Happy Birthday Buddha

Hey folks. I figured I'd start this entry with a pic. Why not leave it at the top and save my self the trouble of moving it and repairing all the errors that causes? Am I the only one whose blog goes haywire when I import a pic? Anyways, nice pic eh? I got this at Everland. I've been there 7 times now and I think since the very first time I've wanted to get one of these things done. I absolutely love watching the artists. I like watching the artists who draw the portraits even better than the caricature artists, but couldn't find any this time. I'm pretty happy with this nonetheless. It's like he knew me! And it WILL be what I'm doing soon.

Exam week is June 18 - 22. Then on the 25th I start teaching extra intensive courses for money over and above my salary. July 16th is my last day of intensive courses. Then it's off to Thailand to spend my extra dough on golf and debauchery. I have over a month to spend in Thailand. Or maybe I'll split the time between Thailand and another country. I was hoping to have less of a holiday and more work this summer BUT my new school pulled the same screw job my old school did on me. They promised teachers could work at camps during the holidays and now it has been announced that we can't. I had a camp arranged for late July and early August that would have given me two weeks vacation and I would have finished the camp two weeks before the new semester started. That would have been perfect. But noooooo! Koreans will only tell the truth in business dealings as a last resort.

I would have had the same camp in the winter for the same amount of money. So now in the last two years the, "Oh yes we will give you permission to work at camps" and a couple other lies have cost me about 15 thousand dollars. Actually both years they used that lie amongst others to induce me into signing the contracts so it's cost me 15 thou and two years in Korea. And I know that when I go into the office tomorrow if I see Mee Sook, the one who told me the lie, she's gonna pull the same act that the guys did last year. Tomorrow Me Sook is going to act like SHE'S the one mad a ME! They get angry if you point out their conniving, cheating, lying, stealing, pure fucking evil business practices. Like a guy stabbing you repeatedly with a knife might get mad at you if you tried to dial 911. I don't know if I'll be able to control myself. I may say some things in pure rage tomorrow. I don't think I'll ever be on good terms with my supervisor ever again. And already it looks a lot like I'll be going to YET ANOTHER new school at the end of this contract. Or maybe before. But the new school will just lie to me too. This is working in Korea. Fun fun fun!

I'll talk about the Buddha's Birthday long weekend later. I'm seething right now. I can't write or think anything positive.

I'm number 8! I'm number 8!

Hey! It's midnight here and I gotta wake up a six AM but I stayed up to watch David Letterman anyway. Boy am I glad I did!

I'm a huge fan! Always have been. I even have the website on my favourites. And sometimes enter the top ten contest. You can get a free t-shirt if they use your entry. I've done, I dunno 20 or so. A LOOOONG time ago the category, "Top ten indications you're at a lame nudist colony" was the topic. THEY PICKED MINE! Here's the site. I'm number 8!

I don't think I'm getting a T - shirt though. They added the parenthetics to cover their asses and save the price of a shirt. Cheap melon forkers! But the Jessica Alba/Jessica Tandy part is all mine!

So am I a published author? Ha ha ha. This brings up all kinds of questions. I can't sleep at a time like this!!! While I was watching I was falling asleep. I didn't recognize the topic as one I'd contributed to and ALMOST didn't notice my entry. But as you know from my previous post I really like Jessica Alba and I think the process in my mind went something like, "That's something I coulda wrote. Except for the lame part about renting Cocoon. Wait a minute Alba... Tandy, I DID WRITE THAT!" And it took about a second.

Now I'm wondering how many of the other 19 have been used. I don't mind at all. It's a thrill for me. As you can tell. And I've got T-shirts. But I have to start paying more attention to the top 10 lists. Or maybe I'll record my entries somehow.

I'm number 8! I'm number 8!

I downloaded the episode and watched it on my computer again. Not the whole episode, of course. Did anyone else think number 8 got just a little more of a laugh than the others? I think I detected that the audience might have been launching into a round of applause and possibly even a standing ovation but then Letterman cut that short by reading the "go rent Cocoon" part. Dammit! Aw, how can I stay mad at Dave. I have a great deal of respect for him. He's great. No question. But those laughs are MINE, baby! Hoo Hoo Haaah Haaaah! I made people laugh. ON TV!

