfriends family all know of my existence and though they have certain worries, they are okay with it. It is refreshing to know that there are some Korean fathers out their who are more concerned with their daughters happiness than with their precious 'pure blood'. The truth, though a lot of Koreans won't admit it, is that their blood is really not very pure. My girlfriend has the blue birthmark. I'd never mention it to her, but the blue birthmark means that she has Mongolian blood, just like millions of other Koreans her ancestry is a mix. The pure Korean blood thing is just a myth.

That's it for now. I'm watching the Bruins game and not so happy with their performance. I'll talk about that in my next entry. Have a great day everyone!!

korean class

2009-11-02T19:18:00.003+09:00

For some reason every time that I mention Korean class I mistakenly say "English class" instead. Maybe it's my subconscious telling me that before I take on Korean I should at least come close to mastering one language.

My first class was this morning. I went over there with a buddy of mine. He told me that he wanted to make it a competition and be a better student than me. I told him not to bother. I'm a horrible student, I always have been. It's amazing I made it through high school and university, I never studied.

We were supposed to meet two other guys from my hagwon over there, but not surprisingly they didn't make it. I swear nobody here is capable of being on time for anything unless you hold their hands and walk them to it 30 minutes early. One of them just plain forgot, and the other accidentally set his alarm for 11pm instead of 11am.

There were only four of us in the class. My buddy and I, and two girls I've never met; one of them American and one of them Canadian. We both knew right away that neither of us would be the best student in class, the girls totally out-classed us. In our defense, the girls have taken these classes before and were just there reviewing.

The teacher is a complete nut-job and talks way too fast. I can barely understand her English she speaks so fast, let alone her Korean. Nevertheless, I made it through the first class without making a total ass of myself. I now have a list of verbs and past-tense conjugations that I have to study for next week, as well as some short phrases using those verbs. All in all, I would say I probably learned more today than I've learned in the entire two years I've been here.

Other than the class the only thing I did was wake up at 3am to waste 2.5 hours watching the Bruins game. 1-0 Rangers. I don't know what's up with the Bruins, they played well enough, but I'm just starting to think that they can't put the puck in the net without Savard. Their power-play is an embarrassment. They play well 5-5, but give them an advantage and they just can't manage to do anything.

I'm also now back to my previous thoughts that Wideman should not be allowed within 50 feet of the puck. The guy is one of the most overrated defense-men in the league. He makes so many bad passes in his defensive zone that it's just scary. He's got to pick up his game and stop playing like a high school kid who's thinking too much about cheap vodka and pussy to make a smart play.

Oh, and I just have to say one more thing. My girlfriend is the best. She knows that I'm a little tight on cash because of my recent vacation. So what did she do? She went out and bought me two, yes, two winter coats! Of course, I have no say in the selection of my clothes anymore, but it's still really cool of her to go out and get me some winter coats. I already had one, and she knew that I had one, but it wasn't one that she selected for me, so I needed a new one. She's great. That's one less thing I have to worry about now.

Anyways, that's the extent of it. Bye.

Oh, yeah, and feed the fish. Can't you see they're starving? Don't you care about the fish? Do you want people to think I neglect my fish?

we're so boring

2009-11-01T12:30:00.000+09:00

Well, the beach never happened. We went out for some Sam-gyeop-sal and then when we were walking towards the subway we felt a little tiny drop of rain, so we decided to call it a night and head back to my apartment. That was fine with me. I didn't really feel like going to the beach anyways. The only reason I even brought up the beach is because sometimes my girlfriend complains about how we never do anything, so I said we should go to the beach on Halloween.

It might have been fun, but honestly I have more fun just staying around the house with her. I've never been an outgoing person and I'm most happy when I'm at home. At least now she can't say we never do anything. I gave us something to do and she decided to stay home, so at least I tried.

Nothing much is going on today. We're going to church, then to emart, because I need to get some stuff to make chili, fried chicken, and burgers for the week. After that we will probably just be heading back here. I'll do some cooking and I think my girlfriend still has to do some work on her presentation, so she'll most likely be doing that while I'm cooking. When we're done eating I want to watch "Better Off Dead" because it's been so long since I've seen it, and I think it's the kind of humor that she might really like.

I was checking out "1408" on IMDB last night and there was some question asked about what the best John Cusack movie is and it made me think of "Better Off Dead" and "One Crazy Summer". Great, great, movies from when I was growing up. Now, I'm going to have to revisit both of them because it's been so long since I've seen either.

The other news is that I start my first real Korean language class tomorrow morning. I'll be going two days a week from 12:30-1:30pm. I'm really excited about it. I'm meeting my girlfriends parents around the Christmas holidays, and I want to show them that I'm at least making an effort to learn the language. Now I'll be able to tell them I'm in a class and trying to study.

