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.

This is what I do when I stay home

Since I have been out for the last 4 weekends in a row and since I showed you what it is that I do when I'm not at home, I figured I'd show you a little bit of what goes on here in thrill-a-minute Yangju, Korea. When I'm not watching TV shows I download or pirated movies I buy at Yong San Electronics market I just surf the net, read, think and occasionally mark papers and plan lessons. Mostly everything BUT the last ones.

And once in a while I write here to vent my pointless rage. Today's topic will be one I've touched on briefly before but in keeping with the latest vein of this blog... I got pics!

Last year in Thailand I purchased a few golf shirts. They were so ridiculously cheap and golfing in Thailand was so ridiculously sweaty, I had to buy like about 6. I bought Ping, Taylor Made and Titleist. Nice golf shirts for about 5 bucks apiece. If I remember correctly.

Recently on one of my frequent subway journeys to Seoul I saw a subway salesman hawking headbands and wristbands with NBA logos on them. The funny thing was the package had the NFL logo on it. Since it was so funny, (and since 2 wristbands and 2 headbands were a buck), I bought three packs.

See the NFL label on the NBA gear? Hee hee hee. Don't I look like I could keep the key clear? I'll Danny Ainge your ass you step up into MY house!

Anyways, it's hard for me to get mad at obvious copywright infringement like this because it's often funny, (some of the grammar mistakes are hilarious), and I figure if you are vain, ignorant and brainwashed enough to believe a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt is worth 200 dollars then you DESERVE to be fleeced. A guy sees a customer who is not so smart and has lots of disposable cash and caters to him/her. The Emperor's New Clothes. They are almost heroes. Almost.

Unfortunately, I been to some of the places where they make this knockoff crap and the people who do all the work sewing, bagging, stapling, shipping etc. are making next to nothing. Slave wages is NOT an overstatement. The people who buy 100 golf shirts for 5 bucks each, bring them back to Korea in their luggage, claim they are originals then sell them for 50 bucks each, THOSE are the creeps who are making the profit. And it's not heroic. Although in Korea if you can afford to golf, and need name brand golf shirts to do it in, well maybe you might fall into the not so smart with disposable income category. Golfing is about 200 bucks a round on average here in Korea. And it's like that to keep the riff raff like us off the course. So sure, sell those jerks phony shirts. Make money off their superiority complexes. While you're in Thailand mail another thousand shirts back to Korea and make 50,000. That'll cover your costs, wages and you get a nice trip to Thailand out of it. But the Thai workers really should be paid more.

Anyway, that's not the pointless rage. My pointless rage will be directed toward the Koreans who brought back the headbands and wristbands. And the Chinese businessmen they deal with.

Look at this label for the love of GOD! Do you suppose they got the "expressed written consent" of all the sports leagues to use their logos? No bar code. Interesting. And Made in Korea my ass! You can't make this kind of stuff and sell it for a buck in Korea. Workers here are too expensive. These were made in China. Sold to a scumbag Korean businessman by an even bigger scumbag Chinese businessman. And the price, ($1), is more than the workers will make for a 12 hour shift. And they'll think they're lucky to be working.

Somebody went to America and bought a pair of socks or something that was made by For Bare Feet just so they could copy the label and use the good name for their product. If you look closely you'll see the signiture grammar mistakes that are included on most bad Chinese knockoffs that make them so funny. These are being sold for a dollar, (for a profit!), only because they're bad knockoffs. What would they sell the GOOD knockoffs for?

One of the guys at work told me he bought a Gucci or Chanel or whatever tie for 50 bucks. Another teacher told him that there hasn't been a genuine piece of that kind of clothing in Korea for a couple of years. Imagine how he felt.

I looked at that For Bare Feet website, THAT IS ON THE LABEL OF THE WRIST/HEADBANDS, and went to the history section. I suddenly felt worse about buying them. Some people worked very hard to establish that company.

Then I thought about my last year of work in Korea. I was working for one of these scumbags who make lots of money using the good names people have worked very hard to acquire to sell watered down, cheap, immitation shit to their unsuspecting customers. My degree took a lot of hard work to earn. I have worked for several years honing my teaching skills. The owner of Seojeong College used my sweat and suffering as selling points for his "college" where he just gives away phony diplomas. And he's gotten filthy rich doing so. The program almost doubled this year.

Not only that but if I ever let people know I worked for that shit college whose business is academic fraud I could be turned down for, or even LOSE a job. Likewise when people wear the knockoff sweatbands and they fall apart at halftime of their first basketball game, the people might not want to buy anything else from For Bare Feet again.

But if you close down the whole business then the Chinese workers who made the sweatbands will be the ones to suffer most. Their jobs were crap but better than nothing. And you can't tell the businessmen to pay the workers more. That's the government's job and they're just happy to see all the income the company is providing for the country.

So what do we do? Eat the rich. Not the rich who earned their money. They don't have enough fat and their meat isn't soft and juicy. The people who have taken the fat of the land off the workers and packed it onto their own self-important, priveleged bodies because of their lofty senses of entitlement. MMmmmmmmm sounds delicious doesn't it? Maybe I'll write a cookbook.