Now to get an episode of the Simpsons on TV. There's much to be done!

Mom and the Girls Mom Warned Us About

I've been doing a little surfing. Catching up on world events without having to depress myself by reading the newspaper. These are interesting times.

First an absolutely perfect Mother's Day cartoon. My Mom never reads this so the fact that I'm posting this late won't matter. She'll likely read it around Christmas.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks to the blogger I stole this from too.

As for world events, I don't like thinking about economics or war or depressing things like that so I figured I'd catch up with celebs. What's happening with the hottest gals of our time. If you had to choose three, (and this is just public opinion, not mine), I think probably Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are the cheerleaders in the minds of most horny guys chanting "Two, four, six, eight - look at us and masterbate."

We all know by now that Paris is gonna spend 45 days giving guards and inmates a taste of why Hilton is "so nice to come home to." Poor girl. No, I'm serious! What did she do, drive drunk and without a license 3, 4, 10 times? Well how can she be expected to know what life is like in the real world. She thought those laws were for REGULAR people.

The pic to the right reminds me of a recent Simpsons episode in which Homer is taking sleeping pills and they cause really destructive behaviour in him. Lisa says the drugs are dangerous and Homer says, "No Lisa I'm taking drugs not DRUUUUUUUGGGSSS." Okay, I think laws against marijuana are stupid. So many people are doped up on legal drugs to make them sleep, keep them awake, make them happy, make them sad, let's face it if there is the slightest thing wrong there's a drug for it. And if you looked at the effects of most drugs prescribed for psychological problems, you'd think the prescribers were pushers, not doctors. I guess that's the point. Why let regular people get rich selling druuuuuugggsss when the medical industry can get even richer selling drugs that look nicer but are more dangerous. Anyway, right or wrong there are laws and evidently Paris doesn't think THOSE laws apply to her either. But what the hay, way to go Paris! Fight the power.

Paris loves being dirty on camera. There is 24/7 videotaped surveillance at every jail and prison I know of. What do you wanna bet a few tapes go missing from her prison? There are some prison guards saying !!CHACHING!! right now. Keep a close watch on Youtube.

And Lindsay is power partying all night then calling in sick to work. Ever done that? No, neither have I. She has decided, (bless her heart), that the world needs to see more of her. So she's a stripper in her next movie. The plot of the movie is about a... yeah, right! Like ANYONE cares.

There isn't much more we can see of Lindsay, but I applaud her efforts nonetheless.

And last but not least, Britney. Take a look at this pic. It's probably too small for you to read the writing but it's on her official website if you wanna check. It's just a pic to thank all the fans who have been praying for her. So you're a good Christian until what, you show nipple?

I just wanna know for future reference. This might get my ass back in a pew I'll tell you hwat! Nice wig eh? heh heh.

These are the three hottest girls in the world? Back in my glory days of pin-ups, posters and celebrity babe worship they woulda been too sleazy for me. If I were a teenager now I think I might have a wall full of Jessica Alba or Scarlett Joahansson. I don't think you can do much better than that. But whatever floats your boat I guess.

There. Now FOR SURE I'll get more people to read my blog.

Grumpy Old Man in Training

I feel like a bit of a jerk right now. But on the other hand I feel pretty good. The kind of good feeling you get when you are warming your hands in the nice, warm embers of a burning bridge. You know what I'm talking about? Let me splain.

Last year I was contacted to work a really lucrative camp and couldn't do so because I worked at Beelzebub College and they wouldn't give permission. The girl I dealt with seemed fairly nice though. We talked on the phone and chatted online about the camp. She actually sent me an email and invited me to be a teacher at the same camp this summer. With the invitation she also sent this website: http://www.weepigeonlifecoaching.com/
and a request that I send it to all my friends and contacts. I sent a response today. You have to read some of the website to understand my reply. Don't read too much or your brain might turn to sugar.