I really think the teacher should give me a discount. It's only $10 for an hour, but I did recruit about 5 other people to take her class, so I'm helping her make a lot more money. Hopefully she'll give me a few bucks off, but I won't hold my breath.

Anyways, that's about it other than the great performance last night from the Bruins. If they play the way they did against Edmonton every game, they'll have a great season. We'll see.

Hope everyone's having a good day. Bye.

happy saturday

2009-10-31T19:08:00.000+09:00

Yay, it's Saturday. I just got back from getting a haircut. It was a little strange. The regular girl wasn't there. It's always a little uncomfortable getting my haircut because I can't speak any Korean and the girls who cut my hair can never speak any English so it's a bit awkward. But at least before I'd been having the same girl cut it every time. It's always worse when it's a new girl. With the old girl it's still uncomfortable, but at least it feels like we've come to some unspoken agreement about how my hair will be when it's finished.

She did a good job though. When the haircut was done I gave the regular "Choayo" and the girl giggled in surprise that I was at least able to say "Good" in Korean. Then came the shampoo. They have this young kid who is doing the shampoo now and he put some weird shit in my hair. It burned like a mother fucker. My head has been on fire for the last hour, and now as I sit here writing this it's finally starting to cool down a little bit. I don't know what the hell that shit he put in my hair was.

Tonight we're going out for either Daegi Galbi or Sam-Gyeop-Sal. Both dishes are just BBQ'd pork, and their both amazing. I love the way they eat here. We just cook it right at our table. Wrap it up in some minty leaves with some sauce and veggies, and eat it. The stuff is delicious.

After food we're going to go to the beach. It's probably going to be one of the last chances we get to go to the beach before it gets cold, so I thought it would be nice to head down there for a couple of hours tonight and walk along the boardwalk and maybe have a drink or two.

This morning I watched the Toronto game, loss in overtime, awesome. The leafs have now gathered 5 points this season out of a possible 22. Beautiful. The truly sad thing though is that the Bruins only have 11 points, so they're not doing that much better. Anyways, there is one benefit to watching Toronto broadcasts, other than the pure satisfaction of watching the team go down in flames. You can learn random facts.

Today, I learned the origin of the term "hat trick". Apparently, in the early days of hockey there was this haberdashery that would give out fedora's to any Leaf's player who would score three goals in one game. Thus, the term "hat trick" developed because there was some store that would actually give you a hat if you scored three goals for the locals. Interesting. I don't think the haberdasher is going to have to worry about going out of business this year giving free hats to Leafs players.

Wow, I almost forgot. It's Halloween. Yesterday, all my kids were angry at me because we didn't have a big Halloween party at my school. According to them every other school has a Halloween party. Instead of a Halloween party the kids at my school got tests. Got to love that. I just told them that we were having a party. It's "Vocabulary Test Party" day. They were not amused. I did at least give them candy though. It does kind of piss me off that every other Academy on the peninsula has parties and Christmas day off, and holidays in general off, but we're all stuck working, sans party. One of these days I'm going to get a job at a public school or a uni and actually be able to enjoy holidays and vacations, one of these days.

Anyways, that's all I have for today. If anything interesting happens tonight I'll let you know. For now, goodnight and good luck.

name change?

2009-10-30T22:21:00.000+09:00

I'm thinking of changing the name of the blog, too many people use Engrish to describe how Koreans say the word English, and I really don't want people to expect this to be funny because it really isn't. I'm not sure what I'm leaning towards for a name though, maybe just "Man-boy on the Peninsula" or something simple like that. I really can't think of anything at the moment. I'm too tired.

Fridays always hit me like a brick. I don't know how I could ever consider going out until 4 or 5am on a Friday night, this is the night that I'm always the most tired. It's been a long week, and I'm glad it's over. Tonight I gave a practice IBT test to my students and those tests always make me more tired than the students. Sitting at the computer for two hours when they take the test always wears me out. I'm really not looking forward to an entire week of IBT's next week. I'll be exhausted by Friday night next week. Maybe I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope the Minister of Education decides to force all the Hagwons to close because of swine flu. I won't hold my breathe, but a guy can always dream.

I mentioned yesterday I would talk a little about our pointless meeting. We have what we call level-up tests every three months at my academy. The students have to get a certain score on the tests to be able to move to the next level. We have the same exact meeting every three months and talk about the same exact things. It's really worthless. Everyone knows that the only thing that matters is that your class falls into the average. You score a few of your worst students a little below the average, and a few of your best students above the average, and everyone else falls in the middle. Yet, we still have to have these retarded meetings every three months just so we don't forget. There was a time, about a year ago, when we didn't have to go to these meetings if we had been here longer than three month and had given the tests at least one time. Now, everyone has to go. So even though I've graded these stupid tests 50 times and know exactly what I'm doing I have to sit through these 2 hour meetings telling me the same shit I've heard 20 times. Pointless, really really, pointless.

