Kisses for my students

Well, new year, new job. That seems to be the way things go for me in Korea. I'm getting settled in here at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and I don't wanna jinx anything but I'm liking it. So far. I liked working at Chonnam U. too. For three months I was deleriously happy there. Then they changed everything and screwed it up. Teachers quit in droves. It was ugly. I hope nothing like that happens here.

Anyhoo, as you can see from the pics HUFS is under some heavy duty construction. The building on the right is where the foreign teachers' office is. It's gonna be 14 floors when it's finished we think. The building, not our office. Although a 14 story office would be cool. The crosswalk is an interesting feature too. Traffic stops in all directions till everybody gets where their going straight across OR diagonally. It must frustrate the impatient Korean motorist no end. As Martin Muntz might say, HAH HAH!

The students we have at HUFS have really impressed me so far. I guess it's not so hard for a student to impress me after having spent the last year at Seojeong College. If the HUFS students are the cream of the crop, Seojeong's students are that scum you skim off the top of the milk with cow hair, dirt, crusty crud etc in it. Academically, that is. They were nice and all but low watt bulbs for the most part.

As the name of the school might suggest, (although it's not a good practice to assume anything logical in Korea), the students at HUFS are all studying foreign countries. A lot of them are learning foreign languages. I've talked to some who have had tests in 4 or 5 languages. Impressive. I have a TON of students who have lived overseas and not just for a month or so. And some have lived in countries you might not expect like Somalia, Philippines, Iraq, India, Greece etc. So they're a worldly group. Probably more free-thinking, open-minded, tolerant, globally-inclined etc. than the average Korean.

So I says to myself, "Self, you have a great opportunity to test that Hershey's Kiss in a jar experiment. The one that the teacher in the States did with her middle school students and found that the kids selfishly hoarded the Kisses like good little capitalists." So I did the experiment last week.

I filled a spaghetti jar with 40 Kisses, lined up 10 desks at the front of the room facing the other students, asked for 10 volunteers and told them to take as many Kisses as they wanted, pass the jar and after person #10 finished, whatever was left in the jar would be doubled and we'd start again. Now, using HUFS students, positioning them so that any greed would be perpetrated in full view of the other students, using only volunteers, all of these things were done in hopes that the kids would be nice. And with the exception of one class, they were. The sharing and teamwork were socially conscious aspects that were VERY nice to see! I was really proud of my students. And even the classes that had a student or two who wanted to get his/hers while the getting was good ended up nowhere near as disgustingly uneven as the REAL world is.

Imagine the 10 people are all the people in the world. Imagine the Kisses are all the world's resources. According to what is considered perhaps the most in depth study of world economics, the top 10% or 1 person has 85% of the world's wealth or 34 kisses. What kind of scumbag would take 34 of the kisses in the jar? The kind that could be C.E.O. of a major multinational corporation, that's what kind of scumbag. On the other end of the scale, the bottom 50% or 5 people have only 1% of the world's wealth or 0.4 kisses to divide between them. THAT'S poverty folks and it was created by unchecked greed. Nothing else.

So rather than vent my pointless rage without suggesting a solution, I divided my classes into groups and got them to come up with some ideas on how to help the poor. There were a lot of Robin Hood responses like taxing the rich, making all rich people sponsor a poor kid, making the rich build schools for the poor etc, but one of the kids had the greatest idea I've ever heard. He suggested that everyone in the world should be poor for a year. Simple as it gets but it would work. I am still fantasizing about a shanty town where Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the whole WalMart Walton family (not Johnboy or Mary Ellen), George Dubyuh (a reverse Robin Hood if there ever was one), and other people with more money than any one person should ever have are bumming around dressed in dirty rags begging for a buck or a crust of bread. OOoooooohhhhhh GOOOOOOooood yeeeeaaah! That would be so sweet! As Martin Muntz might say, "HAH HAH!"

Anyway, the following are the stats from the experiment. These are the results that regular people all over the world would probably get. It's just too bad regular people don't rule the world.

Class one had 11 Kisses left at the end. The 2nd time around they had 18 left.

Class two had the student who got the most Kisses. But he was nice enough to be the first volunteer so maybe he deserved them. He took 25, not 34. And he shared them afterwards like Ted Turner giving a bill to the UN. 1-25, 2-6, 3-5, 4-3, 5-3, 6-2, 7-2, 8-1, 9-0, 10-1.

Class three 1-3, 2-4, 3-6, 4-2, 5-4, 6-1, 7-3, 8-3, 9-6, 10-10.

Class four 1-2, 2-2, 3-3, 4-2, 5-4, 6-13, 7-5, 8-3, 9-2, 10-1.

Class five I was running out of Kisses so I only used 20 in the jar. 1-1, 2-3, 3-1, 4-7, 5-1, 6-2, 7-2, 8-0, 9-2, 10-3.