Cho Seung Hui

Cho Seung Hui is big news around Korea right now. He’s big news all over. Three things now instead of two that Korea is known for: the war, the ’88 Olympics and the Virginia Tech. Killer. I have no doubt there are plenty of people around here who actually have a little bit of pride that Korea is getting so much world attention. But the pride is mixed with embarrassment that a Korean did such a thing, a healthy dose of shame that comes from their idea that Koreans are all brothers and sisters and it was their “brother” who committed this atrocity, and fear that other Koreans, especially those in the U.S. will be judged based on his actions.
I saw on the Korean news an interview with a Korean chick going to University in America, (not Virginia Tech.), and she was saying how her parents called from Korea and told her she had to quit and come home in case the Americans decided to take revenge. Ridiculous!
However, I got to talking a bit at work with a couple teachers and some Koreans about the whole deal and a T.A. nicknamed Rita, (she’s Korean), brought up an event that happened here in Korea five years ago. Some American soldiers ran over a couple Korean schoolgirls with a tank in Eui Jung Boo. After the U.S. made an apology Koreans were demanding that the two tank pilots be tried in Korean courts and calling it intentional and Korean people were just freely hating other people for the tragedy. The thing is they were racially generous with their hatred. They were hating all Americans and all people who just might be Americans.
I live just down the road from Eui Jung Boo and let me tell you the people there are STILL pissed off at ALL non-Koreans about that. I swear to God the second you cross the border between Yang Ju, where I live, and Eui Jung Boo the asshole meter jumps off the charts. On the rare occasion I go to Eui Jung Boo I ALWAYS have trouble with people. I think they are still avenging the tank tragedy. I told this to Rita and she agreed.
I haven’t had too many run-ins with racism here in Yang Ju. I like it. It’s boring but the people are nice. I DO get the occasional group of kids one of which is trying to impress the others by making the joke that just never gets old here in Korea, saying “hello” to the foreigner and then laughing uproariously when the foreigner politely replies. It’s like tapping on a fish tank and watching the fish speed up for half a second or leaning out a car window and yelling “MOOOOOO” as you go by a field full of cows. Just trying to get an interesting reaction out of a foreign species. And that’s how people from other countries are regarded here in Korea whether secretly or even consciously. This, as I see it, is the lesson to be learned here in Korea from the Cho tragedy.
Now, I know the U.S. of A. isn’t completely free from racism but I have no doubt that Koreans will be treated no differently by Americans because of this incident. Yet the immediate reaction of so many Koreans was WE are so ashamed that one of US did that! WE sure hope that THEY don’t make things difficult for the rest of US.
The average Korean is very similar to other Koreans. Frighteningly so to people like me who come from cultures in which uniqueness is valued and encouraged. Koreans more than any other people are always making VERY sweeping statements about Koreans. And from my experience, and everyone else who’s been here for a while, sweeping statements about Koreans are almost always much more accurate than they would be for most other countries. You can say very accurately something like “Koreans like kimchi.” Or “Koreans work long hours.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked by my Korean students if Canadians do this or do that. So many times that in the interest of brevity I’m beginning to just say yeah we do or no we don’t rather than give the whole politically correct answer and mention how everyone is an individual etc. etc. But recent events have made me start questioning ever giving the simple answers to these questions. Because Koreans NEED to know about idividuality and how differences are okay within the same race. They could also use some training on how to see people rather than race.
I’ve been saying for years that because Korea is still technically at war they haven’t been able to start “educating” here yet, they are still “training.” This is one of the end results. They tend to think like a soldier thinks. Soldiers are trained to do what they’re told. They would give their lives for a member of their unit or corps or whatever. A member they don’t even know! They love their fellow soldiers like they love their family members. Koreans are trained to think of other Koreans like this.
I cheer for Canadian athletes in the Olympics. I sing along with my national anthem at hockey games. I support Canada and Canadians in lots of ways just because it’s my country and they are my countrymen. And women. But where does a healthy patriotism turn into unhealthy racism? I would suggest that Koreans cross that point. Most of them anyway, excuse the sweeping statement.
The reaction to the Cho incident has brought this to the fore. And other recent news reflects Korean xenophobia too. It’s hard to say who their favourite target for it is, the U.S. or Japan. But it bothers me reading about Koreans waiting for the Japanese to apologize for wartime mistreatment. I think almost everybody, including me, would like to see all the old surviving soldiers from Japan come to Korea and apologize to the old surviving Korean women who were “comfort women” during Japanese occupation. THAT would have some significance. But getting people who were uninvolved to apologize to people who were uninvolved seems a little too much like “We are all Korean and we hate all of you because you are Japanese so we want you prostrate and humbled before us.” And maybe the Japanese are smart not giving too heartfelt an apology because I don't doubt the Korean reaction would not be satisfaction, rather they would start asking for more revenge like they did in the Eui Jung Boo tank incident. In fact they already HAVE received an apology from Japan AND they have received some reparations in the form of money. If Japan admitted to wrongdoing it might just encourage Koreans to demand mass executions or secessions from land or waters or whatever. And who knows where it would end?
In the coming weeks I sure hope Koreans can see the reaction of Americans, or lack thereof, toward the Koreans in America. I hope they can use it as an ideal for their people to strive for. Because I’ll tell you what, if a Canadian shot up some students at a Korean university I think I’d be getting the hell out of here. Or at least taking my Canadian flag off my backpack for a while.

Some I Tai Won Folks

I post a lot about going to I Tae Won and having fun with folks there but haven't had the foresight to bring a camera and take pics until now. Actually on my birthday I took my cam to get pics of Lance, Meagan, and some of the crew at Stompers, (Dwayne's bar), but as soon as I aimed and pressed the button for my first pic my battery died. So it'll be a little while before I can put pics of them here. However, I went to I Tae Won last night, (Tuesday), to shoot some pool with Mr. Woo and Me Jeong and to pay my tab at Debut. I think I got some good shots of everybody. Except Mr. Woo. Hee hee hee. He doesn't normally look like this. I'll convince him to let me win a few games of pool in exchange for removing this pic from this site.