On a different note, the Bruins lost today. They should have won, they really outplayed New Jersey for about 58 minutes. Then they fucked up and got sloppy in the last two minutes and gave up a goal that lost it for them. Still, I'm excited about the way they played today. Without Savard and Lucic they're still looking pretty good. Bergeron is playing like he used to, and Wideman no longer makes me cringe every time he touches the puck. I'd like to see a little bit more from Krejci though. He's just not playing as well as he was last year. I don't think he's fully recovered from his surgery yet.

Anyways, that's all for today. I think I might play a little PS2. I've finally gotten through the first two hours of teen angst bullshit in "Star Ocean" so I think I can actually finally play the damn game.

Goodnight.

technology is awesome

2009-10-29T23:17:00.000+09:00

Today was my girlfriends day off. She had a bad day. There's this presentation that she has to do so she was attempting to work on that all day. First, the printer at her parents house broke. So she called me at work and asked if she could come to my house and use my printer. About an hour later when I'm on my break I get another phone call from her. The printer at my house is now broken too and she's ready to start throwing things. I talk her down and tell her to just send me and email and I'll print it out at work. When I finish my last class I open up the email and begin to print it...the printer at work breaks. Now I'm pissed off too. I finally get the other printer at work to print it and the print out is fucked up. All the words just blend together into one long word without any spaces between them. I think her word file is cursed, it just seems to destroy everything it touches.

Because of the cursed word file I now have to spend an hour on Sunday going to Hi-Mart trying to get those guys to replace the printer or at least fix it, it should still be under warranty, but I don't think I have the receipt anymore because I'm an idiot when it comes to keeping receipts.

Other than that not much has happened today, but I did want to spend a minute talking about the Toronto vs. Anaheim game earlier this week. How obvious does the league have to be when it fixes a Toronto game?? Seriously, they should have just made an announcement before the game telling everyone that they thought it was bad for the league for the Leafs to go that long without winning a game so they were just going to let them spend the entire game on the power play to give them a fighting chance to win. 45 penalty minutes for Anaheim. Three 5 on 3 power plays for Toronto, four power play goals for Toronto. Fucking bullshit. It was so obvious that it's just silly. Every time there was even a little tiny scrum Anaheim would end up short handed.

The league just needs to deal with the fact that Toronto fucked up it's team and they will be in last place this year. Phil Kessel will not be their new Mats Sundin. Phil Kessel will be lucky to get 20 goals this year. I predict 18 goals for their new "franchise" player.

The worst part is I actually used to be a mild Toronto fan. Them paying Kessel that much money has made me hate them though. I now hate them more than I hate the Habs, more than I hate the Yankees even. I would be happier than I've ever been in my life if they won less than 15 games this year. I want that team to burn in flames. I want Leafs fans to make Kessel cry.

Anyways, that's all I have. Not much else to talk about today. The Bruins are playing tomorrow so I'll probably have something to say about that. Oh, and all the foreign teachers had a completely pointless meeting today so maybe I'll talk about that a little bit too. Bye for now.

spicy chicken

2009-10-29T11:11:00.000+09:00

October 29, 2009

Maybe I’ll actually try to keep this blog up to date. I haven’t decided yet. However, if I do decide to publish this, which I won’t, and if I do actually have some people who read it, which I also wont, don’t fucking leave comments telling me how shitty a writer I am. I know I’m a horrible writer. I’m not writing this to amuse anyone other than myself, I’m not a good writer, I don’t care. Fuck you.

Anyways, not much happened yesterday, but for some reason all the Koreans at my job really respect me and think I’m great. I don’t know why, I don’t actually do anything. I think it’s just because I’ve been there for longer than most people and I don’t cause them any problems. Lately, they’ve been putting these little posters on all the walls in the hall with a list of kids ID’s and names. So I asked one of the Korean staffers what the posters were all about. Apparently, they're just a list of students who don’t have their pictures in the databases yet. All the Korean staffers were so happy and impressed that I actually asked about it. We have about 12 foreign teachers and I was the only one to ask.

The truth is I don’t really give a fuck about the lists of students names they have posted on the wall. The only reason I asked was because all the foreign teachers were asking me about them. Even the faculty manager (FM) asked me about it. Why the fuck does the FM ask me questions that he should know the answer to before me? Because my girlfriend is one of the Korean staffers. So instead of communicating with the Koreans about what’s going on the FM comes to me first to find out if I know anything through my girlfriend. I don’t want him to ask me about shit, it’s his job to know about shit like that before I do.