Class six 1-2, 2-1, 3-7, 4-4, 5-2, 6-3, 7-3, 8-3, 9-2, 10-13.

By the way, if you would like to see these wonderful human beings, check out my work blog at http://professordavidathufs.blogspot.com

See you later.

David O' Cannell's St. Patty's Weekend

I felt Irish last weekend. More Irish than the Irish people I know. But I feel kind of Irish when I spend a few days in a row in I Tae Won. I don't usually smell like an Irish spring, but I see lots of pink hearts on the hill, yellow moons when juicy girls pull their pants down, orange stars in the sky when the Chinese sands are in the air, beige clover when Gunther pours a Guinness, and purple diamonds, which are really amethyst that Koreans are always trying to convince people is worth something. I almost always spend a pot of gold and once in a long time, I'll catch a glimpse of a leprechaun too.

I started March 17th at Ye Olde Stompers at the top of the I Tae Won hill cuz Lance was playing and Dwayne, the owner of Stompers, was drummin. They both get better every time I hear them. St. Patty's Day was the best yet. They even dedicated the best live version of Limelight by Rush I've ever heard to yours truly. That was awesome! At one point Lance, (the most amazing live guitarist you will ever hear for free), said his beer was empty so I purchased him a Crown and Coke. We had shared a few the evening before while paraphrasing another very handy Canadian guitarist, Kim Mitchell, and saying, "Might as well go for a Crown and Coke."

So I go up to the stage and wait there till the song's finished to give Lance a beverage with which to slake his well-earned thirst. He doesn't wait. He proceeds to lay down a ONE-HANDED, beverage-long, pretty damn hot guitar solo to whatever song it was he was playing. He DRANK the drink while playing the solo for the love of God! Kids, if I'm still bloggin when I'm an old man, I'll probly be spinning yarns about the days way back when I knew Lance and he wasn't famous.
That was a great start to the evening's festivities. So when Stompers closed down around 2 or 3, I just wasn't ready to turn in. So I went down the hill a bit with Allen. He was filling in at the bar for Dwayne while he was drummin. A decent fella even if he is from England. I jest. So we went in to Debut to pay a visit to my favourite serving wench Ha Young of the oversized rack. She hasn't yet realized that we are meant for each other. She is constantly playing the exact songs I want to hear. Musically we are soulmates.

Anyway, I started talking with a big English teacher from Michigan. He was telling me how he thought I was in the secret service or something. Then our conversation was joined by a tall, thin American soldier. He had the "Go kick some ass" speech from Henry V, (if you're not a total Phillistine, you'd recognize it if you heard it), the WHOLE, dang thing tattooed on his back. And he showed us. We bullshat for probably about an hour before introducing ourselves. Dave, Dave and Dave. I shit thee not! Tell me any other name THAT could happen with!

Debut closed down and Ha Young went, (not to say "sprinted"), home to bed. I'll see her after hours yet.... So Allen, a drunken Newfie he was talking to, and I went to the last place open, Old Town. There I was chatting up the lovely Russian waitress. I think her name is Ileana. She's my back-up plan if I ever give up on Ha Young. Ha ha. Before long I met this Japanese/Korean guy who was feeding me a cock and bull story about how rich he was and how he wanted me to teach him private lessons. He was pretty obviously a crook but I was so happy I didn't let it bother me. We closed down Old Town! That means EVERYTHING else is open again!

So Allen, the Japanese guy and I went to the Seoul Pub. When we got there, the owner told the Japanese dude he couldn't come in. What kind of a scumbag do you have to be to get banned from the Seoul Pub? Oh yeah, I was banned for life until recently. Heh heh. But all is forgiven. It was kinda nice NOT being the one watching the others drink through the doors. The owner, as usual, asked about Heather and Mike and their two kids. I corrected him and told him they now have 3. That's about all we had to say. So Allen and I chatted with a couple of hard working Russian gals. I think I promised to make them borsht some time. I had a chugging contest with the owner, lost, and finally decided to put an end to my own personal St. Patrick's Day parade. I guess it was nigh onto either lunch or supper time because I scarfed down some Macdonalds and went to sleep.

I woke up at about 7 Monday morning. I work at 1 on Mondays. I barely made it home then back to work and it wasn't my favourite day of work. But I made it through.

Whenever my students ask why I'm not married, I wish I could refer them to this. Or many similar stories I have. Oh I'm sure there'll come a day when I'll grow up, but not just yet. I had a blast! How Irish am I I mean really???!!! I think I'll change me name to David O' Cannell.

Best part is none of this was planned. It was totally spontaneous! I had gone to I Tae Won to buy a couple pairs of nice pants and this is what eventuated! I got two pairs of pants, two pairs of gotch and two pairs of socks that cut off the circulation to my feet, (like all socks I buy in this country). I'm not gonna tell you how much I spent over the three-day weekend but I'll just say those pants and undies are the most expensive I've ever owned. By a long shot. I'll probly end up chucking the socks in the garbage. Anybody with thin ankles want some socks?