He's the best pool player I've ever known. Me Jeong, on the other hand, (the WAY other hand), is not known for her pool playing. She's my favourite waitress at Woodstock, (Mr. Woo's bar). She's also one of them models you see posing beside hot cars. I gave her a nickname, "Astrogirl" because she has HUGE, cute eyes like Astroboy. But she doesn't want anyone to hear that nickname. So I'll remove that information from this site if she ever beats me at pool. She almost beat me one time when she was doing sexy poses to distract me while I shot. She's a babe eh? I don't know this other dude. But I took a ton of his money playing Texas hold em with a 500 won minimum bet. But I used the money to buy rounds of shots. So really Mr. Woo won the card playing since most of the money ended up in his till. But I was on fire last night. I am just very lucky at gambling. You know what they say about being unlucky in love and lucky at cards. It's true for me. It probly helped that I was sporting my gambling shirt too.

So after cards and pool at Woodstock I made my way half way up The Hill to Debut. Debut is owned by Polly. She has a few bars I think. Probly a gozillionaire. I just like her. She's super nice. And her rubber gloves are nice too. Heh heh. And my musical soulmate Ha Young was in fine form last night. I think we look good together. She looks amazing in these pictures. Another babe. My future ex-wife. She played good tunes as usual too. I had a few caucasians with Polly and Ha Young and caught the 6 AM subway back home. I got up at the crack of noon, listened to some hockey on nhl.com and wrote this. That is what I do and who I do it with. Well NOT who I "do it" with, although hope springs eternal, but you know what I mean. Geez I look 40 in that hug picture don't I? Beauty and the beast.

Just in case you're wondering, I've taken thousands of pics of Koreans and in more than half of them the people are giving the peace sign. Two fingers. I got into the habit of holding up three fingers just to be different. Or as Koreans would say, "wonkda". I'll try to post more pics. So that'll give me an excuse to go to I Tae Won. Gotta get pics for my blog. Anyway, see you later. Don't forget to post comments. A comment always makes my day.

40

Let's see now, headache - check, empty wallet - check, ringing in ears from loud music - check, girl in bed - dammit, no check. But I DO have a new number on my phone. My music soulmate Ha Young plugged her name into my phone. She also made me a little birthday cake by stacking up five or six Choco Pies and putting 4 long candles in the top one. She's awesome.

So long story short, I had a good 40th birthday. I didn't feel 40 last night. Although I kinda do today. Lance and the band were great as usual. I got my share of birthday drinks. Saw a lot of friends and still managed to make it home from I Tae Won at about 7 AM. All in all a good night. Although I did run out of cash at one point and there were NO bank machines open. Me and Ha Young checked all over the place. But I ended up running up a tab at Debut, the bar where she spins the discs. I wonder how much THAT'll cost me next time I visit. I tend to buy lotsa drinks when I don't see the money changing hands. That's why I have lived for 40 years without a credit card. Don't trust myself with one. I actually remember ringing the bell at Debut last night too. Hmmmmm. Oh well, you only turn 40 once, right? So I'm still on the YOUNG and FOOLISH side of 40. Thank God. I gotta go nurse a hangover and a cold. Think I'll order pizza. See you next time.

Black Day

Today is technically the last day of my thirties. It's April 14th here in Korea, which is what they call "Black Day". Feb. 14th is when girls give guys chocolate; March 14 is "White Day" when guys give girls candy and today is the day when all the losers who got no candy or chocolate mourn by eating black noodles or "jajang myun". It's a black day alright. Lincoln was shot on April 14th. The Titanic sunk mostly on April 14th. The Donner Party set out on their gastronomically significant voyage from Illinois to California. Much of the U.S. and Canada's prime prairie soil was blown away during the Dust Bowl during which the worst day was "Black Sunday", April 14th, 1935. This was what caused a lot of people to "go west, young man." One of Apollo 13's oxygen tanks exploded killing the mission and almost the crew. And I was born.

Since I was born in Canada and it's still April 13th there, I'm STILL not 40 years old. But in a matter of hours I will most likely be better than half way through my life. And that's if I make it to 80. And who really wants to make it to 80? Not this ranchero. I don't want to lose all my teeth; fall and break a hip; eat more medicine than food; stop drinking; be so blind I can't drive; use a walker; start forgetting who people are; blend steak before I can eat it; wear diapers again; or see the day when "The Captain" becomes just a private again. If you know what I'm saying.

It's not every day a guy turns 40. So what should I do to celebrate this auspicious occasion? All the things an octogenarian can't do of course! I should go out, eat a great steak dinner, (maybe a ribeye at 3 Alley Pub), listen to some REALLY loud L.R.D. music, (they're playing again tonight at Stompers), dance a little, drink a lot and maybe get my thirty-something year old ass laid.

What do I want to do? I want to stay home, drink a few glasses of wine, have a cigar, watch a movie or three, maybe stay up late and watch golf on TV and if I'm really lucky, chat with a family member online at 3 AM. I guess that's what happens when you're getting old.

I gotta say, though, I have a cold. I'm not really sure it's a cold. It has all the symptoms of a cold but I usually get the sniffles and a cough and a nice little ear/chest infection during this time of year in Korea because the Chinese sand is in the air. Not quite as bad as the dustbowl pic but I sure notice it and it's irritating. So I've been feeling like crap lately.

Still, is this a good excuse to stay home on my 40th? Foregoing all my birthday freebies and maybe even a birthday lay? I am in a quandry. In about 7 hours L.R.D. begins to play. That is how long I have to decide what to do. I'll let you know in my next entry.

Happy birthday to me.

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.