Earlier in the day I received an email from a friend inviting me to talk to him on a new site called Quetchup or some damn thing. In order to do that I had to join the site and while filling out the info on the form, Quetchup tried to take all the names from my yahoo address book. Well needless to say that attempt was blocked by my computer but it still pissed me off. I guess poor Linda Lafferty got the brunt of my ire. I returned her email refusing to forward her address to my friends. This is what I wrote verbatum but with a few emoticons missing:

Wow! I'm sorry, but I can't forward this site to any of my friends and am really disappointed that you asked me to do so. I am going to try to explain to you why, and be forewarned, coming from a person who believes people need honesty, sometimes BRUTAL honesty, more than soothing, positive psychological platitudes, this may harsh your mellow a bit.
Most of my friends are not intellectual infants who fall for psychobabble like, "There are no successes or failures. Only results of actions." I think any of my friends could reason that if I kicked the ball towards the goal and it went 10 feet wide, yes the miss was a result of the kick, but it was VERY obviously a failure. Failure and success ARE results of actions. To say anything like the above quote to most of my friends would be an affront to their intellects. Trying to ease somebody's pain through semantics requires that the suffering person be very suggestable. Most of my friends don't qualify.
And if there are any people on my friends list that I have overestimated and who would be fooled by cereal box psychology, they certainly won't be very receptive to this approach. Why do you think people hate Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons? It's not their theology so much. It's the in your face, magnanimous approach. Even though they might be genuinely just trying to help, it looks an awful lot like, "If you listen to what I have to say, you too can be as cool as me!" YOUR approach is even worse! It's the same only at the cost of 60 bucks an hour! At least.
A coach is someone who spends a LOT of time with his/her sport. They study the game and look at it in ways that others may not. They are masters of their sports. To call yourself a lifecoach is to say you are a master of life. Do you not see how arrogant and presumptuous this is? You are young so you haven't spent more time with life than I, or most of my friends have, so what you are effectively saying is that you have discovered things about life that we haven't and your acquisition of wisdom has been more efficient than ours. You're just saying it in words that go nicely together.
There are a lot of very suggestible people in Korea who have not been exposed to the landslides of psychology that we in the "west" have. They are also so overinstitutionalized that they have a deficiency in social training, which has kept them from developing a healthy skepticism. This is a paradise for a racket like yours. And until they are scammed a few times, Koreans probably won't learn. So it may be good for them, but I don't wish you any success and I certainly won't refer any of my friends to you. Find your own victims and keep pumping your own mind full of hyperpositive cliches so that you can live with what you are doing.

Now, don't take this too personally, Linda. You require your clients to be forthcoming. That's all I was attempting with this email. I am trying to convey my honest feelings. I don't dislike you or anything. I just don't agree with your business. This was not a failure. It was just a reaction to an action. What you have to do is find a way to recover positivity. Life is indeed an adventure! And what adventure is without its setbacks? The longest journey starts with a single step. Consider this a stutter-step. The dream is still yours to achieve!

That'll be 60 dollars please.


I dunno, do you think I was too hard on her? I suppose I won't be invited to teach at that camp. But if she lives according to her website, maybe she WILL invite me. She should be thrilled with my honesty and happy to have such a well adjusted person working with the kids. Yeah, right! And her "lifecoach training" is for real too. And those awesome testimonials on the website were written by real people too. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oigu. Think I'll go icefishing with the putz next door.

Sand and Nuts

Well, no rugby pics. It rained yesterday. I like PLAYING rugby in the rain but not watching. But that rain was a good thing. It washes all the Chinese sand out of the air. Today is nice and clear. Actually last night was clear too so I went for a soggy jog. I swear to God I could feel the difference in the air.

For those of you who think the yellow sand is just a wivestale, there is actually a yellow sand level graph kept daily on the website www.usfk.mil Not that the US military doesn't support wivestales wholeheartedly like the one about the Iraq war being about freedom or womd's or anything but oil, but... I still believe in the sand.

And here's a pic taken from the window of one of my classrooms at HUFS. That ain't smog, it's sand that's obscuring the mountains in the distance. And they're not THAT far in the distance.

It's not the sand that is so bad. I don't think it would hurt just breathing in sand. Heck, Jesper Parnevik, (a pro golfer), EATS sand all the time. But since China has become the "next superpower" economically, EVERYBODY in China is buying cars with their new riches. And the pollution is stifling. Worse than traditional front running Bangkok, Thailand, or so I've heard from friends who've been to major Chinese cities recently. It's hard to imagine worse than Bangkok as far as smog.