See you next time.

Capitalist Body Snatchers

Do you ever feel like the whole world has gone stark raving mad? Or like the only person the body snatchers haven't caught sleeping yet? Have you ever had a really REALLY simple idea that would make things a whole lot easier for everybody but you are the only one who likes the idea? What did you do? Did you fight to get your point across? In the "body snatchers" analogy, you can fight to stay awake or you can just give up and drift off into easy, comfortable sleep.

Okay, details are needed to set up the object of this week's pointless rage. I play pogo games. A LOT! Go to www.pogo.com and have some fun if you don't know what I'm talking about. They have a ton of games and you can play them for free. I pay a yearly fee of 20 bucks and am a member. I don't get the ads. I've been a member for a few years. When you play the games you get tokens. You can't use your tokens for much but it's fun to collect them. You can design a "mini" which is a character and a background. You can make your mini look like you and put him/her in all kinds of locations and outfits. This costs tokens. Also, every week there are challenges in chosen games. If you complete the challenge, (like win 100 hands of poker or sell 50 properties in Dice City), you get a badge that you can display next to your name in pogo game rooms. It's fun to collect the badges too.

This week there was a badge in Bingo. The challenge was to score 3000 tokens. You get tokens for every number you cover and every bingo. Also there is a special number you can cover that will get you a jackpot spin. The jackpot spins in Bingo are usually less than 100 tokens. But if you get a bingo, it's 300 tokens. At least in the room I was in. I went to a room where we had to get a blackout for a bingo. I suggested that we wait for all the numbers to be called and then EVERYONE gets a bingo, a spin and all their numbers. MAXIMUM points for EVERYBODY!! Good idea, right? This way the badge would take MUCH less time.

Well my suggestion was met with hearty disapproval. In fact people were calling me names and criticizing me. They would much rather play more games, take longer to get the badge, not help each other out, and probably never get a bingo than do things the communal way. I think perhaps, "communal" might sound a little bit too much like "communist" for these people to see the logic of it.

If we had done things the right way, the badge would have been completed in less than 10 games. Since nobody liked the idea, I had to suffer through about 30 games. Bingo is one of my least favourite games on Pogo. But what is up with these people?! Are they afraid that helping each other might seem a little unAmerican? A majority of the people in the room were Americans. Before you think I'm reading too much into this little incident, I have a similar example.

I saw on American TV a story about an American teacher who did an experiment in her classes. Middle school classes. She divided her classes into groups of 10 or so and gave each group a jar of about 30 or 40 Hershey's Kisses. She gave the teams random numbers. The person with number one was allowed to take as many kisses as he/she wanted, then pass the jar to person number 2. That person could do the same thing and pass to number 3. At the end, (when person number 10 had had a chance), the remaining Kisses would be doubled and they could start all over again. In replication after replication, the jar was empty and person number 10 didn't get any Kisses. In fact in most cases only a few people per group got ANY kisses.

If they had used their brains EVERYBODY could have had unlimited Kisses. It's not a hard concept to grasp. If there were 40 kisses and 10 students everybody could take two Kisses each time. That would leave 20 Kisses at the end, which would be doubled to 40 and they could do it again. Why did NONE of the groups do things the smart way?

It seems to me that the Kisses kids and to the Pogo people were the kind of folks who don't want to be rich, they want to be THE RICHEST. Even if they are relatively poor, but they are richer in comparison to most, they prefer that to being equally very very rich. Does anybody else see how sad this is?

And to make things even worse, after every game of bingo in pogo, the winner is congratulated and often before the game people wish the others good luck. Could they be any more PHONY??? In fact I have been in rooms where people have won and been congratulated and not thanked the congratulator for his/her phoniness. The results were horrific! That person is slagged for being ignorant, not having good manners, and even, (the height of irony), being selfish!

I wonder if any of the Kisses kids who ended up with zilch congratulated the greedy little bastards who were eating their ill-gotten chocolate. Were they rude for not doing so? I think not. If the exercise were repeated and a kid who had nothing the first time got a low number the second time, even knowing how much it sucks to get no chocolate, would they try to conserve Kisses or would they do the same thing as the greedy kids in the first exercise?

When I'm playing bingo on pogo I never call bingo first. I sometimes get bingo but wait till I can take at least one other person with me. And I don't congratulate single bingos. I only congratulate the second or third etc. bingoers. And for this people think I'm an asshole. Am I a Commie? A jerk? An asshole? Or maybe I should just not waste my time and energy complaining like this, close my eyes and drift into a lovely, dreamy, ignorant sleep and have my body snatched.