The Annual Korean Contract Shuffle

Happy pig year everybody. Yeah it's Loony New Year here in Asia once again. And things have been loony around here. It's that time of year when after a long weekend of binging on food and alcohol, Koreans start doing all the work they've been postponing until after "Seollal". It's impossible to spell but that's what they call the Lunar New Year here. For any of you who think that Koreans are hard workers, or who think that you might want to do some business with them, let me tell you what has been going on for the past month.

Jan. 16th Interview with Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Seoul Campus)

I went to the interview and was impressed by a professor Shaun Manning who was forthcoming with any info. I needed. He also told me that the contracts were being changed and had been in the process of change for a couple of months already. He gave me the new salary figures and I was happy with them. I told Shaun that the only problem with me might be getting a letter of release from my present, (up until Feb. 28th), employer. I gave him a number of the Dean of Academic Affairs and informed him that he was an asshole. He had refused to give me the letter of release and told me I had to get my new employer to call for it. I warned Shaun that he would be obnoxious but he might give it to the school.

Jan. 22nd Interview and job at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Yong In Campus)

I had answered a job ad for HUFS Yong In which included the salary figures from the NEW contract. I had been contacted by "Minnie" in late December and offered an interview. She told me I had to wait for her professor to return from holidays. I went to the interview Jan. 22 and was impressed by "her professor" a Professor Kim Gang Cheol who was totally fluent, a literature major and golfer like myself. The campus was beautiful and the schedule, money and classes sounded better than HUFS in Seoul. I was offered the job later that night during the bus ride back to Seoul. I accepted.

Jan. 23rd Job offer from HUFS Seoul

I politely thanked Shaun Manning and refused.

Jan 25th Refused job offer from Yong In and accepted job from Seoul HUFS.

I looked around Yong In and the area surrounding the HUFS Yong In campus and was daunted at the prospect of finding housing. It's in a pretty remote area and remote areas are few and far between in Korea. So I called Minnie to ask for a teacher assistant for translation. Maybe even SHE could come with me to some real estate offices. She hummed and hawed and told me she'd look for somebody and call me later in the day. She didn't get back to me. I had stayed overnight in Seoul at a hotel so that I could go to the Seoul HUFS campus and sign my new contracts that Minnie promised would be there. I went in and, surprise, no contracts! So she told me to come in to the Yong In campus on the 25th with all my documentation like original diploma, passport etc. and told me I could sign the contract at the same time. I suggested that since the campus was so far out of the way I would go looking for a house that day too. So I wouldn't have to make two trips. While trying to suggest this she was saying, "Yeah yeah. Yeah yeah. Okay okay. MMM HMM. MM HMM." I think she was probably doing the old hand mouth yammering sign into her non-telephone ear too. I had already been thoroughly frustrated by having to tell her everything at least 3 times. For example she told me when she offered me the job that they would need a letter of release from my employer. I had already explained to her and Professor Kim that she had to call my employer and get it. I gave her the phone number for crying out loud! She didn't get back to me about the housing help but sent me a text message that she needed original diploma, passport, letter of relese... Now I absolutely knew she wasn't listening. So I contacted Shaun Manning and re-offered my services to HUFS Seoul. He said the job was still mine for the taking. Shortly after sending Minnie an email politely turning down the Yong In job, I received a text message from her saying nothing about the housing help but reminding me to bring my documents. I sent her a text message refusing the job. She sent back another text saying to bring my original diploma, sealed transcripts, (which I had told her 3 times I had to get mailed to the University and asked 3 times for a mailing address and was ignored), and my letter of fucking release! I sent her ANOTHER refusal text message. She texted "Okay. I understand."

Jan. 29th Request for documentation from HUFS Seoul

Shaun Manning sent the 5 new teachers at HUFS Seoul an email requesting our passports, original diplomas, you get the idea. He also, (halleluiah), gave me an address to have my sealed transcripts mailed to. And he introduced us to Mee Sook who would be taking over all dealings with the new foreign professors. She needed our documents to make an "invitation to enter". I assumed this would include signing our new contracts.

Jan. 31st Met Mee Sook. Gave her all documents. Got no contract.

I talked to Mee Sook via internet and asked if the contracts could be signed at the same time I gave all my documents to her. I'm pretty sure she said it would be possible. I had to fax my request for sealed transcripts from her office. She helped me do that. I also informed her that if she needed a letter of release that I couldn't get it and she would have to call my employer. I gave her the number of my supervisor there. When I gave her all the stuff she had asked for, she was talking to me about the schedule. All new teachers will be working the 12 hours plus 6 hours of overtime. She had asked if I wanted a further 4 hours and I had said I'd do it if nobody else wanted them. I had a choice between a writing class on Wednesday or a presentation class on Friday. All teachers who don't teach the extra classes get both Wed. and Fri. off. So, of course, I told her I'd prefer to have long weekends every week so the writing would be better. So now she was talking to me about my 22 hour schedule. I pointedly told her, "No. I prefer 18. I only want 22 if nobody else wants the extra class." And... no contract.

Feb. 4th Apology from Mee Sook and promise to make "invitation letter" for contracts with our documents.

Aparently every teacher was expecting to sign the contract while handing in the documents. Mee Sook apologized and promised to talk to those in charge of the contracts the next day. She also mentioned that I had "volunteered" to teach one of the extra classes and asked who wanted the other one.

Feb. 5th Email from me saying no to the writing class.

I had bumped into one of the other teachers at the pub the night before and he told me he WANTED the writing class but Mee Sook told him I had already expressed a burning desire to teach it. Plus one OTHER teacher told me SHE wanted it too! So I pointedly explained to Mee Sook that she should give it to one of them. I also said we really should talk about scheduling AFTER signing the contracts. She promised they would be ready "soon".