Anyway, the sand mixes with that toxic poison before it arrives in Korea and is inhaled by me. So I've had what I believe has been more of an infection than a cold for a couple months. And, (yes, Heather), I'm blaming it on China. But I'm finally getting over it. I STILL hack up sand in the morning and I can't sleep too well but I've got enough energy to exercise again and keep my house clean. I haven't been answering emails or keeping up with my work either. I did some marking yesterday that I should have done two months ago. As my blog will attest, I've been going out drinking with friends over the past couple months. This has been therapeutic, infection-killing drinking, don't you know.

Korea has been planting trees in China to help block the sand but if you know anything at all about the Chinese, they'll just fatten them up and cut them down for lumber. Don't think this is in any way racist because it was a Chinese guy who told me this: "Here's the difference between Canada and China: you have 100 trees with two people competing for logging rights. In China we have two trees and 100 people competing for logging rights."

I asked him if he didn't see WHY that might be the case from what he had just told me. NO IDEA!! I explained to him that the 2 Canadians would cut down maybe 50 of the trees then plant 200 more. The 100 Chinese people should be looking elsewhere to make their fortunes. Leave the trees alone if there are only 2 left for God's sake! Should be obvious, shouldn't it?

I wonder if the trees the Koreans are planting are pine trees. I wonder this because I also read an article written by a North Korean who had defected to South Korea. He was writing about the pine nut "harvest" in N. Korea. He wrote about how people, crazed by the money available from the sale of pine nuts to the Chinese, were cutting down trees to get the pine cones. He wrote about how he started collecting pine nuts by climbing the trees and shaking them off the branches. But he could see how easily other people were making their money by simply chopping the trees down so he said he ended up doing it too.

The pine nuts are inside the pine cones and are quite expensive due to their nutritiousness, (hightest protein of any nut or seed), and the hard labour through which they are acquired. It seems like almost everything nutritious is expensive doesn't it? Anyway, a lot of the pine nuts exported from China are collected by poor North Koreans and Russians. The ones collected in China are collected by poor Chinese. They get paid almost nothing for their work because, hey this is China we're talking about here, but if they cut the trees down they can get many more nuts with far less effort. The end result is more money. STILL not enought to be considered slave wages, but more than they're used to getting. And economically, it's not a bad thing either. There won't be so many pine trees left since A) they're killing them, and B) the pine nuts are the seeds that aren't being planted to make more trees. So every year, due to the laws of supply and demand, pine nuts will get more expensive, the pine nut barons of China will get richer, buy more cars and make the air dirtier, AANNDD, there will be more, and more dangerous yellow sand here in Korea.

So I'm not eating another pine nut, dammit. I'm done with pine nuts. No more! I just thank God the Chinese aren't chopping down pistachio trees!

I wanna go to camp

http://s146.photobucket.com/albums/r248/davoid13/?action=view&current=MVI_2264.flv

The above is a video I just found from a couple years ago. My friend Guns filmed it. It's from a summer camp I did way down in Naju City where all the good pears come from. I was looking through camp pics I've piled up over the years to help out a couple Canadians who are thinking of coming to Korea and doing some camps this summer. They just wanted to see what it was like. Don't worry, I didn't send them this clip.

I got to looking at all these pics and vids and, (God help me!), I almost wished I could do a camp right now. It's a heck of a lot of work but it's a TON of fun! The little teacher swim was during the only 20 minute break during the day time we had for the whole two weeks we were there! Well, I'm exaggerating, but not that much. As you can see they had some pretty strict standards on teachers' attire at the Naju camp too.

I tell you what, if I were a Korean kid I would want to go to the camps I was working at. Even though we acquiesced to the parents sadistic wishes to do classroom English lessons in the mornings, we sure ran those kids ragged making up for all the fun they DIDN'T have during the rest of the year. Ran ourselves a little ragged too as you can tell by the "Kasiawhew" pic. to the right. Heh heh. I love that pic. It sums up the camp so nicely.

I don't know why I'm posting this. Spring fever maybe. Not that I EVER look forward to summer, but I sure DO like the camps. I think it might be because Guns called me today from Vancouver and told me that the Naju camp will be contracted out to Chonnam University this year. Unless I volunteer to be the camp planner, that is. I said no. Teaching is enough excitement for me, thank you. But I really like those kids. The more I look at these pics the more I think I SHOULD just plan the whole camp for them. I know I could do it. The two Canadians I was showing the photos to would work the camp I'm pretty sure. So I'd only have to find a couple more teachers. And with a fool proof schedule and a good camp location things would be pretty smooth. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Oigooo! Like that has EVER happened at one of these English camps.