The only other thing I have to say is for all you young men out there be very careful when you’re getting intimate with your girlfriends. Last night my girlfriend came over and we had some great hot spicy chicken. Seriously, this stuff will make your mouth bleed and your eyeballs sweat. I love it. Hot chicken is one of my favorite things about Korea. I can get it from 20 different places. The only place back home that had hot chicken was Dominoes pizza. That’s not joke, the only place I could get could hot chicken in my hometown was a fucking pizza joint.

Anyways, back to my advice. If you happen to be eating hot chicken with your girlfriend some night; make sure that after you’ve finished eating it you don’t forget to wash your hands. If you forget to wash your hands your girlfriend will not be happy. She thought I did it on purpose, that I intentionally didn’t wash my hands because I wanted to burn her holiest of holy places because we got in an argument the night before. I would never do something like that. Why would I want to spoil the mood? It’s not like I get laid in the middle of the week very often. Sex has been pretty much relegated to a weekend activity now that her father caught on that she had been coming to my house every night until 2am, and not hanging out with her girlfriends. So, now we only get to spend late evenings together on Fridays and Saturdays.

So my advice you ask? Wash your hands. Hot chicken sauce will be hot in places other than your mouths. And it's much more likely to get you in trouble in the other places.

first post

2009-10-29T11:06:00.000+09:00

October 28, 2009

Well, I’ve never actually written a blog before so I really don’t know what the fuck I should do, other than curse a lot and try to act like I’m a reluctant hipster. Admittedly, I’m a little late to the blog train, but I’m always a little late for everything. That’s ok, I don’t really care.

So, today was a relatively normal day here in Korea. I’m an English teacher in Korea. I’m not Korean, which should be clear by my at least rudimentary ability to use English. I’ve been here for two years now and have gone through the typical trials of an ESL teacher. Someday, I’ll get more into that and dissect things a little bit more, but this is my first blog, so I’ll try to keep it relatively short.

When I say that today was normal, I mean it was normal for an ESL teacher living in Korea, with a Korean girl, a Korean boss, and Korean students. My kids were great today. It’s Tuesday, which means it’s one of two days a week that I only have one class. At a hagwon that means about three hours at work and then back home. Easy day. In fact, most days are easy at work, even the hard days.

My girlfriend works at the same hagwon as me. She has to work a lot more hours for a lot less money, because she’s Korean. She doesn’t like this. Because of this, even when I get out of work three hours before her I come back to work at 10:00pm just to walk her home. She likes this and it keeps her from hating me so it’s a small price to pay.

Tonight we started talking about marriage again. I want to marry her. I love her. But I fucking hate talking about marriage with her, because every time it ends up in the same retarded argument. She doesn’t want to rent an apartment, because it’s not the Korean retarded tradition, I just want to do what we can afford, because I’m realistic. I try to tell her that coming up with $50,000 in a years time is just not possible, I don’t even make that much in a year, how the fuck am I supposed to save more than I make in a year?? It just doesn’t register though. I get the typical answer, “But this is how it works in Korea.”

“Well”, I need to remind her every now and then “I’m not Korean.” That doesn’t matter. I’m in Korea so I have to live up to her parents unrealistic expectations of how much money a 34 year old man should have. Without the consideration that I did not spend my entire 20’s living with my mom and dad. I didn’t have mom and dad to pay rent, pay college tuition, phone bills, electric, food, etc…Doesn’t matter…this is the Korean way.

Eventually, she comes back down to reality, but we still have this argument periodically. I just want to get married so we can stop having this fucking argument. I also got a surprise quiz from her tonight. “What documents will we need to get married? What embassy do we go to? When we have a baby, what country will he be a citizen of? If we move to America what will I have to do? Can I become a citizen? (This one was followed by “I don’t want to be a US citizen, but what would I have to do?) How much will it cost? How much will we spend on the wedding? How many fucking orders of sam-gyeop-sal should we prepare? Are you going to dye your hair before you meet my dad?” Fuck. I just wanted to be nice and walk her home from work. That’s all. Sometimes I really feel like I’m too nice and I need to lay down the law a little bit, but then again I’m just a pushover so any law I laid down would only last about two minutes so that’s pretty pointless.

It’s ok though. I got home after getting the test and looked up a bunch of shit and text messaged her information until she called me and told me she was sorry for being a bitch. I had some Hite, that’s my brand of Korean beer for now, and played some PS2, and now I believe I will get some sleep. But before I go to bed I’ll just mention that when I say Hite is my brand for now it’s because I have some plans in the works. I’ve had my fill of Korean piss macjew so this Christmas I believe that I will buy myself a homebrew kit and make my own shitty beer. If my only choices are Shite and Ass then I might as well just brew my own crappy tasting watered down swill. At least then I can legitimately say that drinking beer is my hobby.