Feb. 8th "Good news" about the contracts! They will be ready 5 DAYS FROM NOW!

Signing date was set for Feb. 13th. Alas, not a Friday. Remember my interview on the 16th of Jan. Shaun Manning had said that the contracts had been in the works for a couple of months before that. So it took them a brisk three months to add a 3% raise and calculate vacation pay based on the regular 18 - hour week rather than a 12 - hour week. Those were the only two new things on the new contracts. Now THAT'S Korean efficiency!

Feb. 12th Told to bring in documents AGAIN for visa including sealed transcripts and letter of release. I gave my wrath a day to disappear and waited for the contract signing meeting to talk with Minnie, I mean Mee Sook about my transcripts and letter of release.

Feb. 13th Wrong contracts. Mee Sook promises to get new contracts made a.s.a.p. I explain for the 7th time about my transcripts and letter of release.

We all go in and are given the OLD contracts with the OLD salary and vacation pay figured on a 12-hour week instead of 18. We're none too impressed so we spend a couple hours explaining to Mee Sook how we need a contract that reflects our actual situation. We all needed the correct contract for negotiating our visas and I needed it, (before Feb. 19th), to make a new housing contract or I'd be living on the street. She ran up and down the stairs, talked to people, but the end result was they couldn't do it on that day. She promised they would be ready "soon". I remind Mee Sook that I had faxed my transcript request from her office and I wrote down my supervisor's number one MORE time on a post-it note and gave it to her and told her she had to get my letter of release from my school. Mee Sook takes our documents and says she is going in to immigration to try to negotiate our visas. Without a contract. Oh and by the way, another teacher told me that Mee Sook told HER that I had changed my mind and VOLUNTEERED for the composition class.

Feb 15th Mee Sook "fails completely" at immigration, tells us we have no choice but to sign the OLD contracts, and asks for my sealed transcripts and letter of release.

Those are her own words: "I went to immigration office and failed completely because I lack of contract." Not surprising. She goes on in the email to all the new teachers to explain that we can't work at HUFS Seoul unless we sign the old contracts and trust them to pay us what would be in the new contracts. Well, why wouldn't we trust them? They have proven trustworthy so far don't you think? We're all upset because everyone, including myself, has turned down other jobs to work for HUFS and we're pretty sure they have been stringing us along with offers of new contracts for that very purpose. They knew from the beginning we wouldn't be able to sign the new contracts, but to keep us committed they gave us schedules, textbooks, false promises about contracts... This is a new one for me. I've never waited so long for a contract. But I have no problem signing the old and getting paid the new. I've actually done that before. I just wish they had told us instead of lie their way into bigger problems. What I am most upset about is the fact that because of Lunar New Year, we won't be able to sign the OLD contracts until Feb. 20th. That's a day after my housing contract runs out. I don't know what's gonna happen with that yet. AND she asks me again for my FUCKING sealed FUCKING transcripts and letter of FUCKING release!!!

Today is Feb. 18th. I am only allowed to stay in my house until midnight tomorrow. I have told my landlord I want to stay and I think he has been given the message. But for all I know he's found a new tennat and they will be moving in soon.

I don't know how things will go with immigration yet because as yet Mee Sook has not received my transcripts and for all I know she still doesn't understand that SHE has to get my letter of release. But I am only employed at the old place until Feb. 28th so I don't think we'll need the letter of release if we do our dealings then.

In a probable attempt to placate the new teachers, who she knew would be very upset at her last email, Mee Sook also included at the end of it that we wouldn't have to go to Japan on our visa runs. If you remember the beginning of my last contract, I was conned into signing with this same promise. I still expect to have to go to Japan and I expect to pay for the trip.

As you might imagine, I am looking for work again. I wrote Mee Sook an email that might be worded strongly enough to induce her to abandon plans of having me as a teacher there. She is probably drinking soju and eating traditional dumpling soup right now and won't read it till the 20th. By which time I may be living on the street. BUT, God help me, I will STILL work there, and sign the bogus contract and trust them to pay me more than the contract stipulates, if they still want me.

When you've been dealing with Koreans as long as I have, you almost get used to this kind of shit. The worst part about all of this is I couldn't go on vacation. That's how I DEAL with all this. Oh well, wish me luck. Further entries as events warrant.

Oh and by the way, as far as anyone knows, I am still the teacher of record for the presentation classes on Friday morning, although I'm sure other teachers have volunteered and been turned down for them. There go 16 long weekends in a row.

Can't We All Just STOP CHEATING??!!

The other day I was walking down the street in Yong In and I saw a coffee shop with the familiar green logo, letters, interior etc. that was unmistakeably Starbucks. They're taking over the world, Starbucks. Soon the price of coffee will be overinflated EVERYWHERE. But on closer inspection, no, it was Starbangs. I wish I had my camera with me so I could have taken a picture. However, I doubt I would have been able to post it here anyway.

The ubiquitous copywright infringement. Charmingly hilarious! Some of the better examples I can think of have been the Jurassic Prak night club I saw with everything stolen from the movie. My friend Kim collects things like this. She has a "Dorald Duke" t-shirt with Donald Duck silkscreened on and even the little circled C's and R's unwittingly copied with him. I have a whole collection of ties with Simpsons characters illegally reproduced. I have an animator friend who tells me that drawing muppet characters like Big Bird or Ernie and Bert, (without permission), is a lucrative industry. And one of my greatest regrets in Korea was the pair of "Ree" jeans with the flagrantly copied "Ree" branded leather patch on them that I didn't buy just because they were too small.