But things always worked out. And after a day of high-stress kid herding, shuffling, dipping, diving, spinning, and pulling last-minute activity and lesson ideas out of our asses, we always had a couple hours after the kids were fed, drugged, soundly whooped and put to bed, to center our souls with beer, smokes and yoga. Guns is the guy on top. He took the kids on their morning hike around the rice fields and his band rocked the place on the last day of camp. He's the lead singer. Ji is our instructor at the bottom. She did yoga while Guns' crew was hiking in the morning. Because of them us teachers got to sleep one hour more than the students each morning. That was awesome! I always forget the other guy's name. Lots of the female campers had crushes on him though. Ah summer love...

Man we had fun! But, I guess I can't live in the past. Two years can change a lot! Two of the four people in this yoga pic. will be in Canada this summer. And one of them won't be the Canadian either. Two Koreans for one Canadian? Is that the going rate? I'm not sure if that's fair market value for a valuable commodity like me or not. Oh well, they might sneak the third guy into Vancouver too. Hee hee. I better stop before I do something foolish like make a long distance call to Canada and tell Guns I'll do the camp.

I might have some rugby pics in the next post. Saturday some of the teachers I work with will be playing and some of us will be cheering. Then we'll all be doing some drinking afterwards. Should be fun.

Gwangju Trip

Well it was a good weekend and LONG! I finished marking my midterm exams and hightailed it off to Seoul to start my 5 days of babes, baseball buddies and beer. Kasia will never read this.

I went to pool night wednesday and helped Woodstock win, (just barely), 8-7. Then I helped Woodstock celebrate afterwards. Mi Jeong, Hee Jeong and Mr. Woo were all there. Here's a good pic of MJ Woo and me. Kasia will never read this.

Then I decided to go to Gwangju to visit some friends and watch some baseball. The Kia Tigers had a three game set with the Hanhwa Eagles friday, saturday and sunday. I caught the first game with Kasia and Laurie. WHAT A GAME! Kia was losing till the 8th inning then, BAM! Hong Sae Weon 3-run homer for the win 5-4. Kasia's never gonna read this.

After a huge lunch buffet at VIPS with my good friend Sam Shik, (no pic), next night I went with Min Ha and Min Ah to ball game number 2. They're a cute couple eh? Swordfighting with cocktail swords. Me and MH were looking nervous there because game two was just as tense as game one. The scoring was back and forth. But Kia pulled off another win. This time 5-3. After the game we went out for some wine and cheese. It was expensive but really nice. Perfect post game refreshment eh? Awesome buffet for lunch. Fried chicken at the game then wine and cheese afterwards. No wonder my gut is bustin its way outta my trusty Kia jersey. Kasia will never read this.

So after all that nice eating we decided to go to Maria's house and visit the girls. Maria had Kasia, and Laurie over for a ladies night. Guess what they were drinking. Wine! So we got another bottle and since Maria was out of wine glasses I bought a bathroom toothbrush cup to drink the wine with. All class. Kasia will never read this.

No sooner did we get in the door than we got attacked by estrogen loopy girls armed with mud. So everybody got facials. Yessiree. That'll probly never happen to me again. Notice the little white bathroom cup. Perfect for wine. Kasia will never read this.

So we went from baseball to wine and cheese to facials. What could possibly be next? I guess the night was getting too feminine for me or something. I had to do something manly. So we had a bit of a pillow fight. Actually it was more like pile pillows on Kasia. But it's okay cuz she's never going to read this.

All in all it was a pretty darn good weekend. It was a bit of a downer that I didn't get the full benefit of all that food on Saturday, (and the 45 dollar wine, (I'm sorry, Maria)), AND I left all my toiletries in the bathroom at the motel so had to buy new shaving stuff, deodorant, toothbrush, comb etc. in Eui Jung Boo at the black market before I made it home. Kasia is never going to read this.

Shout out to Maria. Happy 40th! The lovely white cup I was drinking wine from? Birthday gift. Like I said, I'm all class. And Kasia is never going to read this.