It's impossible to know when you are buying, for example, golf clubs over here whether you are getting an actual, legitimate, original Cobra driver or whether it's just a cheap immitation. Cheaply MADE, (by slave labourers in China), but not cheaply priced any more. Those "clever" Asians are starting to realize that people know it's fake if the price gets too low. I don't know how many times I've been accosted on the streets of I Tae Won, (a popular foreigner shopping and entertainment district in Seoul), with, "Rolex? Genuine immitation Rolex?" Last month I bought a pair of Levi's jeans there FROM a Levi's store ON SALE for only 85 bucks, but they're probably fakes. And so many girls have the, (fake), designer clothes and shoes and purses that I am starting to recognize some of the names and patterns, God help me!

Now you may think it's all harmless and you may forgive them because, (as they all seem to have convinced themselves), they HAVE to do it to feed their families. I used to believe this too. But both are wrong. There ARE a few people who cheat to survive in some Asian countries. I even find myself allowing myself to be cheated sometimes. And not so long ago in Korea I think the cheating would have been more respectable as well. But I have found that economics change much faster than social values and ideas. Korea's economy is now a world powerhouse, but they are STILL cheating because that's how their forefathers succeeded. Their forefathers had to cheat, they don't. But they are still respected, preferred as mates, generally favoured as if they DO. Ask a Korean or Chinese person if one can succeed in business without cheating and don't be surprised when they laugh at you. It's gonna be a while before this changes.

But how is this harmful to me? To you? I am certainly no expert so I can't speak knowledgeably about how countries that have enacted and enforced business laws to force business past this "cheating to succeed" phase seem to, with the new global economy, be the ones who are BEING influenced by, rather than doing the influencing to the countries that haven't progressed past it. But I can give a few examples of how I think it has negatively influenced MY life. Most recently, about half an hour ago.

Half an hour ago I got an email from my university in response to my request for sealed transcripts to be mailed to my new employer here in Korea. You see it's no longer enough to produce an original diploma from my university, it could be a fake purchased on Kaosan road in Thailand. It isn't enough that last year amidst a wave of foreign teachers found to have used phony degrees, (given to them by their Korean recruiters), ALL foreigners were forced to have their degrees verified at their local immigration offices. I have an original degree, on record at all the immigration offices as having been verified just over a year ago, but that's not enough. Now we also need to have sealed transcripts mailed to new employers directly from our alma maters. I have already done this once. A couple of years ago. It costs money and it's an extra hassle. But that's the price we pay for people trying to cheat.

It gets worse. I emailed my school like I did two years ago and made my request. I included my student number, my social insurance number, the address of my new employer, said hello to the worker who did this for me two years ago, but, nope, I could be a fake. Things in Canada are quickly changing so that we will never have to, and never be able to trust anyone ever again. You can't do anything in Canada without taking a thousand extra legal steps to cover your ass against fraud. A lawyer's paradise. Hell for Joe average. Why? We are being forceably protected against the dangerous practice of trusting people while at the same time being relieved of the difficult responsibility of being honest.

Back to my situation. The email stated that due to recent government regulations requests for transcripts will not be processed unless sent from your personal university email address no doubt only attainable through personal appearance, fingerprinting and d.n.a. testing. They also gave me a link to their webpage for alternate forms of transcript requests. It turns out that a request can be made by fax. Great. So I'll go into my new employer and give them the fax number and get them to fax the request. I figured I was out of the woods. How could I be so foolish?

I went to the part of the page where it lists acceptable forms of payment. Cash. That's out. I'm in Korea. I could buy Canadian cash here and mail it but that would be foolish and time consuming. Certified check. That's out too. Although they ARE available in this country, the majority of bank tellers will look at you like you have three heads if you request one. I've tried. Visa or Mastercard. That's out. I don't have either.

Last year I paid with an e-transfer from my Canadian account to the Lakehead university account. I guess some clever person has found a way in the last two years to defraud THIS system of payment as well.

In summation, I am going to have to go through a lot of unnecessary hassle, and waste a lot of time to do something in the slowest, most difficult way, that is totally unnecessary for me to have to do in the first place. All because of peole who can't stop lying, cheating and stealing! Grrrr!

On a lighter note, I'm tied for fourth place in the NFL.com playoff pool. First prize is two tickets to the next Super Bowl. Hotel and airfare included. I checked out the rules for the pool to see if airfare from Korea would be possible. After reading one of the twelve pages of Legalese written specifically to cover their asses against fraud because in the past somebody cheated, I gave up. I kinda hope I DON'T win now.

Heavenly Hockey Card

Who is the greatest street hockey player who ever lived? Would even he, or for that matter, she, (har har), know? I may not have been the best, but I have some pretty impressive statistics. And when I die, if God finds me worthy to enter into Heaven, it is my greatest wish to know how I stacked up against all the street hockey players of the world. I hope God meets me with a handshake, a “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and a hockey card with an action shot of me on the front and exhaustive statistics on the back.

I don’t just want to know goals, assists, penalties, shooting percentage, breakaway success rate and the like. If God made the card, and God is omni present, potent and scient, we can expect more. I want to know statistics like how many one-timers I blasted into the net; the velocity of my hardest ever shots; how many times I would have scored if someone had not yelled, “Car!” I would like to see my scoring totals adjusted for unavoidable irregularities like playing with broken sticks or blades worn sliver thin, potholes, puddles, frost heaves and other challenging imperfections to the playing surface, and variant net sizes. I mean how accurate can you be when making nets out of boots, crushed pop cans, bits of litter, broken stick blades etc.? Really, the only consistent street hockey goal I ever used was from a pair of stringed mittens I got for Christmas one year. And I only got them because of my propensity toward losing unattached mittens. And this propensity existed in turn because most of my mittens had, at one time or another, served as street hockey goalposts and had been slushed up, trodden upon, run over by passing cars or even bunched up and used as a ball in an emergency.

Only God could possibly know how many of my shots would have ricocheted off the post and gone in had the post not been a pile of slush, a toque, a rock, or a running shoe, the laces of which had been used to tie rectangular pieces of couch sponge to the shins of a goalie. And only God could fairly adjust my statistics for inequalities in teams or play. For example, what if one side had couch sponge pads for their goalie and the other team’s goalie just had to tie a couple telephone books to his shins? What if there was one player much older and bigger, or much younger and smaller? What if you had to play with a girl because she was somebody’s sister or cousin and somebody wasn’t allowed to play unless she did too? What if one side had a dead end wall or a curb, but the other side had to wear itself out chasing errant balls past their goal and down the street? What if the street was actually not level? And of course, what if one team’s net was larger than the other team’s? Only God knows how this changed the game.

And only God knows about the NON-statistics. Like how many games did I play at the beginning of my career when the older kids wouldn’t pass to me? Even though I was just as good, or maybe better, they cost me a lot of statistics that way. And how many times did I pass to a younger kid, (remembering how I hated not being passed to), or a worse player who blew the goal and cost me the assist? Or how many times did I have an easy goal but I passed to someone to give them the glory? How many times did I pass to the new kid and try to get him involved? How many times had I been captain and picked the new kid? Or picked the crappy player before somebody better than him just to boost his ego? How many times did I have a chance to lie and say I’d scored, but didn’t? Or how many times had I continued playing even though I was absolutely sure I HAD scored a goal? How many times had I moved the net for a passing car, chased a ball down a hill or looked for one in the bushes? How many times could I have hacked, slashed or started a fight, but chose not to? How many times did I break up a fight between two other players? How many times had I agreed to play goalie even though I’m a lousy goalie, I usually can’t score when I’m in net, we were using a frozen ball and I had no cup? How many times had I helped others melt their superblades to get a really sweet curve? How many kids did I teach to tape their sticks? How many thousands of hacks did I take on the shins without complaint? I think God would be most concerned with these non-statistics.

When I think about it, my heavenly hockey card is going to be awfully long. That or it’ll have microscopic printing. Either way it’ll be okay because I’ll have eternity to study it. But I won’t just receive the card. I think it would be almost sacrilege to underestimate the glory of Heaven so. No, I believe after God gives me the handshake, the “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and my heavenly hockey card, He, (or she (har har)), and I will sit down on some comfy chairs, or maybe clouds, get a nice bottle of Molson or ambrosia or pomegranate wine or myrrh, (is myrrh a drink? Is it even a liquid? I never DID know what myrrh was), whatever beverage goes best with hockey watching, and we’ll watch any games we want. From any time past or present. Maybe even future! I could watch the first game I ever played. Wow, that was a long time ago. I wonder how old I was and who I played with. I could watch THE first game ever played! Was it in Canada? Did they use a cow pie instead of a puck? Was it played on a pond? Did they use sticks that they had hewn out of logs themselves? Was it even on ice? Which came first, street hockey or ice hockey? Again, probably only God knows the answer.

I would love to watch the first goal I ever scored. The thrill on my rosy-cheeked face would bring a tear to my eye in Heaven. Could there be a thrill more unimaginably intoxicating than scoring the Stanley Cup winning goal? Perhaps scoring an Olympic gold medal-winning goal. Or maybe everyone feels something similar when they score their first goal. And I’m not talking about Dad or big brother flailing their bodies in mock attempts to stop a shot that only just makes it into the net. I’m talking about playing with peers and scoring a legitimate goal. When was my first? I can’t believe I have forgotten such a momentous occasion. Then again I don’t remember my first breath, my first friend or my first taste of my favourite food.

I could watch one of so many first games I played at many new schools. Invariably I was picked last and used sparingly until the other players noticed my abilities and began to include me in play and even celebrate goals with me.

I could watch the last game I ever played. That’ll be when I’m very old I hope. If I am very lucky, it will be the last thing I do on earth. Dying of a heart attack while playing hockey wouldn’t be so bad. I could watch any game I have ever played! I could watch EVERY game I have ever played! God and I just might do this BEFORE He decides whether or not I am worthy of entry into Heaven. What more would we really need to see?

Offense isn't offensive

A few things pervade my thoughts this week. One is football. Of the NFL sort. I think the best game of the year was Indy/New England when they met during the season. Too bad it's the playoffs and both teams seem to be buying into the old faithful, "Defence wins championships" nonsense that has killed so many a poolster. Although I DID pick the Colt defence and Adam V. their kicker, I almost puked when I saw such an offensive powerhouse play a whole game without a touchdown last week.

Watch for what I'm about to type in the game this week: Both Peyton and Brady have been guilty of throwing the "safe" passes recently, Peyton moreso than Brady. Although for most of the Pats' last game their best receiver, Reche Caldwell, only got ahold of one ball for a gain of more than 8 yards and that was a ball that was thrown to someone else, intercepted by the other team, fumbled and finally recovered by Caldwell for about a 20 yard gain. But when the going got tough, Brady came out of his shell. Caldwell finally got a long one that put them into game winning field goal position.

Peyton has looked more like Eli in his playoff games so far. Throwing those sideline and endzone un-interceptable passes much closer to the sidelines and endzones. So much closer that not only can't the OTHER team catch them, but the Colts' receivers can't either. Marvellous Marvin Harrison has been Starvin' Marvin for the last two weeks and Reggie Wayne might as well have been John Wayne, he ain't getting any passes. I think Peyton is suffering from Bill Buckneritis. Or I guess, unfortunately, that could be known as Tony Romoitis now. He's so worried about making a crappy play that'll lose the game that he's not making the big plays to win it. Brady threw 3 interceptions against the Chargers last week and won the game because he threw some MORE balls that could have been intercepted, but weren't.

Over their careers, and probably this weekend, that'll be the difference between Brady and Manning. If Manning is too scared to do what got him here and throw the ball, or if the coach is too scared to let him, Colts lose. But if he throws a few interceptions, I think they'll win.
Same with the Superbowl, although I'm impressed with the Bears using their offense and not their number 1 defence to win last week. I have to go with the Saints to beat them though. Sorry Heather and Mike. New Orleans had a hurricane, you guys in Chicago just have lots of wind. The sympathy vote goes to the Saints.

So in conclusion, I predict that the teams that are more offensive on the field and less offensive to the stomach will win. Colts beat Saints in the Superbowl.

But I may be in another country watching that. Another thing on my mind recently has been getting a new job then going on a vacation. If you are a regular reader you know I've worked at a shit school this year so I've been doing the interview thing recently. On Monday I have an interview at the place I most want to work. That sucks because Monday morning is NFL Sunday here in Korea. But I think I'll be able to watch that Colt/Pat game and THEN hightail it out of here to my interview a couple hours away. After that I'll be looking for a ticket to somewhere where I can sit beside the pool and watch the Superbowl. Probly Philippines or Thailand.
Go Colts go!

Tale of Three Countries

Okay, I’m no expert on what I’m about to write, but recent world events, movie viewing, internet surfing and distant echoes of past education have brought to my mind what I perceive as a clearer understanding of the Iraq situation. I could be wrong.
I’ll start with the movie. If you haven’t seen “Hotel Rwanda” go, get it NOW. The story takes place amidst the 100-day massacre of close to a million “Tootsies” by rival “Hutus”. The source of their difference was not race, belief, religion etc., but nose size and length. When Rwanda was colonized by Belgium, the Belgian colonists decided that Tootsies, in general, had longer, more slender noses. This was not a scientific, evolutionary or factual observation, it was just made up.
When the Belgians left, the Tootsies, a minority, were in charge of the country. They gave preference to people with longer, more slender noses. The Tootsies got more government funding, better jobs, etc. They even dispatched with troublesome nose inspections by creating identity cards with “Hutu” or “Tootsie” stamped in big letters across them.
Naturally, the mistreated majority revolted, and the result was an attempted genocide during which one tenth of the Rwandan people were massacred.

Now to Iraq. Almost everyone in Iraq is Muslim. There are some artificial divisions that are causing the commotion. Roughly 60% of the people are Shi’aa or Shia Arabs. Roughly 20% are Sunni Arabs and roughly 15% are Sunni Kurds. So the Sunni are the minority. During the rule of Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni, the Sunnis were favoured by government, given better jobs etc.
The U.S. stepped in and gave Iraq a “democratic” government that is Shia controlled and actually limits the number of attainable seats for Sunnis.
What is the main difference between the Shia and the Sunni Muslim? This goes back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad. After he died, a new leader, Abu Bakr, his close friend and advisor, was elected as the leader of the Muslim people. Sunni support this election but the Shia believe that the new leader should have been a member of Muhammad’s family, his cousin/brother-in-law, Ali. “Shia” is actually a shortened form of “Shia-t-Ali” or the party of Ali. So throughout history Shia and Sunni Muslims have recognized different lines of leaders.
I find it extremely odd that the U.S. recognizes the group that supports “Imams” or leaders, who they believe are sinless and whose authority comes directly from God. The Sunni contend that leadership of the community is not a birthright, but a trust which is earned and may be given or taken by the people. This is virtually identical to the position the founding fathers of America held that caused them to spurn the king of England, (whose authority was believed to be directly from God), and elect their own leaders.
It is also odd that I have read several times that all Iraqis say that they are Iraqi. Not Sunni-Iraqi or Shia-Iraqi. They fought side by side against Iran, they represented their country together in the Olympics and they share all the fundamental Islamic beliefs.

Now a third and final country. It’s called Lilliput. Within Lilliput there existed a metropolis called Mildendo. For above 70 moons past there have been two struggling parties in this empire: the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan. These parties won’t eat, drink or talk with one another. What is the factor that causes their division? The Tramecksan wear high heeled shoes while the Slamecksan prefer low heeled footwear.
The very existence of the city of Mildendo is threatened by invasion from the island of Blefuscu. On Blefuscu there has raged a,

“most obstinate War for six and thirty Moons past.”

The war in Blefuscu is between the Big-Endian Exiles and the Blefuscuan traditionalists who honour their age-old traditions. What traditios are they fighting over? The Big-Endians break their eggs at the big end in brash opposition to the Blefuscuan tradition of breaking their eggs at the small end.

“It is computed, that eleven thousand Persons have,
at several times, suffered Death, rather than submit
to break their Eggs at the smaller End.”
If you haven’t spotted it, this third country is a fictional one derived from the fertile mind of Jonathan Swift and shared with the world in his book “Gulliver’s Travels”. Though the country of Lilliput and its various conflicts were satirical fabrications, I have been recently wondering if these wars are any less believable than those in Iraq and Rwanda. It’s a close call.

cartoon

Hey! What do you know!!! I posted a